Novelists: Ovid in Ossining

NOVELISTS

(See Cover) My mind is bent to tell of bodies

changed into new forms. Ye gods, for

you yourselves have wrought the

changes, breathe on these my undertakings,

and bring down my song in

unbroken strains from the world's very

beginning even unto the present time.

When the Roman poet Ovid wrote this supplication, "the present time" was roughly the time of Christ, when it was far easier to think of gods becoming men, beasts or monsters and to see the palpable world as the creature of unseen magical forces.