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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Metamorphoses, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Metamorphosis
Humanity vs. Nature
Love and Destruction
Gods and Humans
Time, Fate, and Poetry
Summary
Analysis
After Hebe adds years to Callirhoe’s sons’ lives, the gods rise up in outrage. They wonder why the gift of youth and age can’t be granted to others who need it, too. Each god has a person they want to see become either older or younger. As they bicker, Jupiter raises his voice and says that Fate causes people to age, and that none of the gods can defy Fate, not even Jupiter.
The gods are angry that fate prevents them from altering the age of whomever they choose. As all-powerful gods, they resent that there is anything they cannot alter, but Jupiter reminds them that there is a set fate—which includes the steady decay of time—that the gods have no control over.
Themes
Jupiter draws the gods’ attention to Minos, whom Jupiter wishes he could revive. Minos used to be strong and powerful but is now old and weak. Minos lives in fear of Miletus, Apollo’s strong young son. Minos is too afraid to turn Miletus away, but Miletus leaves of his own accord and establishes a new city in Asia. There, he marries a nymph and gives birth to two beautiful twins, Byblis and Caunus.
Jupiter explains how time moves forward without the gods being able to stop it. Young heroes are always eventually replaced by their young sons or their younger rivals. In this way, the world transforms through generations, each new generation usurping the last and so on.
Themes
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