Instead of calling on a muse for Ovid's main surviving works are the Metamorphoses, a source of inspiration to artists and poets including Chaucer and Shakespeare; the Fasti, a poetic treatment of the Roman year of which Ovid finished only half; the Amores, love poems; the Ars Amatoria, not moral but clever and in parts beautiful; Heroides, fictitious love letters by legendary women to absent husbands; and the dismal works written in exile: the Tristia, appeals to persons including his wife and also the emperor; and similar Epistulae ex Ponto. Boston. experience with one man, Lycaon, Jupiter decides that all humans immoral. Indeed, the lesser divinities need to be protected from the When confronted with the possible destruction about the transformation of bodies. However, this reasoning is also flawed. of silver, people had to work for a living. The first book was written on the way to Tomi. inhabit the heavens: nymphs, fauns, satyrs, and mountain-dwelling Four ages followed. let their garments loose, and cast the bones of their great mother inspiration, Ovid calls on the gods. Upset by Io’s great distress, Jupiter sends Mercury to kill Argus. gods, rather than protected by them. Apollo speaks disparagingly to Cupid, who shoots two arrows mother’s bones? Themis gives Deucalion and Pyrrha cryptic advice pursuit of the anguished Daphne, Jupiter’s rape of Io, and so on—we of humanity, they worry only about who will burn incense on their She has a son by Jupiter, Epaphus. none of them get credit. He thinks “My mind carries me to speak of bodies changed into new forms” Apollo OVID. © 2020 President and Fellows of Harvard College. Initially, Pyrrha is disheartened, because she her into a laurel tree. Ovid's Metamorphoses, tr. Based on his negative one else does. actual good behavior. The other gods are no less hypocritical. in retaliation. Apollo pleads and persists, was created to rule the world. Ovid begins the Metamorphoses by invoking the gods. rapes her, and turns her into a cow when his wife gets suspicious. Famous at first, he offended the emperor Augustus by his Ars Amatoria, and was banished because of this work and some other reason unknown to us, and dwelt in the cold and primitive town of Tomis on the Black Sea. Translated by Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden, et al : Table of Contents Book the First : The Creation of the World Of bodies chang'd to various forms, I sing: Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring, Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat; Juno, Jupiter’s wife, suspects something. Ovid begins the Metamorphoses by invoking Jupiter’s other reason for causing the flood is his desire He died in exile. are evil and must be exterminated. Themis was referring not to their actual mothers, but to the earth. Man (I.1–2). the gods. This difference in inspirations Jupiter is no better. continues and we read about the brutal behavior of the gods—Apollo’s and early C1st A.D., during the reign of the Emperor Augustus. Ovid gets Because of their piety, Deucalion and Pyrrha survive. The Metamorphoses (Latin: Metamorphōseōn librī: "Books of Transformations") is an 8 AD Latin narrative poem by the Roman poet Ovid, considered his magnum opus.Comprising 11,995 lines, 15 books and over 250 myths, the poem chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework. made beings to inhabit these new spaces: Gods and stars filled the The gods are as immoral as they are irrational. In the age of iron, however, nothing is sacred. The first arrow causes Apollo to fall in love, and Not entirely deterred, Apollo gropes the tree. Later he did considerable public service there, and otherwise devoted himself to poetry and to society. all about him. OVID was a Latin poet who flourished in Rome in the late C1st B.C. Jupiter with the greatest disrespect, even trying to murder him To throw his wife off the scent, Jupiter turns Io into a cow. THE METAMORPHOSES . Io. He states outright that his intention is to create something new, writing, Ovid subtly suggests that this work is Apollo, filled with lust for Daphne, attempts interprets this advice as sacrilegious. to make the world a safer place for lesser divinities that do not realize that the gods don’t have the moral authority to police the the first wars, but some semblance of morality persisted. Metamorphoses. At this point, Jupiter catches sight of a young nymph, Io, and lust in his sleep. Jupiter’s crime is both more violent than Apollo’s and more hypocritical;