The Metamorphoses of Ovid (1735)

S$194.00

The Metamorphoses of Ovid (1735)

S$194.00

Title: The Metamorphoses of Ovid (complete)/ Metamorphoseon libri
Author: Publius Ovidius Naso
ISBN: –
Publisher: Wetstenium & Smith, Amsterdam, 1735
Condition: Hardcover, pocket leather bound. Firmly bound, interior clean, overall wear as expected, but still strong and readable.

Contains the entire text of the Metamorphoses. Book II of Ovid’s collected works. All text is in Latin.

SKU: ovid-metamorphoses-1735 Categories: , , Tag:

Title: The Metamorphoses of Ovid (complete)/ Metamorphoseon libri
Author: Publius Ovidius Naso
ISBN: –
Publisher: Wetstenium & Smith, Amsterdam, 1735
Condition: Hardcover, pocket leather bound. Firmly bound, interior clean, overall wear as expected, but still strong and readable.

Contains the entire text of the Metamorphoses. Book II of Ovid’s collected works. All text is in Latin.

About Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria, and of the Metamorphoses, a mythological hexameter poem. He is also well known for the Fasti, about the Roman calendar; and the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, two collections of poems written in exile on the Black Sea.

Ovid was also the author of several smaller pieces, the Remedia Amoris, the Medicamina Faciei Femineae, and the long curse-poem Ibis. He also authored a lost tragedy, Medea. He is considered a master of the elegiac couplet, and is traditionally ranked alongside Virgil and Horace as one of the three canonic poets of Latin literature. The scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the canonical Latin love elegists. His poetry, much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, decisively influenced European art and literature and remains as one of the most important sources of classical mythology.

About the Metamorphoses:

The Metamorphoses (Latin: Metamorphoseon libri: “Books of Transformations”) is a Latin narrative poem by the Roman poet Ovid, considered his magnum opus. Comprising fifteen books and over 250 myths, the poem chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework. Although meeting the criteria for an epic, the poem defies simple genre classification by its use of varying themes and tones. Ovid took inspiration from the genre of metamorphosis poetry, and some of the Metamorphoses derives from earlier treatment of the same myths; however, he diverged significantly from all of his models.

Considered one of the most influential works in Western culture, the Metamorphoses has inspired such authors as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dante and Boccaccio. Numerous episodes from the poem have been depicted in masterpieces of sculpture and painting by artists such as Titian. Although Ovid’s reputation faded after the Renaissance, towards the end of the twentieth century there was a resurgence of interest in his work; today, the Metamorphoses continues to inspire and be retold through various media.