The Golden Age: Ovid’s Metamorphoses

Transfer yourself to the golden age, wherein you wander with the ancient legends of creation and watch the mischief of gods, goddesses, nymphs, and humans as recorded in the celebrated epic Metamorphosis by Ovid.

Gasp as Jupiter rants and raves and ends the golden age with thunder bolts and a great aqueous flood that allows only one man and one woman to survive. Through the enchanting drawings translating the stories into colorful picturesque tapestries that accompany the detailed interactions of the gods with the humans, the reader becomes engrossed with the antics of Daphne and Apollo, astonished at how Jupiter transforms into a bull to carry away Europa, haunted by the fates of the familiar Narcissus and Echo, and muted by the tragic transformation of Arachne who dared to challenge a god.

Each of these mythical stories is rhapsodically illustrated and adds a dreamlike quality to the seventeen stories that this Austrian writer has selected for this publication. These tales with their moral ambiguities are timeless. The only quibble that I have is that the text reads too much like a direct translation from the German and lacks some of the poetic spontaneity needed match the imaginative luminous artwork accompanying them.