The lines I chose for this project were 706 through 743 of book four of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. This story is one of the last ones within book four but is still early in the whole Metamorphosis, seeing as it is 15 books long. Perseus, the hero in my story, first appears in book four in line 604, where he tries to enter the garden of Atlas. When Atlas refuses to let him in, Perseus pulls out the head of Medusa and turns him to a stone mountain, who holds up the heavens for eternity. While Perseus is leaving, he spots Andromeda, an Ethiopian princess, chained to a rock by her father Cepheus, who believed it would help calm Poseidon. Poseidon was upset because Andromeda’s mother, Cassiope, boasted that Andromeda was more beautiful than any Nereid, and as a punishment for her actions, he sent a sea monster to destroy their kingdom. To try and appease Poseidon, Andromeda was chained to a rock. Perseus tries to approach her when all of a sudden a sea monster emerges to eat Andromeda. Perseus quickly then makes a deal with the King and Queen that he must be accepted as their son in law if he saves the princess, and they agree. This is where my lines fit into the overall story, where Perseus kills the sea monster, breaks Andromeda’s chains, and is named Cepheus’ son in law. At the celebration, Perseus tells everyone the story of how he killed Medusa. Perseus used a reflection in his shield to kill Medusa (so he wouldn’t be turned to stone by her deadly eyes), and from her blood sprang up two other creatures, the well known Pegasus and the lesser known Chrysaor (the winged boar). This story is one of the most well-known stories of Perseus and the Metamorphoses as a whole. While the story I chose is less well known, it still had the key aspects of an epic. It is perhaps one of the first “damsel in distress” types of story, where the main character, usually a young male hero, saves a beautiful young princess from a monster. An example of this type of story in today’s could be the story of Rapunzel, Princess Fiona from the movie Shrek, or Cinderella, just to name a few. While this type of plot line is extremely sexist, it is interesting to think that it has been around for a long time, and maybe even could have been inspired by the story of Perseus and the sea monster.