Metamorphoses: “nothing retains its form”

Detail from the title page of Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished by G.S. London, 1626.

1/ It’s a good idea to read Ovid after having read the Greeks: Ovid sometimes skips over details, expecting one to know Greek/ Roman mythology and literature; he sometimes fills in the gaps. For example, Ovid’s story of the debate between Ajax and Odysseus about who deserves to get the arms of Achilles is interesting because I’m acquainted with Odysseus from Homer and have also read Aias (or Ajax) and Philoctetes by Sophocles—neither Homer nor Sophocles depicts that scene (in the surviving texts)—so in a sense, Ovid fills in that gap. He also gives us the perspective of one of Odysseus’s companions whom Circe turns into pigs, which we don’t get from Homer. 

Moreover, as he creates Metamorphoses after the Aeneid, he writes about both the Akhaians and the Trojans, moving from Achilles, Ajax, and Odysseus to Hecuba and Aeneas, though he glosses over the story of Dido (the best part of Virgil’s poem). Funnily enough, Polyphemus, the cyclops that Odysseus tricks and blinds (which leads to his 10 years of suffering), has his own story here: an unrequited love for a nymph called Galatea. 

2/ In Metamorphoses, there are a couple of characters who would now be considered trans. If we leave aside Tiresias, the seer who transforms from a man into a woman for several years then back into a man, we have two female characters who transform into men: Iphis, raised as a boy because of her father’s sexism, falls in love with a woman, wishes to become a man, and has her wish granted; Caenis gets raped, and asks to be transformed into a man, known as Caeneus. This might offend some of you, but one thing I find interesting is that these two characters match two types of trans men (women identifying as men) that I often come across (online and in real life): tomboy lesbians who think they should be men because they’re attracted to women and think they don’t fit into the idea of femininity; and woman who reject womanhood and identify as trans (or non-binary) after experiencing sexual abuse. 

That said, I shouldn’t let contemporary politics ruin Metamorphoses. This is mythology, and we have some cool scenes of Caeneus fighting rapey centaurs.

3/ In most cases, Ovid “reduces” the characters we have encountered in the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Aeneid—naturally, because of length—but he expands on the character of Circe: jilted by Glaucus because he loves Scylla, she turns Scylla into a sea monster; rejected by Picus because he loves Anens, she transforms him into a bird. Circe in the Odyssey is to be pitied. Here she is more powerful. Here she is vengeful and malicious. 

But then she’s not that different from the Greek/ Roman gods, is she? Metamorphoses is mainly about the lust of men and the jealousy of women. 

I like this image of Anens: 

“Tiber was last to see her; tired and worn, 

With grief and journeying; she laid her head 

By his long riverside, and there, in tears, 

Breathed weak faint words in cadences of woe, 

As dying swans may sing their funeral hymns; 

Until at last, her fragile frame dissolved

In misery, she wasted all away

And slowly vanished into empty air.” 

(Book 14) 

(translated by A. D. Melville) 

4/ In Metamorphoses, the transformations are generally of the gods putting on disguises, or human beings getting turned into things, bodies of water, trees, animals, the other sex, or gods. The oddest transformation is when the Trojan ships are transformed into sea nymphs. 

“… And one wind’s strength 

The fostering Mother called in aid to break 

The hempen hawsers of the Trojan fleet, 

And on their beam ends drove the ships to sea

And sank them. Timbers softened and the wood 

Was changed to flesh; the curved prows turned to heads,

The oars to toes and swimming legs; the sides 

Remained as sides; the heel that underlay 

The centre of the ship became a spine. 

The rigging soft sleek hair, the yards were arms, 

The colour sea-blue still; and in the waves

They used to fear they play their girlish games, 

Nymphs of the sea, born on the granite hills, 

Now natives of the soft sea-deeps, untouched 

By memories of their birthplace…” 

(ibid.)

This is weird. This is unlike any other metamorphosis in the poem. 

5/ In Book 15 (the final book), Ovid has a section called “The Doctrines of Pythagoras”, which is perhaps the finest part of the poem. 

“… In all creation 

Nothing endures, all is in endless flux, 

Each wandering shape a pilgrim passing by. 

And time itself glides on in ceaseless flow, 

A rolling stream—and streams can never stay, 

Nor lightfoot hours. As wave is driven by wave 

And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead, 

So time flies on and follows, flies and follows, 

Always, for ever new. What was before

Is left behind, what never was is now: 

And every passing moment is renewed.” 

You can see why Ovid is fascinated by transformations. You can see why Metamorphoses speaks to Shakespeare. 14 books are about mythology and legend, and the final book is about life, about change as the nature of life: seasons come and go, people age and die, nations rise and fall, animals transform their shapes, and out of corpses, new forms of life are born. 

6/ Now that I’ve finished reading Metamorphoses, I’m going to say I still prefer the Greeks to the Romans, though perhaps in the case of Ovid (and Virgil), much is lost in translation. As I wrote before, because Ovid moves from one myth to another, there’s no sense of forward movement and it’s sometimes frustrating. But I did love some parts of the book, it’s a brilliant collection of stories, and it’s good to read Ovid, to know one of the important ancient writers, and to see his influence on Shakespeare—not only obvious references as one finds in A Midsummer Night’s Dream or The Winter’s Tale, but Shakespeare’s fascination with metamorphosis in general—every single Shakespeare play has some sort of disguise, acting, or transformation. 

I’m going to have to read How the Classics Made Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate.