Is the hoary old cliché ‘good to think with’ still good to think with? In my view, yes. One concept that certainly is (and was) good to think with is metamorphosis. In antiquity it was good to think with about just two things, but because those two things are nothing less than the limits of humanity and the nature of the gods, that is, I think, quite enough to be going on with.

Stories of metamorphosis which explore the limits of humanity – stories which I am not going to discuss in this chapter – narrate transformations of human beings as an alternative to death: prolongations of existence as laurel, wolf, spider, constellation. There is plenty of scope for more investigation here, for instance in relation to why certain genres play down the notion of human exit via metamorphosis, whereas others gleefully accept it; not to mention the radical differences even within a single genre – I have in mind the resolutely death- centred Iliad at one end of the epic spectrum, the much more transformation-friendly Odyssey a little further along, and, at the far end, the radically open, feverishly metamorphic world of Nonnos. There is also room for more work on the interaction between the metamorphic tradition, considered globally, and other types of belief in the perpetuability of humanity through changed, sometimes non-human forms, beliefs based on the assumed persistence of the soul after death.