Reviews - Metamorphoses | The StoryGraph

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So, this was quite the journey. A sprawling work that is a tightly woven series of tales, the Metamorphoses spans the time from the world’s creation to the early years of the Roman Empire under Augustus. The stories are wide-ranging and explore a variety of subjects including epic scenes from the Trojan War, the founding of Rome, the journeys of the Argonauts, Perseus etc. and on the more familiar side topics like lovers pining to be together against all odds (such stories as Pyramus and Thisbe, a direct inspiration for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet), parents and unruly children, spurned gods and the retributions directed at the mortal subjects of their affections and on more than a dozen occasions Jupiter’s nearly comical inability to keep his prick in his pants; all this is done while still adhering to one central theme: transformation. Ovid’s mastery of engaging narrative design and his skills at weaving one story into the next are simply mesmerising.

As with most classics, the translated work is as much a work of the translator as the author and finding one that’s as close to the golden mean between accuracy and readability often proves hard. The translation I’d recommend is the one done by Garth, Dryden et al. in the 17th century, though they do take liberties at times for the sake of metre and rhyme. Modern translations by Raeburn and Gregory are also good references.

The Work is finish'd, which nor dreads the Rage
Of Tempests, Fire, or War, or wasting Age:
Come, soon or late, Death's undetermined Day,
This mortal Being only can decay;
My nobler Part, my Fame, shall reach the Skies,
And to late Times with blooming Honours rise:
Whatever th' unbounded Roman Power obeys,
All Climes, and Nations shall record my Praise:
If 'tis allow'd to Poets to divine,
One half of round Eternity is mine.

In the epilogue, Ovid confidently declares that despite the passage of time and whatever trials and changes may come his work will survive long after his death and that his fame will last unto eternity. Well, the Julio-Claudian dynasty ended with Nero’s death in 68 CE, new emperors came and went for centuries, Greco-Roman paganism was trumped by Christianity and the Empire eventually fell to barbarian invasions; but the Metamorphoses, outlasting all of these, is still here, 2000 years later, even now being read and proving its author’s prophetic claims to be true.

naiapard's review against another edition

5.0

Do not be frightened by its renown. It won`t impose itself on you; it won`t have expectations of you to like it from the first page and neither it will demand countless hours of spent energy.
It is actually a fun reading. It can really entertain you in a way that it will feel really familiar to you (no surprise there as a good proportion of the European literature stems from it).
It is much like a biblical journey with mythological characters! It starts from a beginning, the creation of the world as it is known and there it evolves until the present of Caesar`s death. A very charming path, I may say.

binstonbirchill's review against another edition

4.0

One of if not the most influential poems from antiquity, The Metamorphoses, is a mythological history of the world up to the time of Augustus. The story is told through endless metamorphoses, gods turning into humans, humans changing gender, changing into animals, or into the landscape of earth itself. For those with a passing interest in etymology there's a heap of recognizable words derived from the characters within this 527 page poem. Some of the history and stories were familiar, others not so much. It can be tricky at times remembering who is who and what is what, the more you know about the Greek gods and cities the better. What was already an enjoyable read will likely be even more so the second time, provided I read up on Greek Mythology in the interim.