Overview of Transformations (NLE Prep)

·  Daphne was turned into a laurel tree; she begged her father, the river god Peneus, to transform her to save her from Apollo, who was chasing her to rape her.

·  The story of Syrinx is similar to that of Daphne. As she was chased by Pan, she begged river nymphs to save her, and was transformed into hollow water reeds. When Pan let out his frustrated breath onto the reeds, they made a noise, and were thus dubbed panpipes.

·  Pygmalion, a sculptor on the island of Cyprus, created an ivory woman (sometimes called Galatea) so beautiful that he fell in love with her. He prayed to Venus and she came to life; he married her and their child was named Paphos.

·  Baucis and Philemon were an old and pious couple. When Jupiter and Mercury were traveling in the region, only Baucis and Philemon gave them hospitality; in return, the gods transformed their house into a temple and granted them one wish, which was stay together for the rest of their lives as guardians of the temple. They died at the same time and were transformed into an oak and a linden tree.

·  Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, had seven sons and seven daughters. She made the mistake of bragging about her superiority to Latona (Leto), the mother of Apollo and Diana who only had the two children, and was punished for this hubris by the twin deities, who killed all her children. She wept so much that she turned into a stone, out of which tears still seeped.

·  Io was another unfortunate victim of the love of the gods. To conceal their union from Juno, Jupiter encompassed them both in a cloud; when Juno made the cloud disperse, Jupiter quickly transformed her into a heifer. Juno sent a gadfly to torment the heifer, which ran all the way from Asia Minor, across the Bosphorus (“cow-crossing”), to Egypt, where she became the goddess Isis.

·  The sisters of Phaethon (Heliades) were transformed into poplar trees thanks to their copious weeping at his death. Phaethon had asked his father Helios to allow him to drive his chariot; when Helios regretfully acceded, Phaethon of course crashed, and was struck down by Jupiter’s lightning bolt in order to save the world from burning.

·  Jupiter stole Europa from her compatriots in the shape of a white bull, and then flew with her on his back to the island of Crete.

·  Actaeon was a hunter who unfortunately happened upon the bathing and nude Diana. For this crime, he was turned into a stag and then torn apart by his own dogs.

·  Narcissus was a beautiful youth, who was prophesied to live forever so long as he did not know himself. Unfortunately, he looked into a reflecting pond, fell in love with himself, and turned into a narcissus (flower).

·  Pyramus and Thisbe, the one the most beautiful of the youths in Babylon, the other the most beautiful of the maidens, were in love but were forbidden by their parents to see each other. They arranged a meeting spot, but Thisbe arrived first and then had to escape a bloody-mouthed lion, which led Pyramus to believe that she had been killed. Logically, he killed herself, and then she killed herself upon discovering that. The mulberry berries turned red from white thanks to the blood soaking into the ground.

·  Arachne boasted that she was a better weaver than Minerva (Athena), and so they had a face-off. When Arachne’s tapestry insulted the gods, portraying the many loves of Jupiter, she was transformed into a spider.

·  Procne married Tereus, and then asked her sister Philomela to visit her. Tereus was so enamored with his sister-in-law that he took her into a woodland hut, raped her, and then cut out her tongue. Once Procne realized this, she rescued her sister; in revenge, the woman killed and cooked Procne and Tereus’ son Itys and then fed him to his father. Philomela became a nightingale, Procne a swallow, and Tereus a hoopoe.

·  Hyacinthus was a beautiful boy loved by both Apollo and Zephyrus, the west wind. Hyacinthus preferred Apollo to Zephyrus; when Apollo and Hyacinthus were hanging around tossing a discus, however, Zephyrus avenged himself by causing the discus to hit and kill Hyacinthus. Apollo transformed the boy’s corpse into a hyacinth (a flower).

·  Adonis was the young lover of Venus. Gored by a bull, he died in Venus’ arms, and she sprinkled his blood with nectar and turned him into an anemone (a flower).

·  The decree of her father stated that the only man Atalanta could marry had to beat her in a footrace. She finally lost to Hippomenes/Melanion, since he distracted her with the three golden apples of Venus. Eventually, Atalanta and Hippomenes were transformed into lions after they defiled the temple of Cybele.

·  Ceyx and Alycone were a couple who, according to some stories, called each other Zeus and Hera. Whether because of Zeus’ anger or not, Ceyx was killed in a storm at sea and appeared to Alycone as a ghost to tell her of his fate. She threw herself into the sea out of grief, and the gods changed them both into kingfishers.