How Ovid Rewrote Greek Mythology Forever | Stephanie McCarter

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon:   / membership   In this episode of Solomon & Smith, Jack and Milo speak with classicist and translator Stephanie McCarter about her acclaimed translation of one of the most influential works in Western literature, Ovid's Metamorphoses. Ovid retold Greek myths of transformation, and in so doing transformed Greek mythology. We talk about why Roman writers saw translation as an act of cultural conquest, and about what is gained and lost when Latin poetry is brought across into modern English. McCarter discusses her approach to translating Ovid, her decision to render sexual violence explicitly rather than euphemistically, and why she believes no translation can ever be faithful. We discuss Roman attitudes toward Greece, the philosophy of transformation, the poetic differences between Ovid, Virgil, and Horace, the politics of translation, and why Ovid remains one of the most modern voices from the ancient world. Topics include: Ovid's Metamorphoses Ancient Greek mythology Roman literature Classical studies Translation theory "To translate is to conquer" Stephanie McCarter's Penguin translation The history of Rome and Greece Mythological retellings Poetry and meter Horace, Virgil, and Catullus The politics of storytelling Women in classical literature Sexual violence in ancient texts The philosophy of change and transformation 00:00:00 Translation as conquest 00:01:28 Introduction 00:05:00 Flux, Rome, and McCarter’s translation 00:10:07 Stephanie McCarter arrives 00:13:04 Poetic epigraph 00:14:34 English poetry, Dickinson, Byron, and Chaucer 00:16:45 Horace and the magic of Latin 00:21:51 Ovid in Latin: speed, play, and rhetoric 00:25:27 Virgil, allusion, and Ovidian style 00:30:30 Epic, epyllion, and the structure of the Metamorphoses 00:38:08 Greece, Rome, and translation as conquest 00:42:35 Translating Ovid: negotiation, constraint, and compensation 00:53:38 McCarter vs Mandelbaum: architecture and line 01:00:16 Apollo, Daphne, archaism, and poetic style 01:06:06 Puns, wordplay, Catullus, and the “fuckathon” 01:09:12 Sexual violence, legal language, and Roman readers 01:14:54 Arachne, power, Augustus, and exile 01:20:14 Ovid’s immortality and the final metamorphosis 01:21:27 Nature, flux, Lucretius, and the minded cosmos 01:29:58 Ovid, Shakespeare, and negative capability 01:36:30 First Encounters and Farewells