Metamorphoses III

Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC-AD 17) was a Roman poet, born at Sulmo (Sulmona) in central Italy. Born into a wealthy Roman family and seemingly destined for a career in politics, he held some minor official posts before leaving public service to write, becoming one of the most distinguished poet of his time. His works include Amores, a collection of short love poems; Heroides, verse-letters written by mythological heroines to their lovers; Ars Amatoria, a satirical handbook on love; and Metamorphoses, his epic work on change.John Godwin is Head of Classics, Shrewsbury School. His works include Lucretius (Bloomsbury, Ancients in Action series), Reading Catullus, and large-scale editions of the poetry of Catullus and Lucretius.

• PrefaceIntroduction: - Why read this text?- Ovid and his Times- Epic Poetry and the Metamorphoses- Book 3- Bacchus- Pentheus- Acoetes - The Metre of the Poem- Further ReadingTextCommentaryVocabulary

an extremely useful and stimulating tool for future high school students and indeed for anyone in need of a guide when approaching this thrilling section of the Metamorphoses in the original ... Godwin has successfully accomplished the very difficult task of introducing students and new readers to a text which, in all its self-reflexivity, is always much more complex than it appears at first glance.