Week 4 Reading A - Ovid's Metamorphoses

The Sun God - Helios - and his golden chariot. image from https://www.theoi.com/Titan/Helios.html

Story: The Metamorphoses by Ovid. Translated by A. S. Kline

This weeks reading was interesting. I usually take notes over the language in these stories highlighting phrases that I find really beautifully written, but in this story, I wasn't moved by the language that much. I had a hard time understanding a few of the parts of the story and had to reread them multiple times. What I really liked about this story was how fluid the transitions were between the smaller stories. Ovid was easily able to connect them all and create a much larger story from all the individual ones. I also enjoyed the smaller creation like stories, like the swan and peacock's tail, that were just randomly dispersed throughout the story. My final note is that I'm a little surprised at how brutal these stories are. In grade school, I knew Zeus had a lot of children but I was never told he went around raping everyone wtf. All the stories had sad endings too usually involving death.