| Summary: | This article informs about the "Philemon and Baucis" story, which is a central but self-effacing episode of the book "Metamorphoses," by Ovid. It is framed by a discussion of divine miracles at one end and a description of the infinitely changeable god Proteus at the other. It seems appropriate that the gods involved here should be engaged in some low-key conjuring, revealing themselves unobtrusively in metaphors and epithets along the way. Jupiter and Mercury as a pair had, after all, already played masters of disguise on their earthly visit to Plautus's Amphitryo. But, of course, the conjuror here is really Ovid himself, demonstrating his own poetic powers of transformation. "Metamorphoses" of a verbal kind long anticipate the final changes, and nothing in this hut—a cabbage, a fork, a flapping goose, a wobbly table—is quite what it seemed at first glance. The first tree in the story nods its head at the entrance to the tiny cottage at the moment when Jupiter and Mercury, in disguise, lower their heads to get through the door.
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