What was Ovid’s view of the gods’ ethical performance? According to Wikipedia According to Wikipedia, “Publius Ovidius Naso, known in English as Ovid, was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature.” Ovid was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. Ovid wrote “a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people” which is called Ab Urbe Condita. Around 8 BC Augustus banished Ovid to the Black sea. About that same time Ovid started writing a book called Metamorphoses. This book is Ovid’s worldview on how creation happened. 

In most of the stories in the Metamorphoses the main theme is pride. Both the gods and men were prideful. The gods were so prideful that if anyone denied their pride that they would have to face the harsh and cruel consequences. Some of these consequences were bad sanctions. 

One of the stories that has a lot of pride in it is book six. This is called “Rustics changed to frogs”. This story begins when a goddess named Latona gives birth to twins, which are both gods. She becomes very thirsty after giving birth and so she goes to get a drink from a pond. There were some men at the pond and they did not let her pass and get a drink. This is because they thought that if they resisted a god that they would become powerful. This is mans pride. The goddess Latona was also being prideful because she thought as a god that she could do what she wanted when she wanted. She tried multiple times to get a drink and every time they resisted. Finally she was done with them so she prayed that they would become frogs. The men did become frogs after this. It’s crazy that all of this happened over a drink of water.