thumb|The Roman poet [[Ovid, born in the city.]]

Amores (, ) is Ovid's first completed book of poetry, written in elegiac couplets. It was first published in 16 BC in five books, but Ovid, by his own account, later edited it down into the three-book edition that survives today. The book follows the popular model of the erotic elegy, as made famous by figures such as Tibullus or Propertius, but is often subversive and humorous with these tropes, exaggerating common motifs and devices to the point of absurdity.

While several literary scholars have called the Amores a major contribution to Latin love elegy, they are not generally considered among Ovid's finest works and "are most often dealt with summarily in a prologue to a fuller discussion of one of the other works".

History

thumb|A panorama of Sulmona

thumb|"CORINNA (THE LYRIC MUSE)" "WILLIAM BRODIE" from -Sculptures of Andromeda, the Toilet of Atalanta, Corinna, and a Naiad- MET DP323119 (cropped)

Ovid was born in 43 BCE and grew up in Sulmo, a small town in the mountainous Abruzzo. Based on the memoirs of Seneca the Elder, scholars know that Ovid attended school in his youth. During the Augustan Era, boys attended schools that focused on rhetoric in order to prepare them for careers in politics and law. There was a great emphasis placed on the ability to speak well and deliver compelling speeches in Roman society. Though Augustus held most of the power, he cloaked the transformation as a restoration of traditional values like loyalty and kept traditional institutions like the Senate in place, claiming that his Rome was the way it always should have been. Under his rule, citizens were faithful to Augustus and the royal family, viewing them as "the embodiment of the Roman state." The arts, especially literature and sculpture, took on the role of helping to communicate and bolster this positive image of Augustus and his rule. It is in this historical context that Amores was written and takes place.

Speculations as to Corinna's real identity are many, if indeed she lived at all. It has been argued that she is a poetic construct copying the puella-archetype from other works in the love elegy genre. The name Corinna may have been a typically Ovidian pun based on the Greek word for "maiden", "kore". According to Knox there is no clear woman that Corinna alludes to, many scholars have come to conclude that the affair detailed throughout Amores is not based on real-life, and rather reflects Ovid's purpose to play with genre of the love elegy rather than to record real, passionate feelings for a woman.

Summary

The Amores is a poetic first-person account of the poetic persona's love affair with an unattainable higher class girl, Corinna. It is not always clear if the author is writing about Corinna or a generic puella. Love elegy as a genre was fashionable in Augustan times.

The term "elegiac" refers to the meter of the poem. Elegiac meter is made up of two lines, or a couplet, the first of which is hexameter and the second pentameter. Ovid often inserts a break between the words of the third foot in the hexameter line, otherwise known as a strong caesura. To reflect the artistic contrast between the different meters, Ovid also ends the pentameter line in an "'iambic' disyllable word". The final couplet in poem often function as a "punch-line" conclusion, not only summarizing the poem, but also delivering the key thematic idea. One example of Ovid's "argumentative" structure can be found in II.4, where Ovid begins by stating that his weakness is a love for women. He then offers supporting evidence through his analysis of different kinds of beauty, before ending with a summary of his thesis in the final couplet. This theme likely stems from the centrality of the military in Roman life and culture, and the popular belief that the military and its pursuits were of such high value that the subject lent itself well to poetic commemoration. Here both soldiers and lovers share many of the same qualities such as, keeping guard, enduring long journeys and hardships, spying on the enemy, conquering cities like a lover's door, and using tactics like the surprise attack to win. Another place where this metaphor is exemplified when Ovid breaks down the heavily guarded door to reach his lover Corinna in II.12. The siege of the door largely mirrors that of military victory.

Another way this theme appears is through Ovid's service as a soldier for Cupid. The metaphor of Ovid as a soldier also suggests that Ovid lost to the conquering Cupid, and now must use his poetic ability to serve Cupid's command. While his predecessors and contemporaries took the love in their poetry rather seriously, Ovid spends much of his time playfully mocking their earnest pursuits. For example, women are depicted as most beautiful when they appear in their natural state according to the poems of Propertius and Tibullus. The theme of love as a playful, humorous game is developed though the flirtatious and lighthearted romance described. Ovid's witty humor undermines the idea that the relationships with the women in the poems are anything lasting or that Ovid has any deep emotion attachment to the relationships.

Due to the humor and the irony in the piece, some scholars have come to question the sincerity of the Amores. Examples of Roman authors who followed Ovid include Martial, Lucan, and Statius.

Post-classical era

The majority of Latin works have been lost, with very few texts rediscovered after the Middle Ages and preserved to the present day. Yet in the case of the Amores, there are so many manuscript copies from the 12th and 13th centuries that many are "textually worthless", copying too closely from one another, and containing mistakes caused by familiarity. Theodulph of Orleans lists Ovid with Virgil among other favourite Christian writers, while Nigellus compared Ovid's exile to the banishment of St. John, and imprisonment of Saint Peter. Later in the 11th century, Ovid was the favourite poet of Abbot (and later Bishop) Baudry, who wrote imitation elegies to a nun – albeit about Platonic love. Others used his poems to demonstrate allegories or moral lessons, such as the 1340 Ovid Moralisé which was translated with extensive commentary on the supposed moral meaning of the Amores. Wilkinson also credits Ovid with directly contributing around 200 lines to the classic courtly love tale Roman de la Rose.

Christopher Marlowe wrote a famous verse translation in English.

Footnotes

Bibliography

;Editions and commentaries

;Studies

  • L.D. Reynolds; N.G.Wilson Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)
  • D. Robathan "Ovid in the Middle Ages" in Binns, Ovid (London 1973)
  • L.P Wilkinson, Ovid Recalled (Duckworth 1955)
  • Latin text
  • Marlowe's translation
  • David Drake's translation