This selection of stories from Ovid's Metamorphōsēs is designed for those who have completed a beginners' course in Latin. Its purpose is restricted and unsophisticated: to help such users, who will have read little or no Ovid, to enjoy the story-telling, character-drawing and language of one of the world's most delightful and influential poets. Assistance given with vocabulary and grammar is based on two widely used beginners' courses, Reading Latin and Wheelock's Latin (for details, see Vocabulary, grammar and notes below).

My general principle is to supply help on a need-to-know basis for the story in hand. The Vocabulary, grammar and notes and Learning vocabularies accompanying the text speak for themselves. The Comment at the end of each passage is an occasionally embellished paraphrase whose main purpose is to point up important detail and show how the logic of each story unfolds. I make no apology for this. With the minimal amount of time today's students have for learning the language, the demands of translation alone can be so heavy that it is all too easy to miss the wood for the trees and hamper the whole purpose of the exercise – pleasure, one of the most useful things in the world. The Study sections offer ways of thinking further about the passage.

My debt to W. S. Anderson's excellent Ovid's Metamorphoses Books 1–5 (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997) and Ovid's Metamorphoses Books 6–10 (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972) will be obvious.

Background

So distraught were the daughters of the Sun, the Heliades, at Phaethon's death that they were turned into trees around his tomb and their tears into amber; while Cycnus (a grieving relative of Phaethon) was turned into a swan (Greek kuknos). The Sun was finally persuaded to return to his daily task, and Jupiter surveyed the damage to the world. While doing so, he had his way with the huntress Callisto, whom a furious Juno turned into a bear, but Jupiter re-transformed into a constellation. Various stories about gods' affairs, some told by a crow and a raven, ensue, and Book 2 ends with Jupiter, disguised as a bull, riding off with Europa.

Book 3 opens with Europa's father Agenor, who came from Phoenicia (Lebanon), ordering his son Cadmus to find Europa or go into exile. Cadmus chose the latter and consulted Apollo at Delphi, who told him to found a city (Thebes) in Greece, in Boeotia. Defeating a terrifying serpent there (which had killed all his companions), Cadmus was told by Athena/Minerva to sow its teeth in the ground. From these sprang armed warriors, who fought among themselves until the last five still standing agreed to stop and join Cadmus in founding the city. Cadmus married Harmonia, the daughter of Mars and Venus, and all seemed set fair for him. But Ovid goes on ‘Yet a man should await his final day, and no one be called happy until he dies and his last rites are paid.’

Sir,

I have read over the Specimen of the Principles concerning Religion and Morality, said to be maintained in a book lately published, entitled, A Treatise of Human Nature; being an attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects. I have also read over what is called the Sum of the Charge. Which papers, as you inform me, have been industriously spread about, and were put into your hands some few days ago.

I was persuaded that the clamour of scepticism, atheism, etc., had been so often employed by the worst of men against the best, that it had now lost all its influence; and should never have thought of making any remarks on these maimed excerpts, if you had not laid your commands on me, as a piece of common justice to the author, and for undeceiving some well-meaning people, on whom it seems the enormous charge has made impression.

I shall insert the accusation at full length, and then go regularly through what is called the Sum of the Charge; because it is intended, I suppose, to contain the substance of the whole. I shall also take notice of the Specimen as I go along.

Specimen of the Principles concerning Religion and Morality, etc.

The author puts on his title-page (Vol. 1) a passage of Tacitus to this purpose: ‘Rare happiness of our times, that you may think as you will, and speak as you think.

To Michael Ramsay

Orleans [France]

31 August 1737

My Dear Friend

I have quitted La Fleche two days after receiving yours. I am now at Tours in my way to Paris, where I do not intend to stay any considerable time, unless some extraordinary accident intervene: So that I propose to see you in London about 3 or 4 weeks hence. You may be sure that this meeting will afford me a very great satisfaction, and it is with the utmost concern I hear you will leave the city a little after my arrival. Nothing can be more useful and agreeable than to have an intimate friend with one at any critical time of life such as that which I am just going to enter upon. And I must certainly esteem it a great loss to be deprived of your advice, as well in points that regard my conduct and behaviour, as in those of criticism and learning. I can assure you I have great confidence in your judgement even in this last particular, though the state of your health and business have never permitted you to be a regular student, nor to apply yourself to any part of learning in a methodical manner, without which it is almost impossible to make any mighty progress. I shall submit all my performances to your examination, and to make you enter into them more easily, I desire of you, if you have leisure, to read once over La Recherche de la Verité of Pere Malebranche, the Principles of Human Knowledge by Dr Berkeley, some of the more metaphysical articles of Bayle's Dictionary, such as those [of] Zeno and Spinoza.

1 All our reasonings concerning matter of fact are founded on a species of analogy, which leads us to expect from any cause the same events, which we have observed to result from similar causes. Where the causes are entirely similar, the analogy is perfect, and the inference, drawn from it, is regarded as certain and conclusive: Nor does any man ever entertain a doubt, where he sees a piece of iron, that it will have weight and cohesion of parts; as in all other instances, which have ever fallen under his observation. But where the objects have not so exact a similarity, the analogy is less perfect, and the inference is less conclusive; though still it has some force, in proportion to the degree of similarity and resemblance. The anatomical observations, formed upon one animal, are, by this species of reasoning, extended to all animals; and it is certain, that when the circulation of the blood, for instance, is clearly proved to have place in one creature, as a frog, or fish, it forms a strong presumption, that the same principle has place in all. These analogical observations may be carried farther, even to this science, of which we are now treating; and any theory, by which we explain the operations of the understanding, or the origin and connexion of the passions in man, will acquire additional authority, if we find, that the same theory is requisite to explain the same phenomena in all other animals.

It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity; therefore, I shall be short. It may be thought an instance of vanity that I pretend at all to write my life; but this narrative shall contain little more than the history of my writings; as, indeed, almost all my life has been spent in literary pursuits and occupations. The first success of most of my writings was not such as to be an object of vanity.

I was born the 26th of April 1711, old style, at Edinburgh. I was of a good family, both by father and mother: my father's family is a branch of the Earl of Home's, or Hume's; and my ancestors had been proprietors of the estate, which my brother possesses, for several generations. My mother was daughter of Sir David Falconer, President of the College of Justice: the title of Lord Halkerton came by succession to her brother.

My family, however, was not rich, and being myself a younger brother, my patrimony, according to the mode of my country, was of course very slender. My father, who passed for a man of parts, died when I was an infant, leaving me, with an elder brother and a sister, under the care of our mother, a woman of singular merit, who, though young and handsome, devoted herself entirely to the rearing and educating of her children.

Part 1

1 There is, in Dr. Tillotson's writings, an argument against the real presence, which is as concise, and elegant, and strong as any argument can possibly be supposed against a doctrine, so little worthy of a serious refutation. It is acknowledged on all hands, says that learned prelate, that the authority, either of the scripture or of tradition, is founded merely in the testimony of the Apostles, who were eye-witnesses to those miracles of our Saviour, by which he proved his divine mission. Our evidence, then, for, the truth of the Christian religion is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses; because, even in the first authors of our religion, it was no greater; and it is evident it must diminish in passing from them to their disciples; nor can any one rest such confidence in their testimony, as in the immediate object of his senses. But a weaker evidence can never destroy a stronger; and therefore, were the doctrine of the real presence ever so clearly revealed in scripture, it were directly contrary to the rules of just reasoning to give our assent to it. It contradicts sense, though both the scripture and tradition, on which it is supposed to be built, carry not such evidence with them as sense; when they are considered merely as external evidences, and are not brought home to every one's breast, by the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit.