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 lo 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 hoose an action that they know is offensive to the gods, as we see in the myths of Lycaon and Pentheus. Sometimes the wrong-doing that offends a god is a direct result of the act of another god. We can see one such example in the myth of lo (Book 1, lines 600-780 approximately). lo 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 lo into a white heifer. He did this in the hope of oncealing from his wife what he had done with lo. However, Juno knew already what Jove had been doing, and she also knew that lo was the white heifer, but she feigned ignorance and took lo (in the form of the heifer) as a gift from her husband. lo 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 lo and directed his son, Mercury, to kill Argus and free lo, Juno knew, and sent a fury to torment lo, driving her to adness. Eventually lo prayed to Jove to end the suffering, and Jove swore to his wife, Juno, that he would not let lo be the source of any more anguish for Juno. Once she had this promise, Juno let lo transform back, and ended her punishment (Book 1, Line 740 approximately). In this myth we see that, even though lo resisted, she did something to offend one of the gods, Juno, by sleeping with Jove.
This caused her a great deal of grief in her life, until Juno judged her punishment to be over. We can see another example of this type of wrong-doing in the myth of Tiresias (Book 3, Lines 315-340, approximately). Tiresias was a man who had spent seven years as a woman when he struck the female of a pair of snakes in the middle of mating. He eventually found another pair of mating snakes, and struck the male this time, which transformed him back into a man (Book 3, Lines 330-333, approximately).
For having spent time as both a man and a woman, Jove and Juno came to him as a qualified judge to settle an argument they were having: whether men or women enjoyed love-making more. Tiresias sided with Jove, agreeing that women enjoyed love-making more than men did. In a fit of rage, Juno struck Tiresias blind, having been offended y his choice. Jove gave him compensation in the form of the gift of prophecy (Book 3, Lines 334-338, approximately). In this myth, we can again see that a human, Tiresias, having been dragged into a losing situation by two of the gods, offended one of them, Juno, and was summarily punished for this wrong- doing.
While neither of these myths resulted in their respective characters’ deaths, we can clearly see the first form of wrong- doing, offending a god by an act of another god. The second form of wrong-doing is to offend a god by being in the wrong place at the wrong time (bad luck). We can see a clear example f this in the myth of Actaeon (Book 3, Lines 140-250, approximately). Actaeon was a hunter, and one day, wandering lost in the forest, he came upon a clearing sacred to Diana, where she bathed.
Though he did not intend to, he saw the goddess naked, and, having offended this virgin goddess, was turned into a stag. He fled from the clearing, but soon after was found by his own pack of hunting dogs, who chased him down and killed him, not knowing him as their master (Book 3, Lines 220-240, approximately). Though Actaeon did not intend to do anything wrong, he offended Diana by seeing her while she was athing, and his punishment led to his death. The third and final way to offend the gods is through willful wrong-doing.
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 lotting 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 rought 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 sisters would be defied with his blood. Pentheus pushed Tiresias aside, ignoring his advice. When Bacchus came to Thebes with his worshippers, Pentheus sent men to bring Bacchus to him in chains, doubting his parentage as a son of Jove, and seeing his throngs of worshippers as an assault on the city itself. The men sent by Pentheus brought back a priest of Bacchus in chains instead of Bacchus himself.
The priest was later freed by supernatural means from his chains. Still Pentheus remained obdurate despite all of these signs. He climbed the mountain where the worship of Bacchus was taking place. About half-way up the mountain, he stood in a clearing and was spotted by his mother, herself a worshipper of Bacchus, driven mad in the frenzy. In her madness, she took Pentheus for a boar, and summoned her sisters to hunt him down with bare hands. Despite his pleading, two of his mother’s sisters tore his arms rom his body, and finally his mother herself took his head off, and cradled it as a prize of the hunt.
The rest of the Theban people took the hint from this example, and did not question the worship of Bacchus (Book 3, Lines 730-733, approximately). Here again we see a man who denies the divinity of one of the gods, and offends this god by first seeking to kill him, then taking one of his priests as a prisoner. This willful wrong-doing led Pentheus to his prophesied death, torn asunder, and his mother and her sisters were defiled with this murder, even though they didn’t know what they were doing.
