The Metamorphoses , the “Books of Transformations”, was written in Latin by the Roman poet Ovid in the reign of Augustus Ceasar ( Octavian in the story of Anthony and Cleopatra ) , around zero BC/AD.
It tells the stories of more than 240 transformations , mostly but not all from Greek sources , in a complex structure of interlocking and nested stories where one is often told by a participant in another .
It has been a sourcebook for writers and artists through the centuries but is it still relevant today ? Not just in the sense that violence is sadly still with us and that there are modern equivalents of any of the stories of oppression , but can these stories be used to facilitate fluidity in thinking and as springboards for lateral thinking and for change ?
Well – this is what we are trying to find out . This website is set up for a group in Belfast started by Dr Erin Haliday but now continuing independently who are looking at these stories , at other poems written in response to them – and writing our own
… and these will be pasted up onto this site as time , and understanding of how WordPress works , allows .
We are also writing short versions of the stories – this is just for the fun of retelling a story to begin to get inside it and it goes without saying that more reliable versions will probably be found on Wikipedia or elsewhere on the web but they are just snapshots anyway as much of the richness of the stories is in the way that the stories are woven together and also often in obscure bits of the actual text .
There are dozens of translations – but this one ,the Oxford World’s Classics edition , by A D Melville is a great read and also has interesting and illuminating Notes …
… and A.S.Kline has his translation free online HERE
Books on the Metamorphoses are also umpteen but this book , a Honeycomb for Aphrodite ( Reflections on Ovids metamorphoses ), by A S Kline is wonderful , is only one pound sixty for the kindle version and also can be read online at
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/AHoneycombForAphroditeI.php
I hope you enjoy this website – if you would like to join in with this project , please let me know
all best , Anita
Life of Ovid
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Hello – welcome to the website of a small group in Belfast who have been looking at the stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses over the last few years . It is an ongoing project and the website is very slowly under construction …the text used is from the translation by A.S Kline which is online and kindly Free to use for uncommercial purposes which obviously this is – and is at https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Ovhome.php
thingstothings 