Ovid's Metamorphoses

Abstract

The amount of Ovid's surviving poetry is almost exactly equal to the sum total of poetry which has come down to us from Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, and Propertius. Ovid wrote because he was a compulsive writer, ‘a poet utterly in love with poetry’ as Gilbert Murray aptly put it. He was the only classical poet to leave an autobiography, and in it he records that as a boy ‘I tried to write words freed from rhythm, yet all unbidden song would come upon befitting numbers and whatever I tried to write was verse.’ The quantity of Ovid's poetry, of course, cannot be made an excuse for lack of quality, but no indulgence need be begged and no allowances made for his masterpiece, the Metamorphoses. When the blow of exile fell on Ovid in a.d. 8 the Metamorphoses was substantially complete, much more so than the Aeneid had been when Virgil died in 19 b.c.