Metamorphoses
Ovid, 8 CE
Held by Project Gutenberg, PG 21765read here
Read it here about 9 h of reading
Add to a shelf
Ovid's Metamorphoses is a long Latin poem that tells the history of the world through myths of transformation, from the ordering of Chaos to the deification of Julius Caesar. More than 250 stories pass in fifteen books, and they leap from one to another with little link. Apollo chases Daphne, Phaethon begs to drive the Sun's chariot, Arachne is turned into a spider by Pallas, and Medea argues with herself over Jason. Love, in many forms, returns again and again as the theme. The poem treats gods, mortals and metamorphosis with an unstable mix of epic, elegy and play.
Where it happens
- Sulmona (Sulmo) Ovid's birthplace in an Apennine valley east of Rome.2
- Rome Where Ovid was educated in rhetoric.2
- Athens One of the places he travelled to after his brother's death.2
- Tomis (Constanta) On the Black Sea; the place of Ovid's exile for his last nine or ten years.2
- Crete Island to which Jupiter, as a bull, carries off Europa in Book II.1
Through time
Who is in it, and behind it
Augustus emperor
Roman emperor during whose reign Ovid lived and who exiled him to Tomis.2
Julius Caesar subject
His deification is the endpoint of the poem; he died the year before Ovid's birth.1
Nicander of Colophon source
His Heteroioumena is a clear influence; 21 of its stories appear in the poem.1
William Caxton translator
Made the first English translation in 1480.1
Virgil contemporary
Older contemporary whom Ovid met only briefly.2
Horace contemporary
Ovid claims to have heard him recite.2
What it is about
Transformation as structure
Over 250 myths are strung together by change of form.1
Genre trouble
Scholars have called it epic, anti-epic, mock-epic, or a poem that refuses categories.1
Love as a recurring theme
As in nearly all of Ovid's work, love in its forms runs through the poem.1
History and myth
A continuous chronology runs from the creation to the deification of Julius Caesar.1
Play with models
Ovid treated myth as an object of play and artful manipulation.1
In its own words
My design leads me to speak of forms changed into new bodies. Ye Gods, (for you it was who changed them,) favor my attempts, and bring down the lengthened narrative from the very beginning of the world, even to my own times.
The Golden Age was first founded, which, without any avenger, of its own accord, without laws, practised both faith and rectitude.
Thou desirest, Phaëton, a gift too great, and one which is suited neither to thy strength, nor to such youthful years.
Pallas, taking compassion, bore her up as she hung; and thus she said: “Live on indeed, wicked one, but still hang; and let the same decree of punishment be pronounced against thy race, and against thy latest posterity, that thou mayst not be free from care in time to come.”
If he can do this, and if he is capable of preferring another to me, let him perish in his ingratitude.
The shape of the book
13 chapters, 124,957 words. Point at a bar.
How it came to be here
Ovid finished the poem in 8 CE, writing in dactylic hexameter, the meter of the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid. It runs to 11,995 lines. Ovid took the idea of a collection of transformation myths from Hellenistic poetry, notably Nicander's Heteroioumena, but made his book longer and gave it a historical frame. Augustus later exiled him to Tomis on the Black Sea, where he spent his last nine or ten years. Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer and Shakespeare all drew on the poem, and William Caxton made the first English translation in 1480.
Free to read elsewhere
- Project Gutenberg ebook #21765
- Open Library search editions you can borrow or read
- HathiTrust search full-view scans
- Standard Ebooks search
Sources
Text: PG 21765, 26073 | translator: Henry T. Riley. US public domain (Project Gutenberg licence).