Amores are Ovid's first completed book, published somewhat after 18 BC. Amores was written in the elegiac dystic. The book follows the model of the erotic elegy–perhaps the commonest theme of the time–as treated before by Tibullus and Propertius. Like the other poets, the book centers in a romantic affair between the poet and a puella: Corinna. Engraved frontispiece of George Sandyss 1632 London edition of Publius Ovidius Naso, (Sulmona, March 20, 43 BC â€“ Tomis, now Constanta AD 17) Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid, wrote on topics of love, abandoned women, and mythological transformations. ... Centuries: 2nd century BC - 1st century BC - 1st century Decades: 60s BC 50s BC 40s BC 30s BC 20s BC - 10s BC - 0s 10s 20s 30s 40s Years: 23 BC 22 BC 21 BC 20 BC 19 BC 18 BC 17 BC 16 BC 15 BC 14 BC 13 BC... Elegiac couplets consist of alternating lines of dactylic hexameter and pentameter: two dactyls followed by a long syllable, a caesura, then two more dactyls followed by a long syllable. ... Albius Tibullus (c. ... Sextus Aurelius Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet born between 57 BC and 46 BC in or near Mevania, who died in around 12 BC. Like Virgil and Ovid, Propertius was also a member of the poetic circle of neoteric poets which collected around Mæcenas. ...

This Corinna is very unlikely to have really lived; it seems she is Ovid's poetical creation, loosely based on a Greek poet of the same name. It follows the cliché of a Latin elegy relation, and keeps like no other poet strictly closed to it. Amores develops as a sort of "novel", breaking syle only a few times (the most famous occasion being the elegy on Tibellus' death). For many this is a sign of weakness, but for others it shows Ovid chose the rhetorical locus communis in order to demonstrate his poetical craft.

There is an excellent and very famous English translation made by Christopher Marlowe. An anonymous portrait, often believed to show Christopher Marlowe Christopher (Kit) Marlowe (baptised February 26, 1564–May 30, 1593) was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. ...

External Links

• Ovid's Amores in original latin, from Perseus [1]

• Marlowe's translation [2]