The invention of blackness in Ovid’s Metamorphoses

Abstract In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1.750–2.365), the Roman poet gives an aetiology of blackness via the myth of Phaethon, whose failure to control his father’s solar chariot leads to the scorching of the earth. This article situates Ovid’s myth of Phaethon within ancient discourses of race, contextualizing the sequence within ancient environmental theory, racial affect theory, and the melancholic tensions of Rome’s enslaving practices. The article concludes with an analysis of the reception of Ovid’s myth of Phaethon in Rita Dove’s The Darker Face of the Earth (1994).