Schmidt's monograph attempts to fill a gap in research on Ovid's Metamorphoses: although Lucretius’ influence on Ovid is by now well established and although his engagement with didactic poetry has been analysed with regard to the eroto-didactic Ars and the aetiological Fasti, there has not been a systematic study of the Met.'s half-serious, half-parodic contribution to the didactic genre, as S. claims in her introduction (15). She focuses on the topics treated in early Greek natural philosophy: cosmogony (ch. 1), the transition from chaos to cosmos (ch. 2), love and strife as driving forces (chs 3 and 4), the creation of life (chs 1 and 2), the elements (chs 5 and 6) and metaphysics of change and reincarnation (ch. 7). Ovid's creative reception of Lucretius and Empedocles takes centre stage in this monograph. The question whether Ovid was familiar with the latter's writings or only his ideas as mediated through Lucretius recurs throughout the book. (S. reluctantly suggests that Ovid engaged with Empedocles’ philosophy directly: 92–3). She also mentions allusions to Hesiod, Vergil, Orpheus’ cosmogonic song in Apollonius’ Argonautica and Aratus’ Phaenomena, but other didacto-poetic predecessors, especially from the Hellenistic period (e.g. Boeus, Callimachus and Nicander), remain absent.

The seven chapters feature close readings of passages from the Met., detailed surveys of scholarship and interpretations of the episodes’ didactic implications with reference to parallel and/or contrasting passages in the Empedoclean fragments and Lucretius’ DRN. These ‘double allusions’ are central to S.'s argument about Ovid's originality in his approach to didactic epic, as she makes clear in her first two chapters on cosmogony and cosmology. Vergil's Aeneid — featuring anthropomorphic deities in charge of the human world — had already countered Lucretius’ demythologising, realistic impetus with its negation of divine intervention, fantastic creatures and supernatural causes. Ovid, however, combines Lucretius’ sceptical materialism and Empedocles’ proto-scientific explanations of the universe's wonders. Taking up and combining their thoughts, especially those that contradict each other, he attributes credence equally to both and neither. Citing didactic authorities while simultaneously exposing their chasms allows Ovid to strike a balance between these natural-philosophical positions and mythic or poetic belief systems (80–4). In that, he is both serious in his engagement with predecessors and playfully ironic in his reinterpretation (102–3). The phrase discors concordia (Met. 1.433) captures this multi-layered enterprise of reception programmatically: whereas Empedocles emphasised the significance of Φιλότης (love, friendship, concordia) for the emergence of life, Lucretius stressed the atomistic relevance of Νεῖκος (strife, hatred, discordia). Ovid's poetic oxymoron gives credit to both, thus establishing his own position within the discourse (92–3). Phaethon's neglect of his father's warnings (Met. 2.1–332) can likewise be seen as a metaphor for Ovid's stance towards didactic poetry: Ovid gives us Sol's intricate speech at full length, but young Phaethon hardly listens to paternal paraenetic: didactic, it seems, defeats its purpose; Ovid's epic, however, succeeds, informed as it is by both natural philosophy and myth (98–9). S.'s analysis of Pythagoras’ speech in Met. 15 (ch. 7) echoes the points raised in the initial chapters and confirms Ovid's highly reflective and ironically humorous fluctuation between reverence and disbelief when it comes to referencing canonised philosophical and poetic authorities.

With the two chapters dedicated to love, a crucial creative force for both Empedocles and Lucretius, S.'s otherwise meticulous philology demonstrates a slightly disconcerting, interpretive tendency. Ovid merges the philosophical Eros, Vergil's advice to choose piety over love, Hesiod's concept of Eros as a primordial divine force and Apollonius’ personified winged little god with tremendously destructive powers, while erotic pursuits are charged with cosmological imagery, thus continuing the Met.'s philosophical project. In a post-#MeToo era, reading Ovid's amatory tales strictly allegorically is an unusual choice. In S.'s interpretation of divine rape stories (ch. 3), sexual violence is occasionally downplayed or even cosmologically legitimised. Hence, Apollo's pursuit of Daphne becomes a metaphor for the necessary balance between the opposing elements fire (Apollo's desire) and water (Daphne's transformation through a river god). Conception in the aftermath of rape is labelled a less destructive, even creative aspect of violence (141–2). The conflict between reason and emotion, piety and furor, is central to the analysis of the human love stories of Medea, Scylla, Byblis and Myrrha (ch. 4): as personified examples of chaos seeping into cosmic and moral order, they question the efficacy of Lucretius’ moralising exhortation to follow reason rather than desire in DRN 4.

Throughout the book, S. makes sure to regularly summarise and restate all her arguments. The extensive signposting occasionally tilts towards the repetitive. For a less specialised audience, these ‘didactic’ recapitulations might make up for the missing translations of the Greek and Latin quotations which would otherwise have rendered the monograph more accessible to general readers. Detecting the author's own voice and perspective is difficult, especially in the summary-heavy chapters 5 (on transformations into elements), 6 (on passages informed by scientific writing rather than myth alone, e.g. the plague on Aegina) and 7 (on Pythagoras’ philosophy of flux). S.'s careful avoidance of hypotheses which have not yet been thoroughly bolstered by experts might disappoint readers looking for refreshing new insights into Ovid's opus magnum. Hopefully, the book will spark more research and discussion and inspire German-speaking classicists to engage further with the intersections of epic and didactic poetry, myth and philosophy, or literature and nature.