Arthur Golding’s 1567 translation of the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses is the third English translation of the Met. that I have read, and it is by far my favorite. For context, the Met. is a 15-book poem about mythology, narrating the history of transformation myths from the creation of the universe to the deification of Julius Caesar and prophecies of greatness for Augustus. Many people like to call the Met. an “epic,” and in many ways it is. However, what makes me classify the Met. as a “quasi-epic” of sorts is for a few reasons. For starters, it is not centered around an epic hero (unlike epics such as the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Paradise Lost, or The Divine Comedy). Secondly, it is an evolution of the epic genre into a greater category which the Met. alone resides in. Ovid was greatly inspired by the literary philosophy of the Hellenistic Greek poet Callimachus, who believed that epics were too bloated and long, and short poems are better. Callimachus would write shorter mini-epics called “epyllions” which do not really survive to this day, despite what the Loeb Classical Library tries selling (really, don’t buy the Loebs with the Aetia or Hecale for either of those poems, buy them for the other poems which actually somewhat survive). Ovid was greatly inspired by this idea (in fact, most of his poetry is lyric love poems), and that philosophy plays into the Met. The poem is as long as an epic should be, but its scale is even greater. Even still, Ovid’s frequently irreverent, humorous tone, as well as the fact each book of the Met. contains a plethora of mini stories makes it thoroughly un-epic. I suppose the best way to classify Ovid’s Metamorphoses is to highlight its strengths: it is an evolutionary, experimental, humorous, moving, larger-than-life masterpiece of a poem, that would challenge the greatest authors’ books in all of human history for being the greatest book ever written. Golding’s translation (for a third read-through) makes it even better than it has ever been before.

     Arthur Golding was an Englishman in the 16th century. His translation of the Met., which was originally written in unrhymed, dactylic hexameter, transforms the work into a poem in iambic heptameter with rhyming couplets. That’s right, Golding doesn’t just keep an overall pretty accurate translation in a completely different meter–he rhymes it too. What results is the most beautiful and powerful “epic” poem in English rendering that I have ever read. Honestly, do not let the fact it was written so many centuries ago dissuade you; this should be the first translation you read, since it is by far the most beautiful and well-written. The Penguin classics edition also contains a list of vocab at the back, as well as footnotes offering information about Golding’s translation, which helps make the work more accessible. 

     On this read through, I was really struck not just by the beautiful language, but also at the sheer genius of Ovid’s work. Think about it: the poem’s “main theme” which Ovid says from the beginning he will be writing about is transformation and change. The stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses are therefore all about change, but also, all the stories in the Met. change into each other. What I mean is that there is a constant narrative thread; if one character is turned into a tree, the next story will be about his family mourning and turning into fountains; afterwards, the next story might be about a god who sees this happen, and then gets into mischief in the same area. That way the stories about change constantly are changing into new storylines. Ovid’s Metamorphoses itself is a change from every type of long, narrative poem that has been written before. The book is a poem about change, whose narrative changes, in a book that itself is a major stylistic change. 

     Furthermore, all of Ovid’s characters are so well written that I can see how this book (and actually, this very same translation) inspired all of Shakespeare’s works. Now that I think about it, the whole book has a very Shakespearean feeling of both sublimity and powerful language intermixed with humor, love, and sympathizable human folly. Historically, the Met. has had an interesting legacy of constant praise and being well received. It is also interesting to note how the book was definitely sponsored by Augustus to be in many ways propaganda for his rule (just like Virgil’s Aeneid). However, also like Virgil’s Aeneid, there are certain areas where some people think Ovid is making fun of the emperor, such as the story of Arachne (a great artist is squashed by an authority figure for depicting the truth in an artistically beautiful way), or certain times where the book depicts Apollo (who Augustus associated himself with) in a negative light. It is also interesting to think about this when you consider that Ovid was exiled from Rome by Augustus, and lived out the rest of his life on a beach in modern day Romania. 

     Overall, Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a book that has finally been mostly done justice by an extremely skilled translator in Golding, a book that I certainly can not stop raving about and recommending, and one that I hope you will read as well (or if you have already, tell me what you thought!).