Themes in Metamorphoses
Dear students
Why, one is tempted to ask, would a mortal be so foolish as to challenge a god? Even if the mortal won she or he could be certain of being punished. In depicting these irrational displays of hubris, Ovid captures human stubbornness and perserverence. The skilled, the wise and the loving among humanity don't accept the inferior status that gods demand of them, even though such resistence inevitably ends badly for the mortal. Thus Ovid's mortal challengers win the reader's sympathy to some extent -- even against the hopeless odds of their own mortality, they strive to best the gods. And in this light, the gods' lack of justice renders them quite tyrannical. Arachne, for instance, is in fact likely a better weaver than Athena. Her audacious talent, coupled with her subject, which decries the immorality of the gods' conduct with mortals, makes her in the end a martyr to the capricious immortals. She is perhaps even the hero of the tale, even though we hear it from Athena's point-of-view.
That said, Ovid certainly invites his readers to recognize that the challenging mortals are offensive to the gods because of their boasting, not because of their talent. The nine sisters go directly to the Muses and demand a competition. Arachne and Niobe challenge the goddesses by brazenly declaring their superiority to anyone who will listen. Niobe's claims are so damaging, because like Arachne's, there is truth to them. Niobe can clearly show that her claims to divinity are essentially as good as Latona's. If Latona ignores her boasts, not only will her divinity be put into question, but the very concept of divinity -- of a superior race of beings who deserve their higher status -- would be shaken. Thus the horrific punishment visited upon Niobe boldly emphasizes the true difference between god and human: mortality. Humans can be killed, gods cannot; that is the only basis on which gods "deserve" to be worshipped.
A related theme introduced in this section concerns mortal acts of revenge. When Procne discovers her husband's betrayal, she feeds him his own son. This might seem unsuitable, as it hurts Procne as much as Tereus. However, Ovid presents emotional transformations as frequently as physical transformations, and the destruction of Procne's sister damages Procne beyond repair. It upends her family, replacing hate for Tereus where she once felt love, and so she expresses the replacement of love with hate by killing her son. Transformed by grief and revenge, Procne is an utterly new creature capable of unspeakable cruelty. Thus Tereus is transformed by love and Procne by hate; both have thus abandoned both family and humanity, and they both change into birds.
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