What did Ovid Write?

N.B. This FAQ is very out of date. I keep it here because so many links point to it, but if you are researching or are just interested in the Roman poet Ovid, I recommend starting with the Wikipedia.

Amores (Loves)

These three books of love poems, 49 in all, are Ovid’s earliest work. From the introductory epigram we know that there were two "editions" (exactly what "edition" means in this context is a complicated topic):

We who had once been Naso’s five books are now three;
the author prefered this work to the previous one.
Though now there may be no joy for you to read us,
the pain will now be less by two.

The first edition of five books appeared sometime after 20 B.C.E. and about the same time as the first fifteen of the Heroides. A second, three-book edition came out around 1 C.E.

The Amores are written in elegiac couplets, as are all of Ovid’s major works except for the Metamorphoses. The first line of each couplet is a hexameter, which means it has has six metrical feet (like bars or measures in music), and the second line is a pentameter and has only five. Epic is written entirely in hexameters, which explains how Ovid in the opening of Amores (see below) can pretend he is beginning to write an epic until Cupid steals a foot out of the second line. The Amores follow in the footsteps of his older, contemporary elegists, Tibullus (ca. 55 B.C.E.-19 or 18 B.C.E.) and Propertius (ca. 48 B.C.E.-ca. 16 B.C.E.). However, Ovid takes the genre into new territory by treating love in a highly ironic and literary way. Love poetry is, for him, less a way to express the emotions of his heart, more a canvas for his unique poetic genius. For, instance, the first poem of the collection begins with the same word, arma ("arms" or "weapons"), that began Vergil’s Aeneid — "Of arms and a man I sing" — and love is throughout treated ironically as a kind of war. In this way, Ovid was able both to give a nod to and to set himself off from his great predecessor (who had only just died when the first edition of the Amores appeared).

The Amores were popular in antiquity, in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. They exerted a great influence on European love poetry.

Amores 1.1.1-10

Of arms and violent wars was I ready to write in serious meter
a subject befitting the music
but the second verse was shorter — Cupid laughed

They say and stole one of my feet
"Who gave you, savage boy," I said, "any power of songs?
We poets are the throng of the Muses, not yours.
What would happen if Venus snatched the arms of blond Minerva,
if blond Minerva waved flaming love-torches around?

Who would approve if Ceres reigned in the mountainous woods,
if the fields were tilled by the laws of the huntress maiden, Diana?"

Heroides (Heroines)

The 21 poems now collected as the Heroides or Epistulae Heroidum (Letters of Heroines) came out in two parts: 1-15 around 15 B.C.E., 16-21 around 4-8 C.E. The first group are verse letters from famous mythical heroines to the men who left them, e.g. Penelope to Ulysses, Dido to Aeneas. The second group are paired letters, one from the woman to the man, one from the man to them woman. Scholars have, at various times, tried to prove that some of these poems are not by Ovid, but the authenticity of most if not all is now accepted.

This kind of verse letter was an invention of Ovid’s, as he tells us in the Ars Amatoria, 3.345-346 (Ovid’s own poetry is speaking here):

Let a Letter be read to you with a composed voice
He invented this work, unknown to others.

We also know from Amores 2.18.17-34, that another poet named Sabinus wrote poetic responses to some of the early Heroides.

Heroides 1.1-10

Your Penelope writes this to you, Ulysses, slow to return
Writing back does me no good. Come yourself!
Troy has certainly fallen, hates by the girls of Greece
But Priam and all of Troy were hardly worth so much.

If only that adulterer, when he came by ship to Lacedaemon,
had been overwhelmed by the raging waters,
I would not have laid, cold, in an empty bed
I, left behind, would not complain that the days passed so slow,
Nor would my loom be weary of my widowed hands
As I try to deceive the long, empty night

Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)

The first two books of Ars Amatoria were published between 1 B.C.E. and 1 C.E., the third book soon after. The first two books advise men how to meet women and keep them, the third book instructs women on how to seduce men. In the contexts of Augustus’ marriage laws, such a work was quite rebellious, which Ovid only makes worse by recommending the great civic and religious monuments of Augustan Rome as good pickup spots. Ovid himself puts down the Ars Amatoria as one of the causes of his exile (see Why was Ovid exiled?)

Ars Amatoria is a "didactic" poem — a poem meant to teach something — in the same vein as much more serious works such as Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things) which is a manual of Epicurean philosophy. Didactic poetry, like epic and all other serious poetry, was properly written in hexameters, so Ovid’s use of elegiac couplets (the same meter as his earlier love poetry, the Amores and Heroides) shows how he jokingly adopts the stance of a praeceptor amoris or "professor of love." He continually stresses that the lover, like the artist, should be doctus, "learned, educated", and cultus, "trained, polished."

Remedia Amoris, Medicamina Faciei Femineae, and Fasti are other examples of Ovid’s didactic poetry.

Ars Amatoria 1.1.1-10

If there is anyone in this city who does not know the art of loving

Let him read this poem and, having read it, love like a professional.
By art are swift ships propelled by sail and by oar,
By art are light chariots driven. Love, too, must be ruled by art.
Automedon was good with chariots and supple reins,
Tiphys was the helmsman on the Haemonian ship.
Venus has set me up as a master over Love,

I shall be called the Tiphys and Automedon of Love.
He is wild and one who will often struggle against me,
but he is still a boy, a soft age ready to be corrected.

Remedia Amoris (The Cure for Love)

Remedia Amoris 1-10

Love had read the title and name of this book

and said, "Wars, I see, are being prepared against me."
"Oh, please, Cupid, don’t condemn your priest and poet"
who so often carried the standards given under your command
I am not the son of Tydeus from whom your mother, wounded,
retreated up to the clear aether on the horses of Mars
Other young men often grow cool, but I am always in love,

And if you ask what I am doing right now, I am in love!
I have even taught by what art you might be obtained
What is now science was only impulse then

Medicamina Faciei Femineae (Women’s Facial Cosmetics)

Medicamina Faciei Femineae 1-10

Learn, girls, what care can improve your face

And how you can preserve your beauty
Cultivation commands the sterile earth to render the gifts
Of wheat and to bury devouring briars
Cultivation improves the bitter juice of fruits
The cleft tree accepts adopted riches
We like what is cultivated. Lofty halls are lined with gold

Black earth is hidden under layers of marble
The same fleece is often dyed in Tyrian cauldrons
India offers ivory to be carved into delighful things

Metamorphoses

Fasti (The Calendar)

Tristia (Sadness)

Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters from the Black Sea)

Ibis

Ibis 1-10

Up until now, when I have already seen five decades
My muse was always unarmed

You won’t find one verse of Naso’s, out of so many thousands
That you could call blood-stained
Nor have my books hurt anyone but me
Since the artisan perished by his own Art
One man (and this is the greatest insult)does not allow
My title of innocence to last forever

Whoever he is (I will, however, not say his name)
Forces me to take up weapons with my unaccustomed hands

Lost and Spurious Works

What is a "spurious" work?

The works in this section became, at some point, associated with Ovid, but scholars today beleive that Ovid did not in fact write them. For lack of anything better they are usually included in lists and editions of Ovid’s work, but are called "spurious"

Until the printing press came to Europe from China, all literature was transmitted through handwritten copies (called manuscripts). This type of transmission is very unreliable, and sometimes a work was separated from the name of its author. For instance, a monk at a monastery might pick up a manuscript from which the title page was missing or, in the haste of the last copier was never copied at all. Copyists then often tried to guess who the author might have been. When modern scholars disagree with these guesses, they say that the work is "spuriously" attributed to the author.

For more on ancient manuscripts and their transmission, visit Interpreting Ancient Manuscripts Web

Halieutica (On Fishing)

Halieutica 1-10

[…The beginning of the poem is lost…]
The universe accepts law; he gave arms to everyone

And reminded them of himself. Thus threatens the calf
Who does not yet carry horns on his tender forehead
Thus deer flee, lions fight with bravery,
The dog with his bite the scorpion with a lash of his tail
And thus with a flap of his wing does a bird fly away
Everyone fears an unknown death, everyone can

recognize their enemy and their protection and know
The strength and use of their weapons.

Consolatia ad Liviam (Consolation to Livia)

Written to console Livia, Augustus’ wife, on the death of her son, Drusus, while campaigning in Germany in 9 B.C.E.. It is wrongly ascribed to Ovid.

Consolatia ad Liviam 1-12

You who long seemed blessed, and were called the Mother of the Nero’s
Now half of this name is lost to you
Now, Livia, you read a sorrowful poem on Drusus
You have only one to call you mother, now

Your devotion does not distract you with love of two
Nor when the name "son" is put to you do you say "which?"
Who dares tell you the rituals of mourning?
Who sets a limit for the tears on your face?
Woe is me, how easy it is, how this touches everyone

To speak brave words for another’s grief,
"You are struck lightly by the thunderbold, surely
So that you may be all the stronger for your calamity"

Nux (The Walnut Tree)

A walnut tree laments its treatment by passers-by. The ascription to Ovid is certainly wrong