Sirs and Madams,

These are really very good.

Nb,

V

I love Ovid and used this translation to do a Classics Club reading group for my students in translation.

have so many thoughts about ovid and the way we read him... too many thoughts...so disorganised thinkings

I would have liked more lovemaking and less bickering. But not bad.

Please read the translation by Peter Green. His introduction was very long-winded, but interesting and informative. I enjoyed the Amores the most of all. This is a classic and the poetry itself is lovely, but it is necessary to keep in mind while reading that this is ancient, and you must read it from a historical perspective. It provides great insight into social relations and romantic behavior in Ancient Rome, but doesn't hold up so well against modern morality and feminism.

I really enjoyed Ovid's poems!!

Oh, my, some parts of this have really not aged well! And knowing only a bit about Augustus, it’s very easy to guess why the Ars Amatoria got Ovid exiled. Its first book alone would have been enough. Not only did Ovid blatantly proclaim the debauchery of his time at a point when Augustus was big on morality and virtue, he also named places built and dedicated by the imperial family as popular locations for beginning illicit affairs. The same section of the Art of Love also contains a romanticised account of the rape of the Sabines which as a woman filled me with dread as well as a short encouragement to force as something women want. In Ovid’s defence, the subject doesn’t really come up again and all of his advice seems to be for a cunning pursuit, mutual love game and consummation thereof which makes him sound a bit more like Casanova than one of those lovely founders of Rome.

The Ars Amatoria gets a bit repetitive as when the perspective changes to women a lot of the advice and situations are simply reversed to fit the other side. All the ills he was trying to teach men how to overcome he advises women to make for their lovers. A third repetition appears in the Remedia as a deconstruction, the situations and examples are the same, the advice diametrically opposed.

The Amores are probably the best thing about this collection. They trace love in the elegiac fashion while gently(and at times not too gently) mocking it. They occasionally drop the guise of idealized love to discuss the reality of love affairs as in the poem discussing abortion or strike a more serious tone as in the eulogy to Tibullus. They are Ovid at his most playful, teasing, jeering, but still very humane. Perhaps in the Ars Amatoria, he is too full of himself, too riled up by his popularity and his tone – that friendly wit – becomes too biting or condescending at times as if inviting reprimand. I am quite curious now to read some of his works in exile and see what tone he adopted in them. Wit was Ovid’s greatest weapon, did he still have the courage to use it when it banished him from the centre of his world?

I did not care much for the translator of this edition’s introduction and notes. The introduction was far too didactic and instead of offering more information about Ovid and his work, he strayed far too much into technical discussions of poetry and its composition. The notes as well were at times filled with irrelevant anecdotes that added absolutely nothing to the understanding of the text.

This book contains the Amores, The Art of Love, The Cures for Love, and the surviving fragment from the Medicamina Faciei Femineae. Basically this collection contains all of Ovid’s surviving poetry from before his exile outside of the Heroides, the Fasti, and the Metamorphoses. I loved the Heroides so I thought I’d mow through these before tackling the Metamorphoses.

I would break the four sections down individually but honestly they are all awfully similar. The Amores and the Art of Love, written in about 16 BC and 1 BC respectively, are poetic lessons on how to convince Roman ladies to sleep with you. The Cures for Love, written around 2 AD, helpfully explains how to break things off when you’re done sleeping with said ladies. Medicamina Faciei Femineae is a short fragment from a 2,000 year old cosmetics handbook, basically. If it’s unclear from my tone I wasn’t blown away by this book.

Part of that was the translation. Normally Oxford World Classics can be counted on to do a first rate job but I thought this translation by A.D. Melville was pretty weak. A lot of the verse comes across as sing-song and sort of silly. Given that it is love poetry it’s supposed to be light but this just felt amateurish. Now I don’t know how to read Latin, so I can’t pinpoint how much of this lies on Ovid’s shoulders and how much belongs to Mr. Melville. But I have read other works of Ovid before and he has sounded considerably better. If I revisit these at some future date I will certainly be trying a different translation.

However, I think it will be a long, long time (if ever) before I take another crack at these and I would have a hard time recommending these poems to others. First of all, not only is this not top tier roman literature, I don’t even think this is the best collection of Augustan age elegies (I thought Propertius’ Elegies were better). So…I guess if you wanted to read the 2nd best book of love elegies written between 25 BC and 14 AD, this book is for you? Second, even if your answer to that question was yes, the book’s attitude towards women is…less than enlightened. Even poor Melville squirmed translating some of these lines, feeling the need to write in his introduction “Ovid’s attitude to women…may well be judged offensive by many readers. I share that opinion…these poems are the products of a younger man, brilliant and heartless.” I don’t know about the brilliant part (at least regarding these poems…some of his other stuff is tremendous), but Ovid can be pretty heartless. These are certainly the oldest poems I’ve ever read that attempt to satirize and make light of aborting your bastards, for instance.

Anyway, I’ve written far more than I intended about this book. The most interesting thing about it may be that these poems were scandalous enough to help Ovid get exiled by a livid Augustus. Misgivings aside, even though I don’t think this is his best work Ovid knows what he’s doing and if you enjoy roman literature there are things to admire here. I would only recommend this book to people who really can’t get enough roman lit though, as my experience with this book was probably a 2.5 star read. However, I think many of my misgivings were a result of a poor translation so I will give Ovid the benefit of the doubt and round this up to 3 stars.

An extremely readable translation with excellent supplementary material.

This is not the kind of book i can give a rating. but it was very interesting. I will definitly have to do a more in-depth re-read of The Amores at some point.

JAIL . PRISON . MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON!!!!!!!!
was interesting to read for the gender and sexuality stuff but jesus christ sex pest ovid really comes out with some heinous shit lmfao

Ignore the blurb, this is an instruction book: how to deal with chicks. The Red Pill.

It's fine, the advice is somewhat manipulative but goal orientated... but it was written 2,000 years ago (let's say) so it kinda rocks.

Worth the time.