Ovid: Fasti (Loeb Classical Library No. 253) (English and Latin Edition) - Hardcover

Ovid

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674992792 ISBN 13: 9780674992795

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1931

Synopsis

Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BCE–17 CE), born at Sulmo, studied rhetoric and law at Rome. Later he did considerable public service there, and otherwise devoted himself to poetry and to society. Famous at first, he offended the emperor Augustus by his Ars Amatoria, and was banished because of this work and some other reason unknown to us, and dwelt in the cold and primitive town of Tomis on the Black Sea. He continued writing poetry, a kindly man, leading a temperate life. He died in exile.

Ovid's main surviving works are the Metamorphoses, a source of inspiration to artists and poets including Chaucer and Shakespeare; the Fasti, a poetic treatment of the Roman year of which Ovid finished only half; the Amores, love poems; the Ars Amatoria, not moral but clever and in parts beautiful; Heroides, fictitious love letters by legendary women to absent husbands; and the dismal works written in exile: the Tristia, appeals to persons including his wife and also the emperor; and similar Epistulae ex Ponto. Poetry came naturally to Ovid, who at his best is lively, graphic and lucid.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Ovid is in six volumes.

About this title

Book Description:

Book IV of Ovid's celebration of the calendar and the associated legends of the Roman year treats the month of April, a particularly happy phase of the Augustan ceremonial year. Around the festival of Venus and the anniversary of the foundation of Rome Ovid retells the legends of Rome's royal found Romulus and the Trojan hero Aeneas. The introduction and commentary pay special attention to Ovid's art as a poet, but aim to provide both the general background and specific explanations of his historical and religious material.

From the Back Cover:

Ovid's Fasti, begun in or soon after AD I, was to have celebrated the calendar and associated legends of the Roman year, but probably had reached no further than June before his exile in AD 8. Book IV, the book of April, honours the festivals of Venus, Cybele, Ceres and their cult, as well as the traditional date of the foundation of Rome and many religious and civic anniversaries. Elaine Fantham accompanies her commentary with a revised text and a deliberately extended introduction. Besides including surveys of language, style, versification and textual transmission, the introduction looks at the shifting generic traditions of Greek and Roman elegy, and situates Ovid's composite poem in its Augustan literary and historical context.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1931
• ISBN 10: 0674992792
• ISBN 13: 9780674992795
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 496