Metamorphoses
Poem by OvidWikipedia
55
MENTIONS
43
EPISODES
41
PODCASTS
Search complete. 55 mentions across 43 episodes found for "Metamorphoses".
Oct 28, 2026
speaker_1UNKNOWN
for tighteousness oh sustainer
BenjaminHOST
Not only do we have the fall in those stories, we also see the fall in all the different stories contained in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
BenjaminHOST
Again, we have a lecture series on that, just as we have a lecture series on Paradise Lost, and we have a lecture on Aeschylus, his rendering of the Prometheus myth.
BenjaminHOST
And the most striking fall for me in Ovid's treasure chest comes in the form... of the fall of Icarus, who defied his father's warning to fly a midway course, not too high and not too low, but he had to soar as close to the sun as he could.
Laura Jenkinson-BrownGUEST
So two heroes going up against each other might be described as being like two bulls going head to head.
Laura Jenkinson-BrownGUEST
There's a great simile about to talk about Hercules in Ovid's Metamorphoses, where he talks about the later adventures of Hercules, where he's fighting Akaloas, who is a river god, and they're fighting over Daenerys, who will get to marry her.
Laura Jenkinson-BrownGUEST
They are described as being like two bulls going up against each other while the herd looks on in fear.
Laura Jenkinson-BrownGUEST
And they are both the bulls.
25 MINS LATER
Laura Jenkinson-BrownGUEST
Their memory is being honored by being in the poem.
Laura Jenkinson-BrownGUEST
So they have got kleos.
Laura Jenkinson-BrownGUEST
They're being killed, but they're being killed by someone who's really impressive, right? again, to go back to that example in Metamorphoses where Achaloas is actually telling Theseus about how he lost his horn when he had to fight Hercules.
Laura Jenkinson-BrownGUEST
He says, I don't like talking about times when I've lost, but like, I lost to Hercules, so I don't mind that much.
Samantha FeyHOST
Zeus was so angry that he turned the king into a wolf.
Samantha FeyHOST
The Roman poet Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, describes the change.
Samantha FeyHOST
Lycaon flees in terror, tries to speak, but can only howl.
Samantha FeyHOST
His clothes turn to fur, his arms to legs, his hunger for slaughter turns on the flocks.
Ian LauerHOST
We'll never really know, but that's a fun, open question to think about.
Ian LauerHOST
Tonight's story comes from Apollodorus's library, with a few details added from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Ian LauerHOST
I've taken some liberties with the pacing and detail to tell it in a modern way, but I've done my best to keep the heart of the story intact.
Ian LauerHOST
The research on the Cairo Calendar comes from Sebastian Porchedu and Lori Yetsu from the University of Helsinki.
Fiona ForsythGUEST
But he writes the Heroides, letters from classical heroines like Ariadne, abandoned by their their love, Penelope writing to Odysseus, that sort of thing.
Fiona ForsythGUEST
And he writes the glorious Metamorphoses, which is what he is probably best known for today.
Fiona ForsythGUEST
But many other sorts of poems as well.
Fiona ForsythGUEST
And then right at the end of his life, he dies in exile, probably around AD 1617.
NickHOST
The history of Hermaphroditos, Latinized as Hermaphroditus, does not begin with Ovid.
NickHOST
By the time the Roman poet wrote the Metamorphoses around the beginning of the Common Era, a divine figure combining masculine and feminine characteristics had already been known in Greek religion, literature, and art for several centuries.
NickHOST
The surviving evidence is fragmentary, but hermaphroditus is attested before Ovid, and by the Hellenistic period the figure was sufficiently recognizable to appear in literature and visual art independently of the later story of Salmacus.
NickHOST
Theophrastus, writing in the late 4th century BCE, appears to preserve one of the earliest literary references to hermaphroditus.
NickHOST
In his portrait of the superstitious man, he describes religious behavior involving images traditionally identified with hermaphroditus.
NickHOST
The precise textual interpretation has been debated, but the passage belongs to a religious environment centuries earlier than Ovid's Metamorphoses.
NickHOST
By the early 3rd century BCE, the comic poet Poseidopus had also written a play titled Hermaphroditus, now almost entirely lost.
NickHOST
but that indicates that the figure was already sufficiently recognizable to serve as the subject of a dramatic work.
Philip RoweHOST
The themes and references in the play also suggest that Shakespeare had read widely about travel, trade and colonisation, which was certainly a hot topic at the time as England tried to catch up with Spain and Portugal over the land grab in the New World.
Philip RoweHOST
He also continued to plunder classical texts, with, for example, Prospero's Farewell to Magic taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Philip RoweHOST
But the plot of the story is of Shakespeare's own creation, with the action, unusually for a later play, being confined to just a few hours of its culmination.
Philip RoweHOST
The only original text that we have for The Tempest is in the first folio, where the play is placed as the first play in the collection, leading the comedies.
speaker_1NARRATOR
Nothing was more natural than that I should by degrees become more and more reserved towards Herder in communicating those things which had hitherto contributed to my culture, but especially such as still seriously occupied my attention at the moment.
speaker_1NARRATOR
He had destroyed my enjoyment of so much that I had loved before, and had especially blamed me in the strongest manner for the pleasure I took in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
speaker_1NARRATOR
I might defend my favorite as I would.
speaker_1NARRATOR
I might say that for a youthful fancy nothing could be more delightful than to linger in those cheerful and glorious regions with gods and demigods, to be a witness of their deeds and passions.
David WalesNARRATOR
Fulmines ardescunt ignibus unde.
David WalesNARRATOR
Ovid, Metamorphoses.
David WalesNARRATOR
General Description.
David WalesNARRATOR
The difficulty of describing town scenery.
2 HRS 47 MINS LATER
David WalesNARRATOR
Statius, Silvae.
David WalesNARRATOR
Iamque mare et tellus nullum discrimen habebant omnia pontus erant dirant quoque litora ponto.
David WalesNARRATOR
Ovid, Metamorphoses.
David WalesNARRATOR
Common amusements of a bathing place, morning rides, walks, and so forth, company resorting to the town, different choice of lodgings, cheap indulgences, seaside walks, a wealthy invalid, summer evening on the sands, sea productions, water parted from the sea, winter views serene, in what cases to be avoided, sailing upon the river, a small islet of sand off the coast, visited by company, covered by the flowing of the tide, adventure in that place.
NeilHOST
This detail has specific values which might be read.
NeilHOST
Was it that the act was so heroic it could fall into the male sphere? When the Roman poet Ovid described the fate of Iphigenia in his work Metamorphoses, she meets her fate, and I quote, with more than a woman's courage, end quote.
NeilHOST
Ovid also has her sacrificed via a stab in the chest and again we might read this as her death being codified much more in the realm of the male.
NeilHOST
The courage and composure displayed by Polluxena must have been widely accepted by the time of the Roman Empire.
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