Ovid
For other uses, see Ovid (disambiguation) |
Engraved frontispiece of George Sandys's 1632 London edition of Ovids Metamorphosis Englished. |
Publius Ovidius Naso (
Sulmona,
March 20,
43 BC –
Tomis, now
Constanţa AD
17), a
Roman poet known to the
English-speaking world as
Ovid, wrote on topics of
love, abandoned
women, and
mythological transformations. Ranked alongside
Virgil and
Horace as one of the three
canonical poets of
Latin literature, Ovid was generally considered the greatest master of the
elegiac couplet. His poetry, much imitated during
Late Antiquity and the
Middle Ages, had a decisive influence on
European art and
literature for centuries.
R. J. Tarrant offers the following assessment for the importance of Ovid::
From his own time until the end of Antiquity Ovid was among the most widely read and imitated of Latin poets; his greatest work, the Metamorphoses, also seems to have enjoyed the largest popularity. What place Ovid may have had in the curriculum of ancient schools is hard to determine: no body of antique scholia survives for any of his works, but it seems likely that the elegance of his style and his command of rhetorical technique would have commended him as a school author, perhaps at the elementary level.[R. J. Tarrant, "Ovid" in Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford, 1983), p. 257.]Ovid wrote in
elegiac couplets, with two exceptions: his lost
Medea, whose two fragments are in
iambic trimeter and
anapests, respectively, and his great
Metamorphoses, which he wrote in
dactylic hexameter, the meter of
Virgil's
Aeneid and
Homer's epics. Ovid offers an epic unlike those of his predecessors, a chronological account of the
cosmos from creation to his own day, incorporating many myths and legends about supernatural transformations from the Greek and Roman traditions.
Augustus banished Ovid in AD
8 to
Tomis on the
Black Sea for reasons that remain mysterious. Ovid himself wrote that it was because of
carmen et error – "a poem and a mistake" (
Tr. 2.207). The
error itself is uncertain. Ovid may have had an affair with a female relative of Augustus, or withheld knowledge of such an affair. The
carmen, however, is probably his
Ars Amatoria, a
didactic poem offering amatory advice to Roman men and women, which had been in circulation for several years.
It was during this period of exile that Ovid wrote two more collections of poems, called
Tristia and
Epistulae ex Ponto, which illustrate his sadness and desolation. Being far away from Rome, Ovid had no chance to research in libraries and thus was forced to abandon his work
Fasti. Even though he was friendly with the natives of Tomis and even wrote poems in their language, he still pined for Rome and his beloved third wife. Many of the poems are addressed to her, but also to
Augustus, whom he calls
Caesar and sometimes God, to himself, and even sometimes to the poems themselves, which expresses his heart-felt solitude. The famous first two lines of the
Tristia demonstrate the poet's misery from the start:
Parve sine me, liber, ibis in urbem::
ei mihi, quod domino non licet ire tuo! Little book go on to the city without me::
Alas for me, because your master is not allowed to go!Ovid died at Tomis after nearly ten years of banishment.
Existing and generally considered authentic, with approximate dates of publication
* (
10 BC)
Amores ('The Loves'), 5 books, about "Corinna", anti-marriage (revised into 3 books ca. AD
1)
* (
5 BC)
Heroides ('The Heroines') or
Epistulae Heroidum ('Letters of Heroines'), 21 letters (letters 16–21 were composed around AD
4 -
8)
* (5 BC)
Remedia Amoris ('The Cure for Love'), 1 book
* (5 BC)
Medicamina Faciei Feminae ('Women's Facial Cosmetics' or 'The Art of Beauty'), 100 lines surviving
* (
2 BC)
Ars Amatoria ('The Art of Love'), 3 books (the third written somewhat later)
* (finished by 8AD)
Fasti ('Festivals'), 6 books surviving which cover the first 6 months of the year and provide unique information on the
Roman calendar* (AD
8)
Metamorphoses ('Transformations'), 15 books
* (
9)
Ibis, a single poem
* (
10)
Tristia ('Sorrows'), 5 books
* (10)
Epistulae ex Ponto ('Letters from the Black Sea'), 4 books
* (
12)
Fasti ('Festivals'), 6 books surviving which cover the first 6 months of the year and provide unique information on the
Roman calendarLost or generally considered spurious
*
Medea, a lost tragedy about
Medea* a poem in
Getic, the language of
Dacia where Ovid was exiled, not extant (and possibly fictional)
*
Nux ('The Walnut Tree')
*
Consolatio ad Liviam ('Consolation to Livia')
*
Halieutica ('On Fishing') - generally considered spurious, a poem that some have identified with the otherwise lost poem of the same name written by Ovid.
See the website
"Ovid illustrated: the Renaissance reception of Ovid in image and Text" for many more Renaissance examples.
* (
1100s) The
troubadours and the medieval
courtoise literature* (
1200s) The
Roman de la Rose* (
1300s)
Petrarch,
Geoffrey Chaucer* (
1400s)
Sandro Botticelli* (1500s-1600s)
William Shakespeare* (
1600s)
Gian Lorenzo BerniniDante mentions him twice:
* in
De vulgari eloquentia mentions him, along with
Lucan,
Virgil and
Statius as one of the four
regulati poetae (ii, vi, 7)
* in
Inferno ranks him side by side with
Homer,
Horace,
Lucan and
Virgil (
Inferno, IV,88).
Retellings, adaptations and translations of his actual works
* (
1900s) 6 Metaphorphoses After Ovid for oboe by Benjamin Britten.
* (
1949)
Orphée A film by
Jean Cocteau, a retelling of the
Orpheus myth from the
Metamorphoses* (
1991)
The Last World by
Christoph Ransmayr* (
1997)
An Imaginary Life by
David Malouf, the story of Ovid's exile, and his relationship with a
wild boy he encounters.
* (
1997) "
Polaroid Stories" by
Naomi Iizuka, a retelling of Metamorphoses casting street kids and junkies in the roles of gods.
* (
1994)
After Ovid: New Metamorphoses edited by
Michael Hofmann and
James Lasdun is an anthology of contemporary poetry re-envisioning Ovid's
Metamorphoses* (
1997)
Tales from Ovid by
Ted Hughes is a modern poetic translation of twenty four passages from
Metamorphoses* (
2002) An adaptation of
Metamorphoses by
Mary Zimmerman appeared on Broadway's
Circle on the Square Theater, which featured an onstage pool [
1]
Ovid's
Ars Amatoria contains the first reference to the board game
ludus duodecim scriptorum, a relative of modern
backgammon.
*
Metamorphoses (poem) for external links specific to that work.
*
Latin literature*
University of Virginia, "Ovid Illustrated: The Renaissance Reception of Ovid in Image and Text"*
Free ebook of Ovid at
Project Gutenberg*
Latin and English translation**
Perseus/Tufts: P. Ovidius Naso Amores,
Ars Amatoria,
Heroides (on this site called
Epistulae),
Metamorphoses,
Remedia Amoris. Enhanced brower. Not downloadable.
**
Sacred Texts Archive: Ovid Amores,
Ars Amatoria,
Medicamina Faciei Femineae,
Metamorphoses,
Remedia Amoris.
**
The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidius Naso; elucidated by an analysis and explanation of the fables, together with English notes, historical, mythological and critical, and illustrated by pictorial embellishments: with a dictionary, giving the meaning of all the words with critical exactness. By Nathan Covington Brooks. Publisher: New York, A. S. Barnes & co.; Cincinnati, H. W. Derby & co., 1857
(a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu & layered PDF format)*
Original Latin only**
Latin Library: Ovid Amores,
Ars Amatoria,
Epistulae ex Ponto,
Fasti,
Heroides,
Ibis,
Metamorphoses,
Remedia Amoris,
Tristia.
**
Gutenberg Project: Fasti With introduction and extensive notes in English by Thomas Keightley. Plain text version.
*
English translation only**
New translations by A. S. Kline Amores,
Ars Amatoria,
Epistulae ex Ponto,
Fasti,
Heroides,
Ibis,
Medicamina Faciei Femineae,
Metamorphoses,
Remedia Amoris,
Tristia with enhanced browsing facility, downloadable in HTML, PDF, or MS Word DOC formats. Site also includes wide selection of works by other authors.
*
Commentary**
Perseus/Tufts: Commentary on the Heroides of Ovid
