Ars Amatoria, or The Art of Love

About this book

With mock seriousness, as if writing a textbook, Ovid teaches the art of love in three books: the first tells young men where in Rome to find a sweetheart, at the theatre, the races or the games, and how to win her; the second how to keep her; and the third gives advice to women. Witty, worldly and full of mythological stories, the poem also gives a vivid picture of fashionable life in the Rome of Augustus.

Context and significance

Ovid (43 BC–about AD 17) published the poem around 2 BC, and it may have contributed to his banishment by Augustus to Tomis on the Black Sea, where he died. This is Henry T. Riley's literal prose translation. Compare Virgil's Georgics, a very different kind of handbook in verse.

About the author