Customer Reviews

Metamorphoses (Oxford World's Classics)

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This is perhaps the worst translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses I've ever read!

Melville renders it into Verse, but all the sentences are jumbled and don't make sense, as well, he adds a weird type of archaic-ness throughout. It doen't make for easy reading or enjoyable reading either.
I'd rather read Arthus Golding's translation to be quite honest!

I think the best version on the market in Verse is Allen Mandelbaum's, and the best Prose translation being the incredible version by Mary Innes

I had already had a trying day and was looking forward to sitting and reading Ovid on my Kindle. I took quite a bit of time to decide that this Melville translation was the one I wanted. So it came as an unpleasant surprise that this edition is not properly formatted for the Kindle. No matter how you adjust the font size, you will not be able to get the line breaks to occur as Melville intended them to. If you use larger type, it simply looks like a prose translation. In a smaller font, the line breaks are generally in the wrong place. In short, don't waste your seven bucks as I have, if proper poetic form -- rhythm -- matters to you.

Through no fault of Ovid or Melville this Kindle book is not much use. And, by the way, as others have noted in several places, Amazon needs to grasp that a review of a translated work has to be listed so that it is translation specific, rather than the chaotic hodgepodge that currently exists.

This is an excellent translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses.There is also a Glossary and Index of Names which is very useful.

This book was a pure joy to read. While I didn't pick up on all the uproarious humor it's said to contain, each of the stories was very enjoyable.

Ovid made a bold stab at the end of this book when he declares "wherever Rome's power extends over the conquered world, I shall have mention on men's lips, and, if the prophecies of bards have any truth, through all the ages shall I live in fame." I couldn't help but laugh at the audacity. But from an objective standpoint, he was entirely right. And after reading his book, I loved his writing so much that I agree that he should have that "undying name." I'm glad he knew something of his greatness before he died (even though he was exiled).

I suppose it's hard for me to give a review of an ancient text. What am I supposed to criticize? He uses too many Greek names I can't pronounce that sometimes differ in one letter or none? He sucks up to Augustus quite obviously, though perhaps in a sarcastic way? All fair enough for the times. Ovid's writing, of course, is poetic. He was a poet. His characters are never dull - even the ones that would go down in mythology as some of the least deserving of sympathy he turns into humans we can relate to. Scylla (not the one turned into the monster) has a passionate monologue revealing her struggle over helping her love, Minos, or saving her father's kingdom. Eventually she cuts her father's purple lock of hair, thus destroying his kingdom and ending his life. How could someone sympathize with that? But Ovid gives her a voice that shows her inner conflict, and the small, sometimes seemingly logical, steps people take to bad decisions. And he does this for many other characters.

He doesn't always portray the gods in a sympathetic light. He knew they could be jerks, and he went through no pains to hide this view. But sometimes he sounds pious enough so that you can understand the reverence with which the Greeks and Romans looked upon their gods. He covers pretty much all extremes of religious devotion - his stories show the most impious and pious, describe rituals, etc. Those, along with other phrases or sentences when you read carefully, reveal so much about the times and the culture, even beyond the religious field.

Considering this is a book of transformations, it provides stories to explain how many things came to be - the Sahara desert, different seasons, amber, the hyacinth, the woodpecker, etc. I always found that interesting about myths. If myths were often used as a teaching tool, explaining the existence of something would be one key function. And that element is always fun to read about.


Anyway, just read the book. It's worth it. He's one of the authoritative authors for occidental myths. No modern source could beat the value of an ancient author. If you don't have the patience to read the whole thing - I'll admit, it seemed to take forever to finish, but I was determined - get a book with an index, like this version. This has an excellent index and glossary, and the table of contents breaks the original books into the stories contained within them. It's formatted in a great way for reference later. It also has a lined, not prose, format, which preserves some of the authenticity and helps break up parts that would have turned into dense paragraphs in a prose style. I should confess, though, that this was not the translation I used for my cover-to-cover reading: my Latin teacher says that Mandelbaum's is the best, but I was stuck with a Barnes & Noble classics edition. Since then I've used this version as reference and to refresh my memory, but I can't completely comment on accuracy or readability.

I think this book should be a basic part of education, certainly if you have any interest in myths or the classics.