It has often been said that Ovid was anti-Augustan. The label is not exactly appropriate. Ovid was indeed irreverent towards
Augustus' state, laws, image. But he was irreverent towards any solemn and sitting target.
Ovid came from an old equestrian family, and began a public career, but he soon abandoned it for poetry. He was assisted in
his youth by Messalla, and his later books bow in the direction of Augustus and his house. But the evidence suggests that he
never maintained a position with a literary circle, even to the extent that Propertius did. He had no need to: his work was
instantly popular, and he had no economic problems. And his exuberant spirit was probably best served by such non-
involvement.
His first poems, the elegiac Amores, were published in two editions: the first was begun about 25 B.C. and issued over the
next ten years or so; the second and smaller edition (the one which we possess) was published about the turn of the
millennium.
Ovid's irreverence is instantly visible in these poems, its potential catholicity already guessable. The most obvious targets
here are, not conventional moralists, but the romantic elegists, the old protesters themselves. Ovid presents himself in the first
book as a lover and poet in the tradition of Propertius and Tibullus, in devoted thraldom to one mistress, whom he calls
Corinna. But what he actually gives us is parody. For example, Propertius and Tibullus had expressed their dissociation from
public life, from war and the life of action ('soldiering'), by projecting themselves as 'soldiers' of love. Ovid gets hold of this
expressive idea and probes it for ingenious and funny effects. How can a lover be represented as a soldier in detail? Poem 1.9,
comparing lover and soldier, shows us. A sample:
Tacticians recommend the night attack,
use of the spearhead, catching the foe asleep ...
Lovers use them too-to exploit a sleeping husband,
thrusting hard while the enemy snores.This is a ludicrous, parodic exploitation of an elegiac motif. Other elegiac motifs (the slavery of the lover, the divinity of the
beloved, and so on) are similarly treated. So is the Propertian use of myth: Propertius had evoked a romantic ideal of devotion
by means of resonating myths; Ovid deploys resonating myths to depict beautiful legs.
In Books 2 and 3 of the Amoves Ovid drops his mask and displays himself as a cheerfully promiscuous lover. Love is, or
should be, simply fun-a game; and the books contain racy lectures and dramatic episodes illustrating it. In this we must
observe, besides his dissimilarity to the romantic elegists, his similarity to Horace. Horace considered that love should be a
game, even if it could turn out bitter-sweet. So Ovid is similar to Horace-but dissimilar too. Ovid took the game so to speak
earnestly, committed time and trouble to it. He did not have things in perspective, Alcaeus-fashion. He even devoted a
didactic treatise to the game of love, purporting to teach one how to play it-indulging an interest in the incongruous mixture
of solemn didactic form and frivolous content that he displays in other works. This treatise was the 'Art of Love' (Ars
Amatoria), first published about 9 B.C. and reissued about the time of the second edition of the Amores, not an auspicious
time.
Such a didactic obviously affronts Horatian standards. And consistently and obviously, it affronts (once more) elegiac
romanticism. And Ovid turns the knife. The cynical instructions of the Ars are repeatedly couched in terms that recall
agonized elegiac devotion. For instance, the powerless elegist was forced to utter 'you are my only love'; Ovid instructs his
pupils on how to choose someone to whom to say 'you are my only love'. But, in affronting the old protesters, the Ars also
affronted Augustus, a very solemn target. So, probably, had the Amores.
The social status of Corinna and the other women in the Amores is as usual hard to pin down, but what seems clear is that
she, and others, are described in a way that suggests they are legally married. The Amores therefore explicitly suggests
adultery. Adultery, too, is obviously in mind in the Ars, despite an unconvincing statement to the contrary at the beginning of
the poem and plangent protestations from exile. For exiled is what Ovid eventually was, and the Ars was adduced as part
cause. His exile is hardly surprising. He writes in explicitly adulterous terms, in the second Augustan period, after Augustus'