So previously I read the Horace Gregory translation and adored it. This time I decided to try David Raeburn's for Penguin classics and I’m afraid it failed to capture the magic I felt before. It is a much easier read, for sure, but I think poetry was missed in this translation. Which makes sense considering Gregory was a poet and Raeburn was into the performance aspects of classical poetry but apparently reading about Jove raping poor women and then Juno punishing said women for it is not doing it for me without the magic of poetry.

I was curious if we were getting new translations and according to the article on lithub, Jhumpa Lahiri has teamed up with Princeton classics professor Yelena Baraz on a new translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses for Penguin and I’m definitely reading it when it comes out. I’m so curious to see how these women will tackle the material.

So my advice would be to try different translations and find the one that works for you.
P.S. I know nothing about poetry, translations or Latin.
-------------
If you love mythology you need to read this. P.S. Gods are horny...

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.

I read this about two months after my second stay in Rome in 2019, so sadly never had the book itself in the city. The city though, was of course, on my mind, throughout.

The Metamorphoses is an 8 AD Latin narrative poem which consists of 11,995 lines, 15 books and over 250 myths. It is known as one of the most influential works in Western Literature, influencing the likes of Dante, Shakespeare, Chaucer. It is accredited with having over 200 characters. My edition stands at over 700 pages long. Elements from the poem have been depicted throughout art forms for centuries. On a beach in St Ives, Cornwall, one year, I read Ted Hughes' Tales From Ovid, his brilliant retelling of twenty-four of the tales. (For a taster of the myths, it is certainly a good place to start, at only 250 pages.)



Most of the myths are familiar: Apollo and Daphne, Narcissus and Echo, the Rape of Proserpina, Arachne - Niobe, Medea and Jason, Theseus and Aegeus, Scylla and Minos, the Minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus, Hercules, Venus and Adonis, Orpheus and Eurydice, Midas, the Death of Achilles, the Ships of Aeneas, Ajax, the Fall of Troy, Ulysses and Circe, and countless more. It ends with the apotheosis of Julius Caesar.

The short prologue reads, and distinguishes the theme of the entire poem:
n  

Changes of shape, new forms, are the theme which my
spirit impels me
now to recite. Inspire me, O gods (it is you who have even transformed my art), and spin me a thread from the
world's beginning
down to my own lifetime, in one continuous poem.

n
Ovid says so himself; the art of transformation is the crux of this giant work. And it is true, we witness the Gods turning men into animals, stones, constellations. It is about love; it is violent; it is also witty, Ovid does not write without humour at times. I remember to this day the humour spinning from the absurdity of some of the events, made absurd by Ovid, who is always seemingly self-aware. At the end of "The Creation" in Book 1, from line 84, the first mention of a metamorphosis occurs, that of man:
n  

Where other animals walk on all four and look to the
ground,
man was given a towering head and commanded to stand
erect, with his face uplifted to gaze on the stars of heaven.
Thus clay, so lately no more than a crude and formless
substance,
was metamorphosed to assume the strange new figure of
Man.

n
Where Ovid calls Man "strange", Hughes, to compare, likens us to Gods:
n  

Then Prometheus
Gathered that fiery dust and slaked it
With the pure spring water,
And rolled it under his hands,
Pounded it, thumbed it, moulded it
Into a body shaped like that of a god.

n

"The Untangling of Chaos, or the Creation of the Four Elements", Hendrik Goltzius—1589

The gods are mischievous throughout. At times their actions seemed completely unprovoked, uncalled for, at other times, they were cruelly fair. Over the 250 myths we see gods and men fight, gods and gods fight, men v. man, heroes against creatures and gods, we see almost everything pitted against one another. And despite the humour, there are poignant moments of feeling, beauty and emotion.

Like in one of my many favourite passages in the poem, the fall of Icarus in Book 8:
n  

He ceased to follow his leader; he'd fallen in love with the sky,
and soared up higher and higher. The scorching rays of
the sun
grew closer and softened the fragrant wax which fastened
his plumage.
The wax dissolved; and as Icarus flapped his naked arms,
deprived of the wings which had caught the air that was
buoying them upwards,
'Father!' he shouted, again and again. But the boy and his
shouting
were drowned in the blue-green main which is called the
Icárian Sea.
His unhappy father, no longer a father, called out, 'Icarus!
Where are you, Icarus? Where on earth shall I find you?
Icarus!'
he kept crying. And then he caught sight of the wings in the
water.
Daedalus cursed the skill of his hands and buried his dear son's
corpse in a grave. The land where he lies is known as
Icária.

n

"Landscape with the Fall of Icarus", Pieter Bruegel the Elder—c. 1560
[Icarus' legs can be seen in the bottom right of the painting, protruding from the sea, surrounded by feathers.]

Or, in Book 10, Orpheus leading Eurydice from the Underworld, which has always been one of my favourite myths; Ovid tells it hauntingly:
n  

Not far to go now; the exit to earth and the light was
ahead!
But Orpheus was frightened his love was falling behind;
he was desperate
to see her. He turned, and at once she sank back into
the dark.
She stretched out her arms to him, struggled to feel his
hands in her own,
but all she was able to catch, poor soul, was the
yielding air.
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?
She only uttered her last 'farewell', so faintly he hardly
could hear it, and then she was swept once more to the land
of the shadows.

n
And because I've somehow managed to avoid any of the metamorphoses in the book, the transformation of Daphne into a tree in Book 1:
n  

[...] She had hardly ended her prayer when a
heavy numbness
came over her body; her soft white bosom was ringed
in a layer
of bark, her hair was turned into foliage, her arms into
branches.
The feet that had run so nimbly were sunk into sluggish
roots;
her head was confined in a treetop; and all that remained
was her beauty.

n

"Apollo and Daphne", Gian Lorenzo Bernini—1622–1625
[This is one of my favourite statues ever, life-sized and made from marble. It is housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, which I have never seen. It is my priority, on my next trip to the city, to finally see the sculpture in person.]

Ovid's report of Achilles' death is short and intriguing in Book 12:
n  

So saying, he pointed the hero out, still hacking the
Trojans
down; then turning Paris' bow in the same direction
he guided an arrow with deadly aim at Achilles' heel.
If Priam, after the death of Hector, had cause for rejoicing,
this surely was it. So Achilles who'd vanquished the
mightiest heroes
was vanquished himself by a coward who'd stolen the wife
of his Greek host.
If he was destined to die at the hands of a woman in war,
he'd rather be cut down by the axe of Penthesilea.

n
(The most popular recent depiction of Achilles and the story of Troy is Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles, which actually chooses to omit the concept of Achilles' heel as she used principally Homer's Iliad as her inspiration, where it is not mentioned as it is here in Ovid.)

I could continue quoting elements of the poem forever. The myths are immortal, of course, and this new verse translation by Raeburn is stunning: it is fresh, readable, but maintains a beautiful poetic voice. Hughes' retellings are also brilliant and I recommend them. I read them after Ovid's original, which I preferred, though it is a long-haul. Any lovers of myth should flock here. Ovid is witty, profound and above all, genius. Of the Roman texts I've read, studying Classical Civilisation in college, this is still the greatest to date.

This took me a while because of the more than 600 characters and less depth on the individual myths than I imagined upfront. Still nice to have this behind the belt when visiting a museum - 2.5 stars rounded up
Bernini’s famous transformation of marble in flesh, inspired by a tale in the first book of the Methamorphoses:


General
Metamorphoses is a treasure trove on myths of the Greek and Romans. Ovid takes us from the creation of the world to the murder on Julius Caesar. Don't expect something chronological like the History of Herodotus, but prepare on being buffeted by more than 250 distinct narratives divided over 15 books. I personally would have like more depth on some myths, like Theseus, Perseus and Jason their adventures. Also the book felt a bit fragmented for me, and I had trouble with keeping my attention with it at times.

Is it overall about conformity? Following higher forces (and the state in the time of Ovid) or else be punished/killed/transformed in a horrible manner? Being humble, except if you are a descendent to the powers that be, like Perseus as son of Jupiter, seems to be the only option in the stories Ovid narrates. This is especially true for women, in Metamorphosis you have an extraordinary high chance of being literally and figuratively screwed, with Medusa at the end of book IV being the sad highlight. After being raped by Neptune in a temple of Minerva she is turned into a monster by the goddess and later beheaded by Perseus.

Some highlights per book
Book I: The whole set up of the poem, from creation to current time, reminded met of The Silmarillion of J.R.R. Tolkien, interesting to see where his inspiration came from.
The reminiscing on a lost golden age is also interesting given Rome was the force of the day and it’s fall heralded the “dark” middle ages. The described golden age reminded me of Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, where the foraging men was seen as most blissful in the human history till after the industrial revolution.

Then as a bonus there is Lycaon as a proto werewolf and ah, a primordial flood to punish us humans for our sins, how familiar. Deucalion and Pyrrha as Adam and Eve.

Myths as an understanding of the world, convenient explanations on why Ethiopians are dark skinned (burned by the Sun wagon coming to close to earth), laurels (a rivernymph trying to escape Apollo) and Egyptians worshipping gods that have animal forms (a lover of Zeus changed into a cow to avoid Juno).
Did people really believe that or where this just tales told to children?

Book II
Phaeton as epitome of youthful over ambition

In strophe 252 we have swans being toasted by the sun and in 377 we have a mourning relative, Cycnus, of Phaeton transform in a new bird species, the swan, which seems a bit conflicting.

Crows and old men being punished for their nosiness and gossiping

Wishes go as awry as in Alladin for Semele

Because no deity can negate the actions of an other deity, interesting concept, this explains a lot about The Iliad

Narcissus being popular with men and girls before turning into a flower.

Book IV
Piramus and Thisbe being the Babylonian predecessors to Romeo and Juliet

Book V
The wedding of Andromeda and Perseus ends up being described as a scene from 300, when her fiancee and uncle shows up to the party and get gruesomely killed.

Book VII
Medea is still hard to understand for me, thought this might be a full account of the journey of the Argonauts but it turned out quite fragmented and short.

VIII has Scylla betray her father for love of king Minos, and has her cutting a string of hair from him as show of betrayal, quite reminiscent to the story of Delilah and Samson.

Book X is the gay book with Orpheus, Ganymede and Hyacinthus (who dies rather stupidly in a friendly match of disc throwing with his lover Apollo)
Pygmalion meanwhile invents the first sexdoll from ivory.

In book XI Alcyone and Ceyx, transforming into kingfishers, has an emotional impact.

Book XII has an invincible transgender Caenis/Caeneus (who got the body and strength of a man after being raped by Neptune) and a fight scene between Centaurs and men that would make Quentin Tarantino jealous. Brainpudding is pushed out of cracked skulls like its a sieve. Wow!

Book XIII has Ajax his “I don’t like words but action” speech four pages in an epic burn of Odysseus
Which is than eloquently returned (“not because my father did not kill his own brother I claim these weapons”) by the master of deception and words himself.
Hecuba ripping someones eyes out (and the general misery of the women of Troy) is quite touching.
And not to forget: nymph Galatea being compared to swan down and white cheese by her cyclops admirer.

Book XIV has the founding of Rome and the many wars preceding and following this event (parties are lambasted for fighting because they just want to win and are ashamed of peace).

In XV we have Pythagoras as first vegetarian, with a speech against eating meat due to the belief the soul reincarnates in an ever repeating manner, maybe influenced from stories from India after the conquests of Alexander?
Interesting that he says that ancient anchors have been found on mountains as well. Father of archeological research besides mathematics?

Isto foi uma grande empreitada, concluída com sucesso.

As Metamorfoses são um poema composto por quinze livros que reúne mais de 250 episódios (gregos e romanos), uns mitológicos outros não.
Ao longo destes 7 meses li, pesquisei, estudei e reli a maioria dos episódios desta obra, e adorei todos os minutos que passei com os heróis destas histórias, mas no meu coração ficaram:

Apolo e Dafne
Píramo e Tisbe
Perseu e Andrómeda
Medusa
Báucis e Filémon
Pigmalião
Mirra
Vénus e Adónis

Este vai directo para a prateleira dos favoritos.

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.

”All things are changing, nothing dies. The spirit wanders, comes now here, now there, and occupies whatever frame it pleases. From beasts it passes into human bodies, and from our bodies into beasts…so do I teach that the soul is ever the same, though it passes into ever changing bodies.”


Ovid’s Metamorphoses is unlike other ancient epics. It does not follow a single event (Homer’s Iliad) or the travails and adventures of a single hero (Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid). Instead, it encompasses hundreds of myths and tales, over eons of time, starting with World’s creation and moving up to the deification of Julius Caesar. What makes this work an epic rather than a random collection of tales is it’s overarching theme, signaled by its title — transformation and change.

Ovid’s epic is the most accessible and the most modern of all the classic epics of the ancient world. The myths are lively, bawdy, violent, and action packed. Each is self contained and easily digestible, yet the connecting theme of transformation is readily apparent. And that theme — all things change, nothing is permanent, but nothing is truly destroyed either — feels completely relevant and applicable to modern sensibilities.

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.

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.

Souvent il s'approche, ses mains palpent son œuvre, ne sachant
si elle est de chair ou d'ivoire. Et il ne dit plus qu'elle est en ivoire ;
il lui donne des baisers, et pense qu'elle les lui rend ; il lui parle,
l'étreint, croit sentir ses doigts presser les membres qu'ils touchent
et craint que les bras ainsi serrés ne soient marqués de bleus.
Tantôt il lui dispense des caresses, tantôt lui offre des présents
appréciés par les filles : coquillages, beaux galets, petits oiseaux,
des fleurs de mille couleurs, des lis, des balles peintes
Il la pare aussi de vêtements, passe à ses doigts
des pierres précieuses et à son cou de longs colliers ;
il suspend des perles à ses oreilles, des chaînettes sur sa poitrine.
Tout lui sied ; et nue, elle ne paraît pas moins belle.
il l'appelle la compagne de sa couche, et la dépose, nuque inclinée,
sur un coussin de plumes, comme si elle allait y être sensible.


Ovide a recueilli ces contes, lors de son voyage d'étude en Grèce qui était d'usage chez les patriciens Romains, pour notre plus grand bonheur. C'est un excellent départ pour découvrir la mythologie.

“Ma con la parte migliore di me io volerò in eterno più in alto delle stelle, e il nome mio rimarrà, indelebile. E ovunque si estende, sulle terre domate, la potenza romana, le labbra del popolo mi leggeranno, e per tutti i secoli, grazie alla fama, se qualcosa di vero c'è nelle predizioni dei poeti, vivrò.”

Classico tra i classici greci, Le metamorfosi è una raccolta di alcuni dei miti più famosi e conosciuti, ma non solo. Partendo dalla nascita del cosmo, Ovidio ci conduce alla scoperta di dei e dee, eroi, semplici esseri umani. Storie di amore e odio, di vendetta e dolore, di riscoperta e rinascita, di vita e morte.

Le metamorfosi mi ha tenuto compagnia per settimane, l'ho centellinato perchè non volevo finirlo, ho preferito assaporarlo a poco a poco. La ricchezza della prosa, i tanti racconti uniti da un sottile filo rosso, creano un mosaico di storie che esplorano, come spesso accade quando si leggono i miti, la nostra stessa umanità.
In scena, al centro di ogni racconto, c'è proprio la metamorfosi, l'evoluzione, il cambiamento. La metamorfosi del mondo, ma sopratutto di chi lo abita che viene catturato nel continuo evolversi, nel continuo cambiare per diventare qualcosa di diverso. Un ciclo senza fine che ben rappresenta la nostra vita e l'essenza della nostra umanità.

Attraverso le parole di Ovidio assistiamo alle terribili vendette degli dei, ai loro amori, a volte crudeli a volte insensati. Siamo lì con Orfeo quando cerca di riprendersi la sua Euridice, siamo lì quando Dafne fugge disperatamente da Apollo e preferisce mutarsi in alloro piuttosto che cedere al dio di tutte le cose belle. E ancora il rapimento di Persefone, la triste sorte di Medusa, la vendetta di Medea, le maledizioni delle Furie, Arianna e Teseo, Narciso e Atalanta.

La scrittura diventa vertigine e ci trascina in un mondo quasi irreale che però somiglia pericolosamente a tutto quello che conosciamo e ci è familiare. I miti hanno sempre parlato di noi e continuano a farlo mutando esattamente come facciamo noi.

Sex, violence, and humor are often painted as low and primitive: the signs of a failing culture. Yet it is only in cultures with a strong economy and a substantial underclass that such practices can rise from duty to pastime. As Knox's introduction reminds us, Ovid's time was one of pervasive divorce, permissive laws, and open adultery, and our humble author participated in all of them.

Eventually, the grand tyrant closed his fist over the upper classes, exerting social controls and invoking the moral standard of an imagined 'golden age' in order to snatch power and discredit his rivals. Though already a popular and influential author and speaker, Ovid was exiled for being wanton and clever--either one he could have gotten away with, but both was too much.

Both he and Virgil were sent to the extremities of the empire by Augustus, and both wrote epics to equal Homer's. While Virgil's was a capitulation to the emperor, honoring his fictitious lineage and equating heroism with duty, Ovid's was a sly, labyrinthine re-imagining of classic tales, drawing equally on the gold of Olympus' brow and the muck between a harlot's toes.

Ovid remained more coy about his dirt than Apuleius or Seneca, maintaining plausible deniability with irony and entendre throughout the complex work. Every view, vision, and opinion is put forth at some point, and very rarely are they played straight. Ovid's characters are remarkable creations, each one a subversion of the familiar legend that surrounds them. Of course, by this point many of us are more familiar with Ovid's versions than the ones he was making light of.

Virgil inspired the proud, righteous men of words: Dante, Tasso, Milton. Ovid created a style for the tricksters and the conflicted: Petrarch, Donne, Shakespeare, Ariosto, Rabelais. Each of Ovid's myths was a discrete vision, not only by plot, but by theme. His tales were not simply presentations of ideas, but explorations that turned back on themselves over and over.

The metaphysical poets would come to adopt this style, creating short works that explored themes, even ritualizing the idea's reversal in the sonnet's volta. The active, visual nature of Ovid was a progression from the extended metaphors of the philosophers to what could be called a true conceit: a symbolic representation at once supportive of and in conflict with the idea it bears.

Each of Ovid's tales flows, one into the next, building meaning by relations, counterpoints, repetition, and structure. Each small part builds into a grander whole. Just as all the sundry stories become a mythology, the many symbolic arguments become a philosophy.

Instead of the Virgilian heroic mode, where one man wins, thereby vindicating his philosophy, Ovid shows a hundred victories and losses, creating an aggregate meaning. Virgil was writing of what he thought one man should be: loyal, pious, righteous, strong, noble. Ovid was more interested in asking what it is possible for a man to be--what are the limits of the mind?

The Greek myths are an attempt to understand the mind, to observe what we do and create types, to develop a system for understanding man. In collecting these various tales, Ovid was creating the first psychological diagnostic manual, of which the DSM is the modern child. The Greeks invented everything, after all, and here, a few thousand years before Freud, is a remarkably coherent and accurate picture of the mind and its disorders.

Freud did little more than reintroduce the Greek system, which is why his theories--the Psyche, the Oedipus Conflict, Narcissism--are drawn directly from that source. Of course, to any student of literature, it's clear that this is how the terms have always been used. All the great works alluded to these Greek ideas because this was the central collection of knowledge about the mind, a set of terms, phrases, and examples which formed the basis of any discussion of the mind.

Indeed, the Greeks were much better at it than Freud was--he even screwed up the Oedipal Theory, the thing he's best known for, despite the fact that the Greeks had it right from the very beginning.

Freud's patients, being middle-class Europeans, were raised by nannies and nursemaids until they were of age, and had fairly little interaction with their parents. Human beings imprint on people who we are around a great deal before about age six as 'family', and therefore, out of bounds sexually. Since his patients were not around their parents much before this age, they did not imprint correctly. Now: what's the first thing that happens to Oedipus in the story? That's right, he's taken away from his parents and raised elsewhere. Cause, disorder, symptom--it was all right there, and Freud still missed it.

So, Ovid was indeed tackling a grand theme in his tales: the mapping of the human mind as it was known to Greece and Rome. That isn't to say that there isn't depth and conflict between characters and ideas in Virgil, but his centralized, political theme deprived him of the freedom to move from one idea to the next, as Ovid did.

This lack of freedom is a boon for most authors: structure gives tangible boundaries and tools with which to create. With no boundaries, the author has no place to start, and no markers to guide his path.

Imagine a man is given all the parts to a lawnmower. His chances of building a lawnmower are pretty high--but that's all he can do. Now give the same man all the uncut materials and tools in a shop. He could build a lawnmower, or nearly any other machine, but it's going to take a lot of doing. That kind of freedom--real freedom--tends to paralyze most people.

Likewise, it's easier to write good poetry when the rhyme scheme, scansion, and meter are pre-determined than to create a beauty and flow in blank verse. Yet Ovid deconstructed his stories, starting and stopping them between books and moving always back and forth. He provided himself with absolute freedom, but maintained his flow and progression, even without the crutches of tradition.

While his irony and satire are the clearest signs of his remarkable mind, the most impressive is probably this: that he flaunted tradition, style, and form, but never faltered in his grand work.

Virgil knew what he did when he attached himself to Augustus' train; likewise Ovid recognized how his simultaneous praise and subversion of Augustus' legacy would play: none could openly accuse him of treason, but anyone with a solid mind would see the dangerous game Ovid played with his king and patron.

He did not shy from critiquing Augustus even as he wrote for him, for his nation, and for history. Ovid's parting shot is the famous assertion that as long as Rome's name is spoken aloud, so will be Ovid's. This has been echoed since by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, so that what Ovid realized we would never doubt today.

Even banished to the wilderness, out of favor, the only way to silence the artist is to kill him, and this must be done long before he has an audience. Augustus got his month, but his empire fell. Ovid's empire grows by books and minds each year, and its capital is still The Metamorphoses.

I researched long trying to decide on a translation. Though there are many competent versions out there, I chose Martin's. I recall seeing the cover and coveting it, but distrusting the unknown translation. Imagine my surprise when my research turned up my whim.

I enjoyed Martin's translation for the same reason I appreciate Fagles': the vibrancy, wit, and drive of the language. Both are poetic, exciting, risk-taking--but also knowledgeable and deliberate. Every translation is a new work of art, all its own, and I respect translators who don't pretend otherwise.

The translators of the fifties were more staunchly academic, capturing meaning and precision, but in enshrining the classics, they fail to take the sorts of risks that make a work bold and artful. Contrarily, the early translators, like Pope, recreated the work in their own vernacular--not merely as a translation, but as a completely new vision, as Shakespeare's plays are to Plutarch's Lives.

Martin (and Fagles) take the more modern approach, championed by the literary style of T.S. Eliot and James Joyce, whose works are solidly grounded in their tradition, deliberately and knowledgeably drawn, but with the verve and novelty of the iconoclast. There is something particularly fitting in this, since Ovid himself was an iconoclast who mixed formalized tradition with subversion and irony.

Martin proved himself utterly fearless in the altercation between the Pierides and the Muses: he styles their competing songs as a poetry jam, drawing on the vocal forms of rap music. I must admit I was shocked at first, and unable to reconcile, but as I kept reading, I came to realize that it was not my place to question.

Translation is the adaptation of one style to another, one word or phrase or invocation to something more familiar. In his desire to capture the competition and skill of song in these early contests, he drew on what may be the only recognizable parallel to modern man. What is remarkable is not how different the two styles are, but how similar.

It is comical, it is a bit absurd, but so was the original--and in any case, he is altering the original purpose less than Pope, who translated all of the poetry into anachronism. I never thought I would prefer a translation of Ovid which contained the word 'homie', but if Martin can be true enough to the poetry to write it, I must be brave enough to laud it.

I still laugh, but only because Martin has revealed to me something of the impossibility and oddity inherent to translation. This certainly isn't your grandfather's Ovid, but then, your grandfather's Ovid wasn't the real one, either.

I also appreciated Knox's introduction in both Martin's and Fagle's work, though Knox's Homeric background is stronger. I found the end-notes insightful and useful, though they are never quite numerous enough to suit me--but such is the nature of reading a work in translation.