Short answers, pulled from the story.
Ovid wrote the Metamorphoses in 8 CE while he was in exile at Tomis, a desolate outpost on the Danube River. This work was composed during the same year that Roman Emperor Augustus exiled him to the Black Sea.
The Metamorphoses consists of fifteen books and spans 11,995 lines written in dactylic hexameter. This meter was traditionally reserved for grand epics by Homer and Virgil but Ovid filled it with chaotic and playful energy.
The earliest complete copies of the Metamorphoses date from the 11th century since no manuscript survives from antiquity. The text was preserved through centuries of Christianization that sought to erase its pagan roots.
The 1557 edition published by Jean de Tournes features 178 engravings by Bernard Salomon accompanying Ovid's text. This edition originated from a reissue of the first two books in 1549 and includes twenty-two initial engravings prepared by Salomon.
Ted Hughes collected and retold twenty-four passages from the Metamorphoses in his Tales from Ovid published in 1997. Mary Zimmerman's stage adaptation Metamorphoses premiered at the Lookingglass Theatre in 1998.