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1 8 VENUS AND ADONIS
From Greek literature the story spread to Roman.
Ovid's Ovid's narrative of the fable in his Metamorphoses (x. f 20-
738) is a mere skeleton, and is awkwardly obscured by the
interpolation of the independent story of Hippomenes' foot-
race with Atalanta (11. j 60-7 07)- But Ovid caught something
of the temper of Theocritus and Bion, and added a few
mythological details. It was through the Latin that the tale
in the first instance reached the poets of Western Europe.
Dante's slight allusion to Venus' infatuation (Purgatorio^ xxviii.
6j^~6) and Chaucer's apostrophe to Venus in The I^ight^s Tale
(2227-8)—
For thilke loue thou haddest to Adon,
Have pi tee on my bitter teres smart,
are Ovidian reminiscences.
Shakespeare, too, gained his first knowledge of the myth
from Ovid. He had opportunities of reading the Ovidian tale
in both Latin and English from his school-days. Golding's
English verse translation of the 'Metamorphoses^ of which the
publication was completed in i')67^ was constantly reprinted
during Shakespeare's lifetime, and the dramatist adapted many
passages from it in plays of all periods of his career.
Ovid's account of Venus' infatuation for Adonis, of her
warnings against the ferocity of the boar, of his love of the
chase, of his death in the boar-hunt, of the goddess' grief,
and of her lover's transformation into a purple flower, are
the broad bases of Shakespeare's poem. Apart from verbal
coincidences, some of its leading characteristics — the free
employment of pictorial imagery, and the frank appeal to
the senses — indicate that Ovid, whether in the Latin original
or in the English translation, was a primary source of inspira-
tion. Shakespeare's indebtedness to Ovid passed indeed
beyond the bounds of the Latin poet's brief version of the
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