Ovid's Metamorphosesis a weaving-together of classical myths, extending in time from the creation of the world to the death of Julius Caesar. This volume provides the Latin text of the first five books of the poem and the most detailed commentary available in English of these books.

The modern, unacademic idiom of A.D. Melville's translation opens the way to a fresh understanding of Ovid's unique and elusive vision of reality.

This landmark translation of Ovid was acclaimed by Ezra Pound as "the most beautiful book in the language (my opinion and I suspect it was Shakespeare's)." Ovid's deliciously witty and poignant epic starts with the creation of the world and brings together a series of ingeniously linked myths and legends in which men and women are transformed--often by love--into flowers, trees, stones, and stars. Golding's robustly vernacular version was the first major English translation and decisively influenced Shakespeare, Spense, and the character of English Renaissance writing. --Johns Hopkins.

The Latin text, with an Introduction and full commentary, of Book XIII of Ovid's Metamorphoses.