In the first century a.d., Ovid, author of the groundbreaking epic poem Metamorphoses , came under severe criticism for The Art of Love , which playfully instructed women in the art of seduction and men in the skills essential for mastering the art of romantic conquest. In this remarkable translation, James Michie breathes new life into the notorious Roman’s mock-didactic elegy. In lyrical, irreverent English, he reveals love’s timeless dilemmas and Ovid’s enduring brilliance as both poet and cultural critic.

Ovid’s sensuous and witty poem brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation—often as a result of love or lust—where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy. Erudite but light-hearted, dramatic and yet playful, the Metamorphoses has influenced writers and artists throughout the centuries from Shakespeare and Titian to Picasso and Ted Hughes.

A masterpiece of Western culture, this is the first attempt to link all the Greek myths in a cohesive whole to the Roman myths of Ovid's day. Horace Gregory, in this modern translation, turns his own poetic gifts toward a deft reconstruction of Ovid's ancient themes.

"A version that has been long awaited, and likely to become the new standard."— Washington Post Ovid's epic poem—whose theme of change has resonated throughout the ages—is one of the most important texts of Western imagination, an inspiration from Dante's times to the present day, when writers such as Salman Rushdie and Italo Calvino have found a living source in Ovid's work. Charles Martin combines a close fidelity to Ovid's text with verse that catches the speed and liveliness of the original. Martin's Metamorphoses will be the translation of choice for contemporary readers in English. This volume also includes endnotes and a glossary of people, places, and personifications. "Martin's complete text is clearly something to look forward to with high expectations."—Bernard Knox, The New York Review of Books "A reader who wants to understand Ovid's poem as a whole, as well as to learn its many famous stories, will find Mr. Martin's clarity and tact invaluable."— The New York Sun "Smoothly readable, accurate, charming, subtle yet clear....A lucidly fluent version of this most flowing of poems."—Richard Wilbur

The theme of the Metamorphoses is change and transformation, as illustrated in Graeco-Roman myth and legend. On this ostensibly unifying thread Ovid strings together a vast and kaleidoscopic sequence of brilliant narratives, in which the often paradoxical and always arbitrary fates of his human and divine characters reflect the never-ending flux and reflux of the universe itself. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

"The Metamorphoses of Ovid offers to the modern world such a key to the literary and religious culture of the ancients that it becomes an important event when at last a good poet comes up with a translation into English verse." -- John Crowe Ransom"... a charming and expert English version, which is right in tone for the Metamorphoses." -- Francis Fergusson"This new Ovid, fresh and faithful, is right for our time and should help to restore a great reputation." -- Mark Van DorenThe first and still the best modern verse translation of the Metamorphoses, Humphries' version of Ovid's masterpiece captures its wit, merriment, and sophistication.Everyone will enjoy this first modern translation by an American poet of Ovid's great work, the major treasury of classical mythology, which has perennially stimulated the minds of men. In this lively rendering there are no stock props of the pastoral and no literary landscaping, but real food on the table and sometimes real blood on the ground.Not only is Ovid's Metamorphoses a collection of all the myths of the time of the Roman poet as he knew them, but the book presents at the same time a series of love poems -- about the loves of men, women, and the gods. There are also poems of hate, to give the proper shading to the narrative. And pervading all is the writer's love for this earth, its people, its phenomena.Using ten-beat, unrhymed lines in his translation, Rolfe Humphries shows a definite kinship for Ovid's swift and colloquial language and Humphries' whole poetic manner is in tune with the wit and sophistication of the Roman poet.

Fasti is both a calendar of daily rituals and a witty sequence of stories. Using the first six months of the Roman religious calendar as a frame, Ovid weaves Greek and Roman history and mythology, astronomical observations and political tidbits into a lively tapestry shot through with uncomfortable political echoes. Augustus tried to control his subjects by imposing his own accounts of history and an annual cycle of festivals on them, but Ovid brilliantly debunks Augustus's versions with his own reflections on patriotism, militarism, and public virtue with earthy images of sensual pleasures and sexual adventures.
From the description of Mars' rape of Silvia--"Mars sees her, desires what he sees, takes what he desires"--with its echoes of Julius Caesar's famous boast, to the portrait of Romulus as a violent thug and impious rapist, Ovid debunks official heroes and dismantles the foundations of Rome's power structures. Written while Ovid was in exile, Fasti is at once a wonderfully witty sequence of stories and a courageous political manifesto.

Publius Ovidius Naso, whom we know as Ovid, was already established as a writer when The Metamorphoses was published in A.D. 8, when he was 52 years old. It had taken him a decade to compose his great poem, during which time he published little, but the Roman world was still abuzz with excitement over his richly erotic Art of Love. So, unfortunately, was the court of Augustus Caesar, and the emperor banished the poet to what is now Romania. Augustus may have taken exception to the poet's turn to the impolite realm of the body--or he may have objected to a rumored affair between Ovid and the emperor's nymphomaniacal daughter Julia, who figures so prominently in Robert Graves's Claudius novels. The poet who had declared Rome to be his only home could have found no worse punishment than exile, but no amount of pleading could sway Augustus, and Ovid died on the shores of the Black Sea a decade later. Full of veiled political and historical references, The Metamorphoses lived on to become a permanent fixture in the canon of European literature. In Allen Mandelbaum's hands, it lives on for a new generation.

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.

“The first taste I had for books came to me from my pleasure in the fables of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. For at about seven or eight years of age I would steal away from any other pleasure to read them, inasmuch as this language was my mother tongue, and it was the easiest book I knew and the best suited by its content to my tender age.” –Michel de MontaigneRemedia Amoris; or, The Remedy of Love (2 AD) is an instructional poem by Ovid. A sequel to his three book poem Ars Amatoria; or, The Art of Love (2 AD), Remedia Amoris; or, The Remedy of Love was immensely popular—if a little controversial—in its time, and has survived numerous charges of indecency over the centuries. For the modern reader, it should prove a surprisingly relatable work on intimacy and relationships from an author of the ancient world.While Ars Amatoria; or, The Art of Love offers salient advice on such topics as etiquette, remembering birthdays, avoiding unhealthy jealousy, being open to older and younger lovers, and nurturing honesty, Remedia Amoris; or, The Remedy of Love takes as its subject the unfortunate—yet common—experience of love gone bad. Perhaps concerned for eager readers of his first work on romance, Ovid provides suggestions to novice lovers on how to escape a bad relationship and on what to do in the event of incurable unhappiness. In order to avoid the tragic fates of Dido or Medea, both of whom were led to early graves by unfaithful lovers, Ovid suggests such healthy behaviors as staying busy, seeing the world, abstaining from alcohol, and trying not to ruminate on the love one has left behind. Remedia Amoris; or, The Remedy of Love, although frequently tongue-in-cheek, is an earnest and effective attempt to caution the overeager romantic and console those unlucky in love.With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Ovid’s Remedia Amoris; or, The Remedy of Love is a classic work of Roman literature reimagined for modern readers.

In this translation, it was attempted to collect out of sundry authors the philosophical sense of these fables of Ovid, if they may be called his, when most of them are more antient than any extant author, or perhaps them letters themselves; before which, as they expressed their conceptions in hieroglyphics, so did they their philosophy and dimity under fables and parables, a way not untrod by the sacred penmen, as by the prudent lawgivers in their reducing of the Old World to civility, leaving behind a deeper impression than can be made by the precepts of philosophy. Due to the age and scarcity of the original we reproduced, some pages may be spotty, faded or difficult to read. Written in Old English.

Breakups are the worst. On one scale devised by psychiatrists, only a spouse’s death was ranked as more stressful than a marital split. Is there any treatment for a breakup? The ancient Roman poet Ovid thought so. Having become famous for teaching the art of seduction in The Art of Love, he then wrote Remedies for Love (Remedia Amoris), which presents thirty-eight frank and witty strategies for coping with unrequited love, falling out of love, ending a relationship, and healing a broken heart. How to Get Over a Breakup presents an unabashedly modern prose translation of Ovid’s lighthearted and provocative work, complete with a lively introduction and the original Latin on facing pages.
Ovid’s advice—which he illustrates with ingenious interpretations of classical mythology—ranges from the practical, psychologically astute, and profound to the ironic, deliberately offensive, and bizarre. Some advice is conventional—such as staying busy, not spending time alone, and avoiding places associated with an ex. Some is off-color, such as having sex until you’re sick of it. And some is simply and delightfully weird—such as becoming a lawyer and not eating arugula.
Whether his advice is good or bad, entertaining or outrageous, How to Get Over a Breakup reveals an Ovid who sounds startlingly modern.

The Ars amatoria (English: The Art of Love) is an instructional book series elegy in three books by Ancient Rome Roman poet Ovid. It was written in 2 AD. It is about teaching basic Gentlemanly male and female relationship skills and techniques. Ovid offers advice to men on subjects such as, how to seduce and keep a woman, and also notably offers women advice on how to be attractive to men. He advises that, "if one is accompanying a lady to the horse-racing in the Circus Maximus, one should gallantly brush the dust from her gown. And if there isn't any dust there, brush it nonetheless. Also, "A young man should promise the moon to the object of his affections in letters-even a beggar can be rich in promises. A small woman, meanwhile, would be better advised to receive her suitor lying down ... but should make sure that her feet are hidden under her dress, so that her true size is not disclosed."