Ovid: Fasti Book 3

Ovid is now firmly established as a central figure in the Latin poetic canon, and his Fasti is his most complex elegy. Drafted alongside the Metamorphoses before the poet's exile, it was only published after the death of Augustus, and involves a wide range of myth, Roman history, religion, astronomy and explication of the calendar. In its aetiology and conversations with gods, it is a Latin equivalent of Callimachus' Aetia. This invaluable new commentary on a central book of the poem explores Ovid's playful inversion of genre, his witty but challenging style of Latin, his use of the elegiac couplet, intertextuality and much more. With a comprehensive introduction providing key background for students and instructors, this guide to Book 3, the first in English for nearly a century, makes use of the latest scholarly research to illuminate Ovid's wide-ranging and amusing account of Roman life.

• Introduces the full range of background topics required by students reading the Fasti, such as religion, allegory, mythology, topography, the Roman calendar and gender, as well as Ovid's own career
• Provides help with appreciating Ovid's lively but challenging style, metre and play with genre, introducing students to the technical diction required to describe it
• Pays due attention to the use of intertextuality and the transmission of the text, with Latin and Greek translated or glossed throughout