How Metamorphoses drew on The Odyssey

A documented line of influence: Ovid demonstrably engaged Homer’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.

The source
The Odyssey

Homer · c. 725 BCE

Ancient Greece
The influenced
Metamorphoses

Ovid · 8

Ancient Rome
Relevance
7/10

On Metamorphoses’s page

  • The Metamorphoses picks the Odyssey apart for raw material — Circe, the Cyclops, Scylla all surface again, transformed
  • Ovid retells the voyage sideways, from the perspective of Ulysses' nameless crewmen, so reading Homer first lets you feel what he's twisting
  • The very title nods back: 'changed shapes' answers Odysseus, the man 'of many turns'

On The Odyssey’s page

  • Ovid mines the Odyssey for his metamorphosis myths — Circe, Polyphemus, Scylla all return, with verbal parallels close enough that scholars track them line by line
  • But he refracts them: the voyage gets retold from the vantage of Ulysses' forgotten crewmen, the men Homer left behind
  • Even his opening 'mutatas formas' — changed shapes — winks at Odysseus, the man 'of many turns'

More connections

See it on the influence map →All documented connections