Metamorphoses

It seems to me that reading Metamorphoses at least once is worthy of the effort, if only to be exposed to this grand writing, and learn the origin stories of things we already know in our contemporary lives. Black ball, Midas touch, hyacinth and Pygmalion come to mind.There’s so much going on in this work. It is grand and sweeping, and sometimes choppy and even more difficult. I would like to have a better grounding in the literature of the time so that I could understand the allusions and homages more easily. Romans loved their blood and guts and adventure tales.In fact, Metamorphoses is rife with violence, gruesome in its detail and astonishing in the litany of names of characters involved in all the “stabbity-stab-stab.” Rape is another prevalent topic, as is punishment by the gods and goddesses.This is not a nice, tidy look at the story of Rome, fiction or not. There were numerous times when I had to stop and remind myself that Metamorphoses was written for an audience who had certain expectations for a great story, and for whom violence was nothing to be squeamish about.The attitudes towards women are difficult, but again, this was written in first century CE, when the very idea of women speaking up for themselves and showing agency was frowned upon at best, punishable at worst. Ancient Rome was a very stratified society, even wealthy women were held to be barely better than the slave class. So it is no surprise this found its way into the literature.There’s so much to enjoy, and revile, in Metamorphoses, it’s impossible to recount them in any way that makes sense. I could comb back through each book’s commentary and look for things to write about here. But I won’t.What I will say is that reading Metamorphoses was a journey worth taking. One which I am just as happy to have completed, leaving me to move on to less complicated books in my stacks. One lasting effect I am sure of, nothing I see or read will ever be the same since reading it.

Unieke en originele verwerking van het hele Griekse en Romein?se mythologische materiaal. Vele pareltjes.Favoriet van het postmodernisme. Amorele sfeer, en vandaar verwondering lof Augustus (die toch familiewaarden wilde herstellen). Mijn favoriet: Philemon en Baucis

Important Note: This review is for the edition translated by Z. Philip Ambrose. Seeing as the review focuses mainly on the translation, this will not work for all copies of the book. You have been warned.Introduction:Right of the bat, I'll admit I'm slightly biased. The translator for this version, Ambrose, was my professor for my greek and roman mythology class I took at UVM. This was a required text and took me about five minutes to realize he was the translator once I got into class. That automatically made the class special. Of all the ancient translations I've read, I can finally say I've known the translator. Just keep this in mind as I continue my review.Content:Ovid is great, pure and simple. I love his stories and the way he writes them. Every time once of my friends asks for a story when we're bored I immediately go to my memories of Ovid and pick out one of my favorites stories. Usually this is the tale of Narcissus and Echo or Atremis and Actaeon.Translation and Notes:If anyone is interested in reading Ovid they already know the value of his works and what they contain (if you don't, then the rest of this review may not be as important to you). Henceforth, that is not the primary focus of my review and will, instead, focus on the translation, notes, and diagrams included in this edition. There is a formidable Table of Contents that lists each story for easy reference. At the end there contains an index/glossary that is near sixty pages in length, chronicling each place, god, and mortal, who they are and when they appear. This is much more handy that it first sounds and I've used it constantly. The introduction, which for me is normally boring and overly long, gives a brief synopsis of each book and the tales included within. That helped me to no end when studying for a test!Notes in the book were on the bottom of the page and usually helped the reader with synonyms (like Abantaides is Perseus), places, and names. Easy and very important.The two most important things in this edition are the illustrations and the translation itself. The illustrations, of which there are many, added greatly to the events depicted in each tale. I found that I used these illustrations as landmarks for individual tales more than the Table of Contents or the Index. For these alone I would recommend this edition yet we have not even touched upon the translation! Fortunately, the translation was just what I wanted: readable and very true to the original Latin. When I first read this translation as a sophomore, I thought it fun to read. Not necessarily easy (for I think poetry and classical texts should be a brain-working experience and require a decent amount of effort put into it) but still fun. When I revisited the text as a senior and translated the original Latin I developed a new appreciation for Ovid and Ambrose. Ovid's Latin was great (of course) and Ambrose did his utmost best to stay true to the original. I used Ambrose's work as a 'cheat sheet', if you will, as I read the Latin for class. The translation was almost word for word, line for line, and a young Latin student's gift from the gods. Until you've tried translating for yourself you can't imagine how great this was, to have each line match up with the original. Just...superb!However, I must note that I have not read a different translation. Overall, I don't think it would matter. Penguin comes out with decent translations (and they have the most, by far) and Oxford World Classics give even better translations with awesome notes except I found both these translations lacking something special when I glanced over them in the bookstores. Perhaps because they didn't have those wonderful illustrations or they aren't set-up as neatly, I still have no desire to further explore my dislike. Take this new bit of information as you will, my view of this translation will certainly not change.Conclusion:A great literal, but definitely readable, translation of Ovid's well-known work of stories and myths, complete with illustrations. Great for the beginner and Latin student alike. Highly recommended.

I read 228 out of 554 pages of Charles Martin's translation of "Metamorphoses" by Ovid before deciding not to finish the book. Ovid was a Roman poet (roughly 43 BC to 17 AD), but his "Metamorphoses" is essentially a book of Greek myths originating hundreds of years before Ovid's time. The entire work is in hexameter poetry, and Charles Martin does an excellent job with this. I particularly love his incorporation of certain modern phrases and wording (e.g. Book V, Line 63: "The crowd went totally ballistic, then") and when the daughters of Pierus challenge the Muses to a poetry contest, and their poetry is rendered in rhyming couplets full of modern urban slang (Book V, Lines 449-495). Martin is clearly very talented, and he's done a brilliant job. I can't envision a translator doing better, at least until English has evolved and a more modern update is in order.So, if I liked Martin's poetry, why didn't I finish the book? Well, I didn't like Ovid's part. Scores of Greek myths are told in a perplexing order, without apparent chronology or sequence. Sometimes a myth is set up as a framing story for another myth (e.g. "So-and-so began to tell her tale, thus:"), and then the book never returns to the framing story, instead proceeding as if the sub-tale were the main tale. Ovid assumes the reader already knows about the most famous mythological figures (e.g. Jason, Perseus, etc.) and jumps to particular, lesser-known episodes in these heroes' lives, omitting their greatest adventures. Inconsistencies in the way certain figures are presented in different parts of the book (e.g. the Sun god) makes it feel like a work written by multiple authors over a long time period. The result is that the book is probably best appreciated as a bunch of tidbits without a larger coherent structure or plot.They myths are filled with cruel, vain, and vindictive gods and the suffering they inflict upon hapless mortals- and sometimes on others, such as when Latona's son (i.e. Apollo) defeats a satyr in a pipe-playing contest and then, as the satyr "cries, the skin is stripped from his body/until he's all entirely one wound:/blood runs out everywhere, and his uncovered/sinews lie utterly exposed to view;/his pulsing veins were flickering, and you/could number all his writhing viscera/and the gleaming organs underneath his sternum" (Book VI, Lines 555-560). Roughly every other story involves a punishment (typically permanent transformation into a plant or animal, but occasionally violent death) that seems like a total perversion of justice. If a book anything like "Metamorphoses" were written today in modern language, it would not be published, and it might be considered the work of a psychopath."Metamorphoses" feels like a confusing blur of stories of cruelty, vindictiveness, and injustice. The excellent poetry cannot ultimately save a story that is so fundamentally unpleasant to read. I understand that "Metamorphoses" is a cultural artifact and a window into the myths of the ancient Greeks, and thus it has value beyond the enjoyment a reader may get from the plot and characters. But Ovid's omission of the most culturally important stories means his work is only suitable for people already versed in the myths. "Metamorphoses" would be a good choice for Greco-Roman scholars or aficionados. Most people would do better with a collection like "D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths," a beautifully-illustrated volume that was my own childhood introduction to the Greek myths (and which inspired wonder and enduring love of these stories in a way that Ovid does not).

I used this translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses when I was doing my GCSEs, and I've looked out for it ever since. The current poetic translations irritated me, I wanted the version I remembered. Well, lo and behold, my university's library delivered.

Don't read Ovid's Metamorphoses expecting a novel, or even a single coherent story. It's a series of stories, woven together in a highly flexible framework, which results in some stories being examined at length and others skipped over. There are stories about gods and heroes, about the lovers of gods, and those wronged by the gods. There are all kinds of transformations, including famous stories like that of Orpheus and Eurydice, the rape of Proserpina, the story of Narcissus and Echo, Adonis, Perseus... If you want to read a book which deals with a lot of the traditional Roman stories, Ovid's a good bet.

I don't know if it's the original or the translator, but either way the narration manages to encapsulate moments of tenderness toward the characters, as well as the moral judgements and so on. Even with the brief glimpses we get, there are characters that are intriguing, even likeable.

E. J. Kenney states in his introduction that Metamorphoses is an anthology of genres: elegiac, pastoral, tragic, and epic; and more high comedy than tragedy. I found Metamorphoses to be a highly entertaining way to learn much of the mythology of classical antiquity, especially those bits that continually reappear throughout English literature. The Oxford World's Classics edition has comprehensive introductory notes and explanatory notes on the text, and an extensive glossary and index of names. I found these aids to be most useful in reading the translation, which was just plain fun.

33. Metamorphoses by Ovid, translated by A. D. Melville, notes by E. J. Kenneyoriginal date: circa 8 cetranslated 1986format: Paperbackacquired: Library book sale 2012read: July 23 - Aug 15rating: 5I'm not and cannot properly review Ovid's Metamorphoses. Instead just scattered notes.- Metamorphoses has tended to fall out of favor at different times because it's mainly entertaining. It seems it kind of mocks serious study, or can in certain perspectives.- And it is entertaining in a very flexible way. You can read it straight through, or a story at time - usually only a few pages - or in many other ways, including in a reading slump, like I was in when I started. The only thing really daunting about it, assuming you have a decent translation or read Latin, is its length.- The quality of the translation is maybe not that critical. He'll be entertaining regardless. - It's almost chronological, beginning with creation and a few other foundation stories (which for me struck a bunch of interesting notes right off) and ending with Roman history. - Except that Ovid dodges a lot. He avoids, mostly, overlap with Virgil and Homer and other prominent works, finding niches that are generally overlooked, or working in more obscure stories. He has a whole book (there are 15 books) on mostly eastern stories. Anyway, he won't replace your [[Edith Hamilton]] or other Greek mythological guides.- He filled in a lot stories I hadn't caught in ancient literature - like Atalanta and the Calydonian Boar hunt, the battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs and Pirithous's wedding, or Venus and Adonis.- But main story lines around Theseus, Minos, Hercules, Jason and the Argo and the hunt for the Golden Fleece, most of the Trojan War or even the basic history of the gods or their battle with the giants all get only cursory coverage.- He knew everything, or so it seems. Like his previous works, he works in references to practically all known literature of all types. Some more prominent than others, and many lost. - He also probably (hopefully) made a lot of stuff up.- So he writes a bit like a scholar and bit like creator.- This is largely humor, but it's not funny exactly, or even exactly satire, it's just very clever. He creates entertaining situations and then might overdo it a bit. I don't think I ever really minded, even when he got quite gory. - I think Ovid influences everyone, including many famous art works, but the main work that came to mind as I read it was Spenser's [Faerie Queene]. Not that Spenser has Ovid's mythology, but just that they left me with a very similar sense. All that work they put in and how far and deeply it pulls you out of the world and how yet mainly it's playful, how it can leave you with that magical sense that only exists around the fringes of your consciousness or awareness.- recommended to anyone, because it seemed like it has almost universal appeal, but not everyone, if that makes sense.

I read this at the wrong time, but I enjoyed the book. Ovid isn't my favorite poet. I read this mainly because I saw a play version of this in high school. All I remember there was pools and a bunch of hot shirtless guys. Then I saw a French movie of this that was basically erotic fantasy. I knew what I was getting myself into. This isn't your PG or even PG-13 mythology. This is more R or NC-17 mythology, which I'm glad because too much of it is watered down. Will I read more Ovid? I'm not sure. Like I said I didn't care for his writing as much.

Ovid's mythology classic begins so beautifully with Creation, then delves into harrowing, mostly gruesome and horrifying details of bleeding entrails,murders, rapes, revenge...with only a few good tales woven in.It also ends beautifully with the surprise of Pythagoras!

Read for Reading 1001, Quarterly Read 2022. A book of mythology, poetry, Roman. Did I enjoy it? Not so much. Time period covered from creation to the deification of Caesar. Influenced much literature to come.

Amazing and vast collection of mythology with linkages throughout.

Modern educators now issue more trigger warnings for this epic poem than Cupid has arrows, but it's an essential part of classical mythology in a superb verse translation. A considerable influence on both Chaucer and Shakespeare. Likely to be controversial at a college campus near you, but such are the sadly politically correct times we live in today. "In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas."

Also read in October 1986.

Various myths and legends are strung together, with the common theme of physical transformations.3/4 (Good).I loved this book, and yet was also frequently bored. There are some bad stories, some great, and everything in between. When it's at its best, it's an unforgettable, etched-in-my-brain great. But even if they were all good stories, telling them in a single, giant poem, while impressive, is not helpful.

I read parts of this in high school, where we translated many of the texts from this book. As this is a different kind of experiences, focusing on reconstructing the sentences anew, I would like to take up Metamorphoses at another time, in order to experience it more as a reader and to get a better idea of the stories within.

The Metamorphoses is not a modest work in scope: in his 12,000-line epic, Ovid tells us that he's attempting nothing less than to give us the history of the world from its creation out of Chaos right up to the time of Julius Caesar. The opening section is a grand, orchestral description of the creation in the spirit of Epicurean philosophy, and the final section includes a long speech by Pythagoras exposing a number of his scientific ideas (and arguments for vegetarianism), but what everyone remembers - and what gives the poem its usual title - is the material that fills the middle 13 books, a vast and unruly collection of stories of sex, violence and magical transformation gleaned from authors like Hesiod, Vergil and Homer (or simply made up on the spot by Ovid himself). Gods (of either sex) lust for mortals (of either sex) and have their wicked way or are frustrated; mortals lust for the wrong other mortals; individuals make rash promises or accidentally find themselves in the wrong place; revenge and jealousy get out of hand; or there is simply too much testosterone and alcohol about. And when things go wrong or a god gets peeved, then it's usually the unfortunate mortal who gets changed into an animal, tree, or rock, according to taste. According to Bernard Knox, there are over 250 transformations in the course of the poem (and that's presumably not counting the unnumbered myrmidons and dragon's teeth...). Most of them seem to end unhappily for the mortal in question - in a few cases the transformation saves someone from an imminent danger of rape, but then they are stuck as a tree for the rest of their life. Iphis and Ianthe are the one couple who seem to profit long-term - Iphis is turned into a boy on the eve of the wedding so that they don't violate the Cretan same-sex marriage ban in force at the time. (This is the story Ali Smith uses in Girl meets boy.)One moral that really comes out of the story is that we should be very careful not to give our children names that sound like animals or plants. That's just asking for trouble. Especially if they happen to be called "Cycnus" - there are three separate characters with this name, in Books II, VII and XII, and they all get turned into swans. Nominative determinism gone crazy...!Of course, Ovid being such an accessible source for subsequent poets, painters, dramatists, opera librettists and others, many of the stories are very familiar, but what is really striking when you read the whole thing is the pace. Ovid rarely lingers over descriptions (when he does, he's usually making some sort of satirical point), but hammers through the story at maximum speed, and segues into a new and quite different story - connected or not - as soon as he gets to the climax of the previous one. Or inserts a story in the middle of another one, down to two or three levels (not quite as much deep recursion as the Panchatantra, though). From the Big Bang to the moment when "terra sub Augusto est", the music never stops. Even the transition from one book to the next is usually just the flick of an eye - Ovid knows all about cliffhangers and doesn't hesitate to use them.The speed and efficiency of his storytelling come across most obviously in Books XII-XIV, where we cover essentially everything Ovid thinks we need to know about the Iliad, Odyssey and Aenead. The Iliad, in particular, is masterfully handled as a single "brain vs. brawn" debate between Ajax and Ulysses, in which the two of them make speeches as if in court to justify their respective contributions to the war effort. In case we hadn't guessed it already from all the scenes where Ovid gleefully shows us muscle-bound heroes acting like dangerous idiots, the poet is firmly on the side of Ulysses. Ovid enjoys himself making gentle fun of the conventions of Big Epic and can't resist teasing Vergil about some small continuity errors in the Aenead. But it's all quite respectful fun - Ovid isn't suggesting for a moment that we don't need to read these great poets. Working out where Ovid himself stands isn't easy at this distance. And he presumably doesn't want it to be easy either - he's writing at the height of Augustus's somewhat hypocritical clampdown on the morals of the Roman upper classes, and whatever he thinks himself, he certainly doesn't want to say anything that counts as explicit blasphemy or corrupting public morals. He's only reporting well-known bits of Greek mythology, after all. It's all the fault of our own dirty minds if we get the impression that the gods and goddesses as portrayed in Ovid are a pretty rotten lot, with only one important claim on our piety, their power to harm us if we annoy them (rather like Augustus, in fact...). And it's for us to decide whether a belief in petulant supernatural interventions is compatible with the logical Epicurean world-view set out in Book I or the Pythagorean pantheism gently mocked in Book XV. From this distance, we can't really know what Ovid expected his sophisticated Roman readers to think, but on the whole I'm inclined to suspect that there's more mockery than piety going on.The Charles Martin translationMy Latin is just about good enough to work my way through Ovid in the Loeb parallel text, but when I tried that it quickly became obvious that I couldn't possibly keep up with Ovid's frenetic narrative pace, so I switched to the Charles Martin translation, mostly because of the few that came to hand, it seemed the best compromise between closeness to the text and readability. Martin chooses to translate Ovid's hexameters into a loose and free-running version of English blank verse (which is based on the iambic pentameter line, of course). This turns out to be a really good choice. It's a form with a very solid track-record, of course, and we're so used to hearing it that it reads very naturally. It does mean that the book gets longer, though - it seems to take Martin about 30-40% more lines than Ovid to say something, so it's not easy to go backwards and forwards between translation and original. The language Martin uses occasionally looks alarmingly modern and American, but he avoids gratuitous anachronisms, and is conscientious about not putting anything in that doesn't have a proper basis in the original text. The one place where he really lets himself go is in the contest between the Muses and the daughters of Pierus in Book V, which he reads as a satire on bad poetryWe’ll show you girls just what real class isGive up tryin’ to deceive the massesYour rhymes are fake: accept our wagerLearn which of us is minor and which is majorThere’s nine of us here and there’s nine of youAnd you’ll be nowhere long before we’re through {...}So take the wings off, sisters, get down and jamAnd let the nymphs be the judges of our poetry slam!...and even that isn't very far from what it says in the Latin, and Martin apologises for it in the introduction and tells us he couldn't help it.Here and there he gives us an editorial interjection if it's needed to explain something like a pun that is only obvious in Latin, but he always marks them off clearly with square brackets. The text also comes with short and unpedantic notes and a very handy index/glossary of names and places that you will need for all those times when you really can't work out whether Jupiter is that person's grandfather, father-in-law, or uncle - or all three. An oddity in this book is that the publishers have used as Introduction an essay Bernard Knox published in the NYRB in 1998, in which he compares the currently-available translations of Ovid and finds them all wanting, except for the work-in-progress by Martin, whose completion he eagerly awaits. Of the current ones, Ted Hughes gets most points for style, but not many for accuracy. That feels almost like the Elizabethan habit of binding favourable blurbs from other poets as part of your book!

History of the world

Short version: loved the writing, got a bit worn out by the subject matter.Ovid is one of the great writers of Western literature and that's pretty obvious from reading The Metamorphoses. I don't know how well Allen Mandelbaum's translation conveys the original Latin, but I enjoyed it. J.C. McKeown's introduction was enough to orient me to the poem and give it some historical context without being overwhelming. (FYI for those who care: beyond that introduction and an afterword in the Everyman's Library edition, there are no other explanatory notes.)I have a lifelong interest in Greek and Roman mythology and many of these stories were not new to me—and many of them were, and that was wonderful. I appreciated Ovid's ability to pull all these stories together (Wikipedia helpfully tells me that there are more than 250 myths involved) into one narrative, with stories nested within other stories. Many retellings of myths focus on plot rather than character: A happened, then B happened, and it ended at C. Ovid gives the characters time to reflect on their desires or actions, to waver in their decisions, to almost save themselves. Even as I was figuratively glaring at Juno while she plotted the destruction of still yet another of Jove's victims/lovers, I enjoyed seeing her point of view.But, well, it's over 500 pages of stories with mostly unhappy endings. Very few people are changed into something else except as a punishment. Love, for so many of the gods and men, was interchangeable with rape. Even when a couple found mutual love, it often ended in death or unwanted transformation. None of this was new to me; it was just wearying reading so much of it at once. So while I loved this book, it'll be a while before I consider rereading it.

The half star missing in this review is a self rebuke, rather than any problem with the work. I feel, with every word that I read, the lack of ability to read the original. This is a wonderful translation, thankfully offered in sympathetic text, rather than cod rhyme but, the original must be so much better.Having showed my ignorance, let's get back to the book itself: this is an amazing collection of stories; some new to me and many the prototypes for stories made popular by later authors. There is an early version of Romeo and Juliet, Icarus' forbear and many others that have echoes in more modern fables.I find it intriguing how the gods are worshipped, but often not respected by their acolytes. Gods are cruel, vain but unbeatable. There is not a single story in which the gods come off worse, at the hands of humanity, although, there are occasions whereby a higher god takes pity and issues retribution for cruelty (not that many cases admittedly).Now all I need to do is learn to read ancient Greek poetry, and I'll be able to appreciate Ovid to the full.

An elegant, easy-to-read translation in unobtrusive iambic pentameter. Maybe not for purists, as the translator sometimes adds asides within the text (always in square brackets) and he turns the song of the daughters of Pierus into a rap (which I happen to think is a stroke of genius). If you're studying Ovid, this may not be the edition for you. But if you want to read Ovid for pleasure, in consistently articulate, poetic and vivid language, which brings the ancient myths to life, I'd thoroughly recommend this translation. It's also received critical acclaim: it won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets.

#2 on the 1,001 Books to Read list. 999 to go. The takeaway was that I'm now properly prepared for the Jeopardy! category of Roman Gods, should I ever get on the show, and should that come up. Absent that, I was in a fog most of the time, barely able to follow the narrative, which read much like Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews, in that it took fragmented, eclectic tales and fashioned them into a linear story. The violence was a bit disturbing at times, Blood Meridian style, and I did enjoy learning a bit more about these myths I knew vaguely, but honestly, I was just happy to be done so I could move on to the next book.

A great classical work. How gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines are transformed according to the ancient myths.

I listened to Charlton Griffin read an obscure translation of the Odyssey last year and came to love the poem after years of resistance. He excelled in that reading in conveying the voices of wily warriors and lowly peasants. Here he is reading a very different poet. He makes Ovid sound urbane, "cool," "hip." The poet wallowed in stories of emotional distress and extreme passion and deeds of bloods. Griffin tells these stories with relish. He doesn't create a vivid gallery of distinct characters the way Robert Whitfield did in his great reading of Don Quixote but he slip into Ovid's characters, men and women, in a quiet, smooth manner that doesn't call attention to itself, letting the hearer following along without any inconsistency of tone to jar him or her out of the story. If I got tired at times of the reading, it was because I listened to this long poem in a short time, instead of drawing it out and savoring it more. A fine performance.

Ovid's "Metamorphoses" is one of the those classics that I probably would have never bothered to read if not for my pursuit of the 1,001 list. I'm glad I finally picked it up to read it though, even if most of the stories were somewhat familiar from other reading.I really enjoy mythology and found A.D. Melville's translation fairly easy to follow. Ovid flits through Greek and Roman mythology to highlight stories that feature a transformation of some kind... (lots of trees and birds result from these transformations.) He skips some of the major plot points of some myths just to get to the transformation stuff, which I found odd (and it knocked off a star for me.) This is definitely a must-read for those who enjoy mythology... (but if you're one of those people, you've probably already read it anyway!)

To fully investigate the entirety of Greek and Roman mythology would take a lifetime. Luckily, Ovid did all the heavy lifting two thousand years ago. Every mythological figure you can think of is in here—from Jupiter to Perseus to Jason to Pygmalion to Romulus. Ovid’s history start at the creation of the universe and goes up to the Caesars of Rome and paints the chronology as a series of changes. In fact, the first lines have the poet saying “My soul would sing of metamorphoses.” Also playing a heavy part is the role of the love god Amor, who is constantly affecting the course of history. I can in no way speak to whether this is a faithful or true translation of Ovid’s work, but I can say that Mandelbaum’s translation is eminently readable and flows well. In some ways, I don’t care if the translation is good or not. It’s the story that matters. Many works of literature and art created since this reference these gods and goddesses, and it was nice to get back to the source material. It’s in Chaucer, in Dante, in Shakespeare, and even in modern jazz (see Patricia Barber and Branford Marsalis). This one may take a while, but it’s well worth the effort. A truly epic book.

Gods and their love affairs. Gods and their love affairs with mortals. Fate, covetousness, allegiance, brutalities, treachery and chastisements metamorphosing from the cocoon of mighty love. The discordant waves of love dangerously destabilizing romantic notions; overwhelming morality and raison d'être of Gods and mortals alike. Ovid makes you want to write intense poetry and feel affectionate to the idea of love as a device of alteration for better or worse. Love does not conquer all; it destroys and alters everything it touches. That is the best part in Ovid’s poems. They do not have happy endings. Lust or romantic love or ardent worship, acquired in any form changes a person, landscapes, communities mutating elements of fate and tragedies.

Metamorphoses elucidates the consequence of origin and transformation in its entirety.

My soul is wrought to sing of forms transformed to bodies new and strange! Immortal Gods inspire my heart, for ye have changed yourselves and all things you have changed! Oh lead my song in smooth and measured strains, from olden days when earth began to this completed time!

Ovid commences his poems by showing appreciation to God (which he says is yet unknown) for carving a loose mass of earth into a picturesque bounty of nature. The amorphous chaos changed into a convex ecstasy of pathless skies, terrains, rivers, the color and prototypes of birds and animals came through a process of love and hate. Ovid represents the mythical world of story telling and repeating fables with morality lessons. The justifications of rape or incest in Ovid’s works segregate the idea of faithful devotion from the viciousness of powerful acquisition that overcomes delusional love. Betrayals are penalized and loyalties are commended. The treatment of love is sagacious and didactic in this book as compared to his other works in the relating genre. It moves onto a broader scenario, becoming a defining factor in wars, altering powers between constituencies, breaking and making of civilizations. Ovid intends the reader to see the probable metaphoric significance of change as a crucial and homogeneous factor in life itself.

And now, I have completed a great work, which not Jove's anger, and not fire nor steel, nor fast-consuming time can sweep away. Whenever it will, let the day come, which has dominion only over this mortal frame, and end for me the uncertain course of life. Yet in my better part I shall be borne immortal, far above the stars on high, and mine shall be a name indelible. Wherever Roman power extends her sway over the conquered lands, I shall be read by lips of men. If Poets' prophecies have any truth, through all the coming years of future ages, I shall live in fame.

As he concludes this epic of transforming love, he credits the survival of Rome to his own prominence making it one of the most influential and renowned works over centuries. Metamorphoses is translated frequently by several modern poets and literary elites.

This is THE Metamorphoses translation to read. Others can't even hold a candle to it (I know, I read some side by side to compare). Beautiful, touching, amazing.

Rereading bits of this at work 6/11. So good.

Enertaining, enlightening, but ultimately light.All the known myths and stories from the Greek/Roman world, with the exception of a few from Homer and Virgil are contained in this lengthy poem to unending transformation.Ovid's boast in the epilogue, "Thoughout all ages, if poets have vision to prophesy the truth, I shall live in my fame." is certainly true.A note on this translation: I have only a smattering of Latin, but found this text to be far superior to the clunky Charles Martin translation, despite Bernard Knox's enthusiasm. The notes were especially helpful. The unnumbered notes are contained in the back of the book so a reader needs two bookmarks. Notes are for the convience of the reader, why put them at the back instead of the foot of the page? and unnumbered too?

The Metamorphoses is a poem in fifteen books by the Roman poet Ovid describing the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework. Completed in AD 8, it is recognized as a masterpiece of Golden Age Latin literature. The recurring theme, as with nearly all of Ovid's work, is love—be it personal love or love personified in the figure of Amor (Cupid). Indeed, the other Roman gods are repeatedly perplexed, humiliated, and made ridiculous by Amor, an otherwise relatively minor god of the pantheon, who is the closest thing this putative mock-epic has to a hero. Apollo comes in for particular ridicule as Ovid shows how irrational love can confound the god out of reason. The work as a whole inverts the accepted order, elevating humans and human passions while making the gods and their desires and conquests objects of low humor.I read this both with the Sunday Morning Group and as the text for a University of Chicago weekend retreat. Not unlike many works of classical literature this has been a rich cultural resource ever since including authors from Chaucer and Shakespeare to, more recently Ted Hughes, and composers from Gluck and Offenbach to Britten. Ovid based these tales on Greek myths, albeit often with stylistic adaptations.

I love Metamorphoses -- it's on my list of books everyone should read. I generally prefer the Greek writers over the Romans, but Ovid is one you don't want to miss. The myths included range from the popular tales that we all know and love to more obscure events that are like gems to mythology buffs. I do have to say, though, that the Penguin Classics version that I have is a prose translation, and I don't care for that at all. It's one clunky paragraph after the next, and I find it hard to read. I recommend finding a more verse-like translation.

Unieke en originele verwerking van het hele Griekse en Romein¬se mythologische materiaal. Vele pareltjes.Favoriet van het postmodernisme. Amorele sfeer, en vandaar verwondering lof Augustus (die toch familiewaarden wilde herstellen). Mijn favoriet: Philemon en Baucis