This is the first separate edition of Metamorphoses XI since that of G. A. T. Davies in 1907. While Davies' edition is incomplete (it omits certain lines) and his commentary is mainly concerned with philological matter, this new edition gives a complete text and the notes are designed to assist appreciation of Ovid's literary qualities. The introduction seeks to define Ovid's literary originality in the Metamorphoses and analyses his considerable influence upon English literature. The appendix provides an opportunity for comparative literary criticism. Book XI contains some of Ovid's best descriptive passages and offers the student an admirable introduction to the Metamorphoses.
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.