In ancient Greece, the surviving

Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

features a wide collection of myths where the subjects are physically transformed, usually through either divine intervention or sorcery and spells. Similar themes of physical transformation are found in all types of

mythologies Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

, and visual arts around the world, including those of Mesopotamian, Roman (

Ovid Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he i ...

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' (, , ) is a Latin Narrative poetry, narrative poem from 8 Common Era, CE by the Ancient Rome, Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''Masterpiece, magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the world from its Cre ...

), medieval (Western Christian), and ancient Chinese. Stories of shapeshifting within Greek context are old, having been part of the mythological corpus as far back as the ''

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; , ; ) is one of two major Ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odyssey'', the poem is divided into 24 books and ...

'' of

Homer Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...

. Usually those legends include mortals being changed as punishment from a god, or as a reward for their good deeds. In other tales, gods take different forms in order to test or deceive some mortal. There is a wide variety of type of transformations; from human to animal, from animal to human, from human to plant, from inanimate object to human, from one sex to another, from human to the stars (

constellations A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The first constellations were likely defin ...

). Myths were used to justify or explain or legitimate a precedent, traditions, codes of behaviours and laws. Ancient Greek taboos and prohibitions could also find a place in mythological narrative, as some provided cautionary tales in the form of a fable. Myths about nature, and the transformation into it, attempted to provide a coherent history and tell the origins of the world, the nature, animals, humans and the gods themselves. Accordingly, there has always been efforts to explain the very supernatural elements of those myths in turn, even within

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...

itself, such as the cases of

Palaephatus Palaephatus (Ancient Greek: ) was the author of a rationalizing text on Greek mythology, the paradoxographical work ''On Incredible Things'' (; ), which survives in a (probably corrupt) Byzantine edition. This work consists of an introduction an ...

and

Heraclitus Heraclitus (; ; ) was an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Achaemenid Empire, Persian Empire. He exerts a wide influence on Western philosophy, ...

, who tried to rationalise those myths as misunderstandings. The fullest surviving and most famous ancient work about transformation in Greek myth is Roman poet

's epic the ''

''. Throughout history, the ''Metamorphoses'' has been used not only as a compendium of information on Ancient Greek and Roman lore, but also as a vehicle for allegorical exposition, exegesis, commentaries and adaptations. True enough, in the medieval West, Ovid's work was the principal conduit of Greek myths. Although Ovid's collection is the most known, there are three examples of ''Metamorphoses'' by later Hellenistic writers that preceded Ovid's book, but little is known of their contents. The ''Heteroioumena'' by Nicander of Colophon is better known, and had a clear an influence on the poem. However, in a way that was typical for writers of the period, Ovid diverged significantly from his models. Nicander's work consisted of probably four or five books and positioned itself within a historical framework. Other works include

Boios Boios (Βοῖος), Latinized Boeus, was a Greek grammarian and mythographer, remembered chiefly as the author of a lost work on the transformations of mythic figures into birds, his ''Ornithogonia''. ''Ornithogonia'' was translated into Latin by ...

's ''Ornithogonia'' (which included tales of humans becoming birds) and little-known

Antoninus Liberalis Antoninus Liberalis () was an Ancient Greek grammarian who probably flourished between the second and third centuries AD. He is known as the author of ''The Metamorphoses'', a collection of tales that offers new variants of already familiar myths ...

's own ''Metamorphoses'', which drew heavily from Nicander and Boios. Below is a list of permanent and involuntary transformations featured in Greek and Roman mythological corpus.

List

Metamorphoses into plants

Metamorphoses into animals (non-avian)

Metamorphoses into birds

Metamorphoses into landscape

Metamorphoses into humanoid lifeforms

Metamorphoses into inanimate objects

Metamorphoses into the opposite sex

Changes in base physical appearance

Miscellaneous

Voluntary transformations

Falsely claimed as Greek mythology

Throughout the eons, several made up and unattested stories involving Greek mythological characters and Greek mythological motives have been passed as genuine Greek myths and beliefs and attributed to various ancient Greek and Roman writers, despite having no basis in Greek mythology and being attested in no ancient Greek or Latin texts. Those do not correspond to ancient beliefs and their origins can be traced in post-antiquity and modern times.

Notes

References

Bibliography

* Buxton, Richard (2009).
Forms of Astonishment: Greek Myths of Metamorphosis
'. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191554162. * * * *

External links

AN

from the Theoi Project
SUMMARY OF TRANSFORMATIONS
on A Dictionary of Classical Mythology {{Greek religion Characters in Greek mythology Greek mythology-related lists Deeds of Zeus Deeds of Apollo Deeds of Artemis Deeds of Ares Deeds of Athena Deeds of Poseidon Deeds of Hermes Deeds of Gaia Deeds of Hera Mythology of Dionysus Deeds of Aphrodite Helios in mythology Deeds of Demeter Mythology of Heracles Deeds of Eros Deeds of Pan (god)