Metamorphoses
Metamorphoseon libri
A classic of antiquity. Written AD 8*, in Classical Latin
* An approximate date: when this work was composed or first set down isn’t known exactly.
The Metamorphoses is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his magnum opus. The poem chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar in a mythico-historical framework comprising over 250 myths, 15 books, and 11,995 lines.
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Its heirs
Later works that draw on Metamorphoses.
The Divine ComedyGreat book
Dante Alighieri, AD 1320*
After Virgil, Ovid is the poet Dante draws on most. The Metamorphoses lends the Comedy its myths and its changes of shape: thieves who turn into serpents in Hell, and Dante himself, transformed like Glaucus, as he rises into Paradise.
Source: Wikipedia, Divine Comedy
“Ovid is given less explicit praise in the poem, but besides Virgil, Dante uses Ovid as a source more than any other poet, mostly through metaphors and fantastical episodes based on those in the Metamorphoses.” Read it there
The Canterbury TalesGreat book
Geoffrey Chaucer, AD 1387
The Manciple's Tale is Ovid's story of Phoebus and the crow, from Book 2 of the Metamorphoses: the white bird that tells Apollo of his wife's infidelity and is turned black for it.
Source: Wikipedia, Metamorphoses
