Metamorphoses

Summary

The Metamorphoses is a Latin poem in fifteen books of dactylic hexameter, about 12,000 lines, that strings together some 250 myths of transformation from the creation of the world to the deification of Julius Caesar and the reign of Augustus. Its unifying thread is change of form: gods, humans and nymphs become animals, plants, stones, stars and springs, usually at moments of extreme passion, violence or divine punishment. Book I begins with chaos and creation, the four ages of man, the flood survived by Deucalion and Pyrrha, and the first of many divine pursuits: Apollo chases Daphne, who becomes a laurel; Jupiter rapes Io, who becomes a cow. Books II to IV include Phaethon's disastrous drive of the sun's chariot, Callisto, Europa, Cadmus and the founding of Thebes, Actaeon torn by his own hounds, Echo and Narcissus, Pentheus destroyed by Bacchus's maenads, Pyramus and Thisbe, Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, and Perseus. Books V to VII bring the rape of Proserpina, the weaving contest of Arachne and Minerva, Niobe's children slaughtered, Philomela's rape and revenge, Jason and Medea, Medea's rejuvenation of Aeson by draining his blood and replacing it with a magic potion, and a plague at Aegina. Book VIII tells of Daedalus and Icarus, the Calydonian boar hunt, Baucis and Philemon, and Erysichthon, cursed with insatiable hunger until he devours himself. Books IX to XI include Hercules' death and apotheosis, the incestuous loves of Byblis and Myrrha, Orpheus's descent to retrieve Eurydice and the songs he sings afterwards, including Pygmalion's statue brought to life, Venus and Adonis, and Orpheus's death at the hands of maenads, Midas, and Ceyx and Alcyone. Books XII to XIII move into Trojan legend, the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs, and the contest for Achilles' arms. Book XIV follows Aeneas and includes the Sibyl of Cumae, granted long life but not youth. Book XV presents Pythagoras's long speech on the transmigration of souls and universal flux, the arrival of the healing god Aesculapius in Rome to end a plague, the deification of Julius Caesar, and Ovid's closing boast that his work will outlive Jupiter's wrath and that he will live in fame.

Plot or Argument

• Books I–II: Creation, flood and the first passions

  Chaos to cosmos, the four ages, the flood, Daphne, Io, Phaethon, Callisto and Europa.

• Books III–IV: Theban tales

  Cadmus, Actaeon, Echo and Narcissus, Pentheus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Hermaphroditus, Perseus.

• Books V–VII: Gods' punishments and Medea

  Proserpina, Arachne, Niobe, Philomela, Jason and Medea, Aeson's rejuvenation, the plague of Aegina.

• Books VIII–IX: Heroes and hungers

  Daedalus and Icarus, Baucis and Philemon, Erysichthon, Hercules, Byblis.

• Books X–XI: Orpheus and his songs

  Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion, Myrrha, Venus and Adonis, Midas, Ceyx and Alcyone.

• Books XII–XIV: Troy and Aeneas

  Lapiths and Centaurs, the arms of Achilles, the voyages of Aeneas, the Sibyl, Circe.

• Book XV: Pythagoras, Aesculapius and apotheosis

  Pythagoras on universal change, Aesculapius ending the plague at Rome, Caesar's deification and Ovid's epilogue.

Characters

• Apollo and Daphne, god and nymph

  The god's pursuit ends with Daphne turned to a laurel.

• Narcissus and Echo, youth and nymph

  Narcissus wastes away in love with his reflection; Echo fades to a voice.

• Medea, sorceress

  Helper and later destroyer of Jason, whose magic rejuvenates Aeson.

• Orpheus, poet-singer

  Loses Eurydice twice and sings the tales of Book X.

• Pygmalion, sculptor

  Falls in love with his ivory statue, which Venus brings to life.

• Erysichthon, impious king

  Cursed by Ceres with insatiable Hunger, he consumes himself.

• Pythagoras, philosopher

  Delivers a long speech on vegetarianism, transmigration and constant change.

• Aesculapius, god of healing

  Comes to Rome in the form of a serpent to end a plague.

Lessons

• Change as the nature of things

  Pythagoras's speech makes explicit what every tale shows: nothing keeps its form. The poem invites reflection on identity persisting through transformation.

  • Is metamorphosis in Ovid usually punishment, escape or revelation?
  • Which transformations preserve the person, and which destroy them?

• Power and its victims

  Many transformations follow gods' assaults on mortals. Read critically, the poem exposes the abuse of power, including sexual violence, while making art out of it.

  • How should modern readers approach the poem's many rapes?
  • Does Arachne's tapestry criticise the gods?
  • Is there a hidden critique of Augustus?

• Art that outlasts power

  Ovid ends by claiming his poem will survive the anger of Jupiter, a challenge to the emperor who exiled him. The Metamorphoses argues for the endurance of art.

  • Was Ovid right about his poem's survival?
  • What does Pygmalion's story say about art and desire?

Context

Ovid wrote under Augustus, whose moral legislation and cultivation of a divine genealogy formed the backdrop to a poem full of divine misconduct. The poem draws on Greek sources, including Hesiod, Hellenistic collections of transformation myths and Callimachus, and on Roman legend.

Composition

Composed in the years up to 8 CE; Ovid claims in exile that he burned his copy when banished but that other copies survived. The poem was widely copied in the Middle Ages, moralised in the Ovide moralisé, and translated into English by Arthur Golding (1567), the version Shakespeare knew.

Reception

The Metamorphoses has been called the painter's and poet's Bible, shaping Chaucer, Shakespeare, Titian, Bernini, Milton and countless others. Modern versions include Ted Hughes's Tales from Ovid (1997).

Comparisons

• frankenstein

  Ovid's Prometheus shaping humanity and Pygmalion's statue brought to life frame the myths of creation and animation Shelley's subtitle evokes.

• the-odyssey

  Circe's transformations in Homer return in Ovid's Book XIV, rewritten in Ovid's psychological and ironic manner.

• troilus-and-criseyde

  Chaucer was steeped in Ovid, whose tales of love and betrayal shaped medieval romance.

• macbeth

  Shakespeare knew Golding's Ovid; Medea's incantations in Book VII lie behind the witchcraft of the late plays and the cauldron imagery of Macbeth.

• the-lais-of-marie-de-france

  Marie's werewolf and bird-lover lais continue Ovid's fascination with human-animal transformation.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The opening of Book I, where a shapeless mass called Chaos is sorted into earth, sea, and sky by an unnamed god. Compare this ordering with the disorder that fills the rest of the poem.
• The moment of change itself in each tale: Daphne's skin turning to bark in Book I, Actaeon's face lengthening into a stag's in Book III, Arachne shrinking into a spider in Book VI. Ovid slows down here and describes the change limb by limb.
• Stories told inside stories. The daughters of Minyas tell tales while they weave in Book IV, and Orpheus sings most of Book X, including Pygmalion and Myrrha. Ask who is speaking and why that singer chooses that tale.
• The few tales of reward rather than punishment, especially Baucis and Philemon in Book VIII, the poor old couple who receive disguised gods into their cottage and are turned into an oak and a linden.
• Pythagoras's long speech in Book XV on the flux of all things, and Ovid's closing lines claiming his poem will outlast Jupiter's anger. Notice how the end of the poem turns its subject from bodies to the poem itself.

Key terms and names

Metamorphosis

A change of bodily form, the subject Ovid announces in his first line. In the poem it can be a punishment, as with Arachne, an escape, as with Daphne, or a reward, as with Baucis and Philemon.

Chaos

The formless, warring mass of elements with which Book I begins. A god or kinder nature separates it into an ordered cosmos, giving the poem its first and largest change of form.

The four ages

The Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron ages of mankind described in Book I, a decline from innocence to violence that leads Jupiter to send the flood.

Deucalion and Pyrrha

The pious husband and wife who alone survive the flood in Book I. They repopulate the earth by throwing stones, the bones of their great mother, over their shoulders.

Orpheus

The singer who descends to the underworld for Eurydice and loses her by looking back. In Book X he becomes a narrator himself, and his songs fill most of that book.

Erysichthon

The king in Book VIII who cuts down a sacred oak of Ceres and is punished with a hunger so great that he finally devours his own body.

Pythagoras

The Greek philosopher who speaks in Book XV, teaching that souls pass from body to body and that nothing in the world keeps its shape, so that the poem's tales are explained as the way all things are.

Apotheosis

The turning of a mortal into a god. Hercules in Book IX and Julius Caesar in Book XV are raised to the heavens, the last and highest metamorphoses in the poem.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How does the world move from Chaos to the Iron Age in Book I, and why does Jupiter decide to destroy mankind with the flood?
2. Comprehension What do Arachne and Minerva each weave in their contest in Book VI, and what happens to Arachne afterward?
3. Comprehension How do Baucis and Philemon treat their unknown guests in Book VIII, and what do they ask for when the gods offer them a reward?
4. Interpretation Daphne becomes a laurel, Echo becomes only a voice, and Narcissus becomes a flower. In each case, does the new form preserve something of the person or erase it?
5. Interpretation Arachne's tapestry in Book VI shows the gods deceiving and seizing mortals. Why does Ovid let a mortal weaver depict the same divine misdeeds his own poem narrates?
6. Interpretation Erysichthon's hunger in Book VIII grows the more he eats. What is Ovid saying about appetite through a body that consumes itself?
7. Interpretation Pythagoras in Book XV teaches that everything flows and nothing keeps its form, yet the poem ends with Ovid claiming his name will never die. Do these two endings agree?
8. Big Question If a person's body, name, and voice can all be changed, what remains that makes them the same person? Is there anything in us that does not change?

Faith Connections

• Genesis 1 and Genesis 6-9 (Scripture)

  Ovid's Book I opens with the shaping of the world out of formless matter and moves to a flood sent on a violent human race, with a single righteous couple preserved. Read beside Genesis, the parallels are striking and so are the differences: in Genesis God creates by his word and binds himself afterward by covenant, while Ovid's Jupiter rages and the survivors must consult an oracle.

• 1 Corinthians 15:35-54 (Scripture)

  Paul speaks of a body sown perishable and raised imperishable, and says that we shall all be changed. Set beside Ovid's tales, where change usually means loss of the human form, Paul describes a transformation that completes the person rather than diminishing them.

• Augustine, City of God XVIII (Church Fathers)

  Augustine discusses the old stories of men changed into beasts, including Circe's victims and the companions of Diomedes, and argues that demons cannot truly create new natures but can at most produce illusions. He takes pagan transformation stories seriously while testing them against a doctrine of creation.

• Dante, Inferno XXV (Great Conversation)

  In the circle of the thieves Dante describes souls changing into serpents and serpents into men, and tells Ovid to be silent about Cadmus and Arethusa because these metamorphoses are stranger. Dante turns Ovid's device into a picture of sin deforming the human image.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Every form in the world, from the first sorting of Chaos to the bodies of nymphs, heroes, and emperors, is subject to change. Change comes through passion, violence, divine anger, or divine favor, and rarely respects merit. Pythagoras in Book XV draws the conclusion that nothing keeps its form and only the soul passes on. Therefore the only thing that can claim permanence is what escapes the body altogether, and Ovid closes by claiming that his poem, and his name in it, will survive Jupiter's anger and the work of time.

Rhetorical device: ecphrasis. In Book VI Ovid describes in detail the two tapestries woven by Minerva and Arachne: Minerva's shows the gods in majesty and the punishments of mortals who challenged them, while Arachne's shows the gods' disguises and seductions. The described artworks become arguments, and the contest turns as much on what each picture claims as on its skill.

Debate: Resolved: In the Metamorphoses, transformation is more often a mercy than a punishment.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Choose three transformations from different parts of the poem, for example Daphne in Book I, Arachne in Book VI, and Baucis and Philemon in Book VIII. Argue what Ovid suggests about the relationship between the old self and the new form, and whether the change judges, preserves, or destroys the person who undergoes it.

Comparison with The Aeneid: Virgil and Ovid both wrote under Augustus, and Ovid retells part of Aeneas's journey in Books XIII and XIV. Compare how the two poets treat the gods, the destiny of Rome, and their own claims to poetic immortality, and argue which poem offers the more stable picture of the world.

Medical Lens

The poem is a rich storehouse for medicine and psychiatry. Medea's rejuvenation of Aeson in Book VII, in which she cuts his throat, drains the old blood and fills his veins with a potion of herbs, is often cited as a mythical precursor of blood transfusion and rejuvenation medicine; the same book describes a plague at Aegina in clinical detail, influenced by Thucydides and Lucretius. Erysichthon's insatiable Hunger (Book VIII) is a vivid portrait of pathological appetite. Narcissus's wasting fixation on his reflection (Book III) gave psychiatry the term narcissism, via Havelock Ellis and Freud. The Sibyl's long life without youth (Book XIV) prefigures the Struldbrugs. Hermaphroditus (Book IV) and Tiresias (Book III) treat changes of sex, of interest to the history of sexuality. Grief transforms people into springs, trees and stones (Niobe, Cyparissus, Byblis). Book XV brings Aesculapius, the god of medicine, to Rome to end a plague, reflecting the real introduction of his cult in 293 BCE.

• Book III

  Narcissus falls in love with his reflection and wastes away; Echo fades to a voice; Tiresias's change of sex.

  Obsession MonomaniaStarvation NutritionSexuality Medicalized
• Book IV

  Salmacis and Hermaphroditus merge into one body.

  Sexuality Medicalized
• Book VI

  Niobe, grieving her slaughtered children, turns to weeping stone.

  Grief
• Book VII

  Medea drains Aeson's blood and refills his veins with a magic brew, restoring his youth; the daughters of Pelias are tricked into killing their father.

  Vampirism BloodReanimation GalvanismPharmacology PoisonsAging Senescence
• Book VII

  Aeacus describes the plague at Aegina: fever, thirst, corpses and the failure of medicine.

  Plague EpidemicAncient Medicine
• Book VIII

  Erysichthon, cursed with Hunger by Ceres, eats everything and finally devours his own body.

  Starvation NutritionMadness Psychosis
• Book XIV

  The Sibyl of Cumae, granted years but not youth, will shrink until only her voice remains.

  Aging Senescence
• Book XV

  Aesculapius comes from Epidaurus to Rome as a serpent to end a pestilence.

  Plague EpidemicPhysicians DoctorsAncient Medicine

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Trace the term narcissism from Ovid's Book III through Havelock Ellis and Freud to modern diagnostic manuals.

• Poetry

  Write a modern metamorphosis in which a patient is transformed by a disease or a drug.

Further Reading

• Tales from Ovid, Ted Hughes

• Shakespeare's Ovid: Being Arthur Golding's Translation of the Metamorphoses, W. H. D. Rouse (ed.)

• Tristia, Ovid

• History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides

  The plague of Athens, a model for Ovid's plague at Aegina.