Ovid's Metamorphoses: classic or dud?

classic for sure (use of the word "classic" in this context obv. classic itself), though search also the Tristia...of all the people to exile. Really.

Can't help you, as it' s some years since I read it and I don't have my copy to hand, but very definitely classic. Good luck.

Metamorphoses enabled me to thoroughly irritate my traveling companion during the four days we spent in Rome: "Oh look, there's Actaeon, he saw Diana naked and she made him grow horns and stuff and he was torn to shreds by his very own dogs! Isn't that just awful?" Metamorphoses = FUN.

the ultimate classic, a hundred times more enjoyable than any of the other greco-roman things I read in college. The whole forms turning into other forms angle was big in everything I worked on in college. Of course now I can't remember what I was on about.

Classic, I love it. I read the Allen Mandelbaum translation; anyone have any opinions on the million different variations floating around?

(also intend to start Ted Hughes' Tales From Ovid sometime this summer)

totally classic! for the reason cited by kirsten: arms you with lots of cool stories.

I think it's classic too -- I love knowing random myths. Although, as with most things, it stops being quite so fun when you actually have to *study* it (and memorise big chunks in Latin).

I have the Penguin Mary Innes version, which is quite good. My Latin teacher has the amusing habit of talking about the authors of all the books we use as if he knows them personally, and referring to them rather camply as Mr. or Mrs. Anyway, he's full of praise for Mrs. Innes.
I enjoy Arthur Golding's version: http://www.sourcetext.com/sourcebook/Ovid/

A random sample from Book XI:
Sir Slumber overpassed the rest, and of the brothers all
To do Dame Iris' message he did only Morphye call.
Which done he waxing luskish, straight laid down his drowsy head
And softly shrunk his lazy limbs within his sluggish bed.
Away flew Morphye through the air: no flick'ring made his wings,
And came anon to Trachis. There his feathers off he flings,
And in the shape of Ceyx stands before Alcyone's bed,
Pale, wan, stark naked, and like a man that was but lately dead.

How good is the word 'luskish'?

It's possibly my new favourite word.

Was it Golding who did the 'amonge the darke Cimmerians is an hollow mountain founde?' translation? Because that one r0xx0rz.

I like the Metamorphoses, although Catullus is in my opinion a better poet (& in the great canon of whiny Roman women, Alcyone manages to be even more irritating than Ariadne, which is quite a feat. Dido still wins, though). Ovid's a bit too snarky and convinced of his own superiority for my tastes, but the stories are great and it's his versions which pretty much created the modern idea of greco-roman mythology. His Pyramus and Thisbe is just absurd, the imagery straight out of a bad horror movie.

The Ars Amatoria and Defensa Amoris are fantastic read, too - the Amores are okay, but not half as funny.

XI 255-748 is Alcyone and Ceyx, isn't it? I should really be able to think up insighful comments about them two from last year, but all I can remember is how fucking annoying the herdsman bit was to learn. Stupid rabid wolves coming out of the marsh and killing cattle and blue-whatchamacallit Psamanthe. The role of the gods is pretty interesting, there, actually. You get the sense that Juno only bothers to call up Somnus because she's so fed up with Alcyone coming to her altars all the time, and then you've got vengeful Psamamthe and the sin of brother-murder, and Thetis as only a nymph and thus bestable by a human, and the limitations of Aeolus' powers meaning that he can't save Ceyx - or indeed tell his daughter her husband's dead - but can only manage the kingfisher-transfomation at the end. Lucifer can't manage anything, either, to save his son: it's a bit 'however godly your parents are, you won't evade tragedy'.

Peter Gabriel to thread!

did anyone see metamorphoses on broadway?

fucking dud when you have a b/f with a masters in latin and you have to pack all his million fucking volumes of ovid et fucking al.

Thanks cis, I'll definitely try and write something about Thetis being 'bestable by a human' (bestable = even better than luskish). I got your tape this morning, thank you -- that's put me in a good mood, although I'm about to attempt learning the Storm section so that'll probably fade soon. I'll make you a tape in return as soon as all this exams nonsense is over.

Maria: Does metamorphoses on broadway really exist? I can't imagine anything more fantastic.

Classic. (Though it's been a while since I looked at it in any academic context.) I don't like the Mary Innes translation - she beats around the bush too much (as it were) when it comes to the sex and violence. The recentish Rolfe Humphries translation seems ok. And Hughes' Tales From Ovid is fantastic.

The Procne/Philomena story is my favourite - powerful/horrible/great.