94 pages • 3 hours read
OvidMetamorphoses
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 8A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Book 8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 8 Summary: “Scylla and Minos”
The princess Scylla falls in love with her father’s enemy Minos. She sneaks away to meet him, but he rejects her. Distressed, she jumps into the sea and is turned into a bird.
Book 8 Summary: “The Minotaur”
On Crete, Minos has trapped the hybrid monster the Minotaur, a half bull, half man, in a labyrinth (176). Theseus, with the aid of Minos’ daughter Ariadne, defeats the Minotaur. He takes Ariadne away, only to abandon her before he reaches Athens. The god Bacchus turns her into a constellation.
Book 8 Summary: “Daedalus and Icarus”
The master inventor Daedalus, imprisoned on Crete, escapes with his son by building wings from wax and feathers. He warns Icarus not to fly too close to the sea or sun. Icarus does not listen and flies too high: “the scorching sun so close / softened the fragrant wax that bound his wings; / the wax melted; his waving arms were bare.” Icarus falls to his death (178).
Book 8 Summary: “Perdix”
Previously Daedalus had killed his nephew and student Perdix of whom he was jealous. Minerva takes pity on Perdix and turns him into a partridge.
Book 8 Summary: “Meleager and the Calydonian Boar”
In Sicily, the hero Meleager and his companions defeat Diana’s menacing Calydonian boar. One of Meleager’s companions is a girl, Atalanta, who draws the boar’s first blood. After killing the boar, Meleager says, “take the prize / that’s mine to give, fair girl of Arcady, / and share the glory of the day with me!” (184). However, Meleager’s mother’s brothers begin to ridicule Atalanta, so Meleager kills them.
Book 8 Summary: “Althaea and Meleager”
At Meleager’s birth, the Fates give his mother Althaea a log, saying that Meleager will live if the log does. After Meleager kills her brothers, Althaea throws the fog into a fire. Far off, he burns to death, and Althaea kills herself.
Book 8 Summary: “Achelous and the Nymphs”
The river Achelous tells Theseus about five nymphs. These nymphs did not make a sacrifice to the river, so he turned them to islands. Achelous loved another nymph, Perimele. After they have sex, her father throws her into the sea, and Achelous prays to Neptune to turn her into another island.
Book 8 Summary: “Philemon and Baucis”
Theseus’ companion Lelex tells the tale of an intertwined oak and lime tree. Once, two poor and elderly mortals, Philemon and Baucis, were the only ones in their land to aid the gods Jupiter and Mercury when the visited the earth in disguise. In return, the gods flooded the land but turned their home into a temple. Philemon and Baucis pray to die at the same time, and the gods turn them into the oak and lime trees.
Book 8 Summary: “Erysichthon and His Daughter”
Achelous narrates the tale of Erysichthon’s daughter, who could transform shape at will.
Erysichthon, cursed by the goddess Ceres with hunger, sells his daughter for food. She prays to Neptune for help, and he gives her the power of transformation. However, her father abuses this power, selling her many times; each time she transforms and returns home. Eventually, he becomes so hungry he eats himself.
Book 8 Analysis
Many of the transformations of Book 8 fall into patterns: transformations as deaths, as pity or mercy, and as reward. The princess Scylla (who is different from the monster Scylla) transforms after she leaps into the ocean. Her father, who is now a bird, plucks her up, then “changed into a feathered bird she rode the air” (175). It is unclear in Scylla’s story whether anyone specifically transforms her—she seems to simply turn into the bird. However, her transformation in a sense replaces her death. Rather than drowning in the ocean, as she intended when she leapt in, she lives on in new form. Nor does she seem to retain any part of her human life or mind as a bird, as Io did when she changed into a cow. Scylla’s old life has ended or died; she has a new life in a new form.
Transformation serves as evidence of divine pity or rescue in the case of Perdix and Perimele. After Daedalus throws Perdix off a tower, Ovid writes, “Pallas, who sustains / talent, upheld him, changed him to a bird” (179). Minerva (known sometimes as Pallas) seems to save Perdix, in a way, because she has a connection to the boy. As the goddess of wisdom and craft, it makes sense for Minerva to become attached to a boy like Perdix who excels at inventing. When Achelous loses his beloved Perimele in the ocean, he prays to Neptune to help her, saying “grant her to have a place, / or be herself a place” (189). Neptune then turns her into an island. This transformation is a type of pity or salvation to Achelous, who can continue being with Perimele in a way (although it is certainly not as much a salvation as Perimele would have wanted herself).
Transformation further serves as a reward in the story of Baucis and Philemon. These mortals are the only ones in their land to aid Mercury and Jupiter, and as a result the gods reward them. Jupiter says to them, “tell us, you good old man, and you, good dame, / his worthy consort, what you most desire” (192). Their response is, “since in concord we have spent our years, / grant that the selfsame hour may take us both” (193). The gods go a step further than granting them simultaneous death, however, by turning them into “two trees from one twin trunk grown side by side” (193), allowing them to live on in a way, together forever.
Related Titles
By Ovid
