Ovids metamorphoses, completed around A.D.8, shows the presence and prevalence of change in the world. Beggining with chaos and creation, Ovid embraces a vast array of mythological tales within his theme of transformation. Phaethon, Narcissus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Deadalus and Icarus are only a few of the most famous. Passing through these to the seriocomic re-tellings of the Trojan War, the travels of Aenas, and the events of Roman history down to Ovids own times, his readers find infinite variety in a work that is, by turns, funny, pathetic and violent- always unpredictable and always engrossing.