Individual Summaries of Ovid the Amores Book I

The following are summaries of each of the elegies in Ovids Amores Book I. Included in each is a link to the Latin. For a translation into English of Ovid The Amores, see Klines public domain version. Elegy titles are based on this translation. Book I of the Amores includes programmatic elegies, as Diotimas excerpt from Batston points out in Notes on Ovid and the Amores by William W. Batstone. The first elegy explains the meter and topic; the 15th, Ovids goal — eternal fame. Diotima also provides an Ovid Bibliography with entries through 2004. Ovid The Amores Book I THE THEME OF LOVEI.1 Cupid serves as Ovids guide and takes away a meter from the heroic dactylic hexameter to produce an 11-meter couplet. Cupid appears throughout the Amores, sometimes accompanied by his mother, Venus. Elegiac Couplet | Dactylic Hexameter LOVES VICTIMI.2 Ovid admits to Cupid that his arrows have left their mark on the poets heart.HIS ASSETS AS A LOVERI.3 Ovid establishes his background as an equestrian and says hes a constant lover.THE DINNER PARTYI.4 Ovid is to attend a dinner party where both his mistress and her husband will be, so he discusses how hell arrange  to have secret intimacies with her.CORINNA IN AN AFTERNOONI.5 Ovid describes the afternoon that Corinna spends with him. He discusses her beautiful body and says — without further detail on their actions — that after they tired each other, they rested.THE DOORKEEPERI.6 Ovid, admittedly slightly intoxicated by wine, as well as love, wants the doorkeeper to let him in so he can see his mistress. Ovid says he once came to the others assistance when the door keepers mistress was going to punish him.THE ASSAULTI.7 Ovid is remorseful because he hit his love, pulled her hair, and scratched her. He asks her to retaliate in kind.THE PROCURESSI.8 Ovid listens to Dipsas, an aptly named dipsomaniac procurer, tell a young woman that a rich and handsome man fancies her. She says hes much to be preferred to the poor poet, i.e., Ovid, who happens to be eavesdropping and gets caught.LOVE IS WARI.9 Ovid compares lovers with soldiers and the husbands of mistresses to the enemy. Love motivates an otherwise idle Ovid.THE POETS GIFTI.10 Ovid is repulsed by his mistress prostitute-like request for gifts. Pleasure is had on both sides, so she should not be looking at him, a poor man, for material gifts. Ovids gift is to make young women famous with his poetry.HIS NOTE TO HERI.11 Ovid tells Corinnas maid what to say to Corinna about him and urges her to get Corinna to write a message telling him to come to her.HER REPLYI.12 In response to the preceding, Corinna has replied that today is impossible. Ovid takes out his aggravation on the materials of the message tablet.THE DAWNI.13 This time Ovid has managed to get his mistress to spend the nigh t with him, so hes seeing the dawn with the pleasure of her sleeping beside him, but dawn means the end, so he wants Dawn to wait. You can figure out whether or not Dawn obliges Ovid.HER HAIRI.14 Ovid takes his mistress to task for dying and, consequently, ruining her hair. Since her hair has fallen out, shell have to get a wig made from a captive Germans hair. She need not totally despair, however, since hair does grow back. See Baldness, Germany and the Date of Ovid Amores 1.14HIS IMMORTALITYI.15 Ovid again discusses his own idleness. Ovid doesnt want to be political but seeks eternal fame through his poetry.