Metamorphoses

Metamorphoses by Ovid, translated by Rolfe Humphries, 392 pages

Ovid's Metamorphoses is a source for many of the most enduring tales and memorable characters in literature - Phaethon, Adonis, Narcissus, Orpheus, Icarus, Midas, Arachne, Pygmalion, Atalanta, and many others besides.  Even when the stories are familiar due to repetition, the manner in which they are artfully interwoven is delightful.  Some of the tales are surprisingly brief, others deliberately drawn out.  Ovid peppers his tales with humor, as when Perseus slays the wedding guests

     ...and Dorylas,

     who was very rich, and the end of all his fortune

     Was a spear jabbed through the groin...

Apollo, Venus, Bacchus, and Cupid - the gods of rapture - preside over Ovid's living tapestry of tales of transformation, but some of the most memorable passages concern more direct personifications - Famine, Sleep, Rumor.  In the closing chapters he brings the story up to his own day, and ends with a fully justified boast,

     Now I have done my work.  It will endure,

     I trust, beyond Jove's anger, fire and sword,

     Beyond Time's hunger.  The day will come, I know,

     So let it come, that day which has no power

     Save over my body, to end my span of life

     Whatever it may be.  Still, part of me,

     The better part, immortal, will be borne

     Above the stars; my name will be remembered

     Wherever Roman power rules conquered lands,

     I shall be read, and through all centuries,

     If prophecies of bards are ever truthful,

     I shall be living, always.