The Wrong Doing In The Odyssey

The Ovidian opinion of human nature is that humans will always do something wrong. When this wrong-doing offends one or more of the gods, the punishment typically results in negative changes in the person’s life, and often their ruin or death. In the myths Ovid presents in his Metamorphoses, the wrong-doing is brought about in one of three ways. The first of these ways is by an act of the gods, seen in the myths of Io and Tiresias. The second way is through bad luck, as we see in the myth of Actaeon. The third and final of the ways the wrong-doing comes about is through intentional wrong-doing, in which the humans choose an action that they know is offensive to the gods, as we see in the myths of Lycaon and Pentheus.
Sometimes the wrong-doing
We can see one such example in the myth of Io (Book 1, lines 600-780 approximately). Io was a fair maiden, and Jove desired her. Though she fled from him, Jove caught her and had sex with her. Juno, knowing what Jove was doing, came down to the earth to confront him. Since Jove knew that Juno was coming to earth and that she would soon be there, Jove turned Io into a white heifer. He did this in the hope of concealing from his wife what he had done with Io. However, Juno knew already what Jove had been doing, and she also knew that Io was the white heifer, but she feigned ignorance and took Io (in the form of the heifer) as a gift from her husband. Io was treated as a cow, but she still retained her human mind. She was made to eat grass, drink muddy water, and sleep on the hard ground. Additionally, she was not able to escape, since she was guarded by the hundred-eyed Argus. Even when Jove took pity on Io and directed his son, Mercury, to kill Argus and free Io, Juno knew, and sent a fury to torment Io, driving her to madness. Eventually Io prayed to Jove to end the suffering, and Jove swore to his wife, Juno, that he would not let Io be the source of any more anguish for Juno. Once she
While the people who commit the other two types of wrong-doing did not intend to offend the gods, the people who commit this third type of wrong-doing have a choice, and choose to commit the wrong-doing which offends the gods. One example of this is the myth of Lycaon (Book 1, Lines 200-260, approximately). When Jove came to earth, he gave a sign to the people there that he was a god, and most of the people there worshipped him. Lycaon, however, mocked him, doubting that he was a god and plotting to kill him in the night as proof. He took his treachery one step further, and tried to serve Jove human flesh as food. Jove immediately struck the house of Lycaon with a bolt of lightning, presumably killing the entire household. Lycaon fled to the fields, where he transformed into a wolf, his outer form now representing his inner form (Book 1, Lines 230-240, approximately). We can see here a clear example of willful wrong-doing. Lycaon publicly expressed doubt that Jove was a god, and plotted to kill him in the night to prove it. The final straw, though, was to serve human flesh to the god, which brought down punishment on him that left his life in ruins, his household destroyed and himself now a wolf. A similar story is that of Pentheus. Pentheus was warned by the prophet Tiresias that if he spurned the worship of Bacchus, the son of Semele, he would be torn into a thousand pieces, and his mother and her