Climate change to identity: The vital lessons in Metamorphoses, Ovid's 2,000-year-old poem

You might think that Ovid's Metamorphoses, an ancient compendium of the greatest Greek myths, would hold little relevance today. But its tales of desire and deceit reveal surprising parallels with contemporary concerns, from climate change and the refugee crisis to gender-based violence and sexual identity.

Ovid's Metamorphoses isn't simply a collection of myths and legends – it is the collection of myths and legends. Taken largely from Greek sources, but written in Latin around AD8, it contains the most famous versions of the stories we're familiar with, from Perseus slaying Medusa to the vain Narcissus falling in love with his reflection.

Its tales of desire, jealousy, cunning and deceit have offered endless inspiration for artists and writers over the centuries – and still feel surprisingly relevant.

"The Metamorphoses is an extraordinarily contemporary text," Fiona Cox, professor and author of Ovid's Presence in Contemporary Women's Fiction, tells the BBC. "Ovid's obsession with fluidity, plasticity and change enabled him to explore the limitations of bodies, the boundaries of gender and of sexuality, and the relationship between humans and the Earth as well as the animal kingdom," she says.

The shapeshifting nature of the myths themselves means that "each generation can use them for their own purpose. They are about universal values [and] the human condition. They confront us with the desires, the passions, the emotions that we all have," Fritz Scholten tells the BBC. He is the curator of Metamorphoses, a new exhibition at The Rijksmuseum that explores the work's influence on art over the centuries.

Whether you go back to Ovid’s original telling of the myths, read one of their many contemporary reinterpretations, or explore the numerous artworks they have inspired, you will find these ancient tales have a striking amount to say about the world we live in today.

For Scholten, the dangers of human vanity and pride are ever present in Ovid. The myth of Narcissus falling in love with his reflection has long been used by artists such as Caravaggio to caution against such vanity. The story can't help but draw parallels with contemporary self-promotion on social media. "We have fallen in love with ourselves and forgotten what's going on around us," Scholten says.

But if we look at the reality behind our filtered selfies and snaps of the latest overcrowded Instagram hotspot, we'll find, Scholten says, as Narcissus did, that "in the end it's just a reflection and an illusion that did not bring us what we hoped for".

Pygmalion's love for the statue of a woman he has created has long appealed to artists like Rodin, who have used the story as an excuse to celebrate their own skill. However, for Scholten, Pygmalion's belief that his creation is superior to all the real women around him has echoes of humankind's misplaced faith in its own invention, AI. "We human beings think we can control everything and have solutions for everything," he says.

But this arrogance has consequences. At least in George Bernard Shaw's retelling of the myth, later adapted into the hit 1964 film My Fair Lady, the Pygmalion character, Henry Higgins, finds that his "creation", Eliza, eventually develops a mind of her own. Should the same happen with AI, the results could be far less pleasing.

Those currently in positions of power, be they tech giants or oligarchs, presidents or prime ministers, would do well to heed the story........

© BBC