OVID'S METAMORPHOSES
Ovid's Metamorphoses
A New Translation
Raffaella Cribiore Award for Outstanding Literary Translation, 2025
NATIONAL TRANSLATION AWARD IN POETRY
(SHORTLIST), 2024
Centuries of conservative translators have robbed the Metamorphoses of its subversive force. In this boldly lyrical translation, C. Luke Soucy revives the magnum opus of Rome’s cleverest and most creative poet, faithfully matching the epic’s wit and style while confronting the sexuality, violence, and politics so many previous translations have glossed over. Innovative and timely, this powerful version breathes new life into Ovid's mythic world, where canonical power dynamics are challenged from below to drain heroes of their heroism, give victims their say, and reveal an earth holier than heaven.
Reviews & Media
Emily Wilson and Luke Soucy read from and discuss their translations of ancient epic at the Brooklyn Public Library (September, 2025)
"Soucy's version of the Metamorphoses which is dynamic, attractive, and up to date in every way—in its laudable close engagement with the latest critical Latin text, its focus on the politics of sex, race, and gender, and its lively presentation of Ovid to the latest generation of younger readers."
"S[oucy]’s translation has great merit. It is more poetic than any current version."
"Soucy’s Commentary gives lavishly helpful guidance to the piecemeal reader, noticing links and making comparisons between different tales. . . . He’s refreshingly sensitive to the way contemporary concerns with sexual and identity politics can feel urgently addressed by the Metamorphoses. Equally refreshing, from the other side, is the fact that as a scholar he feels the value and importance of seeing past attitudes clearly, neither discreetly veiling elements in them that might affront a contemporary sensibility – as many translators have done with divine rapes – nor reading them as if Ovid were our contemporary and saw life as we do."
". . . Soucy’s translation is in blank verse, i.e. in unrhymed iambic pentameter, and unlike other translators, Soucy prides himself on keeping exactly the same number of lines as Ovid’s original. The result is a translation that conveys very well the pace and the witty, lively character of the Ovidian text and that is a pleasure to read."