The Love Poems

Ovid''s love-poetry was typically original and innovative. His witty analysis in the Amores (Loves) of the elegiac relationship develops with relentless irony its essential paradox - love as simultaneously fulfilling and destructive - to its logical conclusion: definitive disestablishment of the poet-lover''s role as presented by Gallus, Tibullus, and Propertius. In its place he went on to offer in the Ars Amatoria (Art of Love) and Remedia Amoris (Cures for Love) anequally brilliant presentation of an alternative and more realistic conception of love as a game at which both sexes can play without getting hurt - providing they stick to Ovid''s rules. Under the surface of Ovid''s wit there runs an undercurrent of serious meaning: the theme of the poet''s completecontrol of his medium and his art and a proud consciousness of his achievements. His claim to be `the Virgil of elegy'' is arrestingly justified in these extraordinarily accomplished poems. Alan Melville''s accomplished translat