13 Métamorphoses

by Ovid, Georges Lafaye (Translator)

"Il gémit et, si sa voix n'est plus celle d'un homme, elle n'est pourtant pas celle qu'un cerf pourrait faire entendre." Avec ses compagnons et sa meute, Actéon chasse. Par hasard, ses pas le conduisent là où Diane se baigne, nue. La déesse se venge de cette indiscrète visite en le transformant en cerf. Cornes, sabots, robe tachetée : plus la moindre trace de l'homme chez cet animal qui, certes, court vite, mais pas suffisamment pour échapper à ses propres chiens. Triste fin puisqu'il est fatalement mordu par ceux qu'il encourageait de la voix auparavant. Toutes les métamorphoses que vous lirez ne sont pas aussi cruelles, mais elles sont sans conteste extraordinaires. Création poétique Je découvre J'analyse Nous avons la parole Prolongements Classe de sixième.

160 pages, Pocket Book

Published November 8, 2018

About the author

Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horatius, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis, the capital of the newly-organised province of Moesia, on the Black Sea, where he remained for the last nine or ten years of his life. Ovid himself attributed his banishment to a "poem and a mistake", but his reluctance to disclose specifics has resulted in much speculation among scholars.
Ovid is most famous for the Metamorphoses, a continuous mythological narrative in fifteen books written in dactylic hexameters. He is also known for works in elegiac couplets such as Ars Amatoria ("The Art of Love") and Fasti. His poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and greatly influenced Western art and literature. The Metamorphoses remains one of the most important sources of classical mythology today.