Test #1: Ovid Basic Culture

Question 0

Childhood?

Answer 0

• From a wealthy equestrian family at Sulmo
• Sent off to Rome to study rhetoric, then Greece
• Turned down an appointment to senatorial rank to follow his passion of poetry
• Hung out with other poets like Horace, Propertius and Tibullus

Question 1

Birth Name and Date?

Answer 1

Publius Ovidus Naso

March 20th, 43 B.C.

Question 2

Exile?

Answer 2

• Ars Amantia and Ovid’s pervasive carefree attitude about marriage most likely angered Augustus so much that he was exiled to Tomis
• Ovid claimed it was over a “carmen and an error”
• Exiled from 8 A.D. - 17 A.D., his death
• Wrote Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto

Question 3

Amores

Answer 3

• Romantic elegies chronicling his affairs with Corinna, a spin off of characters in other Roman poets’ works like Lesiba & Catullus
• 50 poems full of literary devices and poetic techniques
• Plays at the boundaries and definitions of poetic genres
• More passionate than the Metamorphoses

Question 4

Heroides

Answer 4

• a collection of elegiac letters from famous literary heroines or heroes’ wives to their husbands (i.e. Ariadne to Thesus)

Question 5

Medicamina Faciel Feminae

Answer 5

• energetic poem on cosmetics

Question 6

Ars Amatoria

Answer 6

• witty “manual of seduction” with two books for men, one for women

Question 7

Remedia Amoris

Answer 7

• a sequal/follow-up handbook to the Ars Amatoria, telling the reader to get out of love/disentangle oneself from the snares of love
• an apologetic tone

Question 8

Reactions to Ovid’s Work?

Answer 8

• Ovid’s erotic poetry had received criticism and the Ars even got him exiled

Question 9

Fatsi

Answer 9

• a poetic calendar, of which only 6 books survive (one per month), that details the holidays and other events in the Roman calendar and life.
• an immensely valuable source for all things Roman

Question 10

Metamorphoses

Answer 10

• 15 volumes/250 tales of transformation
• the sheer size of it is the style of an epic powem, however it is an anti-epic poem (many little stories and other qualities)
• admired for its animating, highly visual and cinematographic depictions
• “carmen perpetuum”: an epic
• ends with Julius Caesar’s deification
• discusses such things as human psychology (a Hellenistic aspect of his poetry –> discussing emotions) and the idea of public vs. private
• depicts Apollo as a fool and a joke, which causes the reader to re-evaluate their emperor Augustus, who claimed him to be his very own patron deity?
• a GENRE BREAKER, bringing down the barriers between the world of heroes and the world of lovers