Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

Love as Transformative Power
in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Megan Cohen
Love plays a central role in many of the myths in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It
drives grief-stricken lovers to jump off cliffs into the sea, turns enraged mothers
against their children, and leads lovers to exact their revenge. It can also turn
men into gods, unite lovers in death, and potentially bring the dead back to life.
Even gods are subject to the effects of love. Indeed, some speculate that the
motive force of nearly all the metamorphoses is the jealous burning of Juno,
punishing innocent mortals out of her own, often betrayed, love for Jove.
Though there are many permutations of love that exist in the Metamorphoses,
they can be divided into four main categories. There is the erotic love that exists
between lovers, alternately comprising lust, desire, devotion, passion, and
romance; the familial love of parents and offspring, brothers and sisters; the love
and worship of the gods; and the love of country.
The primary mode of love that operates throughout the Metamorphoses is
that of the erotic. Ovid shows erotic love working in many different ways,
depending on the component emotion that is predominately displayed, and the
feelings or attitudes of both the lover and the beloved. In this way, erotic relationships
can be broken down into another four subdivisions: unrequited love or
lust, forbidden love, jealous love, and pure love. Though a common form unites
all of these—that of the erotic—each tends towards a different type of transformation,
just as each has a different motivation.
In the first case, sexual desire is the defining element in the lover’s pursuit
of the beloved. This also can take several forms. It can be the result of a blind
passion artificially induced, such as Apollo’s desire for Daphne that stems from
Cupid’s arrows. On the other hand, it can be a true desire arising from the
beloved’s beauty, as in the case of Salmacis’ love for Hermaphroditus, Neptunes’
rape of Caenis, or Alpheus’ pursuit of Arethusa. Either way, whenever
this all-consuming sexual desire is unreciprocated, it leads to a transformation.
When a male is pursuing a female, the beloved transforms to escape the clutches
of the lover, like Daphne’s transformation into a tree. However, in the case of
Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, Hermaphroditus’ transformation does not allow
him to escape Salmacis, but rather joins him to her after he refuses to indulge
her desires, to form a half-man, half-woman creature. In this way, we can see
unrequited sexual desire as one of the primary driving forces of transformations.
The implication is that love is such a powerful force that the object of affection
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