Thoroughly enjoyable.

Ovid is one of my favourite poets but I do have misgivings about this translation. It's great if you're interested in reading Ovid's love poetry for pleasure, but if you're studying it at any level then it's quite far from the original text.

Green's translations are all a bit too jaunty and try-hard for me. For example, in 1.1.5 where the Latin is 'quis tibi, saeve puer, dedit hoc in carmina iuris?' Green translates this as ' "nasty young brat," I told him, "who made you Inspector of Metres?" '. A more literal translation would be 'who, cruel boy, gave you this right over poetry?', quite different in tone, I think, from Green.

Green has also written a substantial introduction which gives biographical details in some length and outlines his position in reading Ovid. Again, I disagree with his stance which seems to me to be a very literal one, that is he assumes Ovid is writing autobiographically and takes all his evidence from the poetry, a dubious position I think.

That aside, Ovid is a great poet and this is a very accessible volume for the general interested reader. However, for students I think this could be a barrier rather than a help and would stick to Loeb's Heroides and Amores.

This review concerns only Amores I-III. I haven't read Ars Amatoria yet.

I really liked these poems and I think that was helped most by the choices of the translator. Rhyming elegiac couplets were abundant, and I felt myself speaking the poems as opposed to reading them. There was a good variety of poems: ones about Ovid's muse Corinna, ones about the gods, ones about erectile dysfunction, ones about love in general; themes vary from sex, to cheating, to teasing, to despair, to memory, and to war. Most poems are sprinkled with a surprising amount of humour too, and that was what really stood out to me. I was seriously chuckling at some points. What struck me most was how modern some of the situations felt.

Some situations really are timeless, and I enjoyed reading about what Ovid thought about love two thousand years ago. 4/5.

These poems are so much fun! From true love & burning down cities to erectile dysfunction and scorned lovers. I read this over a year, coming back to read a few poems at a time, often aloud, and it’s been great. Very enjoyable.

"It's all right to use force - force of that sort goes down well with the girls: what in fact they love to yield they'd often rather have stolen. Rough seduction delights them, the audacity of near-rape is a compliment - so the girl who could have been forced, yet somehow got away unscathed, may feign delight, but in fact feels sadly let down."

Really, Ovid?

Considering the time in which this was written, the book is pretty spicy!

Imagine Metamorphosis, but it's written by an early twenty-something who is an absolute cad, and you have The Erotic Poems. These were early short works by Ovid and they are sort of the ancient version of Prince's incestuous "Sister" or the gleefully wrong "Head" from the Dirty Mind album ("Head" truly feels ripped straight out of the Ovid playbook).

The situations and "advice" that Ovid gives are so outrageous that they can only be taken as comical. If you're a fan of Aristophanes, this would tie right into that realm of ancient sex humor.

Of course since this is Ovid there is a darn-near catalog of ancient mythological figures referenced throughout that remind one of what was to come in Metamorphosis, and that is the main reason the poem doesn't quite cohere as much as it could. But for a one sitting ancient poetic read, this is entertaining and a window into another world.

Did Ovid possibly get banished for some of the material here? If only we knew.

Овідій поет із "золотої доби" римської літератури.

Ovid was a poet during the lengthy time that Augustus was the emperor of Rome. He was from an equestrian family in the north of Italy, but unlike Virgil, he loved Rome. He loved the plays, the music, the parties, and the people. He thrived on the city life. Unfortunately for him, he made a mistake and Augustus banished him to a distant, cold, and inhospitable place for the rest of his life. The work that he is best known by lay folk like me for was Metamorphosis, which he wrote while in exile in the hopes that Augustus would be pleased and allow him to come back to Rome. No such luck befell Ovid, but his work relied upon many ancient sources, some of which no longer exist, so he did modern man a favor, or at least those modern men who wanted to know more about the myths and legends of the ancient world.

The Erotic Poems were the work of Ovid's heart. The Amores are elegaic poems that were written by a young man. They describe a consuming love, fueled by equal parts passion and jealousy, that ends badly. The emotions are strong, almost frightening at times, and always frank. The Art of Love poems are written in middle age, when passion has cooled a bit. They are instruction manuals for men and women interested in fomenting love. He is a teacher of the art of love, an apprentice at the knee of Cupid. The Cures for Love are intended for the man who cannot survive love. Ovid is a healer, giving instructions in how to manage an addiction to love that had failed. The writing is frank, understandable, and in many ways it seems quite contemporary.

Difficult to read, but still enjoyed picking out themes and or working out what he might be on about.

Lente currite noctis equi - hurry slowly horses of the night.

This slim volume is your one-stop shop for the private lives of the leisured classes of early Imperial Rome, where adultery is the favourite contact sport with abortion as it's only risk. How to fall in love, how to fall out of love, contraception, go-betweens, how to behave, how to dress to make the right impression on your lover - it's all here in a collection of poems passionate and cynical by turn.

But then also at the beginning of book one of the Art of Love when the men and women are at the theatre - to see and be seen - there is a sudden unexpected contrast between the sophisticated modern Romans and their distant ancestors of Romulus' time also eyeing up the Sabine women just making their choices of which one to seize once the signal was given. Of a sudden Ovid is giving us an alternative picture of Roman history, not the drive to military conquest as the product of strategy, but of sexual conquest powering it to dominate the Mediterranean. Thanks to Ovid's vision, the simplest act of love subverts the stated public aims and ambitions of Imperial authority. Brilliant, a window on to another modern world now two thousand years old.

The Melville translation came recommended, by whom I cannot remember. It worked for me.

Did now expect Ovid's Poems to be as good as I found them to be!