ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we will discuss two types of animal-human transformation that were especially pondered upon by the Graeco-Roman imagination. These were imagined relationships – expressions of myth and fantasy – in which animals were drawn into the human sphere. Here they were internalized and recreated as aspects of human nature and sometimes mixed with human qualities in other ways. The first of these relationships is a human-animal transformation during a single life (metamorphosis), while the second is a human-animal transformation during several lives (metensomatosis).
