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Metamorphoses
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Book 13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 13 Summary: “Ajax and Ulysses and the Arms of Achilles”
The Greek soldiers Ajax and Ulysses both argue that they should get Achilles’ armor, but Agamemnon grants it to Ulysses. Ovid writes then that Ajax “drew his sword and ‘this’, he cried, ‘at least / is mine” (306), claiming ownership over at least his own sword before he falls on it. Out of Ajax’s blood springs a hyacinth flower.
Book 13 Summary: “The Fall of Troy”
Ulysses retrieves Hercules’ arrows from the island of Lesbos, and these help the Greeks win the war. After, the Greeks burn Troy and take all the Trojan women as prisoners.
Book 13 Summary: “Hecuba, Polyxena, and Polydorus”
Only one son of the Trojan king Priam survives, Polydorus, who was raised elsewhere. While the Greeks travel back, Achilles’ ghost demands that they sacrifice the Trojan princess Polyxena to him. This distresses her mother, former queen Hecuba, and she wails, “there’s still one hope why / I should endure to live some brief while yet” (310), indicating her sole surviving son Polydorus. Hecuba later sees Polydorus’ body wash ashore, however, and she gouges out the eyes of his killer, Polymestor.
Book 13 Summary: “Memnon”
The goddess Aurora mourns her son Memnon, whom Achilles killed. She begs Jupiter to honor her son, so he turns the smoke from Memnon’s pyre black, and the smoke turns into birds.
Book 13 Summary: “The Pilgrimage of Aeneas”
One Trojan prince, Aeneas, escapes with a fleet and heads to Italy. They make many stops along the way, including sailing between the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. Once, when Scylla was a nymph pursued by many suitors, she went to Galatea for advice.
Book 13 Summary: “Acis and Galatea”
Galatea loves the boy Acis, but the cyclops Polyphemus loves her too. When Polyphemus catches Galatea with Acis, he angrily throws a rock at Acis, killing him. Acis then turns into a river god.
Book 13 Summary: “Scylla and Glaucus”
The sea god Glaucus also desires Scylla, but she runs away, as “she could not tell / if he were god or monster” (322). Glaucus tells her he is a god, but Scylla still flees, so Glaucus visits the witch Circe.
Book 13 Analysis
In Book 13 Ovid again retells a large myth more extensively told in a different poem: the story of Aeneas, famously the topic of Virgil’s Roman epic poem the Aeneid. Once more, Ovid reconsiders this established narrative to emphasize transformations where he can.
He does this first by relaying the tales of Galatea and Scylla. Ovid narrates Aeneas’ fleet’s passage between the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. He writes of the monster, “the other’s ringed below her hell-black waist / with raging dogs. She has a girl’s sweet face, / and if the tales the poets have passed down / are not all false, she was a sweet girl once” (317). This allows him to move his focus to Scylla when she was a girl, as well as a conversation she has with the nymph Galatea. By referencing “the tales the poets have passed down,” Ovid gives a reason to break from the harrowing tale of Aeneas’ passage between the two monsters, focusing briefly on transformative topics. This transition also allows him to explain Scylla’s origin, why she is a monster, and origin tales are another general theme of the Metamorphoses.
Transformation is found in both the tales that conclude Book 13—first, the transformation of Galatea’s dead lover Acis into a flower, then the transformation of Scylla’s pursuer Glaucus from a fisherman to a god. These transformations are also typical of Ovid’s metamorphoses. For example, Glaucus tells Scylla how he became a god He says, he “plunged beneath / the waves. The sea-gods welcomed me to join / their company (so well I was esteemed) / and called on Tethys and Oceanus / to take away my mortal essences” (323-24). Although this is not as major nor as extensive an apotheosis as others (like Hercules’), Glaucus’ transformation contains similar elements. His transformation occurs at the moment of his death, having jumped into the water (a common method of suicide in the Metamorphoses). The gods are directly involved in his transformation, too, Tethys and Oceanus are both ocean titans (the generation before Jupiter). Last, when Glaucus becomes a god, the transformation involves his mortal exterior falling away to reveal a new, divine form.
The two stories of Galatea and Scylla might only be tangentially related to Aeneas’ voyage from Troy to Italy, but they allow Ovid to render the myth in his style.
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By Ovid
