Power In Ovid's Metamorphoses

Throughout Greco-Roman mythology, the gods and goddesses are often depicted as vengeful, immortal beings that weird an abundant of power and control over the lives of mortals. This power enables them to punish mortals for any perceived slights or threats against them, usually through the transformation. Transformation — or metamorphosis — is a major theme interwoven into many of the myths told by the legendary Roman poet, Ovid. Within Ovid’s Metamorphoses, he narrates the classical myths, but in an ironic tone and style that always presents an undecidable moral message in the myth — one that is often caught between two vastly different, albeit convincing, interpretations. This is a concept that is reflected within the popular myth Diana and
Incidentally, the position of vulnerability that Diana is forced into is a result of Actaeon’s intrusion upon the sacred grove “[Diana] had carved” (3.160) herself. This proves that Actaeon’s intrusion is not only a slight against the sacredness of Dian’s virginity, but also a violation against the godly realm of that is personified by Diana’s scared grove — a place for no mere mortal. By debasing Diana’s sacred virtue with his gaze and desecrating the sanctuary of the grove with his unwanted presence, Actaeon’s violation demands some form of punishment. While the water nymphs “cluster round Diana / To clothe her body with their own” (3.183 - 184) naked flesh in order to preserve Diana’s dignity, Diana cannot simply allow Actaeon to walk away unscathed from such a humiliating slight against her. If Diana lets him go unpunished, she is cheapening the sacredness of her own virtue and discredit her authority among the other gods and goddesses. Consequently, from Diana’s perspective, she has no choice but to punish Actaeon for his crime. While Diana does not “[have] her arrows ready” (3.191) to, as this detail suggests, kill him herself, she instead — in the absence of her weapons — she utilizes the power of transformation to punish Actaeon. By transforming Actaeon into a stag, Diana is able to ensure that Actaeon will not “tell / [he] saw [her] here naked without [her] clothes” (3.194 - 195), thus protecting her chaste
This absolves Actaeon of all fault and any guilt for gazing upon the chaste Diana in a vulnerable position because “the fault [is] fortune’s” (3.74). However, this is not something that is taken into consideration by Diana when she punishes poor Actaeon. For a wrongdoing that is not his fault, Actaeon faces undue consequences that Diana’s violent actions have upon him. Instead of killing him herself, Diana’s form of punishment is to transform Actaeon into a stag. While Diana’s actions coincide with the vengeful actions that the gods and goddesses invoke upon any mortals that slight them, it also suggests that Diana wants to watch Actaeon suffer greatly before he dies — that killing him herself with an arrow would be too quick and relatively painless, especially compared to the “fierce savagery” (3.251) Actaeon consequently withstands as a stag. Symbolically, this makes her actions to transform him into a stag — oppose to killing him — more revealing of Diana’s wrath because she wants to reduce the “Royal Actaeon” (3.198) into a helpless animal. As Actaeon is transformed from the hunter and into the hunted, this is the ultimate note of irony within the myth because Actaeon “flee[s] where often he’d followed in pursuit” (3.228) and ripped to shreds by “his own hounds” (3.251); a horrifying punishment for a crime that Actaeon is not guilty