TEN STORIES FROM THE METAMORPHOSES BY CLARENCE W. GLEASON, A.M. (HARV.) OF THE ROXBURY LATIN SCHOOL NEW YORK ·:· CINCINNATI .:. CHICAGO MARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY GIFT OF GINN AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY C. W. GLEASON. A TERM OF OVID. W. P. I PREFACE OVID is an author far less difficult than Vergil, and more interesting than either Vergil or most of the prose writers generally read in schools; hence he deserves a place in our courses of study. In many courses, if not most of them, the aim is to crowd as much of the bare essentials of Latin as possible into the smallest amount of time; thus a literature at best impoverished is bereft of one of the most charming and interesting of the few authors available for school use. The agile pupil is made to vault from his condensed beginner's book into Caesar, from Caesar either into Cicero by way of Vergil, or into Vergil by way of Cicero. But a few weeks spent on the Metamorphoses of Ovid need not be considered an unnecessary digression from the straight path to the desired goal, or in any sense a waste of time, for besides the great literary gain of reading the tales of Greek and Roman mythology told in a most delightful way, there is a distinct value in using Ovid as a stepping-stone from the level (though-in Caesar, at least rough) roadbed of prose to the more difficult and to many pupils dangerous heights of Vergil. A glance at the vocabulary of the present volume will perhaps make this plain. The ten extracts from the Metamorphoses were selected without reference to choice of words, or to their ease or difficulty in translation, but solely from a literary point of view, for the beauty and interest of the |