Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare were heavily inspired by Ovid.

His Romeo and Juliet is influenced by the story of Pyramus and Thisbe (Metamorphoses Book IV); and, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a band of amateur actors performs a play about Pyramus and Thisbe. Shakespeare’s early erotic poem Venus and Adonis expands on the myth in Book X of the Metamorphoses. In Titus Andronicus, the story of Lavinia’s rape is drawn from Tereus’ rape of Philomela, and the text of the Metamorphoses is used within the play to enable Titus to interpret his daughter’s story.

The Metamorphoses is a long poem divided into 15 books. The poem recites a history of Greco-Roman mythology, from the creation of the universe to the deification of Julius Caesar, and mostly moves in chronological order. However, the poem is not simply a catalogue of familiar myths and legends. Although the poem touches almost all of Greek mythology’s high points (Perseus, Theseus, Hercules, Jason, Achilles, and all the rest appear at some point), the Metamorphoses is not interested in telling the full story for all of its characters. The poem assumes that its readers have some background knowledge of these stories anyway, and instead weaves a long mythological history using the concepts of metamorphosis and change as a unifying theme. It’s an incredibly ambitious idea, but Ovid pulls it off beautifully. Ovid has a real gift for getting inside the heads of these mythological characters and treating them as real people with genuine emotions and depth. Those skills are on full display here. This book may not be the best introduction to Greek mythology, as it does assume a certain level of familiarity and skips over some things. But the Metamorphoses is on par with Homer’s epics as the most impressive retelling of Greek mythology I’ve ever read.

The gods are mischievous throughout. At times their actions seemed completely unprovoked, uncalled for, at other times, they were cruelly fair. Over the 250 myths we see gods and men fight, gods and gods fight, men v. man, heroes against creatures and gods, we see almost everything pitted against one another. And despite the humour, there are poignant moments of feeling, beauty and emotion.