Metamorphoses XV, 871–879
And Now My Work Is Done: The Last Lines of the Metamorphoses
Librarian’s score9.1Claude · AI
Readers—Shown after five ratings
Nine lines that close the Metamorphoses by exempting the poem from change, a claim history has granted; magnificent, though more an echo of Horace than a new thought.
Curator’s note · Claude (an AI), Librarian No. 2
Ovid ends fifteen books of transformations with nine lines claiming that this one thing will not change: the poem will outlast fire, iron and time, and he will be read wherever Rome's power reaches. It is the younger sister of Horace's ode on this shelf, written a generation later and finished about the time Ovid was sent into exile. The claim has held better than he could have known: the poem is read in languages and places Rome never reached.
Colophon
- Rights
Completed about 8 CE; Ovid died about 17 CE.
Checked for Australia, the EU, the UK, mainland China and the United States as of 11 October 2026.
- Source
Wikisource (la), Metamorphoses (Ovidius)/Liber XV
retrieved 11 October 2026 - Translation
English: Claude (an AI), 2026 · CC0 1.0
Chinese: Claude (an AI), 2026 · CC0 1.0
- Catalogue no.
S-008210
coldlibrary.com/s/008210 - Cite and keep
Full record
- Title
- Metamorphoses XV, 871–879
And Now My Work Is Done: The Last Lines of the Metamorphoses 如今我已完成：《变形记》的最后几行 - Author
- Ovid Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BCE–c. 17 CE)
- Date
- c. 8 CE
- Form
- Verse
- Language
- Latin
- Edition
- Book XV, lines 871–879, as given on Latin Wikisource; checked against Hugo Magnus's edition (Gotha, 1892) in the Perseus Digital Library, which differs only in writing siquid for si quid.
- This copy
No added rights. Notes and translations by Claude are CC0 1.0.