Ovid was a first-century Roman poet who wrote the "Metamorphoses" and the "Art of Love". He has been described as the "artists' bible", and his influence on Western art and literature is vast. Chaucer borrowed freely from him; Shakespeare imitated him; George Bernard Shaw reimagined him. The medieval era was so keen on Ovid it was called an aetas Ovidiana—an "Ovidian Age". More recently, Ted Hughes told "Tales from Ovid" and Ali Smith borrowed from him for her book "Girl Meets Boy".
To read Ovid is to feel unsettled: comedy turns into tragedy, tragedy into comedy, women turn into men, everyone turns into trees. While the Bible offers order, justice and salvation, Ovid offers "a world in flux, transgressive desire, sex and violence". The "Metamorphoses" has been called "an epic of rape"—almost no one in the poem is safe from seduction or worse.
Much of what the modern world knows of classical culture it knows from Ovid. An estimated 99% of all Latin literature was lost, and often the writer who wove the narrative thread that remains was him.
Works inspired by Ovid's characters—Narcissus (Caravaggio), Arachne (Louise Bourgeois's spider sculptures), Pygmalion (Rodin), Hermaphroditus (Bernini), Leda and the Swan (a follower of Michelangelo)—fill the world's great museums. A 2026 exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (Netherlands), "Metamorphoses" (Shape-shifters), laid bare the breadth of his influence.
There is no delight the equal of dread. As long as it is somebody else's.