latin · mythology

Metamorphoses

c. 8 CE · Early Roman Imperial Period (1st century CE) · Rome

Book I — Creation and the Four Ages

1My design leads me to speak of forms changed into new bodies.
2Ye Gods, for you it was that made those changes,
3favor my attempts, and bring down the long series
4from the very beginning of the world to my own times.
5Before the sea, and the earth, and the sky which covers all,
6had one aspect over all the whole world—
7they called it chaos. A rude and confused mass,
8nothing but a lifeless bulk with the ill-sorted seeds of things.
9Not yet did Titan give light to the world,
10nor Phoebe grow again with her increasing horns;
11nor was the earth suspended in the ambient air,
12balanced by its own weight.
13A God—and a more kindly Nature—put an end to this discord.
14For he separated the earth from the sky,
15and the water from the earth,
16and he separated the clear heavens from the thick atmosphere.
17After he had arranged these things and reduced them to distinct masses,
18he formed the earth into the shape of a mighty globe.
19Then he bade the seas to stretch out
20and to swell with the raging winds,
21and to surround the shores of the earth that he had spread around.
22He added also springs, and pools of vast size,
23and lakes, and he bounded rivers with sloping banks.
24Some of these the earth swallows up, some go to the sea.
25The Golden Age was first created; then, without any avenger,
26of its own will, keeping faith and doing right.
27Punishment and fear were not; no threatening words were read
28on tablets of brass; no suppliant crowd feared the face of its judge.
29The Silver Age succeeded, inferior to gold,
30superior to tawny brass.
31Jupiter shortened the spring of former years
32and through winter, summer, variable autumn, and brief spring
33completed the year in four seasons.
34Then came the brazen race—a fiercer nature,
35more apt to take up arms, yet not wicked.
36Last of all arose the race of hard iron.
37Immediately every species of crime burst forth.
38Modesty, truth, and faith fled; in their place came tricks, treachery, and the love of gain.

Book I — Apollo and Daphne

39Phoebus loved her, and desired a union with her.
40And he hoped for what he desired, and his own oracles deceived him.
41As the light stubble is on fire when the harvest has been cut,
42as hedges are burned by torches which a traveler has
43either held too near them or left behind as morning approaches,
44so the God broke into flames, so he burned throughout his breast.
45She flies more swiftly than the light breeze,
46and stops not, though he calls her back.
47"Stay, nymph, I entreat you! Thus does the lamb flee the wolf,
48thus does the deer flee the lion, thus does the dove flee the eagle.
49But love is the cause of my following you!
50I am no enemy!"
51But the maiden fled. And when at last the god reached her,
52he put his hands about her, she changed into laurel.
53Her soft breast was covered with thin bark,
54her hair became leaves, her arms became branches.
55Even now Apollo loves it: "You shall be my tree,"
56he said. "With you shall be adorned the heads of triumphant generals
57when joyful voices shall sing the Triumph."

Book III — Narcissus

58Narcissus now had reached his sixteenth year
59and might seem either boy or man.
60Many youths desired him, and many girls;
61but in that slender form was pride so cold
62that no youth touched him and no maiden dared.
63Here it was that Narcissus, tired of hunting and the heat,
64lay down, attracted by the beauty of the place and of the spring.
65While he sought to quench his thirst, another thirst grew on him;
66and while he drank he was captivated by the beautiful reflection
67that he saw.
68He loves an unsubstantial hope and thinks that substance
69which is only shadow. He looks in stupor at himself.
70He lies motionless as a statue formed of Parian marble.
71"Now I know," he groaned, "what torture here I feel!
72It is myself I love! I feel the flame!
73What shall I do? Shall I be wooed or woo?
74Why woo at all? What I desire I have.
75Abundance makes me poor."

Book VIII — Daedalus and Icarus

76Daedalus, hating Crete and his long exile and longing for his native land,
77was shut in by the sea. "Though he may block escape by land and sea,"
78said Daedalus, "the sky is surely open, and that way I will go."
79He set his mind to unknown arts, and altered nature.
80He laid feathers in a row, beginning with the least,
81following the shorter with longer ones so that you might think
82they had grown upon a slope.
83When the work was done, the craftsman balanced his own body on two wings
84and hovered in the beaten air.
85He equipped his son and said, "Icarus, I warn you, keep the middle way.
86If you fly too low, the waves will weigh the feathers down,
87if you fly too high, the sun will scorch them off.
88Fly between the two."
89As they flew past Samos, past Delos and Paros,
90Icarus began to enjoy his daring flight.
91He left his guide and seized by desire for the open sky,
92directed his course too high.
93The scorching sun so near unloosed the wax that held the feathers on.
94The wax was gone; his arms were bare as he beat them up and down,
95but without wings they had no purchase on the air.
96His lips as he cried his father's name
97were submerged in the dark blue sea, the Icarian Sea, called after him.

Book X — Orpheus and Eurydice

98There Orpheus sat, and with his singing drew the trees,
99the savage beasts, the very stones to follow him.
100And now returning home, he saw her, his Eurydice,
101gliding among the shades—
102and as he hurried down toward her, he called her name,
103and stretched his arms to clasp her.
104But she eluded him—not of her will,
105but that the shadows held her—and she faded,
106dissolved in mist. He clasped the empty air.
107He turned: she was gone. The ferrymen refused him.
108Seven days he sat upon the bank and wept.
109Then wandering seven months about the desert crags of northern Rhodope,
110under the frozen stars, he mourned his loss;
111and moved the tigers and the oaks with his lament.

notes

The Metamorphoses by Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BCE–17/18 CE) is a narrative poem in fifteen books covering the history of the world from creation to the deification of Julius Caesar. It contains over 250 myths linked by the theme of transformation (metamorphosis). It is the single greatest treasury of classical mythology transmitted to Western culture. Ovid was exiled by Augustus to Tomis (modern-day Romania) in 8 CE — the year the Metamorphoses was completed — for reasons that remain debated (a "poem and an error," he wrote). He never returned to Rome. The poem's influence on Western art, literature, and iconography is immeasurable. Shakespeare drew on it extensively (through Arthur Golding's 1567 Elizabethan translation); it provided the visual program for Botticelli, Titian, Bernini, and Rubens. The myth of Narcissus gave Freud his vocabulary; the myth of Pygmalion gave Shaw his. Translation: Brookes More, "Ovid's Metamorphoses," Boston: Cornhill Publishing, 1922. Public domain.

CreationTransformationRoman

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