Metamorphoses

This Latin narrative poem, completed in the early first century, retells Greek and Roman myths as a chain of transformations from the creation of the world to the age of Julius Caesar. Gods pursue mortals; mortals become trees, birds, stones, or constellations; heroes such as Perseus, Jason, Theseus, and Aeneas pass through episodes that end in changed bodies. Famous sequences include Daphne, Narcissus, Arachne, Orpheus, and the fall of Troy as prelude to Rome. The fifteen books shift tone from comic to tragic without a single human hero. The work is a mythological epic of change, not a handbook of cult practice.

Bound in Nigerian goatskin leather blocked in gold with a design. Printed on Vizille Ivoire Laid paper. 16 tipped-in colour plates, 2 with a gatefold. Printed endpapers. Gilded top edge. Ribbon marker. Gold-blocked dark brown solander box.