ovid's Metamorphosis in 60 seconds

Firstly, the narrator was fabulous.

Ovid retells Greek mythology from a Roman perspective while trying to string together myths into something like a chronological narrative. The stories on their own are all engaging, though Zeus/Jupiter/Jove comes across as a serial rapist without a lot more to his personality and Hera/Juno comes across as an accomplice to Zeus' rape spree in completely destroying the lives of the women who are raped without bothering to do anything about her husband/brother.

There are some funny bits for those who can laugh at rape jokes, like when Zeus changes the woman he is raping into a cow to hide her from Hera, and then when she asks where the cow came from he panics and said it mysteriously appeared and he has no idea where it came from. But then he'll do something like murder a shepherd to retrieve his cow/victim and it's hard to be Team Gods. Ovid reiterated the consensus with these tales that destiny is immutable and nobody can change their fortunes, which are predetermined by, well, the fortunes.

Ovid emphasizes the importance of Bacchus over the other gods, even Zeus. This is an interesting choice. Wine was an important element of the Roman colonial economy. His emphasis that people should venerate Bacchus or else suffer his wrath may have been a thinly veiled threat to participate in the colonial Roman economy or suffer the consequences of opting out.

Shoehorning the myths into the Metamorphosis, Ovid cuts out key parts of the background and assumes a base level of knowledge about the myths, so the book firstly requires the reader to be familiar with (or google) the characters as the book progresses. As the stories are told back to back in this way without much connection between them, the narrative becomes a bit thin and tedious to follow.

Many of the characters change form, usually from human to rock or tree and occasionally human to cow. Ovid tries to wrap all this together in the last chapter with... [spoiler alert] ⚠️ a call to become vegetarian. Seriously. The book ends with the idea that the soul is immortal, and can move from being to being, so don't eat meat. Also, the Greek gods are really all woman ... I mean Roman. Oh, also -- and this is important -- Caesar is a god who was so just and good that he told the other gods to let him die since the fates are predetermined... "but make me into a literal star in the sky... and I now rule Earth and you other gods get the rest of the universe... Oh, and my son must be emporer now, so we're now a hereditary dynasty. OK, I'm dead now." Signed, Ovid (now eternal because this book will make me famous forever.)

That is an honest and accurate summary of how Ovid chooses to wrap up the book, which lost a star from my review (not that it matters) because I felt like I had just finished a very long ad for vegetarianism and the divine power of the Roman state, couched in some fierce cultural appropriation.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!