This cohesive collection of stories from Greek and Roman mythology recounts tales of recorded transformations. Comprised of over fifty stories, it chronicles the legends of King Midus, Daedalus, Icarus, Hercules, and the Trojan War, making this the definitive work of classical mythology. THE MYTHOLOGICAL MASTERPIECE...Newly repackaged and "virtually perfect. (The New York Times Book Review) Editorial Reviews Reading Mandelbaum's extraordinary translation, one imagines Ovid in his darkest moods with the heart of Baudelaire . . . Mandelbaum's translation is brilliant. It throws off the stiff and mild homogeneity of former translations and exposes the vivid colors of mockery, laughter, and poison woven so beautifully by the master." --Booklist "Mandelbaum's Ovid, like his Dante, is unlikely to be equaled for years to come." --Bloomsbury Review "The Metamorphoses is conceived on the grandest possible scale . . . The number and variety of the metamorphoses are stunning: gods and goddesses, heroes and nymphs, mortal men and women are changed into wolves and bears, frogs and pigs, bulls and cows, deer and birds, trees and flowers, rocks and rivers, spiders and snakes, mountains and stars, while ships become sea nymphs, ants and stones and statues become people, men become women and vice versa . . . An elegantly entertaining and enthralling narrative." --from the Introduction by J. C. McKeown - From the Publisher David Horovitch's richly enunciated delivery is a superb vehicle for the classical style, with its elevated diction and its elaborate rhetorical and poetic figures. Ovid poses a special challenge, and only a reader with expert pacing, matched with a sensitivity to nuances of tone and language, could deliver this text to its full impact. This Ovid is a delight. Horovitch expresses both Ovid's elegance and his lightness of touch. A word like "nectar" drips with honeyed sweetness, and even "water" sounds multisyllabic. Ovid's tales of change and transformation‚"Actaeon into a stag, Zeus into a bull, the whole of reality in a constant state of metamorphosis‚" offer as enduring a vision as any in literature. Horovitch has a great voice for the classics. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine - SEPTEMBER 2012 - AudioFile