Audiobooks by Publius Ovidius Naso

Metamorphoses

"Ovid's Metamorphoses is an epic poem written in Latin, composed of fifteen books, which explores the theme of transformation and change. The narrative follows a chronological order, beginning with the world's creation and ending with the reign of Julius Caesar. Ovid retells traditional Greek and Roman myths, focusing on the transformations of gods, heroes, and mortals as they undergo physical, emotional, and psychological changes that reflect the complexities of the human experience. Some of the most famous stories in the Metamorphoses include the tales of Apollo and Daphne, Pyramus and Thisbe, Narcissus and Echo, and the fall of Icarus. While modern scholars consider this epic poem to be Ovid's magnum opus, the work was not well received by its contemporaries; the Roman emperor Augustus went so far as to exile Ovid and ban his books from Rome's libraries. Today, this work is considered one of the most influential works in Western culture and has inspired countless authors like Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Dante."

Publius Ovidius Naso (Author), Peter Tucker (Narrator)

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Metamorphoses

"The Metamorphoses of Ovid is probably one of the best known, certainly one of the most influential works of the Ancient world. It consists of a narrative poem in fifteen books that describes the creation and history of the world through mythological tales, starting with a cosmogony and finishing with the deification of Julius Caesar. Published around 8 AD, the Metamorphoses are a source, sometimes the only source, for many of the most famous ancient myths, such as the stories of Daedalus and Icarus, Arachne or Narcisus. Ovid works his way through his subject matter often in an apparently arbitrary fashion; however, the connection between all the seemingly unconnected stories is that all of them talk about transformation. Change as the only permanent aspect of nature is the certainty that underlies the work of Ovid, who jumps from one transformation tale to another, sometimes retelling what had come to be seen as central events in the world of Greek myths and sometimes straying in odd directions. The poem is often called a mock-epic. It is written in dactylic hexameter, the form of the great heroic and nationalistic epic poems, both those of the ancient tradition (the Iliad and Odyssey) and of Ovid's own day (the Aeneid). It begins with the ritual "invocation of the muse," and makes use of traditional epithets and circumlocutions. But instead of following and extolling the deeds of a human hero, it leaps from story to story sometimes in very cunning ways, and, because of the clever ways in which it connects the stories, the Metamorphoses were once called the "Thousand and One Nights of the Ancient World". (Summary adapted from Wikipedia by Leni)"

Publius Ovidius Naso (Author), LibriVox Volunteers (Narrator)

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Heroides

"The Heroides, also known as the Heroines, the Letters of the Heroines or simply as Epistles are a very famous collection of poems by Ovid, not only for their interesting subject – letters by famous mythological characters addressed to their beloved ones – but also because it’s considered by some the first example of the Epistle as a literary genre – a statement made by Ovid himself in his Ars Amatoria. The book as we have it nowadays consists of 21 letters, divided in two parts. The first is composed of fifteen letters presented as if written by a female mythological character to her lover; the second part, also known as Double Heroides, brings three pairs of letters, being the first in each pair supposedly written by a hero, and the second one, the heroine’s response to the first letter. Along the Metamorphoses and the Ars Amatoria, the Heroides were one of the most influential works of Ovid, not only in the Antiquity, but also throughout the Middle Ages and up to Modern times. (Summary by Leni)"

Publius Ovidius Naso (Author), Unknown (Narrator)

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