Hello – welcome to this website which is dedicated to the stories of Metamorphosis as retold in Rome around 8 AD by the lawyer turned poet, Publius Ovidius Naso, most commonly known as Ovid.
The stories are based on Greek Myths but it is extremely likely that they also comment on the Roman society that he lived in.
It would be easier to know where it’s retelling and where it’s social commentary if we had all the Greek sources but many of them are now lost. It would probably be fair to say that Jupiter is not unlike the Emperor Augustus and that Juno is often his wife, Livia.
Soon after the Metamorphoses was written but before it was published, Augustus had Ovid exiled to Toomis by the Black Sea in what is now Romania and was then the back of beyond.
He hated it there but, sadly, despite writing a series of homesick letters called the Tristia, he was never allowed to return to Rome.
The text used is from the translation by A.S Kline which is online and which he has very kindly made Free to use for uncommercial purposes which obviously this is – and can be found at https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Ovhome.php
The website started when a small group of people in Belfast were looking at the stories with poet Dr Erin Halliday and writing poems and stories based on them. It is now mostly me but it is an ongoing project, and if anyone would like to be involved or has something they would like to put on it or link to then please do get in touch HERE
list of stories as they appear in the book (ie/roughly chronological) click on “Menu”
Diary of stories
Blog
Online translation with Index of names
Life of Ovid
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
Ovid’s Metamorphoses
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