# 5 And then came … monsters

Figure 15 ‘Minotaur’ by Sarah Young, from Turnbull, A. (2023) Greek Myths, Walker Books/Candlewick Press.

It is very difficult for us in the modern world to give a complete definition of a human being. But in the world of ancient myth, things are even more complicated. As you have discovered, texts like Ovid’s Metamorphoses were full of characters that crossed boundaries between human and animal, plant, god, constellation, river and many other kinds of transformation besides. But there is one category of creatures in ancient myth that make this task of defining a human even more difficult: monsters.

What is a monster? That is a question almost as difficult to answer as ‘what is a human?’! But we can use the examples of monsters that we find in texts like Ovid’s Metamorphoses to help us to try to answer it. Monsters are often marked in myths by having bodies that are part human and part animal. They might have the head of a human and the legs of a bull, for example, or many other combinations. These creatures are known as hybrid creatures, because they are a hybrid of humans and animals. In the next activity you will meet some of these hybrid creatures.

## Activity 10 Hybrid creatures

This activity should take about 10 minutes

Below are three ancient images of hybrid creatures. In no more than three sentences, describe the hybrid creature in each image. All of these monsters play a role in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but you do not need to be able to identify any of them by name, or know their stories.

Example: In the first image, you might say that the figure on the left is a hybrid creature which has the tail of a horse. You might also point out that his face, torso and hair look human. You may notice, too, that the creature seems to be attacking the other figure in the image.

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### Discussion

In the second image, the hybrid creature seems to have the body of a human and the head of a bull, with horns. The creature seems to be being attacked by the human standing to the creature’s right.

In the third image there are three hybrid creatures. Each of the three creatures has the body and wings of a large bird, with sharp talons on their feet. Each of the creatures also has the head of a human woman.

Monsters do not only appear in Ovid’s poetry, and monsters from all across ancient literature have had a huge influence on the modern world. The fact that ancient monsters are so commonly returned to has led to many scholars asking the question: why are monsters so popular? What is it that these hybrid creatures do for us? In the next activity you will try to get to grips with this question.

## Activity 11 Tracking monsters

This activity should take about 20 minutes

Listen to this interview with Liz Gloyn about ancient monsters and the role they play in modern imaginations. In the interview, she explains why ancient monsters are so popular in the modern world – in other words, she offers some answers to the question ‘what do ancient monsters do in the modern world?’. As you listen, write down three possible answers to this question.

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Transcript
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### Discussion

Liz Gloyn gives lots of potential answers to this question in the interview, but the three that stood out in particular were:

1. Monsters help us to articulate our fears, especially the fear of not being in control of the natural world.
2. They give a physical shape to societal prejudices, and allow us to understand the prejudices that societies have towards those they consider to be their ‘others’ (which are often racist and xenophobic). They also help us to undermine the misleading assumption that internal goodness is reflected in external body and form (Gloyn explains this using the Greek phrase ‘kalos kagathos’ – beautiful and good – and explains that this mis-assumption that externally beautiful people are always good does not hold up in analysing myth).
3. Monsters allow us to reflect on what makes us human. By reflecting human fears, ancient monsters encourage us to compare our fears in the modern world with the fears of ancient people. They invite us to see ourselves as both similar to (in some ways) and very different from ancient people.

Monsters are not the only hybrid creatures that you might meet in ancient myths. Heroes, too, are usually part human and part god or goddess. Unlike monsters, heroes often take a human form, but they sometimes have special abilities and challenges as a result of being partly divine.

Ovid’s transformation stories engage with the complexity of hybrid beings frequently. Even after transformation into animals or plants, his characters keep hold of certain aspects of their humanity. This complicates the question of what a human is. Would you behave differently towards an animal – like a deer or a cow for instance – if you knew that it might once have been a human, or might still be a human internally? In the next section you will read a story that engages with exactly this question.

Figure 16 ‘Diana and Actaeon’, Zygmunt Waliszewski, 1935.

OpenLearn - Exploring Ovid’s big ideas
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