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Page from the edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses published by Lucantonio Giunti in Venice, 1497

Page from the edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses published by Lucantonio Giunti in Venice, 1497

The Metamorphoses (Latin: Metamorphōsēs, from Ancient Greek: μεταμορφώσεις: lit. "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his magnum opus. The poem chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar in a mythico-historical framework comprising over 250 myths, 15 books, and 11,995 lines.

Although it meets some of the criteria for an epic, the poem defies simple genre classification because of its varying themes and tones. Ovid took inspiration from the genre of metamorphosis poetry. Although some of the Metamorphoses derives from earlier treatment of the same myths, Ovid diverged significantly from all of his models.

The Metamorphoses is one of the most influential works in Western culture. It has inspired such authors as Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, and William Shakespeare. Numerous episodes from the poem have been depicted in works of sculpture, painting, and music, especially during the Renaissance. There was a resurgence of attention to Ovid's work near the end of the 20th century. The Metamorphoses continues to inspire and be retold through various media.

Contents

The Metamorphoses is comprehensive in its chronology, recounting the creation of the world to the death of Julius Caesar, which had occurred only a year before Ovid's birth; it has been compared to works of universal history, which became important in the 1st century BCE.

Ovid works his way through his subject matter, often in an apparently arbitrary fashion, by jumping from one transformation tale to another, sometimes retelling what had come to be seen as central events in the world of Greek mythology and sometimes straying in odd directions. It begins with the ritual "invocation of the muse", and makes use of traditional epithets and circumlocutions. But instead of following and extolling the deeds of a human hero, it leaps from story to story with little connection.

The recurring theme, as with nearly all of Ovid's work, is love—be it personal love or love personified in the figure of Amor (Cupid). Indeed, the other Roman gods are repeatedly perplexed, humiliated, and made ridiculous by Amor, an otherwise relatively minor god of the pantheon, who is the closest thing this putative mock-epic has to a hero. Apollo comes in for particular ridicule as Ovid shows how irrational love can confound the god out of reason. The work as a whole inverts the accepted order, elevating humans and human passions while making the gods and their desires and conquests objects of low humor.

The Metamorphoses ends with an epilogue (Book XV.871–879), one of only two surviving Latin epics to do so (the other being Statius' Thebaid). The ending acts as a declaration that everything except his poetry—even Rome—must give way to change:

“ And now, my work is done, which neither Jove

Nor flame nor sword nor gnawing time can fade.
That day, which governs only my poor frame,
May come at will to end my unfixed life,
But in my better and immortal part
I shall be borne beyond the lofty stars
And never will my name be washed away.
Where Roman power prevails, I shall be read;
And so, in fame and on through every age
(If bards foretell the truth at all), I'll live

 ”

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