Tag: Ovid
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part V- Or at the Races, or the Circus
llustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Don’t forget the races, those noble stallions: the Circus holds room for a vast obliging crowd. No need here for fingers to give secret messages, nor a nod of the head to tell you she accepts: You can sit by your lady:…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part IV- Or at the Theatre
Illustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD But hunt for them, especially, at the tiered theatre: that place is the most fruitful for your needs. There you’ll find one to love, or one you can play with, one to be with just once, or one you might wish to…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) – Book I Part III – Search while you’re out Walking
llustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Just walk slowly under Pompey’s shady colonnade, when the sun’s in Leo, on the back of Hercules’s lion: or where Octavia added to her dead son Marcellus’s gifts, with those rich works of foreign marble. Don’t miss the Portico that takes its…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part II: How to Find Her
Illustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD While you’re still free, and can roam on a loose rein, pick one to whom you could say: ‘You alone please me.’ She won’t come falling for you out of thin air: the right girl has to be searched for: use your…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part I: His Task
Illustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Should anyone here not know the art of love, read this, and learn by reading how to love. By art the boat’s set gliding, with oar and sail, by art the chariot’s swift: love’s ruled by art. Automedon was skilled with Achilles’s chariot…
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Raunchy, Rowdy, and Rotten: Provocative Poetry in Ancient Rome
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Please be warned, the content of this post is (very) adult in nature. ”In around A.D. 64, Marcus Valerius Martialis (A.D. 31-41 to 103), better known as Martial, arrived in Rome aged 26 from his Spanish hometown of Bilbilis, famous then for its iron mines and for the manufacture of steel, and a center of Roman…
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Ovid’s banishment from Rome
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) Ancient Italy — Ovid Banished From RomeExhibited 1838 Oil on canvas © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY This work treats the ancient poet Ovid’s purported exile from Rome, reconstructed here as a panoply of temples, triumphal arches, and statuary from different periods of the city’s…


