Books by Ovid

Index to this volume is in the second volume, Books IX-XV.

In the year A.D. 8, Emperor Augustus sentenced the elegant, brilliant, and sophisticated Roman poet Ovid to exile-permanently, as it turned out-at Tomis, modern Constantza, on the Romanian coast of the Black Sea. The real reason for the emperor's action has never come to light, and all of Ovid's subsequent efforts to secure either a reprieve or, at the very least, a transfer to a less dangerous place of exile failed. Two millennia later, the agonized, witty, vivid, nostalgic, and often slyly malicious poems he wrote at Tomis remain as fresh as the day they were written, a testament for exiles everywhere, in all ages. The two books of the Poems of Exile, the Lamentations (Tristia) and the Black Sea Letters (Epistulae ex Ponto), chronicle Ovid's impressions of Tomis-its appalling winters, bleak terrain, and sporadic raids by barbarous nomads-as well as his aching memories and ongoing appeals to his friends and his patient wife to intercede on his behalf. While pretending to have lost his old literary skills and even to be forgetting his Latin, in the Poems of Exile Ovid in fact displays all his virtuoso poetic talent, now concentrated on one objective: ending the exile. But his rhetorical message falls on obdurately deaf ears, and his appeals slowly lose hope. A superb literary artist to the end, Ovid offers an authentic, unforgettable panorama of the death-in-life he endured at Tomis.

The first English language commentary on any book of the Fasti since Frazer's five volume edition and annotated Loeb of 1929/31.

Hailed in Newsweek for his translation of The Poems of Catullus ("Charles Martin is an American poet; he puts the poetry, the immediacy of the streets back into the English Catullus. The effect is electric"), Martin's translation of Metamorphoses will be the translation of choice for contemporary readers.

This is a new paperback edition of Adrian Hollis's commentary on Ovid's love poem which was first published in 1977. The text of the poem is Kenney's Oxford Classical Text, and it is supplemented with a full introduction to the style and historical background to the poem.

This book presents the Latin text, with an Introduction and full commentary, of Book XIII of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Guidance is offered on points of language and style, and the Introduction treats in general terms the themes of metamorphosis and the structure of the poem as a whole.

This collection of Ovid's poems deals with the whole spectrum of sexual desire, ranging from deeply emotional declarations of eternal devotion to flippant arguments for promiscuity. In the Amores, Ovid addresses himself in a series of elegies to Corinna, his beautiful, elusive mistress. The intimate and vulnerable nature of the poet revealed in these early poems vanishes in the notorious Art of Love, in which he provides a knowing and witty guide to sexual conquest - a work whose alleged obscenity led to Ovid's banishment from Rome in AD 8. This volume also includes the Cures for Love, with instructions on how to terminate a love affair, and On Facial Treatment for Ladies, an incomplete poem on the art of cosmetics.

The five books of the "Tristia" are Ovid's first response to the pain and isolation of exile. They constitute both a moving personal document and a testimony to the enduring values of the mind in the face of arbitrary authority.

In the twenty-one poems of the Heroides, Ovid gave voice to the heroines and heroes of epic and myth. These deeply moving literary epistles reveal the happiness and torment of love, as the writers tell of their pain at separation, forgiveness of infidelity or anger at betrayal. The faithful Penelope wonders at the suspiciously long absence of Ulysses, while Dido bitterly reproaches Aeneas for too eagerly leaving her bed to follow his destiny, and Sappho - the only historical figure portrayed here - describes her passion for the cruelly rejecting Phaon. In the poetic letters between Paris and Helen the lovers seem oblivious to the tragedy prophesied for them, while in another exchange the youthful Leander asserts his foolhardy eagerness to risk his life to be with his beloved Hero.

Contains a continuous running commentary suited to short poems. This book contains the commentary to promote in sixth-formers and undergraduates, not just an understanding of the Latin but also an appreciation of literary quality.