Metamorphoses, Book 1

Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC–AD 17) had completed the Metamorphoses, a hexameter poem in fifteen books, by AD 8, when Augustus banished him to Tomis on the Black Sea. Its subject, announced in the first four lines, is bodies changed into new forms, and it runs as one continuous song from the creation of the world to Ovid's own time, linking some 250 myths.

Book 1 begins with chaos and the shaping of the world: the separation of the elements, the stars, the animals and the creation of man. There follow the four ages of gold, silver, bronze and iron, and the war of the Giants against heaven. Jupiter tells a council of the gods how the savage king Lycaon tried to serve him human flesh and was turned into a wolf, and he resolves to destroy mankind with a flood. Only Deucalion and Pyrrha survive; on the advice of an oracle they throw stones behind them, which become men and women, and other creatures are born from the warm mud. Later in the book Jupiter seduces Io and turns her into a heifer to hide her from Juno, who sets the hundred-eyed Argus to guard her; Mercury kills Argus, and Io is restored in Egypt. The book ends as Io's son Epaphus taunts Phaethon about his parentage.

The opening book shows Ovid's range, from cosmic grandeur to comedy and pathos. His Latin is fluent and clear, and the Metamorphoses is often the first long Latin poem students read.