Ovid

Book Club

Book Club | August 2024: Ovid’s Metamorphoses Books 5 & 6

A screen of foliage filters out the sun. Boughs keep it shaded, and the dewy ground puts forth assorted blooms. It’s always spring. Inside this grove, Proserpina is playing as she picks violets or bright white lilies. With girlish eagerness she fills her baskets and skirt, eager to beat her friends at picking. Almost at once, Dis sees her, wants her, steals her. So quick is love. The terror-stricken goddess calls sadly for her mother and her friends — her… Read more

Book Club

Book Club | July 2024: Ovid’s Metamorphoses Books 3 & 4

He flees through places where he’d often chasedHe flees from his own pets! He yearned to shout,“I am Actaeon‒recognize your master!”The longed–for words won’t come. Barks fill the air.Blackfur is first to gash his back with wounds,Beast–tamer next. Highlander bites his shoulder;he’s set out last but took a mountain shortcutand got there first. As they hold down their master,the whole pack gathers round and bites his fleshuntil there’s no room… Read more

Book Club

Book Club | May 2023: Ovid Metamorphoses

My soul is wrought to sing of forms transformed to bodies new and strange! Immortal gods inspire my heart, for ye have changed yourselves and all things you have changed! Oh lead my song in smooth and measured strains, from olden days when earth began to this completed time! Invocation, translated by Brookes More This month’s Book Club selection is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. We previously read Books 12 and… Read more

Topic for Discussion,  Word Study

Androgyne in myth

I became intrigued in the subject of androgyny after some of our Book Club readings. Plato, in the Symposium, reveals a myth on the origin of mankind through the speech of Aristophanes (starting at 189d). The Symposium is a series of amusing speeches on the subject of love, supposedly composed during a meal given by the young poet Agathon. Aristophanes decides to demonstrate the origin of love. In the beginning, he says,… Read more

Book Club

Book Club | February 2020: Ovid’s The Art of Love

Should anyone here not know the art of love, read this, and learn by reading how to love. By art the boat’s set gliding, with oar and sail, by art the chariot’s swift: love’s ruled by art. Inspired by Valentine’s Day, our selection this month is The Art of Love, or Ars Amatoria, by the Roman poet Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). As always, you can read any translation you like.… Read more