Stories of shape-shifters who could morph readily into animals and even inanimate objects. Includes Proteus, Erysichthon’s daughter, and leads on to Achelous himself.
Metamorphoses
A poor couple entertained two men as well as they could in their humble cottage. Their guests turned out to be Jupiter and Mercury, who rewarded them for their hospitality.
Meleager is killed by his own mother in a strange way, then Ovid cuts to a feast thrown by the river god Achelous to entertain Theseus and others.
More than a dozen heroes are called to hunt a boar as big as an ox that is destroying crops and livestock. Their attempts are farcical until the young woman Atalanta impales the boar with her arrow.
Daedalus and son Icarus try to escape the island of Crete by flying with artificial wings. Icarus flies too close to the sun, melting the wax holding his wings together, and drowns.
King Nisus’ daughter betrays her father and his kingdom to King Minos of Crete. Theseus kills the Minotaur kept in the labyrinth on Crete, then abducts Ariadne to Naxos, where he abandons her.
One of Ovid’s best stories, of a man who inadvertently kills his wife when she suspects him of having an affair with a nymph when he should be hunting.
After the people of Aegina are almost wiped out by a plague, Jupiter gives its king an army of hard workers who became the fearsome Myrmidons in the Trojan War.
Fathered by King Aegeus and Poseidon, after revealing sandals and a sword, Medea tried to poison him with aconite to stop him knowing his father.
Medea tricks the daughters of King Pelias into trying to rejuvenate their father, and they end up killing him. She splits up with Jason, then murders their two sons.
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