INTRODUCTION
(miraculous changes, hence the name, Metamorphoses) is passed in review, from the dawn of creation, when chaos was changed by divine fiat into the orderly universe, down to the very age of the poet himself, when the soul of Julius Caesar was changed to a star and set in the heavens among the immortals. Every important myth is at least touched upon, and though the stories differ widely in place and time,there is no break in the sequence of narration. The poet has seized upon every possible thread of connexion as he passes on from cycle to cycle of story; and where this connexion is lacking, by various ingenious and artistic devices a connecting-link is found.
The poem thus forms a manual of classical mythology, and is the most important source of mythical lore for all writers since Ovid's time. This is the real, tangible service which he has done the literary world. Many of these stories could now be obtained from the sources whence Ovid himself drew them—from Homer, Hesiod, the Greek tragedians, the Alexandrine poets, and many others. And yet many stories, but for him, would have been lost to us; and all of them he has so vivified by his strong poetioc imagination that they have come down to us with added freshness and life.
The classic myths have always had a strong fascination for later writers, and so numerous are both passing and extended references to these in English literature, and especially in the poets, that he who reads without a classical background reads with many lapses of his understanding and appreciation. While the English poets have, of course, drawn from all classic sources, they are indebted for their mythology largely to Ovid. The poet would have been
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