Ovid: Metamorphoses, Book VIII

This simple, utilitarian edition offers sixth-form and undergraduate students an introduction to the enchanted, sometimes violent, often sad, often funny world of the "Metamorphoses". Book III is ideal in this respect, for it possesses a homogeneity unusual among the fifteen books of the poem and follows the fortunes of the royal house of Thebes in episodes which are related at some length, allowing the reader to savour the individual quality of each story and fix its 'dramatis personae' in mind and memory. The brief introduction places the book in its ancient context. Notes serve primarily to aid comprehension of the Latin but also give aesthetic and antiquarian information. A vocabulary is included.