Not to be confused with Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis," which deals with a single human transformed into a huge vermin for no identifiable reason, Ovid's "Metamorphoses" deals with several humans transformed into birds, trees, and wild beasts because the gods want it that way. Their motives are frequently jealous, petty, greedy, selfish, lustful, and even protective occasionally, but always comprehensible. Not that that's any consolation.
As for the title of the work, the word "metamorphosis" literally means nothing more mysterious than "change [meta] of form [morphe]", and it's a good bit less enigmatic than it sounds. Many of the myths we find here are from the Greek tradition, although Ovid was a Roman and wrote in Latin. In fact, "Metamorphoses" amounts to a kind of short story collection in fifteen "books," written in Latin verse, and follows a roughly chronological structure with only the loosest kind of connection from one tale to the next.
We start here with the biggest metamorphosis of them all, the creation of the world. We don't learn much about the creator, who is referred to only as "God". I confess that surprised me a bit - I wasn't aware that the ancients believed in a single creator. Unlike the Creator that most of us are familiar with, though, this one doesn't seem to do much else as the story progresses. He simply separates the elements, causing a number of metamorphoses in the process, and then departs from the scene, leaving room for Jupiter, Aphrodite, Apollo, and that crowd. Good thing, too. As you may remember from your elementary school classes, it's that bunch of gods who inspire all the interesting stories.
How do they do that? By misbehaving, mostly. The Greek, and later Roman, gods are lustful, jealous, wrathful, hungry for attention, and all in all far worse than the humans whose worship they're so desperate for. They cheat on their spouses with human beings, often by disguising themselves. They can't bear it if a human speaks proudly of his or her accomplishments. They occasionally help humans out of tight spots, but woe betide those humans if they then neglect to offer sacrifices and incense. Even when they try to do something out of love, it inevitably turns destructive very quickly. In short, it's a tremendous amount of fun to read about.
Anyway, as the title implies, the solution these gods resort to is always some transformation, either of themselves or the humans they're after. If you're familiar with Jupiter's career, for instance, you probably remember that when he falls in love with some human woman, he inevitably has to disguise himself - as a white bull, a shower of golden rain, even a grandmother - because his wife is so jealous. With good reason, it seems. An example of the opposite approach is the story of Arachne, a young woman whose skill with a loom and needle is so astonishing that she takes to bragging about how much better she is than Minerva. That goddess challenges her to a weaving contest, which she wins, but she's still so annoyed with Arachne that she turns the girl into a spider. Whoops.
It's not entirely clear to me what Ovid's purpose might have been in writing this work. Modern scholars, it seems, have a difficult time with that as well; "Metamorphoses" bears some resemblance to epic poetry, but not enough to fit that category altogether. Another question in my mind is this: Was "Metamorphoses" intended for instruction, entertainment, or to do something else?
One thing is for sure - "Metamorphoses" is as sexist as you might expect from an ancient work, especially when it comes to sexuality. Although you encounter several men who seem to love and respect their wives, most of the men here don't, and that goes double for the gods. I lost count of how many of them simply "take" the women that they're interested in. Oddly enough, given what we know about ancient cultures, there's no mention of men getting lustful over other men, at least not overtly.
You can't really blame Ovid for this approach to women, I guess. It's probably all he knew. More pleasing is the way he concludes his work. Being a Roman, he goes into some detail about the founding of the city by Aeneas, a Trojan survivor of the Trojan War. Shortly after that, he comes some way back around to the world's creation through a lecture given by the philosopher Pythagoras to a group of pupils.
Pythagoras encourages his audience to give up eating meat, saying that it's unnecessary and unjust. The world, he points out, can provide plenty to eat - in long and delicious detail - without any need to kill animals who never do us any harm, and in fact provide us with a good many useful services. In other words, Pythagoras harks back to the Golden Age described way back on Page 1. The individual chapters of the "Metamorphoses" don't link up very well, but the work as a whole does form a pleasing arc.
The history of literature tells us that "Metamorphoses" has been tremendously influential on a lot of the writing that came after it. You can go into that if you like - seems as though that would be a very interesting research topic. Or, of course, you can just enjoy it for what it is. That's quite easy to do. Which probably explains why it's been so influential in the first place.
Benshlomo says, Good stories are stories first, lectures second.
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