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Metamorphoses
- Narrated by: David Horovitch
- Length: 17 hrs and 31 mins
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Publisher's summary
The Metamorphoses by Publius Ovidius Naso (43 B.C. - A.D. 17) has, over the centuries, been the most popular and influential work from our classical tradition. This extraordinary collection of some 250 Greek and Roman myths and folk tales has always been a popular favorite, and has decisively shaped western art and literature from the moment it was completed in A.D. 8.
The stories are particularly vivid when read by David Horovitch, in this new lively verse translation by Ian Johnston.
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From the rising of the morning sun to the summer flooding of the Nile River, the ancient Egyptians believed powerful gods and goddesses ruled over every aspect of their daily lives. This Egyptian mythology guide takes you on a trip through the sands of time to explore the world of pharaohs and sphinxes - ancient Egypt!
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meh
- By Amazon Customer on 01-30-21
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Greek Mythology
- A Captivating Guide to the Ancient Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, and Monsters
- By: Matt Clayton
- Narrated by: JD Kelly
- Length: 1 hr and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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This audiobook includes some of the standard views of Greek myth and history but also tantalizes your imagination with the possibilities that lie behind myth and legend. By the time you are finished with this book, you will have a good appreciation for the nature of Greek mythology and the gods, monsters, and heroes which populate it.
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Greek mythology
- By happyjo on 09-29-19
By: Matt Clayton
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Greek Mythology
- Captivating Stories of the Ancient Olympians and Titans
- By: Ross Tanner
- Narrated by: JD Kelly
- Length: 1 hr and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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This book contains a brief but unconventional look at the Titans and Olympian gods of Greek mythology. Brief, because a thorough treatment of these legendary super beings could take thousands of hours. Unconventional, because digging for truth is far more interesting than reciting old stories which have little relevance to us today. Attempting to reveal some semblance of truth brings the stories to life. It gives them relevance to our modern world. Here, we will look at many of the more fascinating stories.
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very good
- By Janet Crawford on 12-02-17
By: Ross Tanner
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Mythology
- By: Edith Hamilton
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Since its original publication by Little, Brown and Company, in 1942, Edith Hamilton's Mythology has sold millions of copies throughout the world and established itself as a perennial best-seller in its various available formats. Mythology succeeds like no other audiobook in bringing to life for the modern listener the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths and legends that are the keystone of Western culture - the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present.
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Good reading of classical myths
- By Kathi on 03-18-13
By: Edith Hamilton
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Egyptian Mythology
- Classic Stories of Egyptian Myths, Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, and Monsters, the Prince and the Sphinx, Greek Princess
- By: Roberts Parizi
- Narrated by: John Hopkinson
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Would you like to learn how Egyptian’s believe the world was created? Are you interested in learning about Egyptian gods and goddesses and the role they play in the universe? Egyptian mythology is made of stories and beliefs that come from ancient Egypt. It describes the actions of the gods and goddesses as a way to understand the world. The beliefs of these stories played an important role in ancient Egyptian religion. These myths can be frequently seen in Egyptian art and writing, especially in short stories and religious material.
By: Roberts Parizi
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Greek Mythology
- Classic Stories of the Greek Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, and Monsters (Classic Mythology, Book 1)
- By: Scott Lewis
- Narrated by: Madison Niederhauser
- Length: 3 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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This captivating audiobook will take you on a beautiful journey through the fascinating world of Greek mythology. From the beginning of the cosmos to the Odyssey, be ready to venture into an exciting world of love, loyalty, infidelity, vengeance, deception, and intrigue!
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A great way to gain insight to Ancient Greece
- By cosmitron on 07-27-18
By: Scott Lewis
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Uncovering Greek Mythology: A Beginner's Guide into the World of Greek Gods and Goddesses
- By: Lucas Russo
- Narrated by: Jared Zak
- Length: 3 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Get to know the Greek gods and goddesses, from the mighty Zeus, to the temperamental Poseidon, the beautiful Aphrodite, and every character from A to Z. Who wouldn’t want to hear about Zeus and his command of lightning, Hades and how he found his bride, the wisdom of Athena, and so many other stories that capture the imagination. These stories can do more than just entertain; they can also inspire and teach us lessons that were penned by the Greeks themselves.
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Wonderful book!!
- By Laura Preston on 12-07-22
By: Lucas Russo
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Egyptian Mythology
- Fascinating Myths and Legends of Gods, Goddesses, Heroes and Monster from the Ancient Egyptian Mythology
- By: Simon Lopez
- Narrated by: Neil Hamilton
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Do you know that Egyptians had over 2000 gods and goddesses? To understand how the ancient Egyptians saw the world around them, we begin our journey by exploring their beliefs of how the world and man came to be. Get this audiobook and discover the fascinating world of Egyptian Mythology today!
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Ancient Egypt Mythology
- By Cindy Lawrence on 04-26-21
By: Simon Lopez
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The Iliad
- By: Homer
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 17 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Most of the great Greek stories and epic tales are initiated over women, which is exactly what happens in the very beginning of The Iliad by Homer. The Trojan War has been waging for nearly a decade, and really erupted when Helen, the wife to Menelaos, was kidnapped and thus launched the "thousand ships" in pursuit of her. This is the reason that the Achaians and the Trojans have been fighting each other for so long. Achilles, who has become hero to the Greeks, is given the present of a slave girl for his excellence in battle.
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The Iliad
- By Barry on 10-08-17
By: Homer
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An undeniable masterpiece of Western Civilization, The Metamorphoses is a continuous narrative that covers all the Olympian legends, seamlessly moving from one story to another in a splendid panorama of savage beauty, charm, and wit. All of the gods and heroes familiar to us are represented. Such familiar legends as Hercules, Perseus and Medusa, Daedelus and Icarus, Diana and Actaeon, and many others, are breathtakingly recreated.
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Not that translation mentioned in Amazon reviews
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Plagued by flaw in audio-book format
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Ovid's sensuous and witty poetry brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation - often as a result of love or lust - where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of Ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy.
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A revelation
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Ovid’s Metamorphoses is an epic poem, but one that upturns almost every convention. There is no main hero, no central conflict, and no sustained objective. What it is about (power, defiance, art, love, abuse, grief, rape, war, beauty, and so on) is as changeable as the beings that inhabit its chapters. The sustained thread is power and how it transforms us, both those of us who have it and those of us who do not.
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Not Stephanie McCarter's translation
- By Kindle Customer on 08-06-24
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The Aeneid
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The masterpiece of Rome's greatest poet, Virgil's Aeneid has inspired generations of readers and holds a central place in Western literature. The epic tells the story of a group of refugees from the ruined city of Troy, whose attempts to reach a promised land in the West are continually frustrated by the hostile goddess Juno. Finally reaching Italy, their leader, Aeneas, is forced to fight a bitter war against the natives to establish the foundations from which Rome is destined to rise.
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Great story, but....
- By Tad Davis on 03-19-15
By: Virgil
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The Aeneid
- By: Virgil
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The publication of a new translation by Fagles is a literary event. His translations of both the Iliad and Odyssey have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and have become the standard translations of our era. Now, with this stunning modern verse translation, Fagles has reintroduced Virgil's Aeneid to a whole new generation, and completed the classical triptych at the heart of Western civilization.
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Good but the chapters aren't IN ORDER
- By Maggie on 10-18-17
By: Virgil
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The Metamorphoses
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Not that translation mentioned in Amazon reviews
- By IPEVOINC on 05-24-13
By: Ovid
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Metamorphoses
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Overall
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Performance
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Ovid's sensuous and witty poem brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation, often as a result of love or lust, in which men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best known myths and legends of ancient Greece and Rome.
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Plagued by flaw in audio-book format
- By Amazon Customer on 10-14-08
By: Ovid
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Metamorphoses
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Ovid's sensuous and witty poetry brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation - often as a result of love or lust - where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of Ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy.
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A revelation
- By Michael Cain on 05-24-20
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Ovid’s Metamorphoses is an epic poem, but one that upturns almost every convention. There is no main hero, no central conflict, and no sustained objective. What it is about (power, defiance, art, love, abuse, grief, rape, war, beauty, and so on) is as changeable as the beings that inhabit its chapters. The sustained thread is power and how it transforms us, both those of us who have it and those of us who do not.
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Not Stephanie McCarter's translation
- By Kindle Customer on 08-06-24
By: Ovid
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The Aeneid
- By: Virgil
- Narrated by: David Collins
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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The masterpiece of Rome's greatest poet, Virgil's Aeneid has inspired generations of readers and holds a central place in Western literature. The epic tells the story of a group of refugees from the ruined city of Troy, whose attempts to reach a promised land in the West are continually frustrated by the hostile goddess Juno. Finally reaching Italy, their leader, Aeneas, is forced to fight a bitter war against the natives to establish the foundations from which Rome is destined to rise.
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Great story, but....
- By Tad Davis on 03-19-15
By: Virgil
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Good but the chapters aren't IN ORDER
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Michel de Montaigne: The Complete Essays
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In 1572, Montaigne - nobleman, humanist, and thoroughly Renaissance man - retired to the seclusion of his estate in the Dordogne and started to write. From his pen poured a stream of "essays" - attempts to capture the observations that came to him on an idiosyncratic range of subjects, from ancient customs, cannibals, and books to thumbs, war-horses, and the wearing of clothes. He made the study of himself the starting point for investigations into how to live, and wrote with a startlingly modern candor about love, grief, friendship, sex, and death.
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The Art of Love
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- Narrated by: Tim Lundeen
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
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Humphries has rendered (Ovid's) love poetry with conspicuous success into English which is neither obtrusively colloquial nor awkwardly antique.
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The translation is suspect. Painful modernisms.
- By Mark Owens on 02-07-21
By: Ovid, and others
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The Love Poems
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The Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid) is best known for his epic poem Metamorphoses, a collection of myths and legends from Ancient Greece and Rome. His works continue to be widely read and admired, and he is regarded as one of the most significant poets of ancient Rome. Ovid’s love poems are both brilliant and evocative. In Amores, the romantic mysteriousness of elegiac love-poetry is exploded by his witty and ironic treatment of the form. Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris both lay down the rules for the game of love, which both sexes can play.
By: Ovid
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Histories
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In this, the first prose history in European civilization, Herodotus describes the growth of the Persian Empire with force, authority, and style. Perhaps most famously, the book tells the heroic tale of the Greeks' resistance to the vast invading force assembled by Xerxes, king of Persia. Here are not only the great battles - Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis - but also penetrating human insight and a powerful sense of epic destiny at work.
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Best of Audible's "The Histories" by Herodotus
- By Emily on 07-19-16
By: Herodotus
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On the Nature of Things
- By: Lucretius
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- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Lucretius was born in 99 BC, and On the Nature of Things is his only surviving work. His aim was to free the Roman world from its two great terrors - the gods and death. Lucretius argues that the gods are not actively involved in life, so need not be appeased; and that death is the end of everything human - body and soul - and therefore should not be feared. But On the Nature of Things is also a poem of striking imagery, intimate natural observation and touching pathos.
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fascinating
- By Edward Hower on 04-24-19
By: Lucretius
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The Argonautica
- Jason and the Golden Fleece
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The Argonautica, also known as Jason and the Golden Fleece or Jason and the Argonauts, is the only surviving epic poem from Hellenistic Greece. It is a masterpiece whose story was well known to the audiences of the time. Virgil and other later poets were greatly influenced by it. Its author, Apollonius, was a well-known third century BC scholar living in Alexandria during the great age of Ptolomaic scholarship, and his bold attempt at writing a Homeric epic about Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece faced a daunting audience of knowledgeable contemporaries.
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No Homer, translation a bit archaic
- By Jacob Quinn on 05-19-18
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The Aeneid
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- Abridged
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Profoundly poetic yet gloriously accessible, this is the best way to experience a work that has remained a centerpiece of Western civilization for 2,000 years. Fitzgerald's rendering speaks directly to the modern listener, inviting us to share the excitement, adventure, and human tears as Aeneas, the warrior hero, escapes from the burning city of Troy, embarks on a long and perilous journey, and eventually, triumphantly establishes a new nation: Rome.
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Not complete
- By Martin E Sargent on 04-16-16
By: Virgil, and others
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On the Nature of Things
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- Unabridged
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This famous work by Lucretius is a masterpiece of didactic poetry, and it still stands today as the finest exposition of Epicurean philosophy ever written. The poem was produced in the middle of first century B.C., a period that was to witness a flowering of Latin literature unequaled for beauty and intellectual power in subsequent ages. The Latin title, De Rerum Natura, translates literally to On the Nature of Things and is meant to impress the reader with the breadth and depth of Epicurean philosophy.
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I didn't like the structure of the audiobook
- By Erez on 04-24-12
By: Lucretius
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The Aeneid
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After a century of civil strife in Rome and Italy, the poet Virgil wrote The Aeneid to honor the emperor Augustus by praising Aeneas, Augustus's legendary ancestor. As a patriotic epic imitating Homer, The Aeneid also set out to provide Rome with a literature equal to that of Greece.
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A Classic
- By T. McG. on 11-13-11
By: Virgil, and others
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Sophocles’ Greek Tragedies: A BBC Radio Drama Collection
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- Original Recording
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One of the three great tragic playwrights of ancient Greece, Sophocles wrote over 120 plays during his 60-year career, though only seven survive today. The most famous of these are the Theban Plays, all three of which are included in this collection alongside adaptations of Electra and Philoctetes, brought to life by celebrated writers, poets, and playwrights.
By: Sophocles
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The Aeneid
- By: Virgil
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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The Aeneid represents one of the greatest cultural and artistic achievements of Western Civilization. Within the brooding and melancholy atmosphere of Virgil's pious masterpiece lies the mythic story of Aeneas and his flight from burning Troy, taking with him across the Mediterranean the survivors of the Greek onslaught. Aeneas, after many travails and adventures, including a love affair with Dido Queen of Carthage and a visit to the underworld to see his father, ends up in Italy.
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An epic in every sense of the word
- By James on 01-06-05
By: Virgil
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The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- By: Edward Gibbon
- Narrated by: Alastair Cameron
- Length: 108 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (an English historian) is a six-volume collection that examines the fate of one of the most renowned civilizations in history, the Roman Empire. In this masterpiece, Gibbon covers the time periods from the second century A.D. to the 15th century, and takes a look at the history of early Christianity along with the Roman State church, the history of Europe and the Middle East along with the rise of Islam, and the events that lead to the collapse of the Roman Empire among many other historical events.
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Absolutely Loved It!
- By Emily Spencer on 10-01-21
By: Edward Gibbon
What listeners say about Metamorphoses
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Tad Davis
- 10-31-12
Fantastic!
I put off reading Ovid for far too long; this outstanding audio version from Naxos finally pulled me in. Metamorphoses is a wide-ranging account of Greek mythology, focusing on changes. Sometimes the changes are simple changes in fortune, "from good fortune to bad," as Aristotle put it, but often they are changes in physical form: a rape victim is transformed into a bird, a self-obsessed youth is transformed into a flower. Jason and Medea are here; so are Achilles, Ulysses, Aeneas, and many of the Roman gods. The versions of myths given here underlie many of the references in Shakespeare and Dante. Listening to this audiobook is like finally getting past the footnotes to a rich primary source.
It doesn't hurt that David Horovitz's voice is wonderful - almost a physical pleasure to listen to. The translation is by Ian Johnston, who has provided, both online and through Naxos, wonderful versions of Homer.
Ovid's poem is famous for the subtle transitions from one story to the next. They are, at times, almost imperceptible; you start out listening to a story about Orpheus and Eurydice and suddenly realize Orpheus is now telling a story about Venus and Adonis. (And maybe within that story, Venus in turn tells a story about Atalanta.) It sounds more confusing than it is, but you do have to pay careful attention. I recommend keeping a table of contents handy. The PDF that comes with the audiobook provides a useful track listing, and there are other outlines of the structure available on the Internet.
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58 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 08-17-15
Excellent, Engrossing Narration of Classic Mythology
Before listening, print a list mapping Greek gods to their Roman equivalents to avoid confusion.
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5 people found this helpful
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- had to read it for school
- 12-14-14
For those whom love myths
If you could sum up Metamorphoses in three words, what would they be?
Important, because this is one of the only remaining primary sources of Greco-Roman mythology
Consistent, because it has a constant theme of change through out the work
Propaganda, because the last book is so obviously that. The Roman Empire was changing from a republic to a Pricipate and Augusts used propaganda to cement his newly created position.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Metamorphoses?
Ariadne making Athena look at the crimes the male gods of mount Olympus had committed against innocent mortal women
Have you listened to any of David Horovitch’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No, but he did a wonderful job
Any additional comments?
This will be a confusing listen for anyone who is not familiar with the many names of the characters (i.e. Apollo, Phoebus), their backgrounds (i.e. The Delian God = born on the island of Delos = Apollo) and their family tree (i.e. Son of Latona, brother of Diana)
I suggest it to people who are willing to use some sort of reference or those who are already familiar with these stories
This is a very easy to understand translation otherwise and I would highly recommend to those who love mythology
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4 people found this helpful
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- John
- 10-17-16
The Perfect Translation for Audio
Like most 50-something professional types who went to college before computers, I first encountered Ovid’s masterpiece in a paperback edition of Rolfe Humphries’ free verse translation (1955). Admittedly, I never finished it (even without the Internet, I had a short attention span) but much later I tackled Arthur Golding’s much earlier (1567) metrical, rhymed rendition. Golding’s use of a 14 beat / 7 stress line degenerates too easily into the singsong of ballad meter but was saved (for me) by the delightful invention of his language and the continuity of rhyme.
My callow youth aside, I suspect the lack of rhyme and regular meter to be at the heart of my lack of interest in Humphries’ translation. When reading I need the handholds of form, especially with extended poetic ventures.
Listening, however, is a completely different experience. Intricate poetic invention, the completely unexpected (but absolutely perfect) word or phrase, the inverted syntax that adds grandeur or emphasis, is easier to take in with the eye. What the ear needs is a coherent story that skims along. Ian Johnston’s translation does just that; it is straightforward and unadorned. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying it’s simple-minded. After all, this is Ovid’s Metamorphoses. There is enough invention here even without conscious poetic craft to dazzle the imagination.
One example will suffice. As in every printed version I’m familiar with, this epic of transformations is itself one continuous transformation. You’re listening to one story and then realize with a start that you’re in the middle of the next one. By the slightest of slight-of-hand, Ovid has used one character or location or detail in the first tale to segue into the next. Like the stones rising into men and women or Arachne’s shrinking into a spider, the poem is in a constant state of flux. It is a technique that, irony of ironies, gives the work its permanence and coherence.
David Horovitch’s performance is simply superb. His pacing is as easy on the ear as Johnston’s translation. His voice is a treat to listen to. And he understands the shape of sentences and ideas, presenting them with just the right edge of humor, horror or wonder.
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45 people found this helpful
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- Emilee Hatch
- 05-10-18
excellent reading
I assume if you are reading this, you have already read it or have to for a class so for me the rating was about the narrator. I thought it was a great performance. I read it in a college course and enjoyed it but we only read pieces from it. it was fun to listen to it all the way through
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- 4thace
- 01-23-21
Greek and Roman mortals beset by the gods
In this classic there is no real plot, only a series of stories set in various places and at various times which all depict the transformation of people into other things. They get changed into birds, trees, bodies of water, monsters, stars, people of the opposite sex or hermaphrodites. The reason for the transformation may be a curse from a god or a sorceror, or a god rescuing someone from a desperate situation, a punishment for some misdeed, the result of a prophecy, honoring some noble deed, excessive grief or other emotion, or simply accidental bad luck. Many are nymphs or human girls lusted after by male gods, only rarely the result of a woman's desire. A few of the characters who aren't gods appear in more than one tale such as Hercules, not as the person being transformed, many of them only in a single story because the transformation they suffer is final. I think most of the stories come from Greece, but the last chapter concentrates on specifically Latin myths, which were less familiar to me and thus more interesting.
Besides the transformation motif, there are other recurring elements to help with the storytelling. People keep secrets from their spouses, families, and communities. Some transformations are instantaneous, such as the one caused by a glance at Medusa, while others are gradual enough that the person being transformed just starts to notice it happening, reacts with horror or amazement, and might even give their last words as a human. Mostly mortals are undergoing metamorphosis caused by a god they have no power to do anything about, but there is one goddess, Proserpina, who becomes an underworld goddess when she consumes pomegranate seeds there, and is only partially compensated for the trouble. There isn't any big discussion of the origin of the major gods or their family relations before they became gods, you just have to accept that they are realities in this world with their given traits and attitudes.
With any work of this age there is a lot of cultural adjustment the reader has to make to get into the different plots. When I told my friend that I was reading this, his reaction is that it was terribly "rapey," which isn't inaccurate. There is a fair amount of graphic violence Overall the attitude toward young women whether mortal or semi-divine is that of subjugation, which may elicit pity but almost never lead to action out of indignation. The only exception I can think of was the story of Atalanta, who is able to rise above her role through her devotion to Diana. There are other implicit attitudes toward enslaved people, the elderly, nobility, and barbarians which we might not match today. I was able to make allowances for all these differences, but other people might not want to and would find that they spoil their appreciation for the work.
I listened to an audiobook version of the work translated by Ian Johnston and narrated well by David Horovitch. I think they elevated the text for me and kept what might have been a repetitive set of myths (over two hundred) varied enough to want to keep going. I didn't really try to keep track of all of the different characters and settings but imagine that this would be hard even reading a printed version. It was not a verse setting of Ovid's work, and I like to think that someday I might take a look at the original and try to get a sense of the music of the lines to see what I missed. The narration comes in at over seventeen hours so it's hard to imagine experiencing the whole thing again, but maybe I will dip into one myth or another to refresh my memory.
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-25-19
Surprisingly insightful for a book written in 8A.D
But dont zone out for more than a few second or else all the names, locations, and action will change and you'll have no idea what's happening anymore.
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- Jefferson
- 07-18-15
“Oh, Venus, how powerful is your hold over us!”
From the creation of Earth out of Chaos to the fall of Troy and beyond, in Metamorphoses (AD 8) Ovid retells the Greek myths, filtering them through his Roman sensibility and unifying them around metamorphosis: "My purpose is to tell of bodies which have been transformed into shapes of different kinds." Most of the stories feature some such change, punishment or reward, involuntary or voluntary, terrifying or transcendent, permanent or temporary. People, gods, and objects turn into flowers, trees, animals, birds, fish, statues, mountains, and stars, and some humans change gender. Ovid includes all the famous myths that have inspired countless paintings, statues, and stories, as well as many less well-known ones and some more "recent" legendary histories featuring things like the founding of Rome.
Even though we usually know what will happen in the stories, either because we've read them before or because Ovid foreshadows some doom, his book is still absorbing because of his psychological insights, smooth transitions from one myth to the next, nesting of stories one inside the other, sudden shifts to present tense or to second person (e.g., "They wept for you, Orpheus"), humor, irony, and sympathy. And Ovid regularly surprises with some extra touch, as when, after concluding the story of Narcissus with the youth wasting away and entering "the houses of the dead," he says that Narcissus is still trying to find his reflection in the "waters of the Styx."
A common cause or theme of the changes is love or its opposite, especially when transgressive: "By gods above, how much hidden darkness/ the human heart contains!" If some god isn't lusting after some maiden, a daughter is falling in love with her father, a sister with her brother, a brother-in-law with his sister-in-law, or a princess with the enemy of her people. Among the many illicit loves appear a few cases of conjugal loyalty and affection. Ovid also depicts much hate-fueled violence: patricide, homicide, infanticide, fratricide--and is there a word for the murder of an uncle? Almost as often as he depicts detailed metamorphoses, he shows graphic violence, as when during a wedding feast melee a disemboweled centaur entangles his feet in his entrails and runs them unspooling completely out of his body. There is cannibalism. And there is plenty of rape; at one point a girl ravished by Neptune asks to be turned into a man so that she may never be ravished again.
Indeed, many of the myths reveal a bias towards men, as when female-female love is depicted as more abnormal than female-bull love while post-Eurydice Orpheus' preference for boys is taken in stride. Nevertheless, Ovid writes many strong female characters, and his most compelling monologues are those of conflicted women.
In addition to love and violence, Ovid is interested in things like self-destructive pride (e.g., the fate of Niobe mother of fourteen children), heroic ego (e.g., the debate between Ajax and Ulysses over Achilles' armor), and vegetarianism (e.g., the diatribe against our bloody consumption of other living creatures). He also tosses off pithy lines about life, like "No pleasure ever lasts." It all returns to change: whether fantastically as in the myths or naturally as in Pythagoras' "scientific" account of the world, from earth to water or air to fire, from life to death and death to life, everything changes from one form to another.
At times I experienced metamorphosis fatigue (aNOTHer tree?), but mostly his book is a joy, largely due to its wonderful writing. Ovid writes wonderful epic similes, as when Apollo gives
a cry of grief and pain
just like a young cow makes when she beholds
the slaughterer raise his murderous axe
to his right ear and, with a splintering sound,
smash in the temples of her suckling calf.
He offers memorable cameos to personifications of things like Sleep, Hunger, and, here, Envy: "Wherever she goes, she tramples down fields full of flowers, burns the grass, plucks the tops of growing plants, and with her breath pollutes cities and homes, entire communities."
And in Ian Johnston's lively, readable translation, Ovid's rich descriptions and vivid imagination are transporting, like his vision of a post-flood world in which survivors sail boats over the roofs of sunken villas and dolphins race through submerged woods, or his depiction of Medea's magical concoction, including hoarfrost scraped up by moonlight and "the cut up entrails of the ambiguous werewolf," or his beautiful, terrible account of Daphne changing into a tree:
Scarcely had she made this plea, when she feels
A heavy numbness move across her limbs,
her soft breasts are enclosed by slender bark,
her hair is changed to leaves, her arms to branches,
her feet, so swift a moment before, stick fast
in sluggish roots, a covering of foliage
spreads across her face. All that remains of her
is her shining beauty.
Phoebus loved her
in this form as well. He set his right hand
on her trunk and felt her heart still trembling
under the new bark and with his own arms
hugged the branches as if they were her limbs.
He kissed the wood, but it shrank back from his kiss.
The god spoke:
"Since you cannot be my wife,
you shall surely be my tree."
David Horovitch reads the audiobook marvelously. For pastoral scenes his voice wafts pollen, for spiteful ones it drips poison, for sensual ones it caresses flesh, for brutal ones it gouges eyeballs, and for fantastic ones it stirs wonder. He doesn't strain for female voices. He doesn't change his voice drastically for different characters, but modulates it to suit different moods (his love-sick Cyclops is splendid!). It is a pleasure to listen to him.
Ovid ended his magnum opus confident it would last: "Here I end my work,/ which neither Jupiter's rage, nor fire, nor sword,/ nor gnawing time can ever wipe away." He was right to say, "Men will celebrate my fame/ for all the ages, and, if there is truth/ in poet's prophecies, I will live on."
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- Taylor Britton
- 06-12-19
really changed me
this book really changed the way I see the transition of greek into roman cultural dominance. just as our spines are known to morph into snakes when we die, this read really evolved my perspective
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- Kurt M. Douglass
- 05-13-18
Great reading
There are several readings of this work to choose from on Audible, but this is the best one. Horovitch captures Ovid's tone and mood perfectly.
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