I bought this copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses when I was living in Rome. It's the book I was reading on the plane when I left Rome, as the realization sunk in that an awesome and strange adventure was drawing to a close, and it's the book I was still reading when I moved back to Minneapolis and attempted to readjust to life as a Midwestern college undergrad.

I was reading Metamorphoses at the cafe a few blocks away from my apartment when a strange man gave me that little terror of a kitten, Monster. And Monster used to bite my toes when I was reading Metamorphoses in bed.

I was in love, so much in love, when I read Metamorphoses, with someone I would surely never meet again. And I was so lonely. And Metamorphoses was just beautiful, all the forlorn humans going up against the gods, only to be transformed into plants, animals, birds~

To read the great Roman poet while living in Rome, and to continue reading him while you are in mourning for the city once it's gone ~ was outrageous. In the best way. Grand. Epic. Eternal.

Every bird, animal, fountain, or object we see was once something else. In Ovid, they were all once people – in love, or grieving, or trying to escape from rape (see below) – who were transformed. It doesn’t take much for us to anthropomorphize. When I look at trees and their twisting branches, they seem emotional. But they’ll always be something else, and something else, and something else again.

In 15 books, Ovid takes us from primordial chaos (“No shape was fixed”) through creation and recreation, to the future of Rome, and even further, into ever-shifting eternity.

It is Pythagoras who gives a speech on metamorphosis in the final book. But first he makes some interesting comments on vegetarianism:

“How wicked it is for guts to be entombed in guts” (what a way with words!)

Pythagoras believes in reincarnation. If souls do not die, but move from post to post, then humans can also become animals; animals, humans.

“Since we, part of this world, are not just bodies but also winged souls and can inhabit wild beasts and dwell inside the hearts of herds, let bodies be revered, unharmed. They might have held the souls of parents, siblings, others bonded to us”

Ages change, so do places (sea to land, land to sea), so do nations, so will the Rome of Ovid’s time, and so will every empire we see today.

“In all creation there is nothing constant. Everything flows. Each likeness forms in flux. Time too glides by in endless motion, like a river. Both the river and swift hour can never stop.”

Finally, and there is no way around it: after metamorphosis, rape is probably the second most common theme in this poem. About 50 of the stories in this poem involve sexual assault. After reading so many chapters featuring the plotline, I could no longer keep track, and just came to assume that:
If the character is attractive, they will likely get assaulted.
If the character is a virgin, they will likely get assaulted.
If the character is a woman, they will likely get assaulted.
If it’s Tuesday, someone will likely get assaulted.
Most disturbing of all is how routine and normalized it becomes in your mind chapter after chapter. Usually, the victim must birth the product of the rape, and/or is metamorphosed into an animal or object (as translator Stephanie McCarter points out, literally objectified). As though the act collapses into the main theme, the lack of agency over the ever-changing mortal body.

NB: The entire poem contains over 250 myths and over 200 characters. Even though I knew many of them already, it was still hard to keep track, so I read with a notebook and took notes on who is who, which I’d highly recommend doing if your memory is a sieve like mine.