It is believed that Ovid, a famous Roman poet that lived over 2,000 years ago, wrote the very first werewolf transformation scene. As legends go, the first transformation is attributed to Zeus who transforms Lycaon into a werewolf. The images of Lycaon’s transformation are fairly interesting, but even more interesting is how Ovid describes the werewolf transformation process and the resulting werewolf. Ovid describes the process as being fairly painful, and he describes the resulting werewolf as “savage”.
Of particular interest however, and perhaps one of the most unusual aspects of the transformation – he describes Lycaon’s clothes themselves undergoing the transformation process along with the human.
Here is how the first werewolf transformation is interpreted and written:
There he uttered howling noises, and his attempts to speak were all in vain. His clothes changed into bristling hairs, his arms to legs, and he became a wolf. His own savage nature showed in his rabid jaws, and he now directed against the flocks his innate lust for killing. He had a mania, even yet, for shedding blood. But though he was a wolf, he retained some traces of his original shape. The greyness of his hair was the same, his face showed the same violence, his eyes gleamed as before, and he presented the same picture of ferocity.
