Amores

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Amores is Ovid's first completed book, published somewhat after 18 BC. Amores was written in the elegiac dystic. The book follows the model of the erotic elegy–perhaps the most common theme of the time–as treated before by Tibullus and Propertius. Like the other poets, the book centers in a romantic affair between the poet and a puella: Corinna.

This Corinna is very unlikely to have really lived; it seems she is Ovid's poetical creation, loosely based on a Greek poet of the same name. It follows the cliché of a Latin elegy relation, and keeps like no other poet strictly closed to it. Amores develops as a sort of "novel", breaking syle only a few times (the most famous occasion being the elegy on Tibellus' death). For many this is a sign of weakness, but for others it shows Ovid chose the rhetorical locus communis in order to demonstrate his poetical craft.

There is an excellent and very famous English translation made by Christopher Marlowe.

External links

Ovid's Amores in original latin, from Perseus [link]

Marlowe's translation [link]

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