This chapter explores the earliest material witnesses to the medieval reception of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and shows what they can tell us about what attracted the medieval reader to Ovid’s great work. The earliest witnesses consist of two families of freestanding commentaries, both of which seem to stem from Bavaria around the year 1100. This chapter demonstrates how the commentaries make use of several different interpretative strategies. These include, of course, explanations focussed on the mythological background, but also comments on the grammar and vocabulary of the Metamorphoses, as well as explanations focussing on neoplatonic cosmography and Euhemeristic interpretations of Ovid’s work. As this is the first documented stage of adapting, and in that sense transforming, Ovid’s Metamorphoses for later readers, the categories of commentary discerned also lay the foundation for relating and understanding later stages of the tradition.