"After a period of neglect, the Fasti, Ovid's elegiac poem on the Roman calendar, has been the focus of much recent scholarship. Joy Littlewood suggests that Book 6 is unified by the theme of War, so providing a framing bracket to balance the dominant theme of Peace in Book I. While January celebrates the blessings of Augustan peace, June presents a multifaceted portrait of Roman war, a uniquely Roman combination of virtus and pictas. The three goddesses who dispute the origin of the month in the Proem have associations with military success and Roman power, a distinguishing characteristic that they share in varying degrees with the goddesses whose festivals fall in June (Carna, Vesta, Mater Matuta, Fortuna, and Minerva), most of whom, like Juno of Lanuvium, are also the focus of women's cult. Throughout the month, republican military conflicts are recalled in temples vowed and anniversaries of victory and defeat in Rome's struggle for hegemony. Finally, a complex extended epilogue, which culminates in the celebration of Hercules Musarum, coalesces with familiar themes of Augustan ideology: apotheosis, dynastic eulogy, and the monuments of the Pax Augusta. These and other themes are discussed in the Introduction to the Commentary, which includes analyses of the literary and historical background of the work, Augustus' dynastic restructuring of Roman religion, as evinced in the iconography of his new monuments, Ovid's adaptations of material from Livy's Histories and Horace's Roman Odes, his narrative technique, and his expansion of the elegiac genre through the antiquarian content of the book. Fascinating literary questions are raised by the poet's audacious violation of generic boundaries, no less than by his inclusion of sound antiquarian material artfully camouflaged by literary allusion. Ovid's Fasti Book 6 offers new insights into the complex role played by religion in Roman life."--BOOK JACKET.

The Fasti is one of Ovid's most complex, inventive, and remarkable works. This commentary on Book 2 - the first detailed commentary in English - guides the reader towards a fuller appreciation of the poem, through detailed analysis of its religious, historical, political, and literary background.

Presents a clear and detailed guide to a central book of the Fasti, Ovid's account of Rome and its calendar.

"Vivam" is the very last word of Ovid's masterpiece, the Metamorphoses: "I shall live." If we're still reading it two millennia after Ovid's death, this is by definition a remarkably accurate prophecy. Ovid was not the only ancient author with aspirations to be read for eternity, but no poet of the Greco-Roman world has had a deeper or more lasting impact on subsequent literature and art than he can claim. In the present day no Greek or Roman poet is as accessible, to artists, writers, or the general reader: Ovid's voice remains a compellingly contemporary one, as modern as it seemed to his contemporaries in Augustan Rome. But Ovid was also a man of his time, his own story fatally entwined with that of the first emperor Augustus, and the poetry he wrote channels in its own way the cultural and political upheavals of the contemporary city, its public life, sexual mores, religion, and urban landscape, while also exploiting the superbly rich store of poetic convention that Greek literature and his Roman predecessors had bequeathed to him. This Very Short Introduction explains Ovid's background, social and literary, and introduces his poetry, on love, metamorphosis, Roman festivals, and his own exile, a restlessly innovative oeuvre driven by the irrepressible ingenium or wit for which he was famous. Llewelyn Morgan also explores Ovid's immense influence on later literature and art, spanning from Shakespeare to Bernini. Throughout, Ovid's poetry is revealed as enduringly scintillating, his personal story compelling, and the issues his life and poetry raise of continuing relevance and interest. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Originally published in 1955, this introductory text was created for the general reader or students of the classics seeking a greater understanding of Ovid.

Ovid is now firmly established as a central figure in the Latin poetic canon, and his Fasti is his most complex elegy. Drafted alongside the Metamorphoses before the poet's exile, it was only published after the death of Augustus, and involves a wide range of myth, Roman history, religion, astronomy and explication of the calendar. In its aetiology and conversations with gods, it is a Latin equivalent of Callimachus' Aetia. This invaluable new commentary on a central book of the poem explores Ovid's playful inversion of genre, his witty but challenging style of Latin, his use of the elegiac couplet, intertextuality and much more. With a comprehensive introduction providing key background for students and instructors, this guide to Book 3, the first in English for nearly a century, makes use of the latest scholarly research to illuminate Ovid's wide-ranging and amusing account of Roman life.

The verse-by-verse commentary on the Ovidian text includes the reading of more than 300 manuscripts, including the so-called Heinsian manuscripts, and of almost 100 editions, from the two "editiones principes" of 1471 to the present day. The introduction describes the manuscripts used, and a history of the Ovidian editions is also traced. A new text of book VI is presented, accompanied by a slim and lucid critical apparatus. Futher information appears in the commentary and in the appendices, particularly readings of manuscripts and editions. The verbatim commentary offers, with reliable quotes for each term, the critical observations of all the editors and commentators of the Ovidian work throughout the centuries. This aspect of critical edition has been neglected by commentators of Ovid since Heinsius (1659) and Burman (1727). Two appendices ("Readings of manuscripts" and "Readings of editions") are added for the first time for readers of the Ovidian work. The volume closes with a "Select index of textual problems", a large "Index locorum" and an "Index nominum".

'Times and their reasons, arranged in order through the Latin year, and constellations sunk beneath the earth and risen, I shall sing.' Ovid's poetical calendar of the Roman year is both a day by day account of festivals and observances and their origins, and a delightful retelling of myths and legends associated with particular dates. Written in the late years of the emperor Augustus, and cut short when the emperor sent the poet into exile, the poem's tone ranges from tragedy to farce, and its subject matter from astronomy and obscure ritual to Roman history and Greek mythology. Among the stories Ovid tells at length are those of Arion and the dolphin, the rape of Lucretia, the shield that fell from heaven, the adventures of Dido's sister, the Great Mother's journey to Rome, the killing of Remus, the bloodsucking birds, and the murderous daughter of King Servius. The poem also relates a wealth of customs and beliefs, such as the unluckiness of marrying in May. This new prose translation is lively and accurate, and is accompanied by a contextualizing introduction and helpful notes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.