Ovid - Classics - Oxford Bibliographies

2/2/2020 Ovid - Classics - Oxford Bibliographies
Ovid
K. Sara Myers
LAST REVIEWED: 10 MAY 2016

LAST MODIFIED: 30 AUGUST 2016
DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195389661-0039
Introduction
All of Ovid’s poetry bears the hallmarks of his distinctive style: humor, wit (often expressed through word play), great literary learning
displayed with a light touch, self-awareness and literary self-consciousness (often characterized as irony), and a profound interest in the
human condition. His extensive and varied poetic career exhibits his ability to innovate and manipulate the conventions and content of a
range of literary genres, mainly through the expansion of the range of elegy. Ovid’s dense intertextuality also reveals him as a masterful
interpreter of the earlier Greek and Latin literary tradition. Once viewed as apolitical, Ovid’s works are now read as challenging,
commenting, and engaging with Augustus’s ongoing transformation of Roman cultural and political institutions.
Biography
Publius Ovidius Naso was born on 20 March 43 BCE in Sulmo (modern Sulmona) a town in the Abruzzi, some 90 miles (54 kilometers)
east of Rome. The chief source for his life is his own “autobiographical” poem, Tristia 4.10 and elsewhere (no ancient “life” remains; see
Kraus 1968 for sources, and Holzberg 1997 for cautious evaluation). Ovid tells us he was the second son of an established and wealthy
family of equestrian rank. After studying rhetoric at Rome and Athens and beginning an official career in minor judicial posts, he
renounced public life for poetry around the age of twenty. His first compositions were innovative amatory elegiac poetry, and he was
soon moving in the literary circle associated with Valerius Messalla Corvinus. There followed many innovative amatory compositions in
elegiacs (erotodidaxis, epistles). Around 1 CE he embarked on the larger-scale elegiacs of the Fasti and his epic Metamorphoses. By
the year of his banishment in 8 CE, Ovid was Rome’s leading poet. Augustus in that year banished (in an act termed relegatio) Ovid to
Tomis on the Black Sea coast (modern Constanza in Romania). Ovid gives as the reason two charges: a poem, the Ars Amatoria, and
a “mistake” (Tristia 2.207: duo crimina, carmen et error), which he never specifies and which remains unknowable. Considering the gap
between the publication of the Ars and his relegation (probably six years from 2 CE), Ovid’s misdemeanor must have been the more
serious and relevant charge (see Green 1982). A connection with the banishment of Augustus’s adulterous granddaughter Julia in the
same year has been suspected. After Ovid’s relegation, the Ars was banned from the public libraries, but his other works seem to have
remained available. Ovid was forced to stay in Tomis until his death, probably in 17 CE, having failed to convince either Augustus, or
later Tiberius, to recall him, despite requests through poetry written in exile (Tristia, Ex Ponto) and through advocates in Rome.
Green, Peter. 1982. Carmen et error: Prophasis and aitia in the matter of Ovid’s exile. Classical Antiquity 2:202–220.
Suggests that Ovid’s banishment was based on an unwitting political misstep on his part (perhaps knowledge of a pro-Julian plot).
Holzberg, Niklas. 1997. Playing with his life: Ovid’s autobiographical references. Lampas 30:4–19.
Cautions that Ovid’s “autobiographical” references in his poetry often serve literary purposes.
Kraus, Walther. 1968. Ovidius Naso. In Ovid. Edited by Michael von Albrecht and Ernst Zinn, 67–166. Darmstadt, Germany:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Reprinted in 1972. Convenient German collection of passages concerning Ovid’s life.
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Millar, Fergus. 1993. Ovid and the Domus Augusta: Rome seen from Tomoi. Journal of Roman Studies 83:1–17.
Assesses Ovid’s works in context of his life and times as loyal to Augustus.
Syme, Ronald. 1978. History in Ovid. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Historical approach to Ovid’s poetry (chronology and historical information).
White, Peter. 2002. Ovid and the Augustan milieu. In Brill’s companion to Ovid. Edited by Barbara Weiden Boyd, 1–26. Leiden,
The Netherlands: Brill.
Survey of Ovid’s life and literary career.
General Overviews
Because of the large range of Ovid’s poetic works, there are few comprehensive treatments of his whole corpus. The following texts
contain useful information in chapters on individual works. Holzberg 2002, Boyd 2002, and Knox 2009 provide the most recent surveys
of Ovid’s whole literary career, while Hardie 2002 and Knox 2006 (see Collections of Papers) provide an overview of the multiplicity of
recent critical approaches. Kenney’s essay in Boyd 2002 (pp. 27–90) is the best introduction to Ovid’s language and style.
Boyd, Barbara Weiden, ed. 2002. Brill’s companion to Ovid. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
A very useful and comprehensive multi-authored introduction to Ovid’s major works in chronological order, giving overviews and
syntheses of scholarly approaches.
Hardie, Philip R., ed. 2002. The Cambridge companion to Ovid. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Twenty essays covering contexts, themes and works, and reception of Ovid’s poetry.
Hinds, Stephen E. 2006. Generalizing about Ovid. In Oxford readings in Ovid. Edited by P. E. Knox, 15–50. Oxford: Oxford
Univ. Press.
A ground-breaking article on understanding Ovidian poetics.
Holzberg, Niklas. 2002. Ovid: The poet and his work. Translated by G. M. Goshgarian. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
Chapters on the poet’s life and works, specifically addressed to general readers. Explores Ovid’s self-conscious elegiac progression
throughout his poetic career.
Knox, Peter E. 2009. A companion to Ovid. Malden, MA, and Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
A very useful introductory collection of thirty-three chapters by leading scholars on all of Ovid’s works.
Collections of Papers
These international collections attest to the variety of recent critical approaches to Ovid’s poetry. Two older editions (Albrecht and Zinn
1968 and Binns 1973) offer still useful essays. Barchiesi 2001 assembles some of the author’s influential articles on Ovid’s
intertextuality. Knox 2006 gathers important previously published articles on Ovid, while Janka, et al. 2007 presents new chapters on
most of Ovid’s poetry, and Nelis 2004 reproduces conference papers aimed at assessing new approaches to Ovid.
Albrecht, Michael von, and Ernst Zinn, eds. 1968. Ovid. Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Reprinted in 1972. An interesting German collection of articles on a variety of topics.
Barchiesi, Alessandro. 2001. Speaking volumes: Narrative and intertext in Ovid and other Latin poets. London: Duckworth.
Sensitive close readings and interpretations of a number of Ovid’s works.
Binns, J. W. 1973. Ovid. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Still useful collection of papers on Ovid.
Janka, Markus, Ulrich Schmitzer, and Helmut Seng, eds. 2007. Ovid: Werk, Kultur, Wirkung. Darmstadt, Germany:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
A collection of German articles; roughly three articles each on the amatory works, Fasti, Metamorphoses, exilic poetry, and reception.
Knox, Peter E., ed. 2006. Oxford readings in Ovid. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Assembles twenty of the most influential articles on Ovid, mainly from the past two decades on a variety of topics.
Nelis, Damien, ed. 2004. Aetas Ovidiana? Hermathena. Dublin, Ireland: Univ. of Dublin.
Papers presented at a 2002 conference in Dublin, on various aspects of Ovid’s poetry.
Bibliographies
Recent survey articles (Myers 1999, Schmitzer 2002) provide summaries of recent trends. The bibliography and links on the Ovid web
site are neither up-to-date nor exhaustive (Kirke: Ovid im WWW).
Kirke: Ovid im WWW.

German site provides bibliography, links to further information and sites.
Myers, K. S. 1999. The metamorphosis of a poet: Recent work on Ovid. Journal of Roman Studies 89:190–204.
Survey of major recent scholarly approaches to Ovidian poetry. Available online.
Schmitzer, Ulrich. 2002. Neue Forschungen zu Ovid. Gymnasium 109:143–166.

Review of recent books (1997–2000) on all of Ovid’s poetry.
English Translations
Increasing interest in Ovid’s poetry in the past three decades has produced a bumper crop of Ovidian translations in English.
Amatory Poetry
There are current translations of the whole corpus of Ovid’s erotic elegy (Ovid 1982, Ovid 2008), as well as individual translations of the
Ars Amatoria and Heroides (Ovid 1990).
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1982. The erotic poems. Translated by Peter Green. New York: Penguin.
Readable modern translation with introduction.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1990. Heroides. Translated by Harold Isbell. New York: Penguin.
Verse translation with notes.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2002. The art of love by Ovid. Translated by James Michie. Modern Library Classics. New York:
Modern Library.
By a well-known translator of classical texts. Introduction by David Malouf.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2008. The love poems. Translated by A. D. Melville. Oxford World’s Classics. New York: Oxford
Univ. Press.
Verse translation with a rather decorous tone, accompanied by excellent notes. Introduction and notes by E. J. Kenney.
Fasti
Two recent translations of the calendar poem, Boyle and Woodward (Ovid 2000) and Nagle (Ovid 1995), provide useful introductions
and notes.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1995. Ovid’s Fasti: Roman holidays. Translated by Betty Rose Nagle. Bloomington: Indiana Univ.
Press.
With introduction and notes.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2000. Fasti. Translated by A. J. Boyle and Roger D. Woodward. New York: Penguin.
Translation with excellent, theoretically sophisticated introduction and detailed explanatory notes.
Metamorphoses
Translations of the Metamorphoses have proliferated. There are two new editions of the early great translations of the poem by Golding
(Ovid 2002) and Dryden, et al. (Ovid 1998). Innes (Ovid 2006) is in prose, the other translations in verse, with notes and introductions
by prominent Ovidians (Feeney in Ovid 2004a, Kenney in Ovid 1987, Tissol in Ovid 1998).
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1987. Metamorphoses. Translated by A. D. Melville. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford and New
York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Verse translation with extremely useful notes. Introduction by E. J. Kenney.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1994. The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Translated by David R. Slavitt. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Univ. Press.
Verse translation in hexameters.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1995. The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Translated by Allen Mandelbaum. London: Harcourt Brace.
Verse translation with introduction by Mandelbaum.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1998. Metamorphoses. Translated by John Dryden and edited by Samuel Garth. Wordsworth
Classics of World Literature. Ware, UK: Wordsworth Editions.
First issued in 1717, with collaborative verse translations by Dryden and seventeen others. Introduction by G. Tissol.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2002. Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Translated by Arthur Golding and edited by Madeleine Forey.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
An edition of Golding’s influential first English translation of 1567 (used by Shakespeare).
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2004a. Metamorphoses by Ovid. Translated by D. A. Raeburn. London: Penguin.
Close hexameter translation with notes. Introduction by Denis Feeney.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2004b. Metamorphoses. Translated by Charles Martin. New York: W. W. Norton.
Accomplished verse translation with notes. Introduction by B. Knox.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2006. Metamorphoses. Tranalated by Mary M. Innes. London: Penguin.
Prose translation, first published 1955.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2014. Change me: Stories of sexual transformation from Ovid. Translated by Jane Alison,
Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
A selection of stories of sexual transformation from Ovid’s Amores and Metamorphoses, translated by a well-known writer. With a
foreword by Elaine Fantham and an introduction by Alison Keith.
Exile Poetry
Though not as well represented as his other works, Ovid’s exile poetry now is accessible in the translations of Slavitt (Ovid 1990),
Green (Ovid 2005), and Ellis (Ovid 2009).
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1990. Ovid’s poetry of exile. Translated by David R. Slavitt. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ.
Press.
Translations of the Tristia, Ex Ponto, and Ibis.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2005. The poems of exile: Tristia and the Black Sea letters. Translated by Peter Green. Berkeley:
Univ. of California Press.
Excellent translation with extensive introduction and explanatory notes.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2009. Ibis. Translated by Robinson Ellis. Exeter, UK: Bristol Phoenix.
Reissue of Ellis’s classic 1881 edition, with a new introduction by Gareth Williams.
Works
Ovid’s major works include amatory elegy (from c. 26 BCE–2 CE; Amores, Ars amatoria, Remedia amoris, Medicamina faciei femineae,
Heroides), epic (Metamorphoses), the elegiac calendar poem Fasti (1/2 CE–8 CE/after 14 CE), and elegiac exile poetry (after 10 CE;
Tristia, Ex Ponto, Ibis). The chronology of Ovid’s works is highly disputed (see McKeown 1987). All of his extant poems are elegiac,
except the epic Metamorphoses (1/2 CE–8 CE). Lost works include Ovid’s translation of Aratus’s Phaenomena (two fragments are
extant). Two verses from a lost tragedy, Medea, are quoted, one by Quintilian (Inst. 8.5.6, cf. 10.1.98), the other by Seneca the Elder
(Suas. 3.7). Pseudo-Ovidian works (falsely ascribed to Ovid) include the Consolatio ad Liuiam (elegy), Nux (elegy), and Halieutica
(fragmentary hexameter). Doubts have been expressed about the authorship of Amores 3.5, as well as a number of the Heroides (see
Authenticity, cited under Heroides). On the textual transmission of all of Ovid’s works see Tarrant 1983 and Richmond 2002.
McKeown, J. C., ed. 1987. Text and prolegomena. Vol. 1 of Amores: Text, prolegomena and commentary; In four volumes. By
Ovid. Leeds, UK: Francis Cairns.
See pp. 74–89 for discussion of the chronology of Ovid’s works.
Richmond, John. 2002. Manuscript traditions and the transmission of Ovid’s works. In Brill’s companion to Ovid. Edited by
Barbara Weiden Boyd, 443–483. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
A useful introductory and detailed survey (with photos) of the transmission of Ovid’s works.
Tarrant, R. J. 1983. Ovid. In Texts and Transmissions. Edited by L. D. Reynolds, 257–284. Oxford: Clarendon.
Outlines the textual transmission of Ovid’s entire oeuvre.
Amores
The Amores consists of a three-book collection (fifteen, twenty, and fifteen poems) of largely amatory elegies published not before 16
BCE and perhaps between 12 and 7 BCE. The Amores as we have it is a second edition; Ovid tells us in an “editorial” epigram that it
was first published as five books. Like his predecessors Gallus, Tibullus, and Propertius, whom he self-consciously follows, Ovid’s
collection consists mainly of first-person narrative, ostensibly autobiographical erotic poems exploring the author/lover’s affairs. His
“girlfriend” (puella), who assumes less prominence than his predecessors’ puellae, is suitably poetically named Corinna (acknowledging
Catullus’s Lesbia). The Amores has often in the past been read as a mere parody of subjective elegy. More recently, scholarship has
focused on the way in which Ovid’s metaliterary self-consciousness reflects on and thematizes his literary endeavors. Conte’s influential
work on Ovid’s “insistent ostentatiousness” in displaying his literary code (Conte 1989) has contributed to a view of the poet as
interpreter rather than parodist of his predecessors.
Conte, Gian Biagio. 1989. Love without elegy: The Remedia amoris and the logic of a genre. Poetics Today 10:441–469.
Reprinted in his Genres and readers, 35–65 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). The genre of elegy and elegiac
ideology organizes the text.
Texts and Commentaries
A number of useful editions and commentaries exist for the Amores. McKeown 1987, McKeown 1989, and McKeown 1998 provide the
most in-depth commentary, along with bibliography on individual poems.
McKeown, J. C., ed. 1987. Text and prolegomena. Vol. 1 of Amores: Text, prolegomena and commentary; In four volumes. By
Ovid. Leeds, UK: Francis Cairns.
The first of three volumes (a final fourth volume on Book Three is planned), which provide a text (with apparatus), an introduction to the
collection, and detailed commentary on individual poems.
McKeown, J. C., ed. 1989. A commentary on Book One. Vol. 2 of Amores: Text, prolegomena and commentary; In four
volumes. By Ovid. Leeds: Francis Cairns.
The second volume provides detailed commentary on the poems in Amores 1.
McKeown, J. C., ed. 1998. A commentary on Book Two. Vol. 3 of Amores: Text, prolegomena and commentary; In four
volumes. By Ovid. Leeds: Francis Cairns.
The third volume provides detailed commentary on the poems of Amores 2.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1970. P. Ovidi Nasonis Amores. Edited and translated by Franco Munari. Biblioteca di Studi
Superiori 11. Florence, Italy: La Nuova Italia.
Latin text with apparatus, with Italian introduction, translation, and notes.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1986. Heroides and Amores. Translated by Grant Showerman and revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb
Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
Revised Latin text with facing translation.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1991a. Amores I. Edited and translated by John A. Barsby. London: Duckworth for Bristol
Classical.
Latin text with translation and running commentary, first published 1973.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1991b. Amores II. Edited and translated by Joan Booth. Warminster, UK: Aris and Phillips.
Latin text with translation and commentary.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1995. Amores, Medicamina faciei feminae, Ars amatoria, Remedia amoris. Edited by E. J.
Kenney. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Latin text with apparatus.
Scholarship
The best introduction to the rich and learned poetic texture of the Amores is McKeown’s first volume (see McKeown 1987, cited under
Amores: Texts and Commentaries). Conte 1989) was seminal in discussions of genre. Boyd 1997 and Bretzigheimer 2001 both suggest
poetological readings of Ovid’s erotic affairs. Feminist readings have informed the representation of women in elegiac texts (Hallett
1984, Wyke 2002).
Armstrong, Rebecca. 2005. Ovid and his love poetry. London: Duckworth.
General introduction to the amatory works (excluding Heroides).
Boyd, Barbara Weiden. 1997. Ovid’s literary loves: Influence and innovation in the Amores. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan
Press.
Suggests the main focus of the collection is the “theme of poetry writing and the character of the poet.”
Bretzigheimer, Gerlinde. 2001. Ovid Amores: Poetik in der Erotik. Tübingen, Germany: Narr.
Explores Ovid’s self-conscious persona of lover and poet.
Reprinted in his Genres and readers, 35–65 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). The genre of elegy and elegiac
ideology organizes the text.
Hallett, J. P. 1984. The role of women in Roman elegy: Counter-cultural feminism. In Women in the ancient world: The
Arethusa papers. Edited by John Peradotto and J. P. Sullivan, 241–262. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press.
Women in elegiac poetry are represented “counter-culturally” as powerful.
Kennedy, Duncan F. 1993. The arts of love: Five studies in the discourse of Roman love elegy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
Univ. Press.
Theoretical discussions of Ovid’s erotic works in terms of generic self-definition, politics, and erotics.
Labate, M. 1984. L’arte di farsi amare: Modelli culturali e progetto didascalico nell’elegia ovidiana. Pisa, Italy: Giardini.
Discusses the relationship of Ovid’s elegiac codes and contemporary cultural models.
Wyke, Maria. 2002. The Roman mistress: Ancient and modern representations. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
A collection of the author’s influential articles on the “written women” of elegy as signifiers of moral and political as well as poetic
ideologies.
Medicamina faciei feminae
The Medicamina faciei feminae is a didactic elegiac poem about cosmetics for women (predating Ars 3, see Ars 3.205–6), of which only
the first 100 lines survive (with no conclusion; possibly originally 500–800 lines). An introduction justifies the use of cosmetics as cultus
(1–50), while the second half gives recipes for skin-care preparations.
Kenney (Ovid 1995) provides the text, while Rosati (Ovid 1985b) and Johnson (Ovid 2016) provide commentary.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1985a. The art of love and other poems. Edited by J. H. Mozley and revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb
Latin text with facing translation.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1985b. I cosmetici delle donne. Edited and translated by Gianpiero Rosati. Venice, Italy: Marsilio.
Short Italian commentary with introduction, text, and Italian translation.
Latin text of the amatory poems.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2016. Ovid on cosmetics: Medicamina faciei femineae and related texts. Translation and
commentary by Marguerite Johnson. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Latin text with introduction, translation, and commentary on Ovid’s poems on cosmetics.
Scholarship
This poem has not received as much scholarly attention in the recent revival of interest in Ovid. Most scholars (Toohey 1996, Watson
2001) stress the playful and parodic nature of this didactic poem, while Green 1979 points out that Ovid’s recipes were potentially
usable. Wyke 1994 suggests that Ovid playfully appropriates terms of female bodily adornment for the advocacy of male textual cultus.
Green, Peter. 1979. Ars gratia cultus: Ovid as beautician. American Journal of Philology 100:381–392.
Ovid’s pharmacological recipes are practical and reveal his expertise.
Toohey, Peter. 1996. Epic lessons. London and New York: Routledge.
Outlines didactic qualities of the poem and suggests its didactic strategy is parodic.
Watson, Philip. 2001. Parody and subversion in Ovid’s Medicamina faciei feminae. Mnemosyne 54:457–471.
Didactic parody is the object of the poem.
Wyke, Maria. 1994. Women in the mirror: The rhetoric of adornment in the Roman world. In Women in ancient societies: An
illusion of the night. Edited by Léonie J. Archer, Susan Fischler, and Maria Wyke, 134–151. New York: Routledge.
Surveys literary and visual texts, in which the rhetoric of adornment attaches negative values to the female sex. Suggests Ovid’s
didactic playfully opposes these values.
Ars amatoria
The Ars amatoria is a didactic poem about love in three books of elegies. The poet’s pose as teacher (praeceptor) and his claim to
instruct in the arts of love places the poem in the didactic tradition, while the elegiac meter and playful tone set it apart (like the
Medicamina and Remedia) The first two books are addressed to men only (1.35–8 outline how to find a mistress, how to win her, and
how to keep her), while the third (presented as an afterthought, see 2.745–6) is written as a sequel for women. The dating of the Ars is
much debated; general consensus places its publication between 2 BCE and 2 CE (see Ovid 2003). Implicated in Ovid’s relegation (see
Biography), the charge against the poem, published years before, of undermining Roman marriage (Tr. 2.212) seems more likely to
have been less important than Ovid’s “mistake.” Didactic models such as Lucretius’s De rerum natura and Virgil’s Georgics are
acknowledged through borrowed words and phrases (Kenney 1958). Ovid also draws on the “erotodidactic” tradition of elegy and
comedy (see Gibson, Ovid 2003). Contemporary Rome and Augustan monuments figure prominently in the poem, as well as
mythological narratives presented as exempla.
Kenney, E. J. 1958. Nequitiae poeta. In Ovidiana: Recherches sur Ovide. Edited by N. I. Herescu, 201–209. Paris: Les Belles
Lettres.
Examines Ovid’s use of didactic elements and models.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2003. Ars amatoria Book 3. Edited by Roy K. Gibson. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
See pp. 37–39 for discussion of dating the Ars amatoria.
Editions and Commentaries
There now exist commentaries on all three books of the Ars Amatoria, with Hollis (Ovid 1977) and Gibson (Ovid 2003) in English.
Commentaries on the whole poem may found in German (Brandt, Ovid 1991a) and Italian (Pianezzola, Ovid 1991b).
Dimundo, Rosalba. 2003. Ovidio, Lezioni d’amore: Saggio di commento al I Libro dell’Ars amatoria. Bari, Italy: Edipuglia.
Italian commentary.
Janka, Markus. 1997. Ovid Ars amatoria, Buch 2. Heidelberg, Germany: Universitätsverlag Carl Winter.
In-depth German commentary.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1977. Ovid Ars amatoria Book 1. Edited by A. S. Hollis. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
An excellent and classic commentary.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1985. The art of love and other poems. Edited by J. H. Mozley and revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb
Latin text with facing translation.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1991a. P. Ovidi Nasonis de arte amatoria libri tres. Edited by Paul Brandt. Hildesheim, Germany:
Olms.
Reprint of a 1902 commentary on the whole poem, in German.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1991b. L’arte di amare. Edited and translated by Emilio Pianezzola. Milan: Mondadori for
Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.
Italian commentary with Italian translation. Commentary by G. Baldo, L. Cristante, and E. Pianezzola.
Latin text of the amatory poems.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2003. Ars amatoria Book 3. Edited by Roy K. Gibson. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Excellent new commentary with useful introduction.
Scholarship
Gibson, et al. 2006 contains many valuable essays and a useful introductory article by Green on the past fifty years of scholarship on
the two poems. The genre and poetics of the poem are examined by Kenney 1958, Sharrock 1994, Steudel 1992, and Volk 2002.
Gibson, Roy K., Steven Green, and Alison Sharrock, eds. 2006. The art of love: Bimillennial essays on Ovid’s Ars amatoria
and Remedia amoris. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Chapters on many aspects of the two poems, including reception.
Lettres.
Examines the relationship between the representation of lovers and other Roman social models.
Myerowitz, Molly. 1985. Ovid’s games of love. Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press.
Ovid’s poem presents a “conventionalized seduction.”
Sharrock, Alison. 1994. Seduction and repetition in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria 2. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Mythological exempla (Daedalus and Icarus, Calypso and Ulysses) supply a reflection on the artistic process and on the composition of
the Ars.
Steudel, Marion. 1992. Die Literaturparodie in Ovids “Ars amatoria.” Hildesheim and New York: Olms-Weidmann.
Literary allusions to earlier poetry (Hesiod, Lucretius, Vergil) discussed as mostly parodic.
Toohey, Peter. 1997. Eros and eloquence: Modes of amatory persuasion in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria. In Roman eloquence:
Rhetoric in society and literature. Edited by W. J. Dominik, 198–211. New York: Routledge.
Discusses the persuasive persona and rhetorical techniques of the poem.
Volk, Katharina. 2002. The poetics of Latin didactic. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Didactic features of the poem discussed.
Wildberger, Julia. 1998. Ovids Schule der ‘elegischen’ Liebe: Erotodidaxe und Psychagogie in der Ars amatoria. Studien zur
klassischen Philologie 112. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Analysis of first two books of the poem.
Amatory Elegy and Augustan Politics
Ovid’s Ars amatoria and Amores have both been seen to represent challenges to Roman moral ideology and Augustus’s contemporary
moral legislation, the Ars being implicated in Ovid’s relegation (see Biography). While Kennedy 1992 and Kennedy 1993 question the
usefulness of the terms “pro- and anti-Augustan,” many scholars argue that Ovid’s provocative representation of sexual relations, anti-
militaristic values, and the erosion of the distinction between matrona and meretrix challenge Augustan ideology and moral legislation
(Wallace-Hadrill 1985, Gibson 2006, Davis 2006).
Casali, Sergio. 2006. The art of making oneself hated: Rethinking (anti-) Augustanism in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria. In The art of
love: Bimillennial essays on Ovid’s Ars amatoria and Remedia amoris. Edited by Roy K. Gibson, Steven Green, and Alison
Sharrock, 216–234. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Defense of Ovid’s “Anti-Augustanism,” examining his exaggeration of the importance of Gaius Caesar’s Eastern expedition in the Ars.
Davis, Peter J. 2006. Ovid and Augustus: A political reading of Ovid’s erotic poems. London: Duckworth.
Argues that Ovid’s amatory poetry challenges and resists Augustan ideology.
Gibson, Roy K. 2006. Ovid, Augustus, and the politics of moderation in Ars Amatoria 3. In The art of love: Bimillennial essays
on Ovid’s Ars amatoria and Remedia amoris. Edited by Roy K. Gibson, Steven Green, and Alison Sharrock, 121–142. Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press.
Ovid’s didactic advice in the Ars on following moderation challenges Augustan moral polarities.
Kennedy, Duncan F. 1992. “Augustan” and “anti-Augustan”: Reflections on terms of reference. In Roman poetry and
propaganda in the age of Augustus. Edited by Anton Powell, 59–82. London: Bristol Classical.
Audience reception largely determines reading of the poem as either supportive or subversive of Augustan policy.
Kennedy, Duncan F. 1993. The arts of love: Five studies in the discourse of Roman love elegy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
Univ. Press.
Augustus is constituted and legitimated by discourse, even ironic or “oppositional” texts such as Ovid’s.
The Ovidian amatory world does not conflict with Augustanism.
Sharrock, Alison. 1994. Ovid and the politics of reading. Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 33:97–122.
A politicized reading suggesting Ovid’s erotic didactic teaching of “adultery” undermines Augustan authority staked on the emperor’s
moral legislation.
Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew. 1985. Propaganda and dissent? Augustan moral legislation and the love poets. Klio 67:180–184.
The sexual life portrayed in love poetry challenges Augustan ideology and legislation.
Remedia amoris
A didactic poem in elegiacs instructing the reader how to extricate himself from a love a affair, the Remedia amoris presents itself as a
sequel to Ovid’s earlier erotic teaching (lines 9–12) and reverses many erotodidactic precepts. Addressed primarily to men, but also to
women, the poem presents love as a disease or wound to be cured, developing common metaphors from love poetry.
Two commentaries on the poem (one English, one Italian) provide guidance for the text; Pinotti (Ovid 1988) is more comprehensive
than Henderson (Ovid 1979). Kenney (Ovid 1995) provides the Latin text.
Ovid (Publis Ovidius Naso). 1979. Remedia amoris. Edited by A. A. R. Henderson. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic.
Provides Latin text, introduction, and commentary.
Ovid (Publis Ovidius Naso). 1985. The art of love and other poems. Edited and translated by J. H. Mozley and revised by G. P.
Goold. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
Latin text with facing page translation.
Ovid (Publis Ovidius Naso). 1988. Remedia amoris. Edited by Paola Pinotti. Bologna, Italy: Pàtron.
Italian commentary with Latin text of Kenney.
Ovid (Publis Ovidius Naso). 1995. Amores, Medicamina faciei feminae, Ars amatoria, Remedia amoris. Edited by E. J. Kenney.
Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Latin text with critical apparatus.
Scholarship
Recent scholarship on the poem is reviewed by Green in Gibson, et al. 2006. Didactic elements of the poem are reviewed in Volk 2002
and Jones 1997. Brunelle 2000–2001 and Fulkerson 2004 stress the paradox and conflict created by the poem’s erotic elegiac form
and its didactic claims to cure love.
Brunelle, Christopher. 2000–2001. Form vs. function in Ovid’s Remedia amoris. Classical Journal 96:123–140.
Elegiac form of the poem opposes its didactic aims.
Reprinted in his Genres and readers, 35–65 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). The poem dismantles the elegiac
system of love as suffering and signals the end of the writing of love elegy.
Fulkerson, Laurel. 2004. Omnia vincit amor: Why the Remedia fail. Classical Quarterly 54:211–223.
The poem’s erotic discourse foils its purported aim.
Gibson, Roy K., Stephen Green, and Alison Sharrock, eds. 2006. The art of love: Bimillennial essays on Ovid’s Ars amatoria
and Remedia amoris. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Chapters by a number of prominent scholars on many aspects of the two poems, including reception.
Jones, David A. 1997. Enjoinder and argument in Ovid’s Remedia amoris. Stuttgart, Germany: Steiner.
A technical study of this particular rhetorical feature of Ovid’s argumentation in the poem.
Kennedy, Duncan F. 2000. Bluff your way in didactic: Ovid’s Ars amatoria and Remedia amoris. Arethusa 33.2: 159–176.
Ovid’s didactic pose constructs pedagogy as mimesis and stresses role playing.
Lettres.
Volk, Katharina. 2002. The poetics of Latin didactic. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Didactic features of the poem discussed.
Heroides
Twenty-one poems form this unique elegiac collection of fictional epistles; of these Heroides 1–14 are single letters from legendary
heroines of Greek and Roman mythology to their absent husbands or lovers; 15 is by the early Greek poet Sappho; and 16–21
comprise three pairs of double letters (16–17 Paris and Helen, 18–19 Hero and Leander, 20–21 Acontius and Cydippe). There are
numerous problems concerning the authenticity of various poems. An early edition seems to be referred to as published in Amores
2.18.19–26. The epistles represent dramatic monologue in written form, in which tragic and epic (Dido) heroines are adapted to the
humbler genre of love elegy. The literary backgrounds of these textual females create rich opportunities for intertextual engagement
and represent Ovid’s prodigious creativity in the innovation of genre.
Editions
Numerous commentaries on the individual epistles, as well as selections, have recently appeared in a number of languages. Dörrie
(Ovid 1971) is the only available Latin text of the complete collection.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1971. Ovidii Nasonis Epistulae Heroidum. Edited by Heinrich P. Dörrie. Berlin and New York: de
Gruyter.
Currently the only available scholarly text with apparatus criticus of the whole collection.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1986. Heroides and Amores. Edited and translated by Grant Showerman and revised by G. P.
Goold. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
Updated translation with a reliable fully revised Latin text.
Selections
Knox (Ovid 1995) and Kenney (Ovid 1996a) provide useful commentaries, with excellent introductions, on the Latin texts for a wide
selection of Heroides (Kenney has all the double epistles). The smaller selections of Barchiesi (Ovid 1992), Rosati (Ovid 1996b),
Reeson (Ovid 2001), and Michalopoulos (Ovid 2006) offer closely detailed commentary.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1992. P. Ovidii Nasonis Epistulae Heroidum 1–3. Edited and translated by Alessandro Barchiesi.
Florence, Italy: Felice le Monnier.
Excellent Italian commentary on Heroides 1–3, with introduction and translation, stress on intertextuality.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1995. Heroides. Select Epistles. Edited by Peter E. Knox. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ.
Press.
Excellent and helpful commentary on Heroides 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 15.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1996a. Heroides XVI–XXI. Edited by E. J. Kenney. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Excellent commentary, with an informative introduction in which Kenney defends authenticity of the double epistles. Helpful on style and
grammar.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1996b. P.Ovidii Nasonis Heroidum epistulae XVIII–XIX: Leander Heroni, Hero Leandro. Edited by
Gianpiero Rosati. Florence, Italy: Felice Le Monnier.
Italian commentary; accepts poems as genuine works of Ovid.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2001. Heroides 11, 13, and 14. Edited by James Reeson. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Detailed commentary on the poems, with new Latin text, attention to style, imagery, intertextuality.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2006. Heroides 16 and 17: Introduction, text and commentary. Edited by A. N. Michalopoulos.
Cambridge, UK: Francis Cairns.
In-depth commentary with extensive introduction.
Individual Epistles
These commentaries offer in-depth commentary on individual Heroides. Casali (Ovid 1995), Bessone (Ovid 1997a), Pestelli (Ovid
2007a), and Piazzi (Ovid 2007b) all are excellent Italian commentaries.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1995. P. Ovidii Nasonis: Heroidum Epistula IX. Edited by Sergio Casali. Florence, Italy: Le
Monnier.
Italian commentary, with Latin text (limited apparatus).
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1997a. P. Ovidii Nasonis Heroidum epistula. XII, Medea Iasoni. Edited by A. Bessone Federica.
Florence, Italy: Le Monnier.
Detailed Italian commentary, with text, introduction, and interpretation.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1997b. Der XII. Heroidenbrief—Medea an Jason: Einleitung, Text, und Kommentar; Mit einer
Beilage—die Fragmente der Tragödie Medea. Edited by Theodor Heinze. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
German commentary, with introduction (defending authenticity), and an appendix on the fragments attributed to Ovid’s lost Medea.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2007a. P. Ovidii Nasonis Heroidum epistula VIII. Edited by Angela Pestelli. Florence, Italy: Le
Monnier.
Italian commentary with introduction, Latin text.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2007b. Ovidii Nasonis Heroidum epistula VII: Dido Aeneae. Edited by Lisa P. Piazzi. Florence,
Italy: Le Monnier.
Italian commentary with Latin text, extensive introduction, text, translation, and commentary.
Authenticity
Anomalies in meter, style, and usage call into question the Ovidian authorship of a number of the single Heroides, as well as all of the
double epistles (Her. 16–21). At Amores 2.18.21–6 Ovid lists nine (or ten) of the single Heroides (1, 2, 4–7, 10, 11, 15, and perhaps
12). There cannot be said to be a consensus. Kenney’s commentary (pp. 20– 26; see Editions under Heroides) represents a positive
argument for the authenticity of the double epistles, while Courtney 1998 presents a forceful argument for skepticism. Knox 1986 and
Tarrant 1981 similarly cast doubt on other poems. See also the discussions in the individual commentaries. The following selections
represent only a fraction of a much large body of scholarship on the problem.
Courtney, E. 1998. Echtheitskritik: Ovidian and non-Ovidian Heroides again. Classical Journal 93:157–166.
Against Ovidian authorship of Heroides 16–21.
Hinds, Stephen. 1993. Medea in Ovid: Scenes from the life of an intertextual heroine. Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei
testi classici 30:9–47.
Ovidian authorship of Heroides 12 defended through discussion of inter- and intratextuality.
Knox, Peter E. 1986. Ovid’s Medea and the authenticity of Heroides 12. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 90:207–223.
The evidence (including allusions to Ovid’s later poetry) suggests the poem is not Ovidian.
Tarrant, R. J. 1981. The authenticity of the letter of Sappho to Phaon (Heroides XV). Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
85:133–153.
The poem is not Ovidian, but a compilation by a later hand (Neronian or Flavian).
Scholarship
Solid introductions to the Heroides may be found in Jacobson 1974 and Verducci 1985 earlier works that helped revive interest in the
poems. Recent work has focused on the collection’s epistolary form (Farrell 1998), elegiac genre (Spoth 1992), the textuality of the
heroines (Kennedy 2006), and Ovid’s use of cross-gendered speech in the single epistles (Desmond 1993, Lindheim 2003, Spentzou
2003, Farrell 1998). Thorsen 2014 considers the Heroides in relation to Ovid’s other amatory works.
Desmond, Marilynn. 1993. When Dido reads Vergil: Gender and intertextuality in Ovid’s Heroides 7. Helios 20:56–68.
A reading of the poem as a gendered intertextual dialogue with Vergil’s Aeneid.
Farrell, Joseph. 1998. Reading and writing the Heroides. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 98:307–338.
On the Heroides as an epistolary form of female expression.
Fulkerson, Laurel. 2005. The Ovidian heroine as author: Reading, writing, and community in the Heroides. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge Univ. Press.
Feminist treatment of the single Heroides considers the fictional female authors of the collection as belonging to an imaginary
community of readers.
Jacobson, Howard. 1974. Ovid’s Heroides. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
Good introduction to collection.
Kennedy, Duncan. 2006. The epistolary mode and the first of Ovid’s Heroides. In Oxford readings in Ovid. Edited by P. E.
Knox, 69–85. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Discusses how the epistolary form influences Ovid’s intertextuality.
Lindheim, Sara H. 2003. Mail and female: Epistolary narrative and desire in Ovid’s Heroides. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin
Press.
A gender-based analysis of how Ovid’s imagines and presents (through “transvestite ventriloquism”) female desire in the Heroides as
conforming to male fantasies of female powerlessness.
Spentzou, Efrossini. 2003. Readers and writers in Ovid’s Heroides: Transgressions of genre and gender. Oxford: Oxford Univ.
Press.
Feminist focus on heroines’ feminine writing and literary lives.
Spoth, Friedrich. 1992. Ovids Heroides als Elegien. Munich: Beck.

Interpretation of the poems as development of elegiac genre.
Thorsen, Thea. 2014. Ovid’s early poetry from his single Heroides to his Remedia amoris. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ.
Press.
Focuses on Ovid’s early amatory poetry, with particular attention to the Heroides.
Verducci, Florence. 1985. Ovid’s toyshop of the heart: Epistulae heroidum. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
An often interesting study of selected epistles (3, 6, 10, 11, 12, 15), stressing wit, allusion, and parody.
Fasti
In his elegiac poem on the Roman calendar, Ovid sets out the festivals of the first six months of the Roman calendar and the reasons
for them. The religious calendar provides the governing framework for the poem, with one book devoted to each month. The six books
cover the first six months of the year; Ovid’s exile interrupted his composition, and the second six books were never completed. There
is evidence of revision of the Fasti in exile; after Augustus’s death, the poem was rededicated to Germanicus. The work is indebted to
the didactic, antiquarian, aetiological, elegiac, and epic traditions. Callimachus’s Aitia was arguably the greatest poetic influence on the
Fasti (structure and poetics), while Propertius’s fourth book was also an important model. Cross-references suggest that Ovid
composed the Fasti and Metamorphoses simultaneously, in an exploration of the limits of genre and content. Reevaluation of the nature
and significance of the Roman calendar has profoundly influenced the way in which the Fasti is understood to engage actively with the
Augustan cultural and political context. Along with religious ritual and antiquarian aitia, the poem includes Greek mythology, Roman
legend, astronomical lore, and imperial anniversaries.
Editions and Commentaries
Commentaries are available in English on Fasti 1 (Green 2004), 2 (Robinson 2011), 4 (Fantham, Ovid 1998), and 6 (Littlewood 2006),
and more are planned. Bömer (Ovid 1957–1958) provides German translation and commentary on the whole poem, with much
important material on Roman religion.
Green, Steven J. 2004. Ovid, Fasti 1: A commentary. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Extensive commentary with introduction.
Littlewood, R. Joy. 2006. A commentary on Ovid’s Fasti, Book VI. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Helpful commentary with introduction.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1957–1958. Die Fasten. Band I–II. Edited by Franz Bömer. Heidelberg, Germany:
Universitätsverlag Carl Winter.
Exhaustive German commentary.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1989. Fasti. Edited and translated by James G. Frazer and revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical
Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
Latin text with facing translation; with Frazer’s notes on Roman religion.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1997. Fastorum libri sex. Edited by E. H. Alton, D. E. W. Wormell, and Edward Courtney. Stuttgart
and Leipzig, Germany: Teubner.
The best Latin text, with apparatus.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1998. Fasti Book IV. Edited by Elaine Fantham. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Helpful commentary with excellent introduction.
Robinson, Matthew, ed. 2011. A commentary on Ovid’s Fasti, Book 2. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Excellent commentary in English.
Scholarship
Scholarship on the Fasti has exploded in the past twenty years. Fantham 1995 and Miller 1992 provide good introductions to the
scholarship in their surveys of recent trends and approaches to the poem.
Fantham, Elaine. 1995. Recent readings of Ovid’s Fasti. Classical Philology 90:367–378.
A review article surveys recent historical and literary approaches to the poem.
Miller, John F. 1992. Research on Ovid’s Fasti. In Reconsidering Ovid’s Fasti. By John F. Miller, 1–10. Arethusa 25. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
Introduction to volume reviews major scholarly directions.
Politics and Religion
Much recent scholarship focuses on the political and ideological implications of the poem’s calendrical and religious themes. The work
of Beard 1987 and Wallace-Hadrill 1987 stresses the ideological function of the Roman ritual calendar to define and delineate Roman
power and identity. Long considered a mere source for Roman religion, the poem’s presentation of religion now is recognized to
demand a more nuanced treatment, incorporating reflections on Augustan power structures, Roman ritual, social hierarchies, and the
construction of social and sexual identity. Ovid’s choice of the calendar, which was being actively manipulated and transformed by
Augustus, engages with ideological issues as well as constructions of authority and power (Feeney 1992). Herbert-Brown 1994 sees
Ovid’s choice of material as Augustan panegyric, while many have drawn attention to the tensions generated between Ovid’s topic and
his treatment, especially his use of multiple voices in his explanations; Newlands 1995 and Barchiesi 1997 stress how Ovid’s literary
maneuver constitutes a challenge to the ruling authority’s control of the calendar.
Barchiesi, Alessandro. 1997. The poet and the prince: Ovid and Augustan discourse. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
This important work considers the Fasti’s genre, intertextuality, and relationship to Augustan discourse. Seeks to show how a
continuous reading of the text reveals how “contradictory effects can arise from the way in which different themes are placed side by
side.”
Beard, Mary. 1987. A complex of times: No more sheep on Romulus’ birthday. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological
Society 33:1–15.
Seminal article on the cultural/ideological implications of the Roman calendar.
Feeney, D. C. 1992. Si licet et fas est: Ovid’s Fasti and the problem of free speech under the Principate. In Roman poetry and
propaganda in the age of Augustus. Edited by Anton Powell, 1–25. London: Bristol Classical.
One of poem’s key themes is the regulation of speech by the Principate, and it is made to read as if it were broken off at midpoint as a
mute reproach to the loss of freedom of speech.
Gee, Emma. 2000. Ovid, Aratus and Augustus: Astronomy in Ovid’s Fasti. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Explores the literary affiliations (Aratus) and cultural-political implications of the astronomical material of the poem.
Herbert-Brown, Geraldine. 1994. Ovid and the Fasti: An historical study. Oxford: Clarendon.
A study of how Ovid treats imperial themes. Approaches the poem as an important contemporary witness to late Augustan ideology and
dynastic politics.
Herbert-Brown, Geraldine, ed. 2002. Ovid’s Fasti: Historical readings at its bimillennium. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Essays on a variety of topics and approaches to the Fasti.
Hinds, Stephen E. 1992. Arma in Ovid’s Fasti Part 2: Genre, Romulean Rome and Augustan ideology. Arethusa 25:113–154.
Ovid’s depiction of Romulus disrupts the Augustan image and undermines the encomiastic pose.
Newlands, Carole Elizabeth. 1995. Playing with time: Ovid and the Fasti. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
“Ovid exploits the discontinuous narrative framework provided by the calendar to undermine the totalizing control of both time and
space asserted by the princeps.”
Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew. 1987. Time for Augustus: Ovid, Augustus and the Fasti. In Homo viator: Classical essays for John
Bramble. Edited by Michael Whitby, Philip R. Hardie, and Mary Whitby, 221–230. Bristol, UK: Bristol Classical.
Underlines political implications of the Roman calendar.
Genre and Poetics
Ovid characterizes the Fasti as a “greater” sort of elegy at 2.3, 4.3, and 6.22. The poem’s elegiac meter is set in deliberate tension with
its nationalistic and encomiastic subject matter, which was more closely associated with epic (Hinds 1987 is essential on generic
interpretation). Much of this generic interplay is seen to parallel the poem’s political tensions. A number of works trace the literary
affiliations of aetiology (Miller 1992, Loehr 1996).
Hinds, Stephen E. 1987. The metamorphosis of Persephone: Ovid and the self-conscious muse. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
Univ. Press.
An influential work on Ovid’s self-conscious generic affiliations of Fasti and Metamorphoses.
Hinds, Stephen E. 1992. Arma in Ovid’s Fasti Part 1: Genre and mannerism. Arethusa 25:81–112.
A reading of Fasti 3 (Mars’s month) focuses on genre and reveals how the poem’s elegiac status is made central.
Loehr, Johanna. 1996. Ovids Mehrfacherklärungen in der Tradition aitiologischen Dichtens. Stuttgart and Leipzig, Germany:
Teubner.
Studies the multiple explanations of aetiology as a narrative principal in the Fasti and Metamorphoses.
Miller, John F. 1991. Ovid’s elegiac festivals: Studies in the Fasti. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Considers the poem’s relation to Ovid’s earlier elegy, the elegiac genre, literary models, and Roman religion, with some close readings
of episodes.
Miller, John F. 1992. The Fasti and Hellenistic didactic: Ovid’s variant aetiologies. Arethusa 25:11–32.
Importance of Hellenistic and antiquarian sources for Ovid’s didactic alternative modes of explanation.
Pasco-Pranger, Molly. 2006. Founding the year: Ovid’s Fasti and the poetics of the Roman calendar. Leiden, The Netherlands,
and Boston: Brill.
The Roman calendar is an important intertext for the poem with ideological implications.
Porte, Danielle. 1985. L’Étiologie religieuse dans les Fastes d’ovide. Paris: Les Belles Letrres.
Aetiology and etymology central to presentation of the material.
Metamorphoses
Ovid’s only poem in dactylic hexameters, the Metamorphoses is an epic poem in fifteen books. More than 250 Greek and Roman
myths, linked by the theme of transformation, are narrated in a loosely chronological sequence, explaining the origins of the world. The
poem begins with Chaos and the very creation of the universe and reaches, as it promises in the Prologue (1.1–4), Ovid’s own time.
The poem is characterized by a generic hybridism and inclusivity suitable to its metamorphic theme. Virtually every ancient literary
genre is incorporated in it. The epic’s predominantly erotic themes show Ovid still exploring the poetics of love. The cosmic scope of the
epic places it within the Homeric tradition, while its aetiological focus aligns it with Callimachus. Vergil’s Aeneid is engaged as a model
throughout, and is closely reworked in books 13–14. Augustan topics are broached in book 1 but resurface only in the final two books.
The many internal narrators highlight the poem’s self-referential preoccupation with narrative and reception. Human psychology and
issues of self-identity are central to many tales. Ovid’s verbal wit and wordplay permeate the poem, frequently creating comedy, but
never simple parody.
The Metamorphoses are well represented by commentaries in many languages, and many more are forthcoming. Tarrant (Ovid 2004)
now provides the authoritative text. Bömer’s (Ovid 1969–1986) monumental and exhaustive German commentary on the whole poem is
still indispensible, though at times frustrating to use. Hill (Ovid 1985–2000) offers commentary on the whole poem, while Anderson
(Ovid 1972 and Ovid 1997) covers 1–10. The Italian commentary series (represented by Barchiesi in Ovid 2005, Barchiesi and Rosati
in Ovid 2007, Rosati in Ovid 2009, Kenney in Ovid 2011, Day in Ovid 2013, and Hardie in Ovid 2015) covers all fifteen books and will
eventually appear in English.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1969–1986. P. Ovidius Nasonis Metamorphosen. Edited by Franz Bömer. 7 vols. Heidelberg,
Germany: Universitätsverlag Carl Winter.
Exhaustive German commentary on the whole poem (many parallels, but many mistakes).
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1972. Ovid’s Metamorphoses Books 6–10. Edited by William Scovil Anderson. Norman: Univ. of
Oklahoma Press.
Helpful commentary for college students (largely interpretive), with Latin text of author.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1984. Metamorphoses. 2 vols. Edited by Frank Justus Miller and revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1985–2000. Metamorphoses. 4 vols. Edited by Donald E. Hill. Warminster, UK: Aris and Phillips.
Provides introduction, Latin text (Tarrant) with facing translation, and a commentary on the whole poem (generally keyed to the
translation) for non-specialist students.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1997. Ovid’s Metamorphoses Books 1–5. Edited by William Scovil Anderson. Norman: Univ. of
Oklahoma Press.
Helpful commentary (largely interpretive) for college students, with Latin text of author.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2004. P. Ovidi Nasonis Metamorphoses. Edited by R. J. Tarrant. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Latin text with critical apparatus.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2005. Libri I–II. Vol. 1 of Ovidio Metamorfosi. Edited and translated by Alessandro Barchiesi.
Rome: Mondadori for Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.
First volume of excellent Italian commentary on the poem (with Italian-facing page translation).
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2007. Libri III–IV. Vol. 2 of Ovidio Metamorfosi. Edited and translated by Alessandro Barchiesi
and Gianpiero Rosati. Rome: Mondadori for Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.
Second volume of excellent Italian commentary on the poem (with Italian-facing page translation) by two renowned Ovidian scholars.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2009. Libri V–VI. Vol. 3 of Ovidio Metamorfosi. Edited by Gianpiero Rosati and translated by
Gioachino Chiarini. Rome: Mondadori for Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.
Third volume of excellent Italian commentary on the poem (with Italian-facing page translation) by two renowned Ovidian scholars.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2011. Libri VII–IX. Vol. 4 of Ovidio Metamorfosi. Edited by Edward J. Kenney and translated by
Fourth volume of excellent Italian commentary on the poem (with Italian-facing page translation) by two renowned Ovidian scholars.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2013. Libri X–XII. Vol. 5 of Ovidio Metamorfosi. Edited by Joseph D. Reed and translated by
Fifth volume of excellent Italian commentary on the poem (with Italian-facing page translation) by two renowned Ovidian scholars.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2015. Libri XIII–XV. Vol. 6 of Ovidio Metamorfosi. Edited by Philip Hardie and translated by
Sixth volume of excellent Italian commentary on the poem (with Italian-facing page translation) by two renowned Ovidian scholars.
Individual Books
More detailed commentaries on individual books of the Metamorphoses are provided by the selections below. See Lee (Ovid 2003) for
Book I, Henderson (Ovid 1979) for Book III, Hollis (Ovid 1983) for Book VIII, Fratantuono for Book X (Ovid 2014), Murphy (Ovid 2001)
for Book XI, Hopkinson (Ovid 2000) for Book XIII, and Myers (Ovid 2009) for Book XIV.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1979. Metamorphoses III. Edited by A. A. R. Henderson. Bristol, UK: Bristol Classical.
Commentary with Latin text.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1983. Metamorphoses Book VIII. Edited by A. S. Hollis. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Commentary with introduction and Latin text.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2000. Metamorphoses Book XIII. Edited by Neil Hopkinson. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2001. Metamorphoses Book XI. Edited by G. M. H. Murphy. London: Duckworth.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2003. Metamorphoses Book I. Edited by Arthur G. Lee. London: Bristol Classical.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2009. Metamorphoses Book XIV. Edited by K. Sara Myers. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2014. Metamorphoses Book X. Edited by Lee Fratantuono. London and New York: Bloomsbury
Academic.
Latin text with commentary.
Scholarship, General
Scholarship on the Metamorphoses exhibits a variety matching the content and form of the poem. Good general introductions to the
poem may be found in Due 1974, Solodow 1988, and Fantham 2004. Feeney 1991 has an illuminating chapter on Ovid which places
him within the epic tradition. Tissol 1997 discusses many of Ovid’s narrative techniques, while Wheeler 1999 looks at internal narrators.
Due, O. S. 1974. Changing forms: Studies in the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Copenhagen, Denmark: Gyldendal.
A perceptive introduction to the poem.
Fantham, Elaine. 2004. Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
A good introduction for the general reader or student.
Feeney, D. C. 1991. The gods in epic. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
See chapter 8, pp. 188–249, for excellent treatment of the Metamorphoses.
Galinsky, Karl. 1975. Ovid’s Metamorphoses: An introduction to the basic aspects. Los Angeles and Berkeley: Univ. of
California Press.
A, treatment of the whole poem, representing an older view of the poem as primarily ludic.
Hardie, Philip. 2002. Ovid’s poetics of illusion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Perceptive study of how illusion, presence, and absence are major themes of the Metamorphoses and all of Ovid’s poetry.
Hardie, Philip, Alessandro Barchiesi, and Stephen Hinds. 1999. Ovidian transformations. Supplementary Volume 23.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Philological Society.
A selection of innovative essays on the poem and its later reception.
Solodow, Joseph B. 1988. The world of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.
Comprehensive overview of poem, with good discussion of narrative technique.
Tissol, Garth. 1997. The face of nature: Wit, narrative, and cosmic origins in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Univ. Press.
Especially good on Ovid’s style and verbal techniques.
Wheeler, Stephen Michael. 1999. A discourse of wonders: Audience and performance in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Philadelphia:
Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.
Discussion of the poem’s internal narrators and audiences.
Genre and Intertextuality
The hybrid and discontinuous nature of the Metamorphoses has led to much debate about the relevance of generic definitions to the
poem. Hinds 1987 (asserting importance of the epic genre; see also Baldo 1995, Myers 1994) and Knox 1986 (stressing elegiac
affiliations) represent two not irreconcilable sides of the debate. Much recent scholarship has discussed the poem’s rich intertextuality
with a wide range of literary sources from elegy to tragedy (Farrell 1992, Smith 1997, Jouteur 2001, Curley 2013, and Ziogas 2013).
Baldo, Gianluigi. 1995. Dall’Eneide alle Metamorfosi: Il codice epico di Ovidio. Padua, Italy: n.p.
The importance of Vergil as a literary model for the poem.
Curley, Daniel. 2013. Tragedy in Ovid: Theater, metatheater, and the transformation of a genre. Cambridge, UK, and New York:
Cambridge Univ. Press.
Traces Ovid’s engagement with the genre of tragedy in the Heroides and Metamorphoses.
Farrell, Joseph. 1992. Dialogue of genres in Ovid’s lovesong of Polyphemus (Met.13.719–897). American Journal of Philology
113:235–268.
Stresses Ovid’s use of multiple literary models.
Heinze, Richard. 1919. Ovids elegische Erzählung. Philologisch-historische Klasse 71.7. Leipzig, Germany: Berichte der
Sächsischen Akademie zu Leipzig.
A seminal German book comparing the generic styles of the Fasti and Metamorphoses.
Hinds, Stephen E. 1987. The metamorphosis of Persephone: Ovid and the self-conscious muse. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
Univ. Press.
An influential work on Ovid’s self-conscious generic affiliations of Fasti and Metamorphoses.
Hinds, Stephen E. 1998. Allusion and intertext: Roman literature and its contexts. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Contains an excellent discussion of Ovid’s allusive treatment of Vergil’s Aeneid.
Jouteur, Isabelle. 2001. Jeux de genre dans les Métamorphoses d’Ovide. Louvain, Belgium: Peeters.
On the generic hybridity of the Metamorphoses.
Knox, Peter E. 1986. Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the traditions of Augustan poetry. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Philological
Society.
Argues for the importance of elegy to the epic.
Myers, K. Sara. 1994. Ovid’s causes: Cosmogony and aetiology in the Metamorphoses. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.
Narratological and generic implications of an aetiological reading of the poem.
Smith, R. Alden. 1997. Poetic allusion and poetic embrace in Ovid and Virgil. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.
Ovidian allusions to Virgil offer a reading of his predecessor.
Ziogas, I. 2013. Ovid and Hesiod: The metamorphosis of the Catalogue of Women. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
A study of the thematic, structural, and verbal similarities between Ovid’s poetry, mainly the Metamorphoses, and the Hesiodic
Catalogue of Women.
Structure and Narrative
Ovid’s complex handling of chronology in the Metamorphoses has been explored in a number of recent studies (Feeney 1999, Rosati
2002, Cole 2008). Despite the proem’s stated chronological movement, narrative destabilization is a mark of Ovid’s technique
throughout the poem. The poem’s resistance of teleology and closure suggests ideological resistance (Feeney 1999). The many
complex internal narratives in the poem are explored by Rosati 2002 and Barchiesi 2006.
Barchiesi, Alessandro. 2006. Voices and narrative “instances” in the Metamorphoses 1. In Oxford readings in Ovid. Edited by
P. E. Knox, 274–319. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Discusses how internal narratives create complex intertextuality.
Cole, Thomas. 2008. Ovidius mythistoricus: Legendary time in the Metamorphoses. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Argues for a complex chronological structuring (Varronian) of the poem.
Feeney, D. C. 1999. Mea tempora: Patterning of time in the Metamorphoses. In Ovidian transformations. Edited by Philip
Hardie, Alessandro Barchiesi, and Stephen Hinds, 13–30. Supplementary Volume 23. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Philological
Society.
Authoritative time structures put under extreme pressure in the poem.
Hinds, Stephen E. 1999. After exile: Time and teleology from the Metamorphoses to Ibis. In Ovidian transformations. Edited by
Philip Hardie, Alessandro Barchiesi, and Stephen Hinds, 48–67. Supplementary Volume 23. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
Philological Society.
Ovid’s revisions of the temporality of the poem in his exile poetry.
Holzberg, Niklas. 1998. Ter quinque uolumina as carmen perpetuum: The division into books in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 40:77–98.
Argues that poem divisions should be seen in the major internal narratives of books 5, 10, and 15.
Keith, Alison. 1992. The play of fictions: Studies in Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 2. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.
The internal narratives of Book 2 are indebted to Callimachean models.
Rosati, Gianpiero. 2002. Narrative techniques and narrative structures in the Metamorphoses. In Brill’s companion to Ovid.
Edited by Barbara Weiden Boyd, 271–304. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Masterly exposition of various narrative techniques of the poem.
Wheeler, Stephen Michael. 2000. Narrative dynamics in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Classica Monacensia 20. Tübingen, Germany:
Narr.
A useful survey of major narrative structures of the poem.
Politics
The Metamorphoses’ predominantly Greek mythological content seems to engage little with Augustan ideology. However, the dynamics
of the divine power structures in the poem may be seen to reflect contemporary realities. The inclusion of Roman legendary and
imperial (Caesar and Augustus) deifications in the final two books directly reflects the contemporary cult of the emperor (Feeney 1991).
The association of Augustus with Jupiter in Book I has potentially disquieting implications in terms of the employment of violence. The
poem’s treatment of Virgil’s Aeneid has been seen to systematically erase Roman and Augustan concerns and references (Tissol 2002,
Casali 2006). Other scholars (Galinsky 1999, Habinek 2002) argue that Ovid’s texts are in harmony with the Augustan milieu. Feldherr
2010 argues that Ovid’s text is in dialogue with other forms of imperial discourse about power and art.
Casali, Sergio. 2006. Other voices in Ovid’s “Aeneid.” In Oxford readings in Ovid. Edited by P. E. Knox, 144–165. Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press.
Sensitive reading of Ovid’s allusive treatment of the Aeneid in Met. 13–14 as subversive.
Feeney, D. C. 1991. The gods in epic. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Ovid’s imperial deifications reflect the machinations of contemporary imperial emperor cult (see chapter 5).
Feldherr, Andrew. 2010. Playing gods: Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the politics of fiction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
Emphasizes the capacity of the poem to become an element in political and social discourse.
Galinsky, Karl. 1999. Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Augustan cultural thematics. In Ovidian transformations. Edited by Philip
Hardie, Alessandro Barchiesi, and Stephen Hinds, 103–111. Supplementary Volume 23. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
In this and other work the author argues a view of Ovid as nonpolitical or representing Augustanism.
Habinek, Thomas. 2002. Ovid and empire. In The Cambridge Companion to Ovid. Edited by Philip Hardie, 46–61. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Ovid participates in the construction of imperial ideology.
Hardie, Philip. 1990. Ovid’s Theban history: The first Anti-Aeneid? Classical Quarterly 40:224–235.
Suggests that the Theban tales of Met. 3–4 represent a subversive reading of the Aeneid.
Miller, John F. 2004–2005. Ovid and Augustan Apollo. Hermathena 177–178:165–180.

Augustan implications of Ovid’s depiction of Apollo in Met. 1 are ambiguous.
Tissol, Garth. 2002. The house of fame: Roman history and Augustan politics in Metamorphoses 11–15. In Brill’s companion
to Ovid. Edited by Barbara Weiden Boyd, 305–335. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
A useful review of the major themes and narratives of the final books.
Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto
The Tristia comprises five books written from exile during 8–12 CE, containing poems (fifty in all) that advertise Ovid’s “sorrows” caused
by his relegation to the Black Sea. The poems, addressed to his wife and other, unnamed persons in Rome, serve as appeals for a
reconsideration of the poet’s punishment. Tr. 2, addressed to Augustus, is the longest poem (578 lines) and represents a “defense” of
his poetic career through an appeal for clemency. Through the exilic poems’ self-deprecatory tone Ovid creatively returns elegy to its
alleged origins as a song of lament. The Epistulae ex Ponto consists of four books of elegiac letters (forty-six poems in all), the first
three purposefully designed and arranged as a unit. Named addressees include family, friends, and other Romans. Books 1–3 were
published as a single collection in 12–13 CE; Book 4 was probably posthumously published (4.9 datable to 16 CE).
A Latin text for the Tristia is provided by Hall (Ovid 1995), while Owen (Ovid 1989) contains both collections. Recent commentaries on
both poems greatly assist their accessibility (Helzle 1989, Ovid 2005, Ovid 2010, and Tissol in Ovid 2014 are in English).
Helzle, Martin. 1989. Publii Ovidii Nasonis Epistularum ex Ponto liber IV: A commentary on poems 1 to 7 and 16. Hildesheim,
Germany: Olms.
English commentary with extensive introduction.
Helzle, Martin. 2003. Ovids Epistulae ex Ponto: Buch I–I: Kommentar. Heidelberg, Germany: Universitätsverlag Carl Winter.
German commentary.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1967–1977. Tristia. 2 vols. Edited by Georg Luck. Heidelberg, Germany: Universitätsverlag Carl
Winter.
Detailed German commentary.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1988. Tristia, Ex Ponto. 2d ed. Edited by Arthur Leslie Wheeler and revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1989. Tristium libri quinque, Ibis, Ex Ponto libri quattuor, Halieutica fragmenta. Edited by S. G.
Owen. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1995. P. Ovidi Nasonis Tristia. Edited by John Barrie Hall. Stuttgart and Leipzig, Germany:
Teubner.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2005. Commentary on Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto, Book I. Edited and translated by Jan Felix
Gaertner. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Detailed English commentary, Latin text with translation, introduction.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2010. A commentary on Ovid, Tristia, Book 2. Edited by Jennifer Ingleheart. Oxford: Oxford Univ.
Press.
Extensive commentary in English.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2013. Ovidii Nasonis “Epistula ex Ponto” III, 1: Testo, traduzione e commento. Edited by Beatrice
Larosa. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.
Italian commentary.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 2014. Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto Book 1. Edited by Garth Tissol. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ.
Press.
Text and commentary in English.
Scholarship
Much recent scholarship has reassessed Ovid’s exile poetry (see Williams 1994, Williams and Walker 1997, McGowan 2009). Ovid’s
self-deprecatory poetics has been identified as part of the poet’s fiction of waning poetic talents (Nagle 1980, Williams 1994, Claassen
1999). Others stress Ovid’s debt to earlier Greek and Roman exile literature (Gaertner 2007). Also of interest is Ovid’s (re)interpretation
of his earlier poetry from the perspective of exile (Gibson 1999, Hinds 2006).
Claassen, Jo-Marie. 1999. Displaced persons: The literature of exile from Cicero to Boethius. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin
Press.
A general treatment of Ovid’s exile poetry.
Evans, Harry B. 1984. Publica carmina: Ovid’s books from exile. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press.
Good introduction to the two exilic works as poetic books.
Gaertner, Jan Felix. 2007. Ovid and the “poetics of exile”: How exilic is Ovid’s exile poetry? In Writing exile: The discourse of
displacement in Greco-Roman Antiquity and beyond. Edited by J. F. Gaertner, 155–172. Mnemosyne Supplement 283. Leiden,
The Netherlands: Brill.
Stylistic differences between Ovid’s exile poetry and his earlier poetry explained as indebted to ancient epistolographic conventions, not
due to poetic decline.
Gibson, Bruce. 1999. Ovid on reading: Reading Ovid. Reception in Ovid Tristia 2. Journal of Roman Studies 89:19–37.
Ovid’s exilic work shapes his own reception.
Hinds, Stephen E. 2006. Booking the return trip: Ovid and Tristia 1. In Oxford readings in Ovid. Edited by P. E. Knox, 415–440.
Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
An important article on Ovid’s encounters in exile with his past writings.
McGowan, Matthew. 2009. Ovid in exile: Power and poetic redress in the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. Leiden, The
Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.
A complex study Ovid’s response to Augustus in his exile poetry.
Nagle, Betty Rose. 1980. The poetics of exile. Collections Latomus 170. Brussels, Belgium: Latomus.
A study of the poems, especially in relation to Ovid’s earlier elegy.
Videau-Delibes, Anne. 1991. Les Tristes d’Ovide et l’élégie romain: Une poétique de la rupture. Paris: Klincksieck.
Ovid’s exile poetry exhibits a “poetics of rupture,” which aims to communicate suffering over artistry and signals a break with his earlier
elegy.
Williams, Gareth D. 1994. Banished voices: Readings in Ovid’s exile poetry. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Stresses the complex literary designs and multiple voices of Ovid’s exile poetry.
Williams, Gareth D., and Andrew D. Walker, eds. 1997. Ovid in exile I–II. Ramus 26.1–2.
A volume of the journal dedicated to articles on Ovid’s exilic poetry.
Ibis
This elegiac curse poem (published 10–12 CE) is aimed at an unnamed (probably fictional) enemy represented by the pseudonym of
the name of the ibis bird. The poem owes a debt to Callimachus’s lost poem of the same name. Ovid’s choice of meter is again unusual
in light of the usual iambic tradition of invective. The poem parades a richness of arcane mythological learning in a long catalogue of
curses (251–638).
Texts
Latin texts of the Ibis are found in La Penna (Ovid 1957) and Owen (Ovid 1984).
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1957. Publi Ovidi Nasonis Ibis. Edited by A. La Penna. Florence: La Nuova Italie.
Latin text of the poem.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1984. Tristium libri quinque, Ibis, Ex Ponto libri quattuor, Halieutica fragmenta. Edited by S. G.
Owen. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Latin text.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). 1985. The art of love and other poems. Edited by J. H. Mozley and revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb
Scholarship
The excellent Williams 1996 remains the only full-length study of the very difficult Ibis.
Watson, Lindsay C. 1991. Arae: The curse poetry of antiquity. Leeds, UK: Francis Cairns.
A chapter on the poem’s Hellenistic precedents.
Williams, Gareth. 1996. The curse of exile: A study of Ovid’s Ibis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Philological Society.
Discusses Ovid’s “artistic portrayal of a deranged psychotic condition” in the Ibis.
Gender
All of Ovid’s poetry is receptive to feminist and gendered readings (e.g., Sharrock 2002), with its many female voices (see sections of
this bibliography on the Amores and Heroides). Feminist studies have done much to show that the representation of women in elegy
responds both to contemporary gender attitudes and to the poetic concerns of genre, while underscoring the dangers of trying to extract
real life from poetry (Culham 1990, Ancona and Greene 2005). In the Metamorphoses both male and female sexual and gender identity
are central issues in myths that frequently involve physical violation (Richlin 1992, Janan 1994, Segal 1998).
Ancona, Ronnie, and Ellen Greene. 2005. Gendered dynamics in Latin love poetry. Baltimore: John Hopkins Univ. Press.
Essays on Medicamina, Remedia, and Metamorphoses from a gender perspective.
Culham, Phyllis. 1990. Decentering the text: The case of Ovid. Helios 17:161–170.
Introduction to a volume on feminist approaches to Ovid’s texts.
Hallett, J. P. 1984. The role of women in Roman elegy: Counter-cultural feminism. In Women in the ancient world: The
Arethusa papers. Edited by John Peradotto and J. P. Sullivan, 241–262. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press.
Women in elegiac poetry represented “counter-culturally” as powerful.
James, Sharon L. 2003. Learned girls and male persuasion: Gender and reading in Roman love elegy. Berkeley: Univ. of
California Press.
Ovid’s amatory poetry discussed along with other elegists, focusing on the puella as reader.
Janan, Micaela. 1994. There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow: Ovid’s Minyeides and the feminine
imagination. American Journal of Philology 115:427–448.
A study of the thematic associations of the internal narratives of the Minyeides in Met. 4.
Keith, Alison. 2000. Engendering Rome: Women in Latin epic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Examines women in the Metamorphoses who fit within epic patterns of the depiction of females.
Richlin, Amy. 1992. Reading Ovid’s rapes. In Pornography and representation in Greece and Rome. Edited by Amy Richlin,
158–179. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Rape scenes in the Metamorphoses, Fasti, and Ars Amatoria analyzed from numerous theoretical perspectives. In the Metamorphoses
rape may represent the dissolution of boundaries, a central theme of the poem.
Segal, C. P. 1998. Ovid’s metamorphic bodies: Art, gender, and violence in the Metamorphoses. Arion 5:9–41.
The poem uses the body as the focus for the instability and vulnerability of the human condition.
Sharrock, Alison. 2002. Gender and sexuality. In The Cambridge companion to Ovid. Edited by Philip R. Hardie, 95–107.
Ovid’s interest in the “fluidity of identity” provokes a gendered reading of all of his poetry.
Reception
Ovid’s literary afterlife was extremely vigorous. Of his immediate successors, attention has focused recently on the indebtedness of
Statius and Martial to Ovid (Holzberg 2004–2005, Hinds 2007). The 12th and 13th centuries were called the Aetas Ovidiana by the
medievalist Ludwig Traube. In recognition of the importance of reception studies to poetic interpretation (see Burrow 1999), every
recent major collection of essays on Ovid includes chapters on his afterlife (Nachleben). Two new collections are devoted exclusively to
reception studies (Miller and Newlands 2014, Mack and North 2015). Modern literature continues to be inspired by his poetry (Brown
1999, Kennedy 2002).
Brown, Sarah Annes. 1999. The metamorphosis of Ovid: From Chaucer to Ted Hughes. New York: St. Martin’s.
A chronological consideration of the influence of the poem on (mostly) major English authors.
Brown, Sarah Annes. 2005. Ovid: Myth and metamorphosis. Ancients in Action. London: Bristol Classical.
Five episodes (Daphne, Actaeon, Philomela, Arachne, and Pygmalion) and their creative reception in Western culture, primarily in
(mostly English) poetry and prose fiction.
Burrow, Colin. 1999. “Full of the maker’s guile”: Ovid on imitating and imitation of Ovid. In Ovidian transformations. Edited by
Philip Hardie, Alessandro Barchiesi, and Stephen Hinds, 271–287. Supplementary Volume 23. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
Met. 11 by Statius, Spenser, Garth, Pope, and Young.
Hinds, Stephen E. 2007. Martials’ Ovid/Ovid’s Martial. Journal of Roman Studies 97:113–154.
A study of Martial’s use of Ovid as a model and how this sheds light on both poets’ texts.
Holzberg, Niklas. 2004–2005. Martial, the book, and Ovid. Hermathena 177–178:209–224.
Martial’s Books 10–12 form a triad that adopts elements of Ovid’s exile poetry.
Kennedy, Duncan. 2002. Recent receptions of Ovid. In The Cambridge companion to Ovid. Edited by Philip R. Hardie, 320–335.
Surveys Ovid’s influence on literature of the 20th century.
Mack, Peter, and John North, eds. 2015. The afterlife of Ovid. Papers delivered at a conference in London on the Reception of
Ovid, March 2013. BICS Supplement 130. London: Institute of Classical Studies, Univ. of London.
Conference papers on the Renaissance reception of Ovid’s works.
Martin, Christopher. 1998. Ovid in English. New York: Penguin.

Anthology of Ovidian inspiration from Chaucer to Seamus Heaney.
Martindale, Charles, ed. 1988. Ovid renewed: Ovidian influences on literature and art from the Middle Ages to the twentieth
century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
A collection of essays on Ovid’s influence on (mostly) English art and literature.
Miller, John, and Carole Newlands, eds. 2014. A handbook to the reception of Ovid. Malden, MA, and Chichester, UK: Wiley-
Blackwell.
An excellent collection of chapters on Ovid’s reception in literature and art from Antiquity to the early 21st century.
Ovid illustrated: The reception of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in image and text.

A University of Virginia website with illustrations and links.
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Schmitzer, Ulrich. 2002. Neue Forschungen zu Ovid. Gymnasium 109:143–166.

Texts and Commentaries

Medicamina faciei feminae

Texts and Commentaries

Editions and Commentaries

Amatory Elegy and Augustan Politics

Texts and Commentaries

Spoth, Friedrich. 1992. Ovids Heroides als Elegien. Munich: Beck.

Editions and Commentaries

Politics and Religion

Genre and Poetics

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Genre and Intertextuality

Structure and Narrative

Miller, John F. 2004–2005. Ovid and Augustan Apollo. Hermathena 177–178:165–180.

Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto

Texts and Commentaries

Martin, Christopher. 1998. Ovid in English. New York: Penguin.

Ovid illustrated: The reception of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in image and text.

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