Degrado morale e metamorfosi fisica del re Ḍaḥḥāk

This paper aims to highlight and explore the link between Ḍaḥḥāk’s moral corruption and his physical metamorphosis, as well as the fate to which that metamorphosis condemns him. The lengthy tale narrated by Ferdowsi in the Šāhnāma, in which the ruler’s physical transformation is both the precursor and the outcome of the evil that will poison his reign, constitutes a unicum within Iranian epic poetry, where, through the allegory of metamorphosis and its political consequences, the moral tension of the work is made explicit and heightened.