Reading assignment: Ovid's Metamorphoses

• Book I: "The Creation" through "Io"
• Book III: "Tiresius" through "Narcissus and Echo"
• Book IV: "Salmacis and Hermaphroditus"
• Book V: "The Rape of Proserpine"
• Book VI: "Tireus, Procne, and Philomela"
• Book VIII: "Daedalus and Icarus"
• Book X: "Orpheus and Eurydice"; "Pygmalion"
• Book XV: "Epilogue"

In addition I would recommend the story of Jason and Medea in Book VII; the whole story of Hercules in Book IX, "Venus and Adonis" and "Atalanta" in Book X, and the whole Troy story (including the story of the Aeneid) in Books XI-XIV [note that some other stories are interpolated in these four books]. Ovid was an extremely popular author from his own day to the present, so these stories have, more than many others, passed into the common store of references of educated people all over the Western Hemisphere.

Rev 9/96