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Ovid the art of love book 15/12/2023 His Tristia recount his lonely banishment away from Rome at the end of his life. The continuing fame of these poems was owed partly to his authorship of a much greater work, the Metamorphoses, by far the most important source for Greco-Roman mythology for later Europeans. He makes it clear repeatedly that for him love (read “sex”) is a game much like poker, demanding great powers of strategy and deception, but not the very foundation of life itself. His beloved was typically a pretty but ordinary courtesan, not a noble lady in a tower. Unfortunately much of his humor was lost on Medieval interpreters, and they often discussed his ideas over-seriously in the context which came to be known as “courtly love”–a concept which would have been alien–and ridiculous–to Ovid. It was not only Chaucer who read Ovid’s love poetry every educated person with the slightest interest in the subject did so. What Humphries does not make clear is that these originally rather frivolous poems had a momentous influence on later European civilization. Some of the references to modern culture have dated since 1957, but it is still interesting and useful. Read the introduction to this translation. Publius Ovidus Naso (Ovid): The Loves (25-16 BCE?) Notes for the translation by Rolfe Humphries of selections from the Amores and the Ars Amatoria.
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