Status Updates From Metamorphoses

Read another section, this time from Book 4, Pyramus & Thisbe. Really liked this one. Almost identical to the story of Romeo & Juliet. I assume al of lecture/class will talk about that fact & compare it to Song of Songs. On page 139.

this might be my favorite so far (tied with Odyssey)

Read another small section, this time from Book 14. At least this time the professors gave us a whole section to read, the Wanderings of Aeneas Resumed, to read instead of some random-ass lines. The Apetown section caught me off guard a bit and made me chuckle. Can't wait to come back to actually read this and give it proper justice once I finish the Plato book. I also need to read the Aeneid soon too.

Reading guide says to read lines 678-687 of Book 13. We are the honours programme. Why the fuck are we babying ourselves by only reading such small segments of these texts. There are times this class is downright insulting in the way it assumes we are more simian that we actually are. Anyways, this is the part about the daughters of Orion killing themselves to save Thebes. On page 531.

Again, fuck this reading list. It says read lines 933-942 of Book 15, which I assume means the epilogue of the book. Call for infamy & kleos. On page 636.

Read another small section of the Pythagoreas section of Book 15. What the actual fuck is this reading guide the professors gave us. Part of it is the line numbering in the class packet is way off from this copy, but it seems to be a problem with the packet because this translation keeps the line numbers faithful to the original Latin. Hope this doesn't fuck me over in the quiz tomorrow.

Read a very brief excerpt from the Pythagoreas section of Book 15. Why the hell are we reading these random-ass sections of the poem? We spent a week on Song of Songs for some reason yet we speedrun through Ovid? smh. In this section, Pythagoras talks about how cool being vegetarian is. He was a weird dude. Need to do a deep dive on him at some point. Like to see the contemporary Roman view of him.

Read a section of Book 5, The Rape of Prosperina. I'm so Greek pilled that it took me far to long to realize that this is just a Romanized retelling of the Hellenic story Hades kidnapping Demeter's daughter Persephone. On page 202.

Read the first two sections of Book 1, The Creation & The Four Ages. Surprised how similar this is to Genesis. Also interesting to see how the Iron Age Romans used the term “Iron Age” and “Bronze Age” contemporarily

Read all the intro stuff. Preface, context, 20 page intro, translators note. We’re only readinf small parts of this for class, which is a shame. I plan to read the whole thing. The Nabokov comparison is NOT as flattering as the editors think it is. Can’t wait to read tho.