Selected Poems

by Ovid

Of bodies changed to various forms I sing
Ye gods, from whom these miracles did spring.
--from Metamorphoses

Acknowledged as the leading Roman poet of his generation, Ovid suffered the pain of banishment and exile for reasons that remain unknown until this day. But his work survives, and the classics in this special volume include excerpts from poems of love, pain, and transformation, including Amores (Loves), Heroides (Epistles of the Heroines), Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), Fasti (The Calendar), Metamorphoses , and Tristia (Sorrows).

Genres: Poetry, Classics

128 pages, Hardcover

First published July 8, 1971

About the author

Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horatius, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis, the capital of the newly-organised province of Moesia, on the Black Sea, where he remained for the last nine or ten years of his life. Ovid himself attributed his banishment to a "poem and a mistake", but his reluctance to disclose specifics has resulted in much speculation among scholars.
Ovid is most famous for the Metamorphoses, a continuous mythological narrative in fifteen books written in dactylic hexameters. He is also known for works in elegiac couplets such as Ars Amatoria ("The Art of Love") and Fasti. His poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and greatly influenced Western art and literature. The Metamorphoses remains one of the most important sources of classical mythology today.

Reviews

[Daniel Chaikin · Rating 4 out of 5]

21. Ovid: Selected Poems by David Hopkins
published: 1998/2003
format: 123 page hardcover
acquired: Library
read: Apr 23 - May 2
rating: 4

Ovid lived 44 bce to 17 ce

Hidden in the verso: "The translations of Ovid included in this selection are taken from versions by English poets of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These were chosen because they convey the feel and flavor of Ovid’s witty style more vividly than any other English translations."

The late 17th, early 18th century translators include:
John Dryden
(Dryden was the main translator used and the only one used more than twice.)
Richard Duke
"anon. 1725"
“Lord Somers” (John Somers)
John Sheffield Buckingham (Duke Of), Earl of Mulgrave
William Massey
Joseph Addison
Laurence Eusden
Samuel Croxall
Edward Vernon
John Ozell
Sir Samuel Garth
Leonard Welsted
T. P.

This was intended as an appetizer by me. I stumbled across it in the library catalogue, and it was a small, cute little book...and it was short. I zipped through, occasionally re-reading, but spending little time on meaning. Every line rhymes, which is charming, and rhythmic, but also a bit strange. But they re-read really nicely. No clue on accuracy. I'm presuming these translations are closer to a performance, a showy thing, than a quest for perfect accuracy (or comprehensibility). But I could be wrong.

I plan to read Ovid, "for real", in June.

[R.a. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautiful little, hardbound, book, this little anthology contains excerpts from his major work.

The type is little small, but the portability and craftsmanship of the actual book has made this little curiosity almost endearing.

The big setback, of course, is simply that it doesn't provide enough—especially The Metamorphosis. And honestly, I would have liked a little more from The Amores as well.

This little volume becomes a great little summer book—highly portable and accessible for short, even interrupted, reading sessions.

But again, I wanted even a little more.

[letturownia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fanką literatury klasycznej raczej nie zostanę.