[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on The Amores
Ovids Amores depict a mockery of the values held during the first century of the Christian era. Ovid attempts to show the world the lack of importance in the great virtues presented in many of the major epics of the time. Amores uses satire to describe the authors wooing of women to waging war. It suggests that Ovids efforts to romance his lovers are much more essential to life than the battles that are taking place during the times Duty and valor are all pointless in the end. These ideas were of course very unpopular with the emperor Augustus. In the Amores, Ovid follows earlier writers of erotic elegy. Erotic poets so commonly excuse themselves for choosing Love over War, for preferring minor poems to a major epic, that such a refusal poem is known as a recusatio. Ovid tweaks that tradition by claiming to prefer epic.
The Art of Love
The Art of Love uses the impudent, witty tone that pervades much of the Loves, but without their anguish. It had enormous influence in the middle Ages, when it was studied seriously as a source on the true nature of love, but was also often considered scandalous. The major theme discusses the fact that how to find and capture woman and then how to keep them. The Art of Love, playfully instructed women in the art of seduction and men in the skills essential for mastering the art of romantic conquest. This paragraph explains the above-mentioned scenario of the Art of Love:
“Short partings do best, though: time wears out affections,
The absent love fades; a new one takes its place.
With Menelaus away, Helen's disinclination for sleeping
Alone led her into her guest's
Warm bed at night. Were you crazy, Menelaus?
Why go off leaving your wife
With a stranger in the house?.................
