About
Ovid's sensuous and witty poem brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation, often as a result of love or lust, in which men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best known myths and legends of ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy. Mortals become gods, animals turn to stone, and humans change into flowers, trees, or stars. First published in a.d. 8, Ovid's Metamorphoses remains one of the most accessible and inspirational introductions to Greek mythology.
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Reviews
"It is Ovid's perhaps unique genius to offer his tales of transformed bodies both as metaphors for the pivotal moments of the human life cycle and as comments on the social construction of that life cycle in his own time."
Robert Squillace, professor, New York University
"Ovids Metamorphoses, in winding its way through the ages to modern times, lavished its own beneficence on literary traditions, from his contemporaries th the medieval moralizers to enlightened neo-Agustans."
Masterpieces of World Literature
"In Ovid's witty, sensuous poem no one ever remains the same…Narrator Barry Kraft has picked up this energy, sharply and precisely attacking each word of Millers translation…[He] batters us, wave upon wave, with the archetypal power of each tale…This is a refresher course in mythology at its best."
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