The Essential Metamorphoses

The Essential Metamorphoses, Stanley Lombardo’s abridgment of his translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, preserves the epic frame of the poem as a whole while offering the best-known tales in a rendering remarkable for its clarity, wit, and vigor.  While making no pretense of offering an experience comparable to that of reading the whole of Ovid’s self-styled history “from the world’s first origins down to my own time,” this practical and judicious selection of myths at the heart of Roman mythology and literature yet manages to relate many of the most fascinating episodes in that world-historical march toward the Age of Augustus—and is accompanied by an Introduction that deftly sets them in their cosmological, theological, and Augustan contexts.

SKU
27032g

Ovid
Translated and Edited by Stanley Lombardo
Introduction by W. R. Johnson

2011 - 216 pp.

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Cloth (no dust jacket) 978-1-60384-625-7
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Instructor Examination (Review) Copy 978-1-60384-624-0
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The Essential Metamorphoses, Stanley Lombardo’s abridgment of his translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, preserves the epic frame of the poem as a whole while offering the best-known tales in a rendering remarkable for its clarity, wit, and vigor.  While making no pretense of offering an experience comparable to that of reading the whole of Ovid’s self-styled history “from the world’s first origins down to my own time,” this practical and judicious selection of myths at the heart of Roman mythology and literature yet manages to relate many of the most fascinating episodes in that world-historical march toward the Age of Augustus—and is accompanied by an Introduction that deftly sets them in their cosmological, theological, and Augustan contexts.

 

Praise for Stanley Lombardo’s unabridged translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses:

"Stanley Lombardo successfully matches Ovid’s human drama, imaginative brio, and irresistible momentum; and Ralph Johnson’s superb Introduction to Ovid's 'narratological paradise' is a bonus to this new and vigorous translation that should not be missed."   
      —Elaine Fantham, Giger Professor of Latin, Emerita, Princeton University
 

"Lombardo’s translation is the most readable I’ve seen. . . . Its language is modern, accessible, and unpretentious.”

     —Margaret Musgrove, University of Central Oklahoma

"A superb teaching text. The translation is readable, witty, and very accessible to today’s students."


     —John Makowski, Loyola University, Chicago

 

Contents: 

Introduction; Note on the Text, Abridgment, and Introduction; Suggestions for Further Reading

The Essential Metamorphoses:

  • Book 1: Invocation, Origin of the World, The Four Ages, The Giants, The Council of the Gods, Lycaon, The Flood, Deucalion and Pyrrha, Python, Apollo and Daphne, Io, Pan and Syrinx, Io (continued), Phaëthon and Clymene
  • Book 2: Phaëthon and Phoebus, Callisto, Jupiter and Europa
  • Book 3: Cadmus and the Earthborn People, Diana and Actaeon, Jupiter and Semele, Tiresias, Echo and Narcissus
  • Book 4: Pyramus and Thisbe, Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, Cadmus and Harmonia, Perseus and Andromeda
  • Book 5: (no selections)
  • Book 6: The Contest of Arachne and Minerva, Procne and Philomela
  • Book 7: Procris and Cephalus
  • Book 8: Minos and the Minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus, Meleager and the Calydonian Boar, Philemon and Baucis
  • Book 9: Nessus and Deianeira, The Death of Hercules, Iphis and Ianthe
  • Book 10: Orpheus and Eurydice, Jupiter and Ganymede, Apollo and Hyacinthus, Pygmalion, Myrrha and Cinyras, Venus and Adonis, Atalanta and Hippomenes, Venus and Adonis (continued)
  • Book 11: The Death of Orpheus, Midas
  • Book 12: (no selections)
  • Book 13: Polydorus and Polyxena, Hecuba, Galatea and Polyphemus
  • Book 14: The Death of Aeneas, Pomona and Vertumnus, Iphis and Anaxarete, Pomona and Vertumnus (continued), The Sabines, Romulus, Hersilia
  • Book 15: Aesculapius, The Deification of Caesar, Envoi

Glossary of Main Characters  

 

About the Authors:

Stanley Lombardo is Professor of Classics, University of Kansas.



W. R. Johnson is Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, Emeritus, University of Chicago.