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Classical Origins

His mind, his soul, the light of his reason and his judgement were blinded, and in his madness, as if it were his wife, he would lift up the divinity to the couch.¹

As is the case for many tales which begin as myths, the urtext for the Pygmalion story is no longer extant. Though Ovid’s is the most important classical version of the tale, stories similar to his tale have been recorded by several classical mythographers and early Christian apologists, and there are good grounds for thinking that the story was a local legend of Cyprus.² The earliest written version of the Pygmalion story formed part of the no longer extant History of Cyprus or Cypriaca written by the Hellenistic writer Philostephanus – a poet and collector of myths, who flourished in the third century BC. Philostephanus’s version is only available to us through the later works of Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 150–c. AD 211) and Arnobius of Sicca (d. 330), who recount it in slightly different forms.³ Both mythographers use the story as a parable to justify religious polemic: Clement warns that pagan statue-worship is wrong; Arnobius argues that it is impossible for gods to dwell in statues.

Clement, an Athenian and a Christian, records Philostephanus’s story in Protrepticus or The Exhortation to the Greeks (4, 51).⁴ He tells of Pygmalion, a ‘well-known’ man of Cyprus, who falls in love with a sacred ivory statue of naked Aphrodite and embraces it. Arnobius’s account, in Adversus Nationes (4, 22), contains more detail than Clement’s. He elevates Pygmalion’s status to king of Cyprus, changes the holy statue from the Greek Aphrodite to the Roman Venus, suggests that Pygmalion is mad, and is the first writer (that we know of) to imply a sexual violation of the statue: ‘[Pygmalion’s] mind, his soul, the light of his reason and his judgement were blinded, and in his madness, as if it were his wife, he would lift up the divinity to the couch’. The writers connect Philostephanus’s Pygmalion with a similar story, from Poseidippus’s book on Cnidus, of an unknown man’s amorous liaison with a marble statue of Aphrodite. The man from Cnidus is also elevated by Arnobius, who describes him as young and of noble birth. He suggests further, that the Cnidian’s love for the goddess caused him to perform ‘lewd’ acts with it; according to Clement, it is, rather, the craftsmanship of statue itself which beguiles the man.

There is also a reference to a Pygmalion in Hyginus’s Fabulae (written before AD 207).⁵ It is not clear, however, whether this is the Pygmalion of Ovid’s story. Hyginus writes that ‘In Egypt in the land of Busiris, son of Neptune, when there was a famine, and Egypt had been parched for nine years, the king summoned the augurs from Greece. Thrasius, his brother Pygmalion’s son, announced that rains would come if a foreigner were sacrificed, and proved his words when he himself was sacrificed’.⁶ Hellanicus also includes a very brief reference to Pygmalion in his Cypriaca: ‘Carpasia [was] a city of Cyprus, which Pygmalion founded’ (Müller, I [1841], 65).

Ovid’s story of Pygmalion, in Metamorphoses (composed between AD 1–8), is the earliest version of cultural importance.⁷ According to Meyer Reinhold, it was Ovid’s account ‘that remained the canonical form of the myth until the end of the seventeenth century’ (Reinhold, p. 316). It is certainly canonical, but it is by no means the only version to which writers reacted. Ovid’s sources have not been identified, but his story is similar to those of Philostephanus and Poseidippus. The similarity is noted by Joseph Solodow.⁸ Though Philostephanus’s is the earliest known written version of the story, only Solodow infers a direct connection between Ovid and Philostephanus:

Comparison of this [Ovid’s] version with its Greek source shows how, in making it over, the poet gave it a new subject and reconceived it so powerfully that it became a paradigm for later ages. Philostephanus of Cyrene, a pupil or friend of Callimachus, wrote what appears to be the original account; Philostephanus’ work is lost, but two later writers have preserved notice of it (pp. 215–216).

He is, however, only able to support his case by comparing the two versions. There is no other evidence that Ovid knew this work.

Ovid’s Pygmalion, a sculptor of Cyprus, scorns the libertine women of his nation and creates his own perfect woman in ivory. He falls passionately in love with the statue, dresses it, showers it with gifts, and takes it to bed with him. At the festival of Venus, Pygmalion prays to the goddess to give him a woman like his ivory maiden. When he returns home from the temple, he kisses and embraces the statue, which warms to life in his arms. They marry and produce a child called Paphos.⁹ The sex of the child is not conclusive owing to manuscript difficulties. Pygmalion is said to be an ancestor of Adonis, with whom Venus later falls in love.

Aside from being just a simple sketch of Ovid’s artful and poetic tale, the story, as it is here, has been taken out of the context of the larger narrative of the Metamorphoses. It is important to acknowledge, that post-Ovidian renarrations of the Pygmalion story usually divorce the story from the significant place it has in the Metamorphoses. The story, however, has one set of interpretations when it is separated from the Metamorphoses, and another when it is left in its context. Perhaps the most striking result of removing the Pygmalion story from the Metamorphoses is seen in the implications of Pygmalion’s actions. When divorced from its context, the story ends happily with Venus answering Pygmalion’s prayers. As part of the Metamorphoses, it ends tragically, with Pygmalion’s descendants being punished for his marriage to his own creation. Myrrha falls in love with her own father, Cinyras, and tricks him into sleeping with her. Venus is punished for her part in the transformation of the statue, as the son whom Myrrha conceives is Adonis. The goddess falls in love with the beautiful Adonis and mourns his loss when he is killed by a wild boar in a hunting accident.

Various other aspects of the Pygmalion story take on special significance when it is placed within the context of the stories in the Metamorphoses. For example, the story tells of an inanimate object becoming animate, whereas the reverse is more usual in Ovid’s collection. The story immediately preceding that of Pygmalion tells of the punishment of the Propoetides, who have denied Venus’s divinity. The goddess makes them the first prostitutes and turns them into stone, a reversal of the Pygmalion situation. The blood of their faces hardens, contrasting with the blushing innocence of Pygmalion’s awakened statue. Pygmalion, we are told, sculpts his statue because he is disgusted by the Propoetides. This point, requiring the distinctive Ovidian context of the tale, is often omitted in later renarrations. On one reading, Ovid appears to be stressing Pygmalion’s piety, but this is not universal. Through close scrutiny of the nuances of the language, Jane Miller concludes that Ovid uses sexual innuendo in his description of the statue, implying that Pygmalion is less than pious:

Once the statue is finished, Pygmalion falls in love with it: ‘operisque sui concepit amorem’ (‘and he falls in love with his own work’. The word ‘concepit’ is a sexual metaphor, already hinted at by the use of ‘nasci’ in the previous line’).¹⁰

Miller argues that there is a sexual sub-text which tells against the view of the story as one of piety rewarded. Douglas Bauer suggests that the Pygmalion story has further significance within the framework of the Metamorphoses:

Of all the themes in the Metamorphoses, none recurs either as frequently or as patently as that of stone. The variety of its manifestations – now functioning literally and at the same time symbolically as the subject-matter in the account of a bizarre petrification or its inverse, now as the metaphor of physical or moral insensibility, and now as a complementary simile or verbal echo – warrants its distinction as the dominant image.¹¹

The story forms a striking connection between two of the major themes in the collection: love and stone, and is located in the golden section of the Metamorphoses. Bauer concludes that the ratio between the number of lines which precede the Pygmalion story and the number of lines which ‘divide it from the cognate epilogue is exactly 0. 618, the Golden Section’ (p. 20). This, he claims, shows both the premeditation of the poet in constructing the Metamorphoses, and his ‘familiarity with the mystical Pythagoreans’ (p. 20). If the golden section theory is correct, it means that Ovid has emphasized the Pygmalion episode. Bauer speculates that this could be because the stone, love and art themes are all interwoven in the story. Other explanations have been proposed to explain the significance of the metamorphosis of the statue. Jane Miller suggests that the metamorphosis of the statue is an archetypal birth-myth: ‘This birth-image reinforces the view that the statue is, in a sense, the child of Pygmalion, a notion which would have an obvious bearing on the Myrrha story’ (Miller, p. 208). The idea that Pygmalion was the father or creator of the statue-maiden, and therefore should not marry her, connects it with the sexual guilt and punishment of Myrrha. Errol Durbach suggests a third interpretation, arguing that the Pygmalion story contains within it the germ of its anti-myth: that form of Romantic idealism that stands in danger of changing living flesh into stone. Pygmalion wants a living doll, like Hoffman’s Coppelia.¹²

Later classical accounts of Pygmalion can be found in fragments of mythographic and historical writings. These, like those which preceded Ovid, are unsophisticated and divergent. Bibliotheca or The Library (first or second century AD), a collection wrongly attributed to Apollodorus, refers to a Pygmalion, though his relationship with a statue is not mentioned. The text merely records his genealogy, and the account differs from that given by Ovid.¹³

This Cinyras in Cyprus, whither he had come with some people, founded Paphos; and having there married Metharme, daughter of Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, he begat Oxyporus and Adonis, and besides them daughters Orsedice, Laogore and Braesia (Apollodorus, II, 84–85).

Ovid’s Pygmalion is Cinyras’s grandfather, rather than his son-in-law; and Pygmalion’s child is Paphos rather than Metharme. A Pygmalion, described as a Phoenician who became king of Cyprus, is alluded to in the fourth book of De Abstinentia by Porphyry (c. AD 270).¹⁴ Here Pygmalion is connected with priests who break their rule of vegetarianism by eating sacrificial flesh.

The Cyzicenean and Asclepiades the Cyprian say, about the era of Pygmalion, who was by birth a Phoenician, but reigned over the Cyprians. […] On one occasion a priest touched cooked flesh, burnt his fingers and put them in his mouth. Having tasted the flesh, he wanted more, ate some and gave it to his wife. Pygmalion, however, becoming acquainted with this circumstance, ordered both the priest and his wife to be hurled headlong from a steep rock, and gave the priesthood to another person, who not long after performing the same sacrifice, and eating the flesh of the victim, fell into the same calamities as his pre...