Metamorphoses

The story of Actaeon is yet another example of transformation as punishment. Diana turns Actaeon into a stag, which directly leads to his death, as a punishment for his seeing her naked while bathing. However, what marks this story apart from the others is the narrative commentary Ovid provides at the end. He writes, “as the tale spread views varied; some believed / Diana’s violence unjust; some praised it, / as proper to her chase virginity. / Both sides found reason for their point of view” (58). This type of explicit narrative commentary does not appear frequently in the Metamorphoses, and it certainly does not appear at the end of the many stories of gods punishing mortals, even for mortals’ mistakes or unintentional trespasses. That is not to say that readers of Ovid have not always had opinions about the myths he relates—only that Ovid seems to find justification for Diana’s actions here particularly ambiguous. Certainly, Actaeon did not mean to stumble across Diana while he was “idly wandering” (56). But Ovid does not make similar judgement calls at the end of comparable stories, such as when Juno frequently takes out her anger against Jupiter for infidelity on the women he seduces and/or assaults.

Another tale of note in Book 3 is the story of Tiresias, in which Ovid associates knowledge with embodied experience and identity with fluidity. When Jupiter and Juno debate whether men or women enjoy sex more, they turn to Tiresias since “he knew both sides of love” (60). Tiresias has a special kind of knowledge as a direct result of having lived as both a man and a woman—knowledge that most, even the gods Juno and Jupiter, can only guess at. This puts Tiresias in a special position as a mortal, given that most mortals do not suppose they can advise the gods.

The way Tiresias gained this knowledge is notable too. He is not the only character in the Metamorphoses to change his sex or gender identity. However, he is nearly unique in changing back (Erysichthon’s daughter in Book 8 also changes to and from being a man, but the conditions of her transformations are unique in their own ways). Had Tiresias changed into a woman and stayed that way, she would have still had the knowledge of both sexes. However, Tiresias as a character in Greco-Roman mythology holds more knowledge and power than is usually afforded to women in the classical age, and so the fact that he has the form of a man before advising the gods makes sense when considering historical context.