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Book 4: Salmacis and Hermaphroditus
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Metamorphoses, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Metamorphosis
Humanity vs. Nature
Love and Destruction
Gods and Humans
Time, Fate, and Poetry
Summary
Analysis
After Minyas’s third daughter finishes her story, the three sisters keep weaving, ignoring the festival for Bacchus. Suddenly, they are assaulted by the sound of loud drums and the smell of perfume. Their looms start to turn green and grow ivy. It is nearly nighttime, but their house blazes with candlelight. The frightened sisters try to hide in dark corners. Suddenly, their fingers grow membranes, and they transform into bats. They hang from the ceiling, unable to speak.
The punishment of the daughters of Minyas shows that the gods are superior to humans at least in the fact that they can transform and punish them at will. While they abstained from Bacchus’s festival, the three daughters told stories, but when they are turned into bats, they lose their voices and therefore their ability to praise their preferred gods altogether.
Themes
