The principal character in “Ozymandias” is the “traveller from an antique land” (1) who narrates 13 of the sonnet’s 14 lines. This traveler, likely an allusion to the ancient historian Diodorus Siculus, illustrates the ability of literature to allow both writers and readers to travel through time. Shelley’s use of “antique” as an epithet to describe the traveler’s home testifies to this time-traveling capacity of written works, which is further highlighted by the poem’s other characters. The two main characters might appear to be the king Ozymandias and the sculptor who carved him in stone, but the poem’s framing as the recounting of an encounter with the statue effectively strips both king and sculptor of any agency they may have enjoyed several millennia ago. All the reader’s information on Ozymandias and his sculptor is mediated by the interpretation of the traveler. This traveler believes...