Forms in Flux: Transformation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses

“Some sisters said such things could never be, while others were convinced that anything was in the power of true deities—“

–The Metamorphoses, Book 4, by Ovid translated by Allen Mandelbaum

Ovid wove Greek myths of transformation to create his masterwork, The Metamorphoses. This poem describes a world of shapeshifting, ambiguity, and forms in flux. Of endless transformations instigated by passion: passionate feelings, fantasies, pleas, prayers, and convictions.

This episode contains a couple of more obscure myths from Book 4 that seed a meditation on the fluidity of identity and gender, and the blurriness of boundaries in an ever-changing cosmos.

Transcript of Forms in Flux: Transformation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses

Hello and welcome to Myth Matters an exploration at the intersection of mythology, creativity and consciousness. I’m your host Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide beautiful crazy world of ours, I’m glad that you decided to join me here today.

In the last episode, we began an investigation of the Roman poet Ovid and his masterwork The Metamorphoses, a long poem that weaves Greek myths into a tale of passion and transformation in a constantly changing cosmos. 

I have a couple more stories from Ovid to share with you today, and I want to think about what transformation, as a fundamental process taking place around us and in us all the time, suggests about the nature of what is transformed. In his stories about transformation events, Ovid describes a world of bodies, natural forms, and gods that are fluid. The shapeshifting seems easy, natural, because all forms are forms in flux, as a quantum physicist might say today.

Ovid shows us the ambiguity that is in nature and is nature, the natural state of things. This raises questions about what is fixed. Does anything or anyone have a permanent identity? And what meaning or how much meaning, should we attach to those aspects that are fluid or exist on a spectrum, or are susceptible to transformation?

Some spiritual traditions, Buddhism for example, address the question of impermanence but maybe the connection to transformation as a fundamental process is lost or siloed when attached to a particular spiritual approach. Maybe stepping into Ovid’s language makes it easier for us to think about the inherent fluidity of forms as a fact of living, with or without a desire for enlightenment.

Myth often deals with transformation, whether material shape-shifting or psychological evolution, following the pattern called the hero’s adventure or some other plot line. In addition to addressing transformation as a topic, as an event in a story, myth itself is an evolving form, a symbolic language of images and symbols subject to new interpretations and meanings all the time. 

The mythic world is kaleidoscopic and can remind us of the fluid, nuanced nature of our experience and world. If we approach myth as myth, that is, and don’t make a dogma of it.

It’s interesting that in contemporary usage, “transformation “or “metamorphoses” is defined as natural in the lives on the other-than-human creatures like caterpillars and butterflies, for example, but is attributed to the supernatural, forces, to uncanny, magical means when undergone by a human. The result of an evil witch or sorcerer exercising their powers on a hapless victim. 

This type of magic in a fairy tale leads many people to dismiss it as an entertaining story for kids,  a “wonder” tale with little connection to reality but the truth is, there’s a disconnect from the reality of transformation and the power of the metaphors as metaphors, in the texts that are deemed “merely” stories. In my experience, even those of us who take myth seriously have a hard time internalizing the degree to which the more-crazy seeming elements contain truth, metaphoric and even factual, about the material world as well as the psychological.

Ovid gave definitive form to many Greek myths including some that are relatively obscure. We’ll look at a couple of them today. He fleshed out the characters in every myth that he handled. He gave them motivation, he gave them passions that drove them to do all kinds of crazy, even self-destructive things. The enduring familiarity of this dynamic probably has something to do with Ovid’s great influence on what is now the dominant culture. What drew Shakespeare, for example, to his poem. 

In some respects, Ovid was a capable translator of human behavior and social dynamics. At the same time, he was a product of his time. Of the conventions, the prejudices, and the relative lack of certain factual information about the world. In Ovid’s time, the Earth was still the center of a solar system that extended only as far as Saturn, for example. There was no scientific knowledge of galaxies, or germs, or genes and DNA.

I wonder to what degree we still live, perhaps unwittingly, in Ovid’s world, accepting and perpetuating the viewpoint and assumption embedded in the stories that he told. His influence is palpable and easy to explain and so that makes him, in my mind, one of many narrators of human experience who deserves close and critical reading.

The myths that I have for you today are found in Book 4 of The Metamorphoses. Here, Ovid uses a frame narrative. Placing a story within a story demonstrates the intricacy of his technique and complicates the possible meanings, and represents another blurring of boundaries.

The framing story involves the three daughters of Minyas, who are at home weaving and telling stories to pass the time. A community ritual to worship Bacchus, also known as Dionysus, is underway but they have refused the call to participate because they don’t believe he is a true god. 

Their father Minyas is the founder of the Minyans, people who lived in Boeotia, an area in Greece near the Gulf of Corinth with a rich mythological history.  Boeotia is bordered by Mount Parnassus, location of the Oracle of Delphi and dear to the god Dionysus and his mysteries, and Mount Helicon, home of the Muses. 

Also Mount Cithaeron, the site of a number of stories, notably Actaeon who was turned to stag by goddess Artemis, and Pentheus, who was dismembered during Dionysian rites. These rites became the subject of the famous play The Bacchae by Euripides. And finally, Mount Parnitha, site of battles in ancient days between the Boeotians and the Athenians.

Dionysus, the god of fertility, wine, ecstasy, madness, and life force in its raw power, has a significant presence here, which is something I’ll return to later. First, let me tell you the story of Samacis and Hermaphroditus, as told to us by Ovid in the Mandelbaum translation.

Samacis and Hermaphroditus

Now as I said, these three sisters refuse to take part in Bacchus’ sacred orgies because they do not believe that he is even a god. The local priest has given orders for this Bacchic festival, and all of the other local women, including the servants, have been relieved from their labors on that day in order to go into the mountains to celebrate with the god. Only the sisters stay at home and violate the holy day. 

They decide to spin and weave. Tasks that belong to the goddess Minerva, who is known to the Greeks as Athena. This is important work that requires the hands but not the ears so, they decide to take turns telling tales to make the work less tedious.

The sisters discuss each story as it comes to an end, debating whether or not such things could ever be. Generally, they conclude that anything is within the power of true gods, which, however, did not include Bacchus.

Here’s the poem:

“Now it is time for the sister named Alcithoe to tell a story. As she runs her shuttle swiftly through the threads upon her loom she says, “Daphnis’ love is too well known to be retold: that shepherd, boy of Ida, whom a nymph – as her revenge against a rival – turned to stone; so sharp, are wounds that pierce a jealous lover’s heart. Nor shall I tell how Sithon, when the laws of nature had been overturned, was now a woman, now a man – ambiguous. 

Nor how the faithful friend of the boy Jove has now become hard metal; nor how those Curetes sprang from heavy rains; nor how Crocus and Smilace were changed to flowers. I set these tales aside: to charm your mind, it is a newer tale that I’ll recite.

You’ll hear just how Samacis’ fountain gained so much ill-fame, why it can ennervate the limbs of any man: who dares to bathe within its waves is rendered soft and weak. Although that fountain’s power as well known, it’s cause has been revealed to few alone.

Within the caves of Mt. Ida, naiads nursed a little boy, the son of Hermes and the Cytherean goddess. In his face one saw his father and his mother traced: his name – Hermaphrodites – linked their names. 

Three-times-five years had passed, and now he left his Ida – mountain that had nurtured him. The toils of traveling were lightened by his curiosity; for him, the sight of unknown lands and rivers brought delight. The Lycian towns were also on his way, as were the Carians, who lived beside the Lycians. Here he saw a gleaming pool – so clear that one could see the very bottom. 

No marsh reeds and no random weeds had clogged its waters, and no spiky rushes marred the surface: it was clear. And it was ringed by meadows: ever fresh, that grass was green. Those waters were a naiad’s home, but she had a little taste for hunting, archery, or racing with her feet – the only nymph who never was inclined to join the swift Diana‘s company. 

Her sister‘s – so they say – would urge her: ‘Do take up the bow or javelin, Salmacis; it is best to vary ease with tougher tasks – hard tests.’ But hardships did not draw her; she took up no spear, no colored quiver, and she shunned the hunt. Instead, she bathes her lovely limbs in her own pool: there, with a boxwood comb, she often smooths her hair; that she may see what best becomes her, she consults the waves; and now, in a transparent robe, she rests along the tender leaves, the tender grass, or – often – gathers flowers. 

And by chance, just when the boy had come, she was among the flowers. What she saw, she wanted: him.”

****

Maybe you see where this is going. Stepping into my exposition for a minute to continue the story…

Hermaphrodites was often said to be the son of the god Hermes and the goddess Aphrodite. He was handed over to some nymphs in the forest of Mount Ida who raised him, and grew into a remarkably handsome youth. At age 15 he started to travel the world and one day, as we just heard, he came upon a beautiful, clear pool of water that was the domain of the nymph Samacis. As soon as she saw him, she wanted him. She fell in love. 

Samacis took a breath to gather herself. She smoothed her dress and hair. When she felt composed and at her maximum loveliness, she stepped out of the reeds and addressed him. “You are so beautiful,” she said, “that you could be Cupid, the god of love! And if you are mortal, then you are truly blessed. As are your parents and your siblings, if you have any and they take after you. Do you have a wife or girlfriend? If you do, I don’t mind a little secret lovemaking, a quiet affair. And if you don’t, please marry me!” 

Hermaphrodites was so innocent. He blushed at these words, which made him even more attractive. Samacis could no longer contain her desire. She came close and began to kiss him and tried to put her arms around his neck but the youth cried out “No, stop. Stop or I’ll leave,” and pushed her away.

Samacis stepped back, disappointed. “I’ll take my leave then,” she replied and turned to walk away. But she was only pretending and as soon as she stepped into the surrounding bushes, she crouched down in the thicket to watch the young man.

Hermaphrodites sighed with relief at being alone. He strolled around the lovely meadow and returned to the beautiful, cool pool. The water was so inviting that he slipped off his clothes and into the caress of the water. For her part, Samacis hadn’t taken her eyes off of him for a moment, and when he entered her watery domain she was crazy with desire. 

Stripping off her clothes, she dove into the water and tried once again to embrace him. Once again, Hermaphrodites tried to fend her off. She snatches a kiss, she fondles him and he twists to get away but no matter how hard he tries, in the end she entwines herself around him like a serpent, or like– as Ovid says, “the ivy as it coils around enormous tree trunks or the octopus that holds its enemy beneath the sea with tentacles, whose vice is tight.”

Still, the youth does not yield. And Samacis makes a pleading prayer to the gods: “May no day dawn that sunders him from me, or me from him” she begs. And the gods grant her prayer. The bodies of the youth and the nymph are joined into a new shape, one that could be called either a woman or a boy, both or neither one.

In Ovid’s words (Mandelbaum translation):

“And when he saw just what the pool had done, how he was a man who had now become a half-man – one whose limbs had lost the force they had before he plunged – as he stretched out his hands, Hermaphrodites, though deprived of manly voice, now cried: ‘Do grant this gift, dear father, and dear mother, to the son who carries both your names: whoever comes into this pool as man, may he emerge a half-man; at these waters’ touch, may he be weakened, softened.” And they heard his plea; moved by their biform son, his parents poured into the pool a potion that endowed those waters with a pestilential power.”

And this story ends. 

I’m sure you deduced that Hermaphroditus, child of Hermes and Aphrodite, is the source of the word “hermaphrodite,” meaning a person or organism with both male and female reproductive organs. In some species, earthworms for example, this is typical. In Ovid’s time, Hermaphroditus also symbolized the androgynous body and all the gray area in form and expression, that lies between the extremes of the traditionally masculine male and the traditionally feminine female. 

In Roman times, Hermaphroditus was primarily a romance deity who symbolized erotic love, especially in marriage. He represented the unbreakable bond between spouses and the creation of a new being as a result of their union. In one version of this myth, Samacis is his wife and theirs is the first marriage, preceding the divine marriage of Zeus and Hera. Which suggests that even marriage between the gods and goddesses conforms to this pattern, this transformation, this blending of gender.

You might recognize the connection to marriage from Plato’s Symposium. 

In the Symposium, a group of men at a banquet debate the nature of love. The playwright Aristophanes, who some believe is poking fun at the notion that falling in love is a quest for “finding your other half,” — yes, that saying is this old— Aristophanes says there were originally three sexes– male, female, and hermaphrodites. Zeus cut them all in half so people now search for their missing other half. Heterosexual couples then, are hermaphrodites. In the context of that ancient banquet, this suggestion blurs distinctions between sexual desires, normality, and divine will of the gods.

In any event, the questions, mysteries, and fears surrounding sex, gender, relationship, and love that preoccupy us today have been around for a very long time as evidenced by the myths and traditions of many cultures. Claims by hand-wringing fundamentalists that something must be terribly wrong in our societies because we wave a rainbow flag today are simply ignorant of the long history of sex and gender as fluid. And also ignorant of contemporary science about chromosomes. 

Now, ancient Greek mythology is a tangled web of often contradictory narratives. The stories belonged to specific localities and cults, they were exchanged, imported, tinkered with over time. The jumble illustrates today’s theme of fluidity and also gives us a number of possibilities and angles to play with. 

For example, Ovid gives us a rape story but in other versions Samacis is Hermaphroditus’s wife or even the nymph that raised him. In the version that Ovid elaborated, Hermaphroditus is the son of Hermes and Aphrodite but others said that he was the male form of the goddess of love herself and lived near her spring in what is now Turkey. On Cyprus, Aphrodite‘s birthplace, she was also known in some cults as Aphroditose and was both male and female. In some stories, Hermes and Aphrodite are twin siblings. In some stories, their child is the Greek god of love, Eros.

None of these details are fixed. Which reflects the dynamism of our cosmos, Ovid’ fascination with transformation and the power of erotic desire and love, and the nature of the god Hermes.

Hermes is the messenger of the gods. He connects the gods and goddesses to each other and also to us. He is the one who can cross all boundaries, the only god who can come and go to the underworld. The shapeshifting god who is not constrained by boundaries, thereby revealing their blurriness. Their arbitrariness.

Hermes may help a hero, but he doesn’t champion them. He guides and leads astray. He is a liar, a thief, and a playful inventor of new things, new rituals, and new meanings. Hermes is the god of language, of the turn in phrase, the double-sided and the double talk, the promise and the con. Rhetoric and hermeneutics, the art of interpretation. Fluency, that is fluidity. 

Hermes is a god of the borderlines that cannot be pinned down, and when he consorts with Aphrodite, what does this suggest about sex, gender, erotic desire, love, and fantasy?

The fundamentalist mindset hates Hermes. All this blurring, all this change, all of this deviance from the nice clean black and white categories… it’s too hard to hold the complexity, too difficult to control. Reality in the hands of Hermes is simply too queer.

Let’s look at another myth. What about those daughters of Minyas, known as the Minyades, who rejected the call to a Dionysian bacchanal? The three hardworking women who couldn’t spare any time for a deity who brings a divine disorder? The sisters who insisted on house work rather than risk a loss of control and dissolution of the hard edges of identity? Is this the end of their story within Ovid’s story? Of course not.

The Minyades

The three sit together with spindle and loom, full of self-righteous scorn for the revelers, and here’s what happens, as Ovid imagined it (Mandelbaum translation):

“Suddenly – they heard a roar invade 
their room: a roaring – hoarse and harsh – of drums,
invisible, and flutes with curving horns,
and tintinnabulating gongs. The room
was steeped in saffron, myrrh–in sweet perfume. 
What happened to them was most incredible:
the wefts turned green; and all the hanging cloth
began to sprout with boughs, as ivy does;
a part became grapevines; where threads had been,
now twining tendrils grew; along the warp,
vine leaves began to sprout; the purple hue
that had adorned rich fabrics passed into
a purple hue that colored clustered grapes.
Indeed, the hour had come when it is hard
to say that it’s still day or it is dark,
when an uncertain light trespasses on
the boundary of night. And suddenly,
the walls began to tremble, and the lamps –
oil-fed – to flare up, and the palace seemed
ablaze with ruddy flames, while phantom beast
were roaring. Now the sisters rush to seek
some hidden corner, any place to keep
the flashing flames away; but smoke invades
the halls. And as the sisters try to hide,
their limbs – grown smaller now – are covered by
a membrane, just as thin wings cloak their arms.
Within the dark, they cannot see just how
they’ve lost their former shape. Though they can show
no feathered plumage, their transparent wings
sustain them; and when they attempt to speak,
the sounds they utter fit their shriveled shapes;
and each to each, they grieve in thin, thin squeaks.
They do not haunt the houses, but the woods;
since they detest the day, they fly by night.
It is from twilight that their name derives,
for bats are often called the Vesperites.

Yes, Dionysus transforms the sisters into bats. The Latin word for “bat,” “verspertilio,” is the source for our contemporary biological name for this animal family and for a type of bat, the Vesper bat, which includes more than 400 species found worldwide.

“Vespers” are also evening prayers in the Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches, and a few others. Vespers may be followed by the Compline, an all-night prayer vigil. Fitting, don’t you think, that the god who reminds us that life and death are connected and invites us to celebrate this mystery in wild places in the darkness of night, would choose this form to punish, make his point, and symbolically press these three detractors into perpetual worship?

This is Ovid’s insightful contribution to this myth. You may have noticed other elements in the poem that echo our theme of fluidity and the blurriness of boundaries, as well. These are worth noting. This brief story is so rich.

The loom and threads becoming ivy and grapevines, the purple cloth and grapes, reminding us of the origin of these materials and of the ideas  and craft behind them. Where else but nature did we get the notion of threads, spinning, twining, and weaving, and by what other means would we know color? Between the vine and the thread is a succession of transformations, material and imaginal.

The invasion of sounds and smells, the phantom figures of the living world “out there” that we convince ourselves is separate and disposable, seduced by the illusion of the walls that we erect and the clock that ticks out artificial hours.  We distinguish the hours and yet in the real world, light and dark are shading into each other by degree. The transformation in this myth takes place in that liminal space called “dusk.”

And what about the bats? Part bird, part animal, coming alive in the shoulder hours, hunting on the margins, and voicing sounds that are not quite speech. From the perspective of the humans these women once were, anyway.

I’m sure I haven’t exhausted the possibilities but I’ll stop there and ask a question I posed earlier in this episode. Do we still live in Ovid ‘s world? What is still true and useful, and what do we need to surface and transform? This task of myth-making and culture-building belongs to each of us.

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Transformation fascinated Ovid and yet love and passion were his primary themes. Topics that he took up in all of his works. In the next episode, we’ll look at the four types of love in the Greek world and dip into Ovid ‘s poem one more time. I hope you’ll join me.

If we have a better understanding of our need for myth, and all that our old stories offer, we can live more satisfying lives. We can inhabit a better story and create a more beautiful, just, and life-centered, life-embracing world.  

And that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Take good care of yourself and until next time, keep the mystery in your life alive.