Customer Reviews

The Student's Ovid: Selections From the Metamorphoses (Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture)

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While this book does do some things right, as the other reviewers have pointed out, it is severely crippled by lacking a dictionary anywhere in the book. This may not be a problem for graduate students or others with extensive experience with Latin, but for those with less background in the language (and hence smaller vocabularies), it is a great hassle, as one has to constantly flip through a dictionary to find words. (For those who think that this is beneficial, and that students need to learn how to use the dictionary, know that it's not. All it does is create frustration with students, who need all the encouragement they can get in Latin.) I didn't find the notes to be of any help either. They are in the back, which is common enough among books of this sort that I can't complain about it, but for the intermediate student who is mostly interested (at this stage) in the literal meaning of things, they don't provide much help.

Overall, I can't recommend this book for students at the middle level. It simply doesn't provide enough help. A book that does it right? Pharr's Vergil.

"The Student's Ovid" has several selections from Ovid's Metamorphoses --- and Musgrove, the editor of the book and writer of the helper notes for translating in the back, does a wonderful job of not truncating any important parts of the sections she includes. She begins where she feels each section begins -- usually as some fellow begins telling a story about lovers turned to trees or whatnot, or in a idyllic glade right before Zeus enters to take advantage of an unknowing female in the shape of a cloud or bull.

Musgrove includes the most important and interesting stories from "The Metamophoses": Deucalion and Pyrrha, Daphne and Apollo, Io, Europa, Cadmus, Echo and Narcissus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Perseus and Andromeda, Orpheus, Pygmalion, Midas, and many others.

This book is perfect for an intermediate college - level Latin course, both as a window into the rich culture of the time, and practice with translation!

Dr. Musgrove provides simultaneously an in-depth and easy to digest interpretation of the Metomorphoses. Ovid has never been seen in this light, and I expect won't be again for a long time.