The Metamorphoses Hb Everymans Library Classics

The Metamorphoses is Ovid’s great Roman narrative poem, composed in fifteen books around 8 CE. It traces a vast mythological history from the creation of the world to the deification of Julius Caesar and the reign of Augustus. Its hundreds of interconnected tales are united by transformation: humans become trees, birds, flowers, stars, stones, and animals; gods change shape; worlds, bodies, and identities remain continually in flux. The work retells many of the most influential stories of Greco-Roman myth, including Apollo and Daphne, Echo and Narcissus, Pygmalion and his statue, Perseus and Medusa, Daedalus and Icarus, Orpheus and Eurydice, Midas, the Trojan War, and the fall of Troy. Ovid’s style is witty, sensuous, irreverent, and often darkly comic, with love—its desires, jealousies, and violence—acting as one of the poem’s great transformative forces. This Everyman’s Library Classics hardback uses Allen Mandelbaum’s acclaimed verse translation, with an introduction by classical scholar J. C. McKeown. The edition presents a readable poetic rendering while preserving the speed, humour, and narrative richness that made the poem foundational to later Western art and literature.