Selections from Ovid: with Notes and Vocabulary

by Ovid, Charles William Dunmore

This Focus Classical Reprint of Selections from Ovid offers a classic reader on Ovid from Charles W. Dunmore, professor emeritus at New York University. The text contains extensive selections from Ovid’s primary works, all in Latin, with commentary and a full vocabulary. Selections are taken from Metamorphoses, the Fasti, Heroides, Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto, Amores, and Ars Amatoria.

Genres: Classics, Poetry

206 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horatius, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis, the capital of the newly-organised province of Moesia, on the Black Sea, where he remained for the last nine or ten years of his life. Ovid himself attributed his banishment to a "poem and a mistake", but his reluctance to disclose specifics has resulted in much speculation among scholars.
Ovid is most famous for the Metamorphoses, a continuous mythological narrative in fifteen books written in dactylic hexameters. He is also known for works in elegiac couplets such as Ars Amatoria ("The Art of Love") and Fasti. His poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and greatly influenced Western art and literature. The Metamorphoses remains one of the most important sources of classical mythology today.

Reviews

[Caleb Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dunmore has done a generally good job selecting the best representatives from Ovid's literature. The dictionary at the end of the book is generally helpful, and the footnotes, when explaining historical/mythological references, are helpful as well; otherwise, they're not much help (which I believe is the ideal approach in a student-focused selections reader anyways).

Overall, a well-curated introduction to Ovid's literature.