Antoninus Liberalis, Greek grammarian, probably flourished about AD 150.

His only surviving work is the Μεταμορφωσεων Συναγωγη, a collection of forty-one prose tales about mythical metamorphoses. The literary genre of myths of transformations of men and women, heroes and nymphs, into stars (see Catasterismi), plants and animals, or rocks and mountains, were widespread and popular in the classical world. This work has more polished parallels in the better-known Metamorphoses of Ovid and in the Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius.

Many of the transformations in this compilation of forty-one are found nowhere else, and some may simply be inventions of this author; the manner of the narrative is a laconic and conversational prose; "this completely inartistic text" (Myers) offers the briefest summaries of lost metamorphoses by more ambitious writers, such as Nicander and Boios.

References

• The Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis: A Translation With Commentary, trans. Francis Celoria (Routledge, 1992). ISBN 0-415-06896-7. This is the first English translation of this work. Reviewed by K. Sara Myers, University of Michigan, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 1994.
  
• Manolis Papthomopoulos, Antoninus Liberalis: Les Métamorphoses (Paris, 1968) This edition establishes the Greek text.
  
• (Stephen M. Trzaskoma). Antoninus Liberalis: three sections from Metamorphoses: Hierax; Aigypios; The Dorians
  
• Encycyclopaedia Britannica 1911: "Antoninus Liberalis". Notes nineteenth-century editors of the Greek manuscripts