Intro to myth by Thury chapter 2 photos Lynn Engl 260

1. Bust of Homer, Capitoline Museum. Homer, the ancient Greek poet, lived so long ago that no one knows what he looked like. This bust from the 2nd c.
B.C.E. shows him as old, but infuses him with a vitality attributable to the power of his compositions.

2. The Tapestry Weavers or The Fable of Arachne, by Diego Rodriguez Velazquez. This 17th-c. painting reflects some of the complexity of Ovid’s
world. Velazquez represents the diverse interactions between the weavers, their audience, and the characters in the tapestry being woven. There is
humor in the ways the gestures of the weavers both resemble and contrast with those of their subject, and the way the audience in the middle ground
observes the weavers as well as their creation. These sorts of relationships are also found in the tale of Arachne, and throughout his Metamorphoses.
Such ironic interplay of stories interested Ovid much more than the exact rendition of scientific principles or religious values.