Love and Metamorphoses

A few kilometers away from Rome the sand dunes of Sabaudia the Circeo marshes and Arpinos mountain waterfalls become the backdrops to fabulous transformations Callisto is changed into a bear Jupiter metamorphoses into Diane Glaucus becomes a sea monster and the nymph Salamachis melds into the body of the young Hermaphrodite But each of these transformations also plays on those of their performers thus giving a new twist to Ovids Metamorphoses written before and during his exile from the Roman Empire and questioning the role of gender and identity in our society