Ovid - Ovid: Metamorphoses

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

METAMORPHOSES

A. D. MELVILLE was a scholar of Kings College, Cambridge, where he gained a double First in Classics and won a Craven Studentship. His love of the Classics was kindled at Charterhouse and he discovered the seductive charms of Ovid at Kings. After a long career as a solicitor in London, interrupted by distinguished service in the Second World War, he returned to Ovid, and his translations of the Metamorphoses, the Love Poems, and Sorrows of an Exile (Tristia) are all available in Worlds Classics.

E. J. KENNEY is a Fellow of Peterhouse and Emeritus Kennedy Professor of Latin in the University of Cambridge. His previous publications include a critical edition of Ovids amatory poems (Oxford Classical Texts, 1961), an edition with commentary of Lucretius, De Rerum Natura III (1971), The Classical Text. Aspects of editing in the age of the printed book (1974), The Ploughmans Lunch. Moretum: a poem ascribed to Virgil (1984); and he is Editor of and a contributor to The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, Vol. II, Latin Literature (1982).

This ought to become the standard modern complete verse translation.

Greece & Rome

Melvilles new translation enables us to understand this unique and witty poetic narrative with a fresh approach. His use of modern idiom and of occasional rhyming couplets for added special effect are a great bonus and a delight to readers. The text is highly recommended to both students and readers who have a special interest in the subject.

Greek Review

Melville has produced a fluent and readable version which conveys a sense both of Ovids wit and of his elegance.

Classical Review

Melville has chosen blank verse, pleasantly varied by rhymed couplets to round off each sequence. His narrative is taut, his vocabulary vivid and flexible, his speeches pungent or powerful, and his command of wit a delight.

Classical World

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OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

OVID

Translated by
A. D. MELVILLE
With an Introduction and Notes by
E. J. KENNEY

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Translation, Translators Note, Glossary, and Index of names
A. D. Melville 1986

Introduction, Historical Sketch, and Explanatory Notes
E. J. Kenney 1986

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

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First published 1986 by Oxford University Press
First issued as a Worlds Classics paperback 1987
Reissued as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 1998

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Ovid, 4317 or 18 B.C.
Metamorphoses.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
I. Title.
PA6522.M2M45 1986 873.01 8515479

ISBN 019283472X

UXORI NATISQUE CARISSIMIS

Dr S. E. Hinds has kindly read the Introduction and the Explanatory Notes in draft, and I am indebted to him for many helpful criticisms and acute suggestions, the majority of which I have gratefully adopted.

E.J.K.

OVID (Publius Ovidius Naso) was born on 20 March 43 BC at Sulmo (now Sulmona) in the Abruzzi. The year of his birth was long remembered as that in which both consuls fell fighting Antony at Mutina, leaving Octavian (the future Augustus) in a position of strength which he exploited to become Triumvir and eventually sole ruler of the Roman world. In view of Ovids fate at his hands it is not surprising that in the poem which is our chief source for his life (Tristia iv. 10) he lays some stress on these circumstancesmore especially as there was a contemporary report that the deaths of both consuls had in fact been compassed by Octavian (Tacitus, Annals i. 10. 2, Suetonius, Augustus 11). By the time that Ovid came to manhood the combined forces of Antony and Cleopatra had been routed at Actium (31 BC) and the Roman Republic had been transformed into an (ostensibly) benevolent despotism.

Ovids family was prosperous, and he was sent to Rome to study under the leading teachers of the day. For Roman boys education then and for centuries to come was verbal, literary and rhetorical, its principal aim the production of fluent and convincing extempore speakers. The reminiscences of the elder Seneca (Controversies ii. 2. 812, ix. 5. 17) illustrate vividly the effects of this kind of training on Ovid, in whom it encouraged and developed an obviously innate delight in words, their metrical arrangement and artistic manipulation. Possibly the encouragement went too far: Quintilian thought that he would have been a better poet if he had controlled his genius rather than letting it control him (Institutio Oratoria x