Amores is Ovid's first completed book of poetry, written in Elegiac couplets. It was first published in 16 BC in 5 volumes of which 3 now survive. The book follows the popular model of the erotic elegy, as made famous by figures such as Tibullus or Propertius, but is often subversive and humorous with these tropes, exaggerating common motifs and devices to the point of absurdity.
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The Amores are a poetic first person account of the poet's love affair with an unattainable higher class girl, Corinna. The plot is linear, with a few artistic digressions such as an elegy on the death of Tibullus.
The book has a ring arrangement, with the first and last poems concerning poetry itself, and 1.2 and 1.9 both contain developed military metaphors.
3.1
3.2 - Ovid woos a girl at the races.
3.3
3.4 - Ovid tries to persuade a man to let him have sex with his wife.
Ovid's Amores are firmly set in the genre of Love Elegy. Familiar themes include:
It has been regularly praised for adapting and improving on these older models with humour.
The poems contain many allusions to other works of literature beyond love elegy.
Poems 1.1 and 1.15 in particular both concern the way poetry makes the poet immortal, while one of his offers to a lover in 1.3 is that their names will be joined in poetry and famous forever.
Ovid's love elegies stand apart from others in the genre by his use of humour.
Amores I.1 begins with the same word as the Aeneid, "Arma" (an intentional comparison to the epic genre, which Ovid later mocks), as the poet describes his original intention: to write an epic poem in dactylic hexameter, "with material suiting the meter" (line 2), that is, war. However, Cupid "steals one (metrical) foot" (unum suripuisse pedem, I.1 ln 4), turning it into elegiac couplets, the meter of love poetry.
Ovid returns to the theme of war several times throughout the Amores, especially in Chapter Nine of Book I, an extended metaphor comparing soldiers and lovers ("Militat omnis amans", "every lover is a soldier" I.9 ln 1).
Speculations as to Corinna's real identity are many, if indeed she lived at all. It has been argued that she is a poetic construct copying the "puella" archetype from other works in the love elegy genre. The name Corinna may have been a typically Ovidian pun based on the Greek word for "maiden", "kore"
Though most of this book is rather tongue-in-cheek, some people didn't take it that way and this could be the reason or part of the reason why Ovid was banished from Rome. However, his banishment probably has more to do with the Ars Amatoria, written later, which offended Augustus. There is also a connection between Ovid and Augustus' daughter, Julia, who was also exiled.
There is a famous English verse translation made by Christopher Marlowe.
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