Ovid's Erotic Poems

The most sophisticated and daring poetic ironist of the early Roman Empire, Publius Ovidius Naso, is perhaps best known for his oft-imitated Metamorphoses . But the Roman poet also wrote lively and lewd verse on the subjects of love, sex, marriage, and adultery—a playful parody of the earnest erotic poetry traditions established by his literary ancestors. The Amores , Ovid's first completed book of poetry, explores the conventional mode of erotic elegy with some subversive and silly twists: the