Ovid’s Tales of Warning: The Daughters of Minyas

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Much of Ovid’s Metamorphoses is comprised of layers of framed narratives. Rather than simply a poetic voice, we have moments in which an omniscient narrator tells the story of a man who is telling the story of an old friend who has a story carved on their shield.

An example of this comes in Book IV, the majority of which is ostensibly centred around the daughters of Minyas, yet within their narrative we have four other stories.

Put simply, the Minyads are sat together weaving whilst the other women in the city are worshipping the god Bacchus (Dionysus). Disgusted and horrified by the lechery and debauchery of the god, being sworn to follow Minerva (Athena), and not believing that Bacchus is indeed the son of Jupiter (Zeus), these women choose to shut themselves away and weave, denying the power or divinity of Bacchus. This is particularly potent because, prior to this, we have seen the narrative of Pentheus and Agave (which is based on the Bacchae), in which Bacchus has caused Agave to murder her own son Pentheus.

As the Minyads weave, they choose to tell each other stories to pass the time:

Pyramus and Thisbe (IV. 55–166)

The first story is one that we see being performed by the mechanicals in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream…