Publisher Description

This edited edition of Stanley Lombardo's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses includes an Introduction by W. R. Johnson.
"Stanley Lombardo successfully matches Ovid's human drama, imaginative brio, and irresistible momentum; and Ralph Johnson's superb Introduction to Ovid's 'narratological paradise' is a bonus to this new and vigorous translation that should not be missed." -Elaine Fantham, Giger Professor of Latin, Emerita, Princeton University

Author Biography

Stanley Lombardo is Professor of Classics, University of Kansas.W. R. Johnson is Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, Emeritus, University of Chicago.

Long Description

The Essential Metamorphoses , Stanley Lombardo's abridgment of his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, preserves the epic frame of the poem as a whole while offering the best-known tales in a rendering remarkable for its clarity, wit, and vigor. While making no pretense of offering an experience comparable to that of reading the whole of Ovid's self-styled history from the world's first origins down to my own time, this practical and judicious selection of myths at the heart of Roman mythology and literature yet manages to relate many of the most fascinating episodes in that world-historical march toward the Age of Augustus--and is accompanied by an Introduction that deftly sets them in their cosmological, theological, and Augustan contexts.

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