Metamorphoses

Books

• 1
  Book 1

  Creation. The cosmos emerges from chaos. The four ages — gold, silver, bronze, iron — trace humanity's decline. Jupiter drowns the world in a flood. Deucalion and Pyrrha repopulate the earth by throwing stones. Apollo kills Python and pursues Daphne, who becomes a laurel tree.

  780 lines
• 2
  Book 2

  Jupiter seduces Io, Callisto, and Europa. Phaethon demands to drive the chariot of the Sun, loses control, and is struck down by Jupiter's thunderbolt. The world burns.

  875 lines
• 3
  Book 3

  Cadmus founds Thebes. Diana turns Actaeon into a stag. Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection. Echo fades to a voice. The Theban cycle of violence begins.

  733 lines
• 4
  Book 4

  Athamas and Ino are driven mad. Perseus rescues Andromeda. The story of the Minyads. Ovid weaves together tales of divine punishment and human suffering with relentless energy.

  804 lines
• 5
  Book 5

  Perseus turns his enemies to stone with Medusa's head. Minerva visits the Muses on Helicon. The Pierides challenge the Muses to a singing contest — and are turned into magpies. Pluto steals Proserpina.

  678 lines
• 6
  Book 6

  Arachne challenges Minerva to a weaving contest and is turned into a spider. Niobe boasts of her children and loses them all. Marsyas is flayed alive. Procne and Philomela. Boreas and Orithyia.

  721 lines
• 7
  Book 7

  Medea — Ovid's longest continuous narrative. Her love for Jason, her magic, her rejuvenation of Aeson, her murder of Pelias, her flight to Athens. Cephalus tells the story of the plague at Aegina.

  865 lines
• 8
  Book 8

  Scylla betrays her father for love of Minos. Daedalus builds the labyrinth and flies from Crete. Meleager hunts the Calydonian boar. Philemon and Baucis entertain Jupiter and Mercury unawares.

  871 lines
• 9
  Book 9

  Achelous fights Hercules. Hercules dies on Mount Oeta. Byblis falls in love with her brother. Iphis is transformed from a girl into a boy on her wedding night.

  797 lines
• 10
  Book 10

  Orpheus descends to the underworld to retrieve Eurydice and loses her by looking back. He sits on a hillside and sings — stories of Ganymede, Hyacinthus, Pygmalion, Myrrha, and Adonis flow from his grief.

  739 lines
• 11
  Book 11

  The death of Orpheus — torn apart by maenads. The metamorphosis of Midas: everything he touches turns to gold. Laomedon's Troy. The siege of Troy begins to loom.

  795 lines
• 12
  Book 12

  The Trojan War. Ajax and Ulysses debate who deserves the arms of Achilles — the longest speech-pair in the poem. Hecuba's grief. Memnon. The fall of Troy approaches.

  628 lines
• 13
  Book 13

  Aeneas' wanderings through a mythological Mediterranean. Scylla and Charybdis. Galatea and Polyphemus. The Sibyl and the Cyclops reappear. Italy comes into view.

  968 lines
• 14
  Book 14

  The philosophy of Pythagoras: everything changes, nothing dies. A vast speech on the impermanence of all things — cities, elements, landscapes, bodies. Ovid prepares for the final metamorphosis.

  852 lines
• 15
  Book 15

  The myths approach history. Romulus is deified. Numa meets Pythagoras. Julius Caesar becomes a comet. Augustus rules. Ovid ends with his own apotheosis: the poem will outlive him, and his fame will never die.

  880 lines