Ovid's Metamorphoses is a collection various Greek and Roman Myths in an epic poem format. These stories are used to tell the history of mankind in a way and explain events in our world. Ovid does not provide a direct re-telling of these myths but rather often twits them, highlighting details or aspects that are often odd while using humor at the same time. There is a mix of comedies and tragedies. I also noticed the way he would be telling one story and suddenly you are in another. He is able to transport you from one tale to the middle of another, it should be jarring but it works. This is one of my favourite classical works and a masterpieces of Latin literature.

I'm reviewing books I have read in the past but never had a chance to add reviews.

My kind of bible.

I bought this copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses when I was living in Rome. It's the book I was reading on the plane when I left Rome, as the realization sunk in that an awesome and strange adventure was drawing to a close, and it's the book I was still reading when I moved back to Minneapolis and attempted to readjust to life as a Midwestern college undergrad.

I was reading Metamorphoses at the cafe a few blocks away from my apartment when a strange man gave me that little terror of a kitten, Monster. And Monster used to bite my toes when I was reading Metamorphoses in bed.

I was in love, so much in love, when I read Metamorphoses, with someone I would surely never meet again. And I was so lonely. And Metamorphoses was just beautiful, all the forlorn humans going up against the gods, only to be transformed into plants, animals, birds~

To read the great Roman poet while living in Rome, and to continue reading him while you are in mourning for the city once it's gone ~ was outrageous. In the best way. Grand. Epic. Eternal.

I kept this on my bedside table and read a few chapters/myths whenever I felt like it which was nice:)
My all time favorite myth is about hyacinthus and Apollo and I loved reading it! It’s the main reason I got the book:)

Also in Orpheus and Eurydice there’s a part that goes “and now, as she died for the second time, she never complained that her husband had failed her - what could she complain of, except that he’d loved her?”
I though that’s as really pretty:)

I underlined a lot of parts but that’s one of my favorite:)

Превращения начинаются из Хаоса в мир, из камней в людей и идут бесконечной чередой. Есть ли мифы без волшебства, как наказующей или мстящей силы, властного приговора? Есть ли жизнь без превращений вещества? Есть ли что-нибудь в природе, не испытывающего метаморфоз? Нет ничего вечного, есть череда преобразований, есть власть природы. Мифы тоже продукт преобразования. Верования превращаются в мифы, когда люди перестают в них верить.

Rolfe Humphries was my Freshman Humanities professor at Amherst College, and he loaned me Seneca's Thyestes in Latin; he also recommended me, with one other from the class (who graduated summa) to Humanities honors additional lectures, from other classicists and linguists.
We read his Aeneid in class, and he made ironic comments about the liberties the translator had taken.
As for Ovid, in my grad school Latin minor Ovid course, I much preferred his elegiacs, "Amores," "Ars Amatoria,"and "Remedia Amoris." They are the witty poems that Shakespeare learned most from, with his "small Latin" (about equal to my years of it). Of course he picked up stories from the Met (as we Americans used nicknames for Latin works, like Horace's Ars versus Ovid's Ars).
I did memorize thirty lines of the Met in Latin hexameters for my Ph.D. oral examinations, though I never got to recite them, nor any of my memorized Latin, some from the two Arses, of course the Aeneid, several Horatian odes, Catullus's "Vivamus mea Lesbia-atqu' amemus / Rumoresque senum severiorum," rousing hendecasyllables, a few passages from Plautus's brilliant, colloquial Roman dialog, and a few naughty* epigrams of Martial, Book 11. (* Or as Don Juan's / Byron's Mom called them, the "nauseous epigrams of M.)

Metamorphoses is an epic poem written by Latin poet Publius Ovidius Naso, also known as merely Ovid. It's compounded by fifteen books that narrates this author's perspective of the world, from the Creation of it to his days in the Roman Empire through a recollection of fantastic myths about transformation, either out of prayer or punishment, but always by divine intervention. It is important, however, to take into account that often, when Ovid refers to these deities, throughout his epic verses, he's actually making allegories about the Roman rulers. He depicted the deeds of those who had power over those who weren't through a transference towards the pagan myths that were very well known in Rome. He basically conveyed how that great nation worked in former and current days, in which peace just began to flourish.

Personally, when I read Homer or Virgil, I'm astounded by their works, but I never felt as connected with them as I feel with Ovid's magnum opus. I would say that this is due to the fact that I do not relate to metaphors on homecoming, war or pagan rites; but ultimately Ovid does the same: he used the art of literature to denounce and to enhance life. However, for me, Ovid's subjects span several fields and issues that still concern us these days. Trust me when I say one will hardly ever read a better written poem that includes rape, abuse of power, injustice and stalking in perfectly constructed verses. But do not think Ovid's only goal was to narrate deviousness and how to get away with it: he shows the sorrowful aftermath. See for instance how many occurrences of suicide happen in this collection of myths out of heartbreaks, the death of a beloved or after divine punishment.

There are several humorous episodes all along the book, but there are also others that are quite touching (at least for me). I remember Narcissus' for example, whom I used to think of as a despotic and egotistic being, but who's actually rather innocent and somewhat pure. There is also Hermaphroditus and how after Salmacis' rejection, intend of rape and caprice lost his virility by union to the latter. Or Daphne, who to after being stalked by Apollo, prays for her beauty, cause of her sorrows, to go away, being thus transformed into a laurel tree. We find also Iphis who was born a girl but it's treated as a boy, her sexuality concealed, just because her father threatened her mother to kill the newborn if it wasn't a boy. Iphis then falls in love with a woman who intends to marry, but she suffers because secretly finds herself amidst a sorrowful trial due to the claims of lesbianism as something unnatural. However, after divine intervention, she's finally turned into a man, happily married. And see Caenis too (another one of my personal favourite myths), who is raped by Poseidon and as a reward is granted a wish. So she wishes for her sex to change, being thus turned into Caeneus who would later be mocked at in fight against a centaur because of his change of sex: people believed his strength would be rather null because of his womanly origins. So my point is that Metamorphoses is filled with contemporary issues, specially those concerning gender identity. We often find news about women harassed by men, the latter claiming to be victims of the former's 'provocative' beauty, like Daphne thought of herself. We find men or women coping with gender dysphoria who have to live through it out of fear of rejection or sometimes death, like Iphis. Little did the author of this book think about his work outliving people's incomprehension about human nature being out of humanity's hands.

However, the myths mentioned above are only a few: the diversity found in the book is really vast. Ovid made an outstanding job with his epic poem recounting human nature and how it can be transformed. According to him, we all change; we are like a river that never stays the same. He closes with a flourish in Metamorphoses' final book that tells the teachings of Pythagoras as a treatise on the art of peace. As stated by him, there's no reason why people should feast in the death of another being. He denounces the pagan practices that pointlessly take an innocent life for a sin that they didn't commit. He, overall, teaches the reader how precious life — any life — is.

n  "Our bodies too, are always incessantly changing,
and what we were, or are, is not what we will be
tomorrow…"n

Even before Book XV I knew this was, without question, one of my favourite books. But after the book in question, I think this is one of the books I'll try to keep rereading for the rest of my days to remind myself that change is normal, that life, regardless of its form, matters; and this will, hopefully, stick to my mind for a while.

صدق أوفيد حين قال في خاتمة كتابه أن حتى غضبة جوبيتر الجبار لن تستطيع أن تمحو أثر كتابه وتعجز النار والحديد بل أنياب الزمن العاصف أن تطمس كلماته فكانت أصداء هذا الكتاب واضحة في كل الآداب العالمية وظل منبعاً تستقي منه الآداب الغربية الإلهام فنراه في ملحمة ملكة الجان لإدموند سبنسر ومسرحيتي "العاصفة" و"حلم ليلة منتصف الصيف" لشكسبير ونرى رائعة جيفري تشوسر "حكايات كانتربري" تأثرت إلى حد كبير بأوفيد. ولم يقتصر أثر هذا الكتاب على الأدب وحده وإنما ترك بصمته على الفنون التشكيلية فنجد لوحات "بيكاسو" تصور مشاهد من هذا الكتاب ونراه في تماثيل "بنفنوتو تشيلليني" و "باولو فيرونيزي".
تنقل أوفيد برشاقة ساحرة بين مختارات من الأساطير القديمة وخرافات اليونان والرومان وحضارات الشرق السابقة ومن التراث الشعبي الروماني نفسه. فيروي هذه القصص بأسلوب شعري ساحر قل أن تجد له مثيل حيث يمتع القارئ ويرسخ أسماء الآلهة والأبطال في ذهنه فيريحه من المعاناة التي يكابدها أثناء قراءته لتلك الأساطير في أماكن أخرى.

The great thing about Ovid's “Metamorphoses” is that it doesn't force you to take it so seriously. It’s still remarkably vivid, considering its age, and there is hardly a dull moment in it. You can actually read it just for pure pleasure. Its wild stories about transformations from one shape to another can be so entertaining, that your first reaction in reading it probably won't be to ask yourself weighty questions like "Hmm, I wonder what insights this ancient book offers into the structure of the cosmos, or the essence of existence, or the development of the human imagination?" Well… it just so happens that Ovid's poem does offer insights into all of these things -- but you can think of the deeper levels as an added bonus!

Basically, the poem's answer lies in its central theme of "change". For Ovid, the physical world is constantly changing, and so is human life (through birth and death, love, hatred, achievement, and failure). Most important, however, is his portrayal of the human imagination – not so much because of anything he says about it, but because of how he puts it into action. You'd be hard-pressed to find any other author, ancient or modern, who is so bursting with ideas about how to tell a story.

“Metamorphoses” is a wide-ranging account of Greek and Roman mythology, and this epic of transformations is itself -- one continuous transformation. One moment you’re reading one story, and then realize with a start, that you’re in the middle of the next one. By the slightest of hand, Ovid has used one character,or location, or detail in the first tale to segue into the next. Like the stones rising into men and women, or Arachne’s shrinking into a spider, the poem is in a constant state of flux. It is a technique that, irony of ironies --gives the work its permanence and coherence.

Being familiar with most of the stories, I have noticed that Ovid isn't giving a straightforward retelling of the myths. Instead, he is constantly twisting them around to his own purposes, making them look ridiculous, or fixating on details that are strange or grotesque. I think he pulled this off quite well with a witty and humorous tone. By keeping things light, he lets the reader in on the joke. At the same time, however, Ovid also deals with some pretty heavy stuff, and sometimes he does seem to take a strange amount of pleasure in his characters' suffering. I rarely witness comedy and tragedy work so well together as in this book.

I think this is one of the books you need to read in your lifetime. Don’t let its heft intimidate you, you don't even have to read it all the way through. If you want a taste of what it's about, you can pretty much start anywhere you want, or just look in the index to find your favorite myths, and go straight to those. In this way, it's sort of like an all-you-can-eat buffet -- with the difference that, once you get hooked, you're likely to go ahead and eat the whole thing.

Ho cominciato la lettura di Ovidio un po’ titubante, ma mi sono ricreduta subito. Catapultata fin da subito nella nascita del Cosmo il libro acquista subito un ritmo incalzante che non lascia respiro e mi sono ritrovata a divorarlo.
E davanti agli occhi rivedo Tritone con le spalle incrostate di conchiglie, Apollo che scorazza sul suo carro, Giove che insegue i suoi amori fra una trasformazione e l’altra, e le metamorfosi prendono vita.
Bernini deve aver letto necessariamente gli splendidi versi che Ovidio dedica ad Apollo e Dafne, l’inseguimento incalzante, la trasformazione dei piedi in radici, del busto in fusto, dei capelli in fronde. Neanche dopo la metamorfosi Apollo si arrende: l’alloro in cui Dafne si trasforma sarà sempre caro al dio e con le sue foglie si cingeranno le teste dei vittoriosi perché anche Dafne abbia gloria nel tempo.
Bellissimi i versi dedicati al rapimento di Europa, la voluttuosità della giovane al richiamo di Giove, trasformatosi in toro per raggirarla, acquista toni sensuali e delicati.
Gli dei sono come bambini: capricciosi, arroganti, invidiosi. La loro furia non ha limiti. La loro vendetta è tremenda. Gli umani ne subiscono le sorti, che chiamano destino.
Scopriamo Medusa, il mostro che pietrifica, scendiamo nell’Ade con Teseo a riprendere Arianna, piangiamo la sorte sventurata di Niobe per colpa della sua ubris , scopriamo come nacque il Giacinto e come il salice piangente, vediamo come un albero cambi il colore dei suoi frutti dal sangue versato di Piramo e Tisbe, corriamo con Atalanta e Ippomene, godiamo per l’amore di Pigmalione.
Ma i versi più belli e toccanti sono quelli che riguardano Narciso e il suo amore impossibile:
“s'innamora d'una chimera: corpo crede ciò che solo è ombra
Disteso a terra, contempla quelle due stelle che sono i suoi occhi,
i capelli degni di Bacco, degni persino di Apollo,
e le guance lisce, il collo d'avorio, la bellezza
della bocca, il rosa soffuso sul niveo candore,
e tutto quanto ammira è ciò che rende lui meraviglioso.
Desidera, ignorandolo, sé stesso, amante e oggetto amato,
mentre brama, si brama, e insieme accende ed arde.
Quante volte lancia inutili baci alla finzione della fonte!
Quante volte immerge in acqua le braccia per gettarle
intorno al collo che vede e che in acqua non si afferra!
Ignora ciò che vede, ma quel che vede l'infiamma
e proprio l'illusione che l'inganna eccita i suoi occhi.
Ingenuo, perché t'illudi d'afferrare un'immagine che fugge?
Ciò che brami non esiste; ciò che ami, se ti volti, lo perdi!
Quella che scorgi non è che il fantasma di una figura riflessa:
nulla ha di suo; con te venne e con te rimane;
con te se ne andrebbe, se ad andartene tu riuscissi
Ai colpi il petto si colora di un tenue rossore,
come accade alla mela che, candida su una faccia,
si accende di rosso sull'altra, o come all'uva
che in grappoli cangianti si vela di porpora quando matura…”

Ma è solo nell’ultimo libro che Ovidio svela il vero senso delle sue metamorfosi. L’universo è un divenire in un ciclo che sempre cambia senza sosta. Come le onde del mare che si rincorrono sulla riva, passano le stagioni, l’uomo cambia, cresce si trasforma e muore per tornare alla terra, l’anima trasmisgra in altra forma, sia essa animale, pianta o di nuovo uomo. Dobbiamo aver cura dunque di ciò che siamo, di quello che abbiamo intorno e del tempo che ci è concesso.
Una lettura splendida, piena e attualissima, nonostante l’età che porta.





















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Third and fourth year Latin class. These were my favorites of our translation assignments. Lovely tales of transfigurations. Ovid rocks!

Torn as to how to rate this one. Based on creativity, prose style, and humor: 5 stars. Based on overabundance of disturbing, disgusting content: 1 star.

This book is not for the faint of art, or the casual mythology fan.

Ovid's aim was to encompass all of mythology into a single narrative, and he very nearly succeeded. The only places where he cheats a little are on the myths that already had either several or definitive versions - the Labors of Hercules, the Trojan War, and the wanderings of Odysseus and Aeneas are glossed over. This is just fine with most readers; the book is taxing enough to the average attention span as is.

The result is a mixed bag. Some of Ovid's retellings are psychologically spot-on and told with a freshness and verve surpassing that of most modern fiction, to say nothing of other ancient writing. The story of Apollo and Daphne is everybody's favorite for this reason: the prose is fluid as a river, the pacing is sublime, and the emotions ring true.

It's a tale as old as time. Horny boy meets terrified girl, and miscommunication leads to catastrophe. Unfortunately, because this is the pagan Greco-Roman mythos, nothing can ever be undone, and having entombed herself in bark to ward off Apollo's embraces, Daphne is stuck there for good. She cannot reevaluate the situation. She cannot change her opinion of him. Similar instances occur all over: Actaeon and Diana, Pan and Syrinx, and there must be thirty other pairs I'm forgetting. The only major exceptions are Vertumnus and Pomona, who get a happy ending by virtue of being Roman, and Dis and Proserpine, who are stuck together because they're both powerful gods and neither can conveniently get turned into anything...

Which brings up the main problem with Ovid. Good Lord, but this man had a twisted, filthy mind.

This story of Dis and Proserpine (or as they are better known, Hades and Persephone) is a good example because there are several other ancient versions to compare it with, most notably the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (earliest written version 7th century BC). The story is essentially unchanged: man meets girl, man drags girl to miserable underworld kingdom, girl eats a handful of pomegranate seeds, girl has to stay, girl becomes more like her husband over time. Ovid's narration is so close to the hymn-writer's in some places that if he were submitting it as a school paper today, it might not pass an online plagiarism test.

But in other, disturbing ways, his version diverges substantially from the source. There is no mention in the Hymn, for instance, of an outright rape. While it's entirely possible that Hades forced himself sexually on Persephone once he had her in his kingdom, the hymn-writer never states any such thing, and we can give the lonely god the benefit of the doubt. The writer of the Hymn also goes out of his way to refer to Persephone as "deep-breasted" - which establishes first that she's a fertility goddess, but second that she's nubile. She is physically an adult, although she isn't quite mentally an adult.

Ovid goes there. In his version, the poor girl is raped by Dis while he's driving the chariot (this sounds anatomically impossible, but that's beside the point). He also goes out of his way to describe Proserpine as a child, with "small breasts" (note the inversion of the Homeric epithet), who weeps as much for the flowers she dropped as for her lost virginity (let's hear it for heavy-handed imagery!). The original was Labyrinth; Ovid's is Lolita. Charming.

He smuts up a lot of stories in this manner. The tale of Pygmalion and Galatea, of which he is the earliest source, is almost unrecognizable from many of its beautiful treatments in art. In Edward Burne-Jones' series of paintings, Pygmalion is attractive and noble. He refrains from touching his statue as if she were real, even though his heart is moved by her. While he's out, Venus rewards him by bringing the marble girl to life, and we leave her innocent and awkward while her handsome young creator kneels before her, kissing her hands and averting his eyes from her exposed body. In Ovid, meanwhile, Pygmalion was in the habit of molesting the statue and only noticed she had come to life because the cold marble body he was groping had suddenly turned warm and started to move. Well then.

So do I recommend this book? It can be disturbing and revolting in equal measure, not to mention features nine hundred characters too many and having no continuity no matter how hard the writer tries to force it. Yet it's been a well of inspiration throughout the ages for art (Bernini to Burne-Jones) and literature (Pyramus and Thisbe found their way into n  A Midsummer Night's Dreamn, while Rochester borrowed Vertumnus' old lady disguise in n  Jane Eyren).

For mature readers who love mythology or want a glimpse into ancient Roman psychology, absolutely, go read it. For casual fans, younger readers, and more delicate sensibilities, just read Apollo and Daphne, which is the best story and best writing of the lot.