Amores is Ovid's first completed book of poetry, written in elegiac couplets. It was first published in 16 BC in five books, but Ovid, by his own account, later edited it down into the three-book edition that survives today. The book follows the popular model of the erotic elegy, as made famous by figures such as Tibullus or Propertius, but is often subversive and humorous with these tropes, exaggerating common motifs and devices to the point of absurdity.
While several literary scholars have called the Amores a major contribution to Latin love elegy,[1] [2] they are not generally considered among Ovid's finest works[3] and "are most often dealt with summarily in a prologue to a fuller discussion of one of the other works".[4]
Ovid was born in 43 BCE, the last year of the Roman Republic, and he grew up in Sulmo, a small town in the mountainous Abruzzo.[5] Based on the memoirs of Seneca the Elder, scholars know that Ovid attended school in his youth.[6] During the Augustan Era, boys attended schools that focused on rhetoric in order to prepare them for careers in politics and law.[7] There was a great emphasis placed on the ability to speak well and deliver compelling speeches in Roman society. The rhetoric used in Amores reflects Ovid’s upbringing in this education system.
Later, Ovid adopted the city of Rome as his home, and began celebrating the city and its people in a series of works, including Amores. Ovid’s work follows three other prominent elegists of the Augustan Era, notably Gallus, Tibullus, and Propertius.
Under Augustus, Rome underwent a period of transformation. Augustus was able to end a series of civil wars by concentrating the power of the government into his own hands.[8] Though Augustus held most of the power, he cloaked the transformation as a restoration of traditional values like loyalty and kept traditional institutions like the Senate in place, claiming that his Rome was the way it always should have been.[9] Under his rule, citizens were faithful to Augustus and the royal family, viewing them as “the embodiment of the Roman state.” This notion arose in part through Augustus’ attempts to improve the lives of the common people by increasing access to sanitation, food, and entertainment.[10] The arts, especially literature and sculpture, took on the role of helping to communicate and bolster this positive image of Augustus and his rule.[11] It is in this historical context that Amores was written and takes place.
Speculations as to Corinna's real identity are many, if indeed she lived at all. It has been argued that she is a poetic construct copying the puella-archetype from other works in the love elegy genre. The name Corinna may have been a typically Ovidian pun based on the Greek word for "maiden", "kore". According to Knox there is no clear woman that Corinna alludes to, many scholars have come to conclude that the affair detailed throughout Amores is not based on real-life, and rather reflects Ovid’s purpose to play with genre of the love elegy rather than to record real, passionate feelings for a woman.[12]
The Amores is a poetic first person account of the poetic persona's love affair with an unattainable higher class girl, Corinna. It is not always clear if the author is writing about Corinna or a generic puella. Ovid does not assume a single woman as a subject of a chronical obsession of the persona of lover. The plot is linear, with a few artistic digressions such as an elegy on the death of Tibullus.
The book has a ring arrangement, with the first and last poems concerning poetry itself, and 1.2 and 1.9 both contain developed military metaphors.
Ovid's Amores are firmly set in the genre of love elegy. The elegiac couplet was used first by the Greeks, originally for funeral epigrams, but it came to be associated with erotic poetry.[13] Love elegy as a genre was fashionable in Augustan times.[14]
The term ‘elegiac” refers to the meter of the poem. Elegiac meter is made up of two lines, or a couplet, the first of which is hexameter and the second pentameter.[15] Ovid often inserts a break between the words of the third foot in the hexameter line, otherwise known as a strong caesura.[16] To reflect the artistic contrast between the different meters, Ovid also ends the pentameter line in an “’iambic’ disyllable word.”
Familiar themes include:
It has been regularly praised for adapting and improving on these older models with humor.
Scholars have also noted the argumentative nature that Ovid’s love elegy follows. While Ovid has been accused by some critics to be long-winded and guilty of making the same point numerous times, others have noted the careful attention Ovid gives to the flow of his argument. Ovid usually starts a poem by presenting a thesis, then offers supporting evidence that gives rise to a theme near the end of the poem.[17] The final couplet in poem often function as a “punch-line” conclusion, not only summarizing the poem, but also delivering the key thematic idea.[18] One example of Ovid’s “argumentative” structure can be found in II.4, where Ovid begins by stating that his weakness is a love for women. He then offers supporting evidence through his analysis of different kinds of beauty, before ending with a summary of his thesis in the final couplet. This logical flow usually connects one thought to next, and one poem to next, suggesting that Ovid was particularly concerned with the overall shape of his argument and how each part fit into his overall narrative.
One of the prominent themes and metaphoric comparisons in Amores is that love is war.[19] This theme likely stems from the centrality of the military in Roman life and culture, and the popular belief that the military and its pursuits were of such high value that the subject lent itself well to poetic commemoration.
While Amores is about love, Ovid employs the use of military imagery to describe his pursuits of lovers. One example of this in I.9, where Ovid compares the qualities of a soldier to the qualities of a lover.[20] Here both soldiers and lovers share many of the same qualities such as, keeping guard, enduring long journeys and hardships, spying on the enemy, conquering cities like a lover’s door, and using tactics like the surprise attack to win. This comparison not only supports the thematic metaphor that love is war, but that to be triumphant in both requires the same traits and methods.[21] Another place where this metaphor is exemplified when Ovid breaks down the heavily guarded door to reach his lover Corinna in II.12. The siege of the door largely mirrors that of military victory.[22]
Another way this theme appears is through Ovid’s service as a soldier for Cupid.[23] The metaphor of Ovid as a soldier also suggests that Ovid lost to the conquering Cupid, and now must use his poetic ability to serve Cupid’s command. Cupid as a commander and Ovid as the dutiful soldier appears throughout Amores. This relationship begins to develop in I.1, where Cupid alters the form of the poem and Ovid follows his command. Ovid then goes “to war in the service of Cupid to win his mistress." At the end of Amores in III.15, Ovid finally asks Cupid to terminate his service by removing Cupid’s flag from his heart.
The opening of Amores and the set up of the structure also suggests a connection between love and war, and the form of the epic, traditionally associated with the subject of war, is transformed into the form of love elegy. Amores I.1 begins with the same word as the Aeneid, "Arma" (an intentional comparison to the epic genre, which Ovid later mocks), as the poet describes his original intention: to write an epic poem in dactylic hexameter, "with material suiting the meter" (line 2), that is, war. However, Cupid "steals one (metrical) foot" (unum suripuisse pedem, I.1 ln 4), turning it into elegiac couplets, the meter of love poetry.
Ovid returns to the theme of war several times throughout the Amores, especially in poem nine of Book I, an extended metaphor comparing soldiers and lovers (Militat omnis amans, "every lover is a soldier" I.9 ln 1).
Ovid's love elegies stand apart from others in the genre by his use of humor. Ovid’s playfulness stems from making fun of both the poetic tradition of the elegy and the conventions of his poetic ancestors.[24] [25] [26] [27] While his predecessors and contemporaries took the love in the poetry rather seriously, Ovid spends much of his time playfully mocking their earnest pursuits. For example, women are depicted as most beautiful when they appear in their natural state according to the poems of Propertius and Tibullus. Yet, Ovid playfully mocks this idea in I.14, when he criticizes Corinna for dying her hair, taking it even one step further when he reveals that a potion eventually caused her hair to fall out altogether.
Ovid’s ironic humor has led scholars to project the idea that Amores functions kind of playful game, both in the context of its relationship with other poetic works, and in the thematic context of love as well.[28] The theme of love as a playful, humorous game is developed though the flirtatious and lighthearted romance described.[29] Ovid’s witty humor undermines the idea that the relationships with the women in the poems are anything lasting or that Ovid has any deep emotion attachment to the relationships. His dramatizations of Corinna are one example that Ovid is perhaps more interested in poking fun at love than being truly moved by it. For instance, in II.2 as Ovid faces Corinna leaving by ship, and he dramatically appeals to the Gods for her safety. This is best understood through the lens of humor and Ovid’s playfulness, as to take it seriously would make the “fifty-six allusive lines…[look] absurdly pretentious if he meant a word of them.”[30]
Due to the humor and the irony in the piece, some scholars have come question the sincerity of Amores. Other scholars through find sincerity in the humor, knowing that Ovid is playing a game based on rhetorical emphasis placed on Latin, and various styles poets and people adapted in Roman culture.
The poems contain many allusions to other works of literature beyond love elegy.
Poems 1.1 and 1.15 in particular both concern the way poetry makes the poet immortal, while one of his offers to a lover in 1.3 is that their names will be joined in poetry and famous forever
Ovid's popularity has remained strong to the present day. After his banishment in 8 AD, Augustus ordered Ovid's works removed from libraries and destroyed, but that seems to have had little effect on his popularity. He was always "among the most widely read and imitated of Latin poets.[31] Examples of Roman authors who followed Ovid include Martial, Lucan, and Statius.[32]
The majority of Latin works have been lost, with very few texts rediscovered after the Dark Ages and preserved to the present day. However in the case of Amores, there are so many manuscript copies from the 12th and 13th centuries that many are “textually worthless”, copying too closely from one another, and containing mistakes caused by familiarity.[33] Theodulph of Orleans lists Ovid with Virgil among other favourite Christian writers, while Nigellus compared Ovid's exile to the banishment of St. John, and imprisonment of Saint Peter.[34] Later in the 11th century, Ovid was the favourite poet of Abbot (and later Bishop) Baudry, who wrote imitation elegies to a nun - albeit about Platonic love.[35] Others used his poems to demonstrate allegories or moral lessons, such as the 1340 Ovid Moralisé which was translated with extensive commentary on the supposed moral meaning of the Amores.[36] Wilkinson also credits Ovid with directly contributing around 200 lines to the classic courtly love tale Roman de la Rose.[37]
Christopher Marlowe wrote a famous verse translation in English.