Thoughts on metamorphosis

As I continue to read "Tales from Ovid," it's interesting to see a sort of pattern emerging in the way the Greeks seemed to think about the concept of metamorphosis. Stupidly, I wasn't really thinking about the concept itself when I first started reading; I just thought it was interesting that each tale involved a sort of metamorphosis. But obviously there was some reason behind creating a work that revolves around such a concept.

I read a big chunk today, and there were two tales that essentially came to the same conclusion about metamorphosis: it is a third option in the choice between life and death. Rather than an afterlife or a continuation of life, a metamorphosis places one in a sort of permanent limbo, which in some senses is the worst option of them all. The first time this came up was in the tale of Myrrha, who prays to the gods to give her the "most pitiless judgement."


I only fear that by dying
I would pollute the dead.
Just as my life contaminates the living.
Give me some third way, neither wholly dead
Nor painfully alive. Remove me
From life and from death
Into some nerveless limbo.


Later, Venus says something almost identically similar when contemplating the crimes of the Cerastae and the Propoetides. She considers destroying their cities entirely, but there are many innocents in the cities that do not deserve death. So, she realizes,


Why should I punish all
For a few? Let me pick out the guilty
And banish or kill them -
Or sentence them to some fate not quite either
But a dire part of both.
The fate for such, I think, is to become
Some vile thing not themselves.


There are some incidents, of course, in which metamorphosis seems to be a positive thing - but the idea that humanity faces three options (life, death, and transformation) is interesting. Applied to today's world, I think it is safe to say that there are some people who have already undergone the last option and just have yet to realize it.