Metamorphoses
Ovid (8)
“The poem that taught Western civilization its mythology — 250 transformation stories woven into a single unbroken song from the creation of the world to the apotheosis of Julius Caesar.”
EraAncient Roman / Augustan Age
Pages500
Difficulty★★★★☆ Advanced
AP Appearances5
Character Analysis
Apollo embodies the paradox of divine power in the Metamorphoses: he is the patron of art and beauty, but his interactions with mortals are almost invariably predatory. His pursuit of Daphne is the poem's template for divine desire — unstoppable, entitled, and resolved only by the annihilation of its object. That the god of poetry destroys through the act of desiring makes him the poem's most troubling figure.