When does imitation of an author morph into masquerade? Although the Roman writer Ovid died in the first century CE, many new Latin poems were ascribed to him from the sixth until the fifteenth century. Like the Appendix Vergiliana, these verses reflect different understandings of an admired Classical poet and expand his legacy throughout the Middle Ages.
The works of the “medieval Ovid” mirror the dazzling variety of their original. The Appendix Ovidiana includes narrative poetry that recounts the adventures of both real and imaginary creatures, erotic poetry that wrestles with powerful desires and sexual violence, and religious poetry that—despite the historical Ovid’s paganism—envisions the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ.
This is the first comprehensive collection and English translation of these pseudonymous medieval Latin poems.
Seductive verse.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BC–AD 17), born at Sulmo, studied rhetoric and law at Rome. Later he did considerable public service there, and otherwise devoted himself to poetry and to society. Famous at first, he offended the emperor Augustus by his Ars amatoria, and was banished because of this work and some other reason unknown to us, and dwelt in the cold and primitive town of Tomis on the Black Sea. He continued writing poetry, a kindly man, leading a temperate life. He died in exile.
Ovid’s main surviving works are the Metamorphoses, a source of inspiration to artists and poets including Chaucer and Shakespeare; the Fasti, a poetic treatment of the Roman year of which Ovid finished only half; the Amores, love poems; the Ars amatoria, not moral but clever and in parts beautiful; Heroides, fictitious love letters by legendary women to absent husbands; and the dismal works written in exile: the Tristia, appeals to persons including his wife and also the emperor; and similar Epistulae ex Ponto. Poetry came naturally to Ovid, who at his best is lively, graphic and lucid.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Ovid is in six volumes.
The Roman book of days.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BC–AD 17), born at Sulmo, studied rhetoric and law at Rome. Later he did considerable public service there, and otherwise devoted himself to poetry and to society. Famous at first, he offended the emperor Augustus by his Ars amatoria, and was banished because of this work and some other reason unknown to us, and dwelt in the cold and primitive town of Tomis on the Black Sea. He continued writing poetry, a kindly man, leading a temperate life. He died in exile.
Ovid’s main surviving works are the Metamorphoses, a source of inspiration to artists and poets including Chaucer and Shakespeare; the Fasti, a poetic treatment of the Roman year of which Ovid finished only half; the Amores, love poems; the Ars amatoria, not moral but clever and in parts beautiful; Heroides, fictitious love letters by legendary women to absent husbands; and the dismal works written in exile: the Tristia, appeals to persons including his wife and also the emperor; and similar Epistulae ex Ponto. Poetry came naturally to Ovid, who at his best is lively, graphic and lucid.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Ovid is in six volumes.
Two early works by the consummate Latin love poet.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BC–AD 17), born at Sulmo, studied rhetoric and law at Rome. Later he did considerable public service there, and otherwise devoted himself to poetry and to society. Famous at first, he offended the emperor Augustus by his Ars amatoria, and was banished because of this work and some other reason unknown to us, and dwelt in the cold and primitive town of Tomis on the Black Sea. He continued writing poetry, a kindly man, leading a temperate life. He died in exile.
Ovid's main surviving works are the Metamorphoses, a source of inspiration to artists and poets including Chaucer and Shakespeare; the Fasti, a poetic treatment of the Roman year of which Ovid finished only half; the Amores, love poems; the Ars amatoria, not moral but clever and in parts beautiful; Heroides, fictitious love letters by legendary women to absent husbands; and the dismal works written in exile: the Tristia, appeals to persons including his wife and also the emperor; and similar Epistulae ex Ponto. Poetry came naturally to Ovid, who at his best is lively, graphic and lucid.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Ovid is in six volumes.
2009 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine
Widely praised for his recent translations of Boethius and Ariosto, David R. Slavitt returns to Ovid, once again bringing to the contemporary ear the spirited, idiomatic, audacious charms of this master poet.
The love described here is the anguished, ruinous kind, for which Ovid was among the first to find expression. In the Amores, he testifies to the male experience, and in the companion Heroides—through a series of dramatic monologues addressed to absent lovers—he imagines how love goes for women. “You think she is ardent with you? So was she ardent with him,” cries Oenone to Paris. Sappho, revisiting the forest where she lay with Phaon, sighs, “The place / without your presence is just another place. / You were what made it magic.” The Remedia Amoris sees love as a sickness, and offers curative advice: “The beginning is your best chance to resist”; “Try to avoid onions, / imported or domestic. And arugula is bad. / Whatever may incline your body to Venus / keep away from.” The voices of men and women produce a volley of extravagant laments over love’s inconstancy and confusions, as though elegance and vigor of expression might compensate for heartache.
Though these love poems come to us across millennia, Slavitt’s translations, introduced by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda, ensure that their sentiments have not faded with the passage of time. They delight us with their wit, even as we weep a little in recognition.
The poetry of change.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BC–AD 17), born at Sulmo, studied rhetoric and law at Rome. Later he did considerable public service there, and otherwise devoted himself to poetry and to society. Famous at first, he offended the emperor Augustus by his Ars amatoria, and was banished because of this work and some other reason unknown to us, and dwelt in the cold and primitive town of Tomis on the Black Sea. He continued writing poetry, a kindly man, leading a temperate life. He died in exile.
Ovid's main surviving works are the Metamorphoses, a source of inspiration to artists and poets including Chaucer and Shakespeare; the Fasti, a poetic treatment of the Roman year of which Ovid finished only half; the Amores, love poems; the Ars amatoria, not moral but clever and in parts beautiful; Heroides, fictitious love letters by legendary women to absent husbands; and the dismal works written in exile: the Tristia, appeals to persons including his wife and also the emperor; and similar Epistulae ex Ponto. Poetry came naturally to Ovid, who at his best is lively, graphic and lucid.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Ovid is in six volumes.
The poetry of change.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BC–AD 17), born at Sulmo, studied rhetoric and law at Rome. Later he did considerable public service there, and otherwise devoted himself to poetry and to society. Famous at first, he offended the emperor Augustus by his Ars amatoria, and was banished because of this work and some other reason unknown to us, and dwelt in the cold and primitive town of Tomis on the Black Sea. He continued writing poetry, a kindly man, leading a temperate life. He died in exile.
Ovid's main surviving works are the Metamorphoses, a source of inspiration to artists and poets including Chaucer and Shakespeare; the Fasti, a poetic treatment of the Roman year of which Ovid finished only half; the Amores, love poems; the Ars amatoria, not moral but clever and in parts beautiful; Heroides, fictitious love letters by legendary women to absent husbands; and the dismal works written in exile: the Tristia, appeals to persons including his wife and also the emperor; and similar Epistulae ex Ponto. Poetry came naturally to Ovid, who at his best is lively, graphic and lucid.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Ovid is in six volumes.
An influential medieval allegorical interpretation of the Metamorphoses that uncovers the hidden moral truths of Ovid’s stories, translated into English for the first time.
Written in about 1340 in Avignon by the Benedictine preacher Pierre Bersuire, The Moralized Ovid—commonly referred to by its Latin title, Ovidius moralizatus, to distinguish it from the anonymous French vernacular Ovide moralisé—was arguably the most influential interpretation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the High Middle Ages. It circulated widely in manuscript form and was frequently printed during the Renaissance. Originally intended as a sourcebook of exempla for preachers’ sermons, The Moralized Ovid provides not only a window into the reception of classical literature in the fourteenth century but also amazingly vivid details of daily life in the Middle Ages across all strata of society.
The work begins with a detailed description of the Greco-Roman gods, inspired in part by Bersuire’s friend and fellow proponent of classical poetry, Francesco Petrarch. It then retells selected major myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, each followed by numerous allegorical interpretations that draw from biblical stories, contemporary events, and the natural world.
This edition presents the first full English translation alongside an authoritative Latin text.
The poet in exile.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BC–AD 17), born at Sulmo, studied rhetoric and law at Rome. Later he did considerable public service there, and otherwise devoted himself to poetry and to society. Famous at first, he offended the emperor Augustus by his Ars amatoria, and was banished because of this work and some other reason unknown to us, and dwelt in the cold and primitive town of Tomis on the Black Sea. He continued writing poetry, a kindly man, leading a temperate life. He died in exile.
Ovid’s main surviving works are the Metamorphoses, a source of inspiration to artists and poets including Chaucer and Shakespeare; the Fasti, a poetic treatment of the Roman year of which Ovid finished only half; the Amores, love poems; the Ars amatoria, not moral but clever and in parts beautiful; Heroides, fictitious love letters by legendary women to absent husbands; and the dismal works written in exile: the Tristia, appeals to persons including his wife and also the emperor; and similar Epistulae ex Ponto. Poetry came naturally to Ovid, who at his best is lively, graphic and lucid.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Ovid is in six volumes.
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