Metamorphoses
Ovid (8)
“The poem that taught Western civilization its mythology — 250 transformation stories woven into a single unbroken song from the creation of the world to the apotheosis of Julius Caesar.”
Characters in Metamorphoses
by Ovid · 8 · 12 characters analyzed
Cast: Apollo, Daphne, Narcissus, Echo, Orpheus, Eurydice, Pygmalion, Arachne, Daedalus and Icarus, Philomela, Medusa, Perseus.
Character Analysis
Apollo embodies the paradox of divine power in the Metamorphoses: he is the patron of art and beauty, but his interactions with mortals are almost invariably predatory. His pursuit of Daphne is the poem's template for divine desire — unstoppable, entitled, and resolved only by the annihilation of its object. That the god of poetry destroys through the act of desiring makes him the poem's most troubling figure.