I've been reading retelling of Greek mythology all my life, so it's probably time to read it in a more authentic form. There are many English translations for Metamorphoses. I think the enjoyment of reading depends very much on the quality of translation, so this review compares the various versions.

Translated by Charles Martin (Norton) 2004
I bought this after reading this comparison. It's subtly but undeniable frustrating to me. I guess the first paragraph (invocation) is not the best passage to get a good idea. So here is the beginning of Book 3, the story of Cadmus:

And now, his taurine imitation ended,
the god exposed himself for what he was
to cowed Europa on the isle of Crete.
In an action both paternal and perverse,
the captured maiden's baffled father bids
her brother Cadmus to locate the girl
or face an endless term of banishment.

by David Raeburn (new Penguin edition) 2004
Same passage:

Now they had landed on the Cretan soil, when Jupiter dropped
the disguise of a bull, to reveal himself as the god who he
was.
Anxious for news, Europa's father commanded Cadmus
to search for his kidnapped sister. 'Find her, or go into
exile,'
he said--an iniquitous action, if also inspired by devotion.

Hmm . . . some readers might find the line breaks annoying. Not sure if it's any better or worse than Martin translation . . .

by Allen Mandelbaum, 1993

But his false semblance soon is set aside:
on reaching Crete, Jove shows his own true guise.
Meanwhile the father of the ravished girl,
not knowing what had taken place, commands
Cadmus, his son, to find Europa or
to suffer exile from Agenor's land--
a cruel threat, but born of love!

A notable feature of this edition is that it has no Introduction, Translator's Notes, and annotations. It only has modest Afterword. So you jump in, just as you would when you read contemporary books. I like it--I read for fun, so the less hassle, the better. However, because all explanatory points are incorporated in the main text, some people might find it slow.

by A.D. Melville (Oxford World's Classic) 1986

Now safe in Crete, Jove shed the bull's disguise
And stood revealed before Europa's eyes.
Meanwhile her father, baffled, bade his son
Cadmus, set out to find the stolen girl
And threatened exile should he fail--in one
Same act such warmth of love, such wickedness!

I like this, too. Simple and elegant, and I like how it flows. It sounds more literary and slightly antiquated, which may or may not suit your preference.
(The Kindle eBook has a strange format, with wide margin on the left.)

No clear winner. I'd say, if you like poetic language and have no problem figuring out what is happening in poetically abbreviated and slightly classic language, go for Melville. If you'd rather read it like a novel, Mandelbaum (although it is a verse translation). Or you might like the newest translation.

Disclaimer
I only read two languages, and Latin is not one of them. So I cannot tell how accurate these translation may be.

P.S. Oh, the content. In case you don't know, it's filled with murders, rapes, and treacheries.

Being a Roman, and being a creative mind, Ovid edits some myths. For instance, he skips the part about Cronus (Saturn) killing his children, and Zeus (Jove/Jupiter) killing him, his father. This way, Ovid makes it sound as if all evils started with humans.

I wonder how Ovid really felt about Greek/Roman mythology. Rome conquered Greece about 150 years before his time, but culturally, Greeks influenced the Romans and their empire. Did he feel indignant about the strong Greek influence?

It's been fascinating to immerse myself in these myths and see how Ovid, having taken Greek myths as his source, has influenced so many other writers later on.

I'm already quite familiar with Greek mythology, and yet! It doesn't seem to matter how many times you re-read them, by which author, whether they are a direct translation of the original or a retelling. There are so many characters, so many relationships, and so much depth, that there's always something new to find.

There's been a recent resurgence of retellings in which these myths are framed from a modern perspective, and I find that too many of them try to make these characters into people, when they are, overwhelmingly, stories to explain how the world worked. Why do some birds mate for life? Why is there winter? Why does the sun travel across the sky? These are not stories about people, and trying to make the myth of Hades and Persephone into a romance is kind of missing the point (on top of making me a little worried for the author's idea of what constitutes romance).

“Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.”
― Ovid, Metamorphoses



Ovid -- the David Bowie of Latin literature. I chewed on this book of myth-poems the entire time I was tramping around Rome. I was looking for the right words to describe my feelings about it. It isn't that I didn't like it. It is an unequivocal masterpiece. I'm amazed by it. I see Ovid's genes in everything (paintings, sculptures, poems and prose). He is both modern and classic, reverent and wicked, lovely and obscene all at once. It is just hard to wrestle him down. To pin my thoughts about 'the Metamorphoses' into words. Structure really fails me.

That I guess is the sign for me of a book's depth or success with me. It makes me wish I could read it in the original form. I'm not satisfied with Dante in English. I want him in Italian. I'm not satisfied with Ovid in English. I want to experience his poetry, his playfulness, his wit in Latin.

I still prefer the poetry of Homer and Dante, but Ovid isn't embarrassed by the company of the greats; so not Zeus or Neptune, but maybe Apollo.

The book is a collection of many ancient myths united by the theme of metamorphosis.

Plot. Rating 5
The myths collected by the author are very diverse. The vast majority of them are from Greek mythology; it is a real encyclopedia. There are simple plots, but many plots are quite intricate with unexpected twists and miraculous transformations. The poem shows and considers the whole spectrum of human emotions and deeds. From extreme cruelty and insane revenge (for example, the myth of Prokne and Philomela) to love and humor. I think most myths are little known; although, their heroes have turned into the concepts, beings, and words of our modern life. For example, such a phenomenon as an echo has a beautiful explanation in Greek mythology.
Nevertheless, the book has a general chronological movement from the creation of the world to Julius Caesar.

Characters. Rating 5
The poem features a huge number of characters. A frequent motive is the struggle of people against the gods through voluntary or involuntary rivalry. The Greek gods are cruel, vindictive, and capricious. However, Ovid manages to fill the characters with true emotions and experiences. He accurately uses words and phrases to depict heroes in states of passion, falling in love, spiritual uplift, or complete collapse of hopes. Many transformations correspond very well to the character and behavior of their heroes.

Dialogues. Rating 4
The meaning of the dialogues is conveyed well, but the florid style of the poem introduces some redundancy and emotionality. However, since the characters are almost always in extraordinary and unusual circumstances, these dialogues suit them. But this is a common feature of many ancient works.

Writing style. Rating 4
I liked the writing style of the book; although, in my opinion, it is not easy to read because the poem contains a large number of exclamations, rhetorical questions, self-talk, and various topics little known to the modern reader. Also, the stories change quite abruptly. However, this is offset by the excellent descriptions. Ovid builds a detailed scene of dramas and tragedies and shows the character behavior well. He also describes the details of the situation, the unusual appearance of various gods and monsters, and their metamorphoses well.

Worldbuilding. Rating 5
This is a grandiose study and reconstruction of ancient mythology. Ovid conveyed the myths in a precise and tangible way, unfolding a poetic movie before the reader's eyes. His worldbuilding details always work to change the plot, motives, and emotions of the characters. This creates a vast and rich fantasy world, which when read, comes to life.
And of course, the metamorphoses themselves are excellent worldbuilding. It was interesting for me to find out which animals, birds, plants, constellations, and concepts have roots in Greek mythology.

Conclusion. Overall rating 5
Ovid perfectly conveyed the vast world of ancient mythology to human civilization in a concentrated and fascinating form.

Me tomó un rato leer esta maravilla, leía un poco cada día, por las mañanas, con la cabeza fresca. Menciono esto porque así recomiendo leerlo, es para tener la cabeza fresca y sin pensamientos, que así te la llenas de imágenes tan increíbles como las que viven los dioses y humanos según Ovidio. Así encuentras los odios, celos, pasiones, peleas, amores, que cuenta sin tener otra cosa presente. Es bello, durísimo, mágico, y certero. Me mató, me encantó, es un libro inolvidable. Cómo pude vivir tanto tiempo sin Ovidio?

Very enjoyable translation indeed. Highly recommended. But much will depend on how much you are put off by some expanding of the original, and some rhyme (both internal and line-end). For example:


"A fisherman, who with his pliant rod
was angling there below, caught sight of them;
and then a shepherd leaning on his staff
and, too, a peasant leaning on his plow
saw them and were dismayed: they thought that these
must surely be some gods, sky-voyaging.

Now on their left they had already passed
the isle of Samos – Juno’s favorite –
Delos, and Paros, and Calymne, rich
In honey, and Labinthos, on the right.
The boy had now begun to take delight
in his audacity; he left his guide
and, fascinated by the open sky,
flew higher: and the scorching sun was close;
the fragrant wax that bound his wings grew soft,
then melted. As he beats upon the air,
his arms can get no grip; they’re wingless – bare.

The father – though that word is hollow now –
cried: “Icarus ! Where are you ?” And that cry
echoed again, until he caught sight
of feathers on the surface of the sea.tt
And Daedalus cursed his own artistry,
then built a tomb to house his dear son’s body.
There, where the boy was buried, now his name
remains: that island is Icaria."


Also you can read a nice bit online here:

http://www.cardinalhayes.org/ourpages...

Personally I quite liked the Arachne section included in the doc above, but these things are all a matter of taste.

Second reading completed Nov 17, 2023. This time I read the new Stephanie McCarter translation. I liked it. She uses a flexible blank verse, which moves along nicely. She also worked hard to keep the text concise, to echo Latin's compactness, and to employ Ovid's poetic devices where compatible. As others have noted, she has a strong commitment to name rape and violence as such. Reading the text with that in mind, it seems clear that Ovid too was calling on the reader to see it for what it was. This decision on the part of both poet and translator is not intrusive, just present when appropriate.

I've compared a selection from her version to the same lines from three other translators just below, if you're trying to decide which one to read. There are others, but these are on my shelf. I would take McCarter, although my 2013 review (below) of Gregory's translation was also enthusiastic.

This time around I was struck by the poetry of Jove’s seduction of Europa, Orpheus’s charming the trees, and Pythagoras’s tirade against eating meat. I found that my just finished read of Bren Smith’s Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer, with its graphic and material reasons for a mostly plant based diet, and Pythagoras’s argument that what’s on your plate was likely reincarnated before you slaughtered it, reinforced my mostly successful growing commitment to vegetarianism. ;-)

I’ve selected a passage to illustrate McCarter’s choice to use the word ‘rape’ for Ovid’s rapio (not ravishment or any other euphemism)

[Context: Cyane, the nymph of a spring, has attempted to stop Pluto on his way to rape Proserpina, daughter of Ceres, but the god forced his way by her. (Cyane has said that at least her lover Anapis had not forced her to become his bride; he asked her.)]

McCarter:
But Cyane laments for the raped goddess
and for her spring’s scorned rights. Her silenced mind
now bears a wound that’s inconsolable.
She melts completely into tears, dissolving
into the spring she just had ruled, a mighty
spirit. You could have seen her limbs turn soft,
her bones contort, the hardness leave her nails.
Her thinnest parts were first to liquefy:
her sea-blue hair, her fingers, legs, and feet—
for thin limbs quickly change to icy streams.
Next shoulders, back, flank, chest—all disappear.
At last, her ruined veins flow not with blood
but water. Nothing’s left that you could grasp.

Rolf Humphries:
Cyane
Grieved for both violation, girl and fountain,
And in her silent spirit kept the wound
Incurable, and, all in tears, she melted,
Dissolving, queen no longer, of those waters.
Her limbs were seen to soften, and her bones
Became more flexible, and the nails’ hardness
Was Gone: the slenderest parts went first, the hair,
The fingers, legs, and feet: it is no great distance
From slimness to cool water. Back and shoulders,
The breasts, the sides, were watery streams, and water
Went through her veins, not blood, till there was nothing
For anyone to hold.

Allen Mandelbaum
“’But Cyane nursed an inconsolable—
a silent—wound that was incurable;
a sadness for the rape of Cere’ daughter
and for the violation of the waters
of her own pool—for Pluto’s scorn and anger.
She gave herself to tears and then dissolved
into the very pool of which she had—
till now—been the presiding deity.
You could have seen the softening of her limbs,
the bones and nails that lost solidity.
Her slender hairs, her fingers, legs, and feet—
these were the first to join the waves. In fact,
the slenderest parts can sooner turn into
cool waters. Shoulders, back, and sides, and breasts
were next to vanish in thin streams. At last,
clear water flows through Cyane’s weakened veins,
and there is nothing left that anyone can grasp.

Arthur Golding (Shakesspeare’s Ovid)

Dame Cyan taking sore to heart as well the ravishment
Of Proserpine against hir will, as also the contempt
Against hir fountains priviledge, did shrowde in secret hart
An inward corsie comfortlesse, which never did depart
Until she melting into teares consumde away with smart.
The selfe same waters of the which she was but late ago
The mighty Goddesse, now she pines and wastes hirselfe into.
Ye might have seene hir limmes were lithe, ye might have bent hir bones:
Hir nayles wext soft: and first of all did melt the smallest ones:
As haire and fingars, legges, and feete: for those same slender parts
Doe quickly into water turne, and afterward converts
To water, shoulder, backe, brest, side: and finally in stead
Of lively bloud, within hir veynes corrupted there was spred
Thinne water: so that nothing now remained whereeeupon
Ye might take holde, to water now consumed was anon.


Original 2013 review:

Fantastic. This is powerful stuff. I especially liked the speeches by Ajax and Ulysses when they compete for dead Achilles armor, even if it is a spot where Ovid strays from the metamorphoses theme. Also, the descriptions of nature and emotion throughout are vivid. No argument that it sags a bit at times, but overall the intensity is compelling.

I actually listened to the Horace Gregory translation, but am citing the print edition because otherwise the pages don't get calculated into one's annual reading total. After reading some reviews, I decided that I need to get ahold of the Melville translation to see how much difference there is and which one I prefer. I found Gregory plenty gripping.

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.)

Livro obrigatório para os apaixonados pela mitologia clássica. Apesar de no início demonstrar de difícil leitura devido á enorme quantidade de heróis e deuses, vale a pena insistir e deixar-se deslumbrar por estas "metamorfoses". Impressiona como livros que tem milhares de séculos sobreviveram aos dias de hoje, e continuam a ter muita relevância na nossa cultura.

Ovid é digno do colocar-se ao lado de Homero e Virgílio como esta sua epopeia das lutas entre Deuses e Semi-Deuses, heróis gregos e romanos e homenagem ao império romano.

33. Metamorphoses by Ovid, translated by A. D. Melville, notes by E. J. Kenney
original date: circa 8 ce
translated 1986
format: Paperback
acquired: Library book sale 2012
read: July 23 - Aug 15
rating: 5

I'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 The 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.

Casi puedo compararlo al trabajo que realizó Virgilio con la "Eneida" pues Ovidio gran maestro conocido por otras obras desarrolló una biblia de Mitología romana (que viene a ser una adaptación de la griega) pero aún cuenta más cosas que a veces tergiversan la mitología griega pero es buena fuente de mitos y explicaciones sobre la naturaleza.

Quase três meses depois cheguei ao fim da caminhada por este mundo único e maravilhoso.
Não foi uma leitura fácil. Primeiro lia; depois decifrava; a seguir pesquisava e finalmente resumia. Fui feliz em todas as fases. Os meus amigos e a minha família não dirão o mesmo pois, sempre que os apanhei a jeito, "torturei-os" contando-lhes algumas destas histórias trágicas de deuses e humanos; das suas paixões, ódios, ciúmes, vinganças, desgostos, guerras,... e tudo o que, dois mil anos depois, ainda move o mundo. Histórias que inspiraram outros escritores (e pintores e músicos) ao longo dos séculos (por exemplo, Romeu e Julieta, de Shakespeare, não é mais do que o romance de amor entre Píramo e Tisbe).

Júpiter, Mercúrio, Narciso, Hermafrodito, Medeia, Medusa, Filomela, Dédalo, Ícaro, Minotauro, Ariadne, Hércules, Orfeu, Eurídice, Pigmalião, Vénus, Adónis, Apólo, Dafne, Midas, Aquiles, Ájax, Sibila, Ulisses, Pitágoras,... são apenas alguns dos heróis desta "epopeia" que eu pensava que conhecia. Pensava mal...

Podia ficar aqui, por tempo indeterminado, a "massacrar-vos" sobre Metamorfoses (e do quanto bem me fez). Mas vou calar-me e guardá-lo na "mala dos sete para a ilha deserta"...

Para quem tiver paciência, deixo os meus rascunhos... http://ovidiometamorfoses.tumblr.com/