Discombobulous history and its other

Now and then it's probably a good idea to step back from close attention to specific words, lines, passages and take a look at larger patterns and motifs in the Metamorphoses.

At the macro level, the title of the poem sets a reader to wonder: What sort of changes? Why "changes"? What is change? What's the end, the result, or outcome of mere change? The alleged topic of Ovid's poem seems to be more of the nature of a verb than of a noun. Some person, place or thing undergoes change, and becomes some other person, place or thing. The interest, the game, the poetry is usually in the act of changing -- the sudden arrest or surprise:

While she was still speaking, the soil covered her shins; roots, breaking from her toes, spread sideways, supporting a tall trunk; her bones strengthened, and in the midst of the remaining marrow, the blood became sap; her arms became long branches; her fingers, twigs; her skin, solid bark. And now the growing tree had drawn together over her ponderous belly, buried her breasts, and was beginning to encase her neck: she could not bear the wait, and she sank down against the wood, to meet it, and plunged her face into the bark. (Myrrha)

The daedal fates of Icarus

As noted the other day, Ovid's Daedalus has much in common with his Arachne. Both are painstaking artificers who seek to go beyond merely imitating nature. Daedalus' design for the labyrinth of Crete was, Ovid notes, inspired by the Maeander River, near Miletus in ancient Caria:

No differently from the way in which the watery Maeander deludes the sight, flowing backwards and forwards in its changeable course, through the meadows of Phrygia, facing the running waves advancing to meet it, now directing its uncertain waters towards its source, now towards the open sea:

His design for his escape from Crete was based upon nature's model as well:

he applied his thought to new invention and altered the natural order of things. He laid down lines of feathers, beginning with the smallest, following the shorter with longer ones, so that you might think they had grown like that, on a slant. In that way, long ago, the rustic pan-pipes were graduated, with lengthening reeds. Then he fastened them together with thread at the middle, and bees’-wax at the base, and, when he had arranged them, he flexed each one into a gentle curve, so that they imitated real bird’s wings. (Kline)

Like Arachne, Daedalus is entirely absorbed by his art, his techne. He is a problem solver. He solves Pasiphae's problem, then has to contain the problematic issue of that "solution" for Minos:

Aeacus: omen and nomen

...the king of Oenone, the best in hands and mind... Pindar, Nemean 8

According to Apollodorus, Aeacus king of Aegina was the most pious of men. When Greece was devastated by evils, Aeacus's prayers restored fruitfulness to Hellas. Ovid transforms that story in Metamorphoses 7. It's another rich, important tale, briefly noted here.

Aegina

First, the long detailed description of the devastating plague on the isle of Aegina makes it clear that it had no natural cause. The cause was divine, and came from Hera's wrath at Zeus. Not only was she angry at him for straying from the marital alliance (foedus) and loving the daughter of Asopus, Aegina, but also for allowing the isle where that love was consummated, and where their child Aeacus was king, to be named in honor of her rival. (Its original name was Oinone, or Oinopia). The divine cause had no more to do with the moral rectitude of the people of Aegina than with their physical hygiene. They were not being punished for anything they did or did not do (as, for example, Oeneus will be punished by Diana for forgetting to worship her in Book 8). They suffered horribly, to the point of losing every trace of moral, physical, and social humanity, because they lived in a place named Aegina. Gods do not like being reminded of certain things.