Metamorphoses

Ovid's masterpiece includes fifteen "books" or chapters beginning with the primordial chaos and ending with the deification of Julius Caesar. It tells the stories of Greek, Roman and Near Eastern myth and legend and was the source of many later stories. Shakespeare, for example, used the story of  Pyramus and Thisbe as the basis for Romeo and Juliet. It is also the play-within-the-play enacted (in burlesque fashion) by Bottom and company at the end of  A Midsummer Night's Dream.

It seems to me that Ovid claims to be explaining the origins of certain things found in nature but he's doing this in a tongue-in-cheek manner. The real theme of the work is that change is the only constant. After the first several tales about the creation of the world, the stories are linked by association and contrast rather than in any chronological order. So, I plan to look at several of my favorite stories in no logical order. I also find some of the artwork that has been influenced by the stories fascinating so I'd like to look at those along with the stories.

I'll be starting with "The Story of Pyramus and Thisbe" at the beginning of Book Four. If you Google  those names, you can see images of several pieces of artwork depicting that story. My favorite is a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist John William Waterhouse titled Thisbe. Here is a link to it:

http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/waterhou/p-waterh23.htm