Furthermore, the epistolary elegies known as the Heroides may be considered as a part of Ovid’s love poetry, since love is the common denominator of all the letters included. To these works belong also the fragments of the didactic Medicamina faciei femineae (Cosmetics for female beauty). Thus, in this poetry we find titles in which amor (love) features in various forms, such as the collection of elegies called Amores (Loves), which many think we now possess in the form of a second edition the didactic manuals in elegiac couplets, the Ars amatoria (The art of love) 1–3 and the Remedia amoris (Cures for love). And even in the exile to which Augustus condemned Ovid toward the end of his life, he insists, in his imaginary epitaph in Tristia 3.3.73 and his autobiography Tristia 4.10.1, that he is tenerorum lusor amorum, “the playful bard of tender loves.” Love is most conspicuously present in the earlier phase of Ovid’s career. His epic masterpiece the Metamorphoses and his etiological Fasti are strongly marked by stories of love. Always brilliantly marshaling the rich resources of the art of literature, the love poetry of the great and prolific poet Ovid (43 BCE–17/18 CE) displays a vigorous engagement with Rome and the human condition.
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