Why omit Ovid?

Why didn't they tell me about this? All these years I've been reading my Edith Hamilton, reading my Bullfinch, reading my secondary sources. And then at a library book sale I pick up a well-worn copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses, in the Horace Gregory translation.

And the heavens open, and I am a mythologist again.

I mean, seriously, I used to think of myself as a somewhat educated fellow. I read the required Homer (including the boring Telemachus parts) and the extracurricular Homer (beautiful bloody battle bits, though repetitive). I read me some Aeneid and some Divine Comedy and some Milton. My best friend in college was a Classics major. But nothing has been as much breezy fun or as diversely educational as this strange, comprehensive poem that would serve so well as a beginning mythology text.

Everything you need is there. Why don't teachers use this version to teach Perseus? Why don't museum curators print selections beside ancient illustrations? This is so well written, so readable, such an education in pacing and transition control... Are people so afraid of primary texts that they would rather read badly written Cliff's Notes than actual good, terse, muscular writing? (Don't answer that.)

Or do Gregory's oddly VH1-ish introduction and oddly located chapter summaries scare people away?

If I ever teach a mythology class, this will be a significant chunk of the curriculum. I'll probably have to throw in some other cultures to be more politically correct. But Ovid is a pretty ideal Dead White Male.

This nerd says check it out.

Breakfast today was homemade monkey bread made by a very intense four-year-old. Torn-up raw refrigerator biscuits in a loaf pan with melted butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon poured over the top, then baked for much longer than I expected. Lunch was much less interesting.