94 pages • 3 hours read
OvidMetamorphoses
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Book 12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 12 Summary: “The Expedition Against Troy”
The Trojan prince Paris steals his wife from Greece, setting off the Trojan War. The Greek fleet has trouble sailing, and their leader Agamemnon must sacrifice his own daughter Iphigenia to Diana. Ovid writes, “love / yielded to public weal, the father to / the king” as Agamemnon performs the unthinkable, killing his daughter, for the public benefit (274-75). However, some say that Diana secretly switched Iphigenia at the last minute with a deer.
Book 12 Summary: “Achilles and Cycnus”
During the war, the greatest Greek warrior Achilles battles the impenetrable Trojan warrior Cycnus. After a long fight, Achilles begins to choke Cycnus, whom Neptune takes pity on and turns into a white bird.
Book 12 Summary: “Caenis”
The aged Greek Nestor tells of an old acquaintance, Caeneus, who used to be the girl Caenis. After Neptune assaults Caenis, he grants her one wish, and she asks to be turned into a man, changing name to Caeneus.
Book 12 Summary: “The Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs”
A younger Nestor attends a wedding with Caeneus among the Lapiths, a great people. There, the Lapiths get into a battle with the Centaurs and many die. The Centaurs eventually converge on Caeneus and bury him in trees. Later, he flies out of the pile of wood as a bird.
Book 12 Summary: “Nestor and Hercules”
Nestor despises Hercules, who once killed all his brothers. Hercules even killed Nestor’s brother Periclymenus, whom Neptune had given the ability to change shape.
Book 12 Summary: “The Death of Achilles”
After many years of war, Neptune asks Apollo, “you, who are my first favourite of all / my brother’s sons and built Troy’s walls with me, / walls built in vain, do you not groan to see / this citadel at any moment now / about to fall?” (291-92). In response, Apollo helps Paris kill Achilles, who has contributed greatly to Troy’s destruction, with a bow and arrow. After this, other Greek warriors fight over Achilles’ armor.
Book 12 Analysis
In Book 12, Ovid begins his retelling of the Trojan War, a touchstone classical myth. The Trojan War was the subject of much famed literature and art in Greco-Roman antiquity, including works famed both in Ovid’s time and ours. Ovid covers some of the same events as Homer does in his epic poem The Iliad. However, Ovid focuses on the stories within the larger myth of the Trojan War that fit within the transformative theme of his Metamorphoses.
Ovid covers one traditional early Trojan War story by telling of Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia. However, his focus on the fight between Achilles and the Trojan warrior Cycnus is less typical. Cycnus is certainly known to authors beyond Ovid, but he is a more minor mythological figure than some of the other Trojans Achilles famously battles, including Hector, the greatest Trojan warrior. Nevertheless, the story of Cycnus fits well into the Metamorphoses because it concludes with a transformation when Cycnus turns into a swan (in Latin, cycnus). Ovid also includes a transformation at the end of Nestor’s story of the battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs. The story of this battle was widespread in antiquity, famously appearing carved in stone on the south side of the Athenian Parthenon. Ovid, via Nestor, tells it at length, but does make sure to conclude with the death and admittedly obscure transformation of Caeneus into a bird.
Transformation as a form of recompense or mercy also appears in the story of Caenis. The god Neptune rapes the girl Caenis, and unlike in many of Ovid’s tales of divine sexual assault, he then offers to make reparations by granting her a wish. She says, “this wrong you’ve done me needs an enormous wish— / put pain like that beyond my power. Grant me / to cease to be a woman” (280). Caenis points out that what Neptune has done to her is so horrible that, if he is to get close to repaying her, he must grant her something big, like a transformation. The significance of this gender transition is that (according to Ovid, at least) it will prevent Caenis from feeling the pain of sexual assault as a woman again. Given the prevalence of sexual assault throughout the Metamorphoses, Caenis’ transformation as a preventative against future assault is thought-provoking.
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