The piece of Ovid's poem Metamorphoses literally translates as "transformation". The compendium is actually itself a transformative work, fusing a multitude of Greek and Roman historical traditions into one massive epic. There are many different types of transformations that occur for different reasons in the poem: people and gods transform into plants and animals, love into hate, chaos into being. Love is the catalyst that creates these changes in the stories that make up the Metamorphoses. This love is described as a turbulent force that possesses the power to create both positive and negative changes. Those affected by this force are entirely in its power, to the exclusion of reason and often morality. The transformations in the Metamorphoses derive from the search or the effects rendered by love. As already mentioned, this love does not always have a positive outcome; in reality, it is often quite the opposite. Five major subcategories of causes arise from transformations brought about by love: sexual encounters, escape, pain, punishment, and romantic love. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssaySexual encounters are varied and common in the stories of the Metamorphoses. The two types of encounters that occur are those of rape and relationships resulting in pregnancy. Rape is shockingly rampant in the plots of these stories. These cases occur in plots such as that of Book X, which documents Neptune's abduction of Caenis. Afterwards, Caenis transforms into a male so that she can never be sexually assaulted again. In book VI Tereus rapes his sister-in-law Philomela, who in the end, together with her sister, transforms into a bird to escape. When, in Book X, Myrrha satisfies her sexual appetite for her father and becomes pregnant, she flees her homeland and prays for transformation; subsequently, she is transformed into a myrrh tree which produces her illegitimate child. Many of the characters in these stories experience a transformation in an attempt to escape a person, god, or situation. In Book I, Apollo pursues Daphne, a follower of Diana determined to preserve her virginity. When Apollo persists against Daphne's wishes, Daphne flees and calls on her father, the river god, to transform her beauty. Daphne becomes a laurel tree and in doing so manages to escape. In the next example we again see a human being fleeing from the unwanted affections of a god. In book 5, Arethusa is transformed into a river by the goddess Diana to escape her retinue, Alphaeus. In both cases, the gods take pity on humans, changing their physical composition. Pain often becomes the cause of a transformative narrative due to the fact that the human or divine form occupied by the character becomes unbearable. By transforming, typically into a plant form, this character not only escapes their mourning, but preserves the memory of what they have cried for forever. In Book Book VIII tells the story of Byblis, whose unrequited love pains her so much that it turns into a spring eternally fed by her tears. Punishment is a constant theme throughout the epic, usually inflicted by the gods on humans or each other out of indignation out of arrogance or simply out of revenge. These types of punishment are linked to love in that revenge is an act of self-love on the part of the perpetrator: they focus on appeasing themselves. Likewise, arrogance is also the act of self-love,.