Ovid’s magnificent panorama of the Greek and Roman myths—presented by a noted poet, scholar, and critic.
Prized through the ages for its splendor and its savage, sophisticated wit, The Metamorphoses is a masterpiece of Western culture—the first attempt to link all the Greek myths, before and after Homer, in a cohesive whole, to the Roman myths of Ovid’s day. Horace Gregory, in this modern translation, turns his own poetic gifts toward a deft reconstruction of Ovid’s ancient themes, using contemporary idiom to bring to today’s reader all the ageless drama and psychological truths vividly intact.
“Varied as only verse can be when it comes from a poet with a virtually perfect ear.”
8212;Whitney J. Oates, The New York Times Book Review
“It is the only literate and readable version I’ve come across. A large and wonderful job…I’m sure I will be using it the rest of my life to return to the old stories.”
8212;Robert Lowell
“It is the best translation of a long poem that I have ever known; and Ovid, whom I have always avoided, has suddenly become in my mind one of the first-rate Roman poets…”
8212;Robinson Jeffers
Lives and Loves of the Gods
Ovid’s The Metamorphoses is a magnificent collection of the ancient Greco-Roman myths that have fascinated readers down through the ages.
The emperor Augustus banished Ovid in 8 A.D., and decreed his works too corrupt for Roman youth. Unlike Virgil and Homer, Ovid was interested in women and love and sometimes treated his immortal subjects irreverently. But he added to their dilemmas the warmth of human understanding. His insight, humor, wit and sophistication give these stories a lively contemporary flavor.
Another age of prudery, the Victorian, suppressed him again. But the great Victorian poets—Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser—knew him well and were greatly influenced by his abundant vitality and passion and his exquisite poetry.
Horace Gregory’s translation of The Metamorphoses has been acclaimed by critics as one of the best of modern times. With the felicity of a true poet, he re-enters Ovid’s world and relates, in modern language, the lives and loves of the gods and goddesses with clarity and brilliance.
