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1 results

  • 21 - Ovid

  • from PART IV - THE AGE OF AUGUSTUS
  • Edited by E. J. Kenney, W. V. Clausen
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Classical Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 March 1982, pp 420-457

  • Summary

    The design and execution of the Amores can be properly understood only in relation to Ovid's predecessors. The chronology of Ovid's early poetry is perplexed and obscure, so that the composition of the Heroides cannot be exactly placed in a sequence with the two editions of the Amores and with the Ars amatoria. The material of the Heroides comes principally from Greek epic and tragedy. Ovid's language implies that the Metamorphoses will manage to be both Callimachean and un-Callimachean at once. Attempts have been made to detect a unity and hence a message in such aspects of the poem as its structure or its symbolism, even in its very diversity. In the technical sphere Ovid left a mark on the Latin poetic tradition that still endures: for the modern composer of elegiac couplets is normally expected to abide by the Ovidian rules.