Conversely, the many cases of cursed transformations reflect the sins committed by their victims. Each form that the mortals are confined to in these myths symbolizes a part of their sin. The most common sin is disrespect and subordination of the gods; through many cases of this, the Greek myths tend to disproportionately stress respect for godly powers. Arachne, the extremely talented mythical weaver, displays an incredible amount of heroic hubris in her boasts that she could best the goddess Athena in her own art. When, in their contest, Arachne’s piece reflects yet more of this insolent disrespect towards the gods in general, Athena transforms Arachne into a spider: this form fits Arachne’s immense ego by reducing her to a miniscule, horrific being. The gods punish mortals for hubris in manners fitting the crimes by giving them pathetic or grotesque forms to juxtapose their immense egos. These punishments, repeated time and again throughout Greek mythology, illustrate the Greeks’ value of humility before one’s betters. Through the myths, the Greeks explain that those who stand against their superiors should and will be punished. Respect for property is another similar Greek value that appears in various myths involving transformation. In the poet Homer’s The Odyssey, Book XI, Odysseus’s men land on the isle of Helios, the sun god, and are warned to not touch Helios’s holy cattle yoked there. Failing to heed this warning because of their greed, the men are turned into pigs: a fitting animal for greedy people. With the men’s unfortunate ends, Homer enforces the importance of quelling personal greed and having respect for others’ possessions. When transformations are used to punish mortals in Greek mythology, it is generally in order to warn against the immoral actions taken by that mortal.

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