Metamorfosi: note terminologiche

Abstract

This brief note addresses the question of why the grecism ‘Metamorphoses’ is used by Ovid as the title of his most important work. To answer this question, the oldest Greek occurrences of the pair μεταμόρφωσις/μεταμορφόω are examined. The results are interesting: the pair does not appear in any of the texts of the writers of the archaic or pre-Socratic period, nor in any of the texts of the thinkers and authors of the classical period. Its first appearances date back to the Hellenistic period and are due to the work of editors and grammarians. These facts allow us to conclude that the coinage μεταμόρφωσις/μεταμορφόω is late. We will show here that it gave rise to a metalinguistic terminology that presupposes the Aristotelian and Stoic ontologies of individual form and individuating quality respectively. The conceptuality underlying this terminology has significant implications, which will be explained in detail here.
It is precisely these implications that allow for a novel comparison with the use of the verb μεταμορφόω in the New Testament and to answer the starting question by claiming that the choice of ‘Metamorphoses’ as title of Ovid’s poem is explained precisely by its status as a term of mythical metalanguage.