Metamorphoses Themes

Metamorphosis, or transformation, is the driving force of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The gods exercise their power to transform for a huge variety of reasons, illustrating the claim that Roman academic Pythagoras makes near the end of the poem: that human souls are transitory and can take different forms. Most commonly, the transformations in the Metamorphoses take place when a character is in a helpless state or has done something extreme. For instance, the gods often…

In the Metamorphoses, Ovid portrays humanity’s attempt to wield power over nature. Significantly, this tendency to control nature seems to stem from the unique position in which human beings were created. In contrast to the earth’s landscape and animals, the gods create human beings as “holier creature[s] […] which could hold dominion over the rest.” Even so, although human beings are made to be capable of dominion over nature, they don’t wield it right…

Throughout the Metamorphoses, many human characters dare to think they are superior to the gods. Often, characters anger the gods by refusing to worship them, such as when the daughters of Minyas refuse to join Bacchus’s festival and he turns them into bats. In another instance, Niobe not only refuses to worship the goddess Latona, but also asserts she is superior to Latona because of her wealth, royalty, and dozens of beautiful…

In the first chapter of the Metamorphoses, Ovid describes the world as a jumble of indistinct parts “called Chaos.” The gods give order to this chaos by sorting out the elements by their weight and qualities. In this way, it seems that the gods are responsible for the universe, especially as they go on to have a huge influence over the world’s affairs. However, Ovid’s work presents other forces over which the gods themselves have…