Ovid

Even when Ovid's poems seem to fall into a recognised category, the overall effect may be unlike that of any other known work. In the Metamorphoses the range of mood, style and subject matter is astonishing, from the Creation to Acis and Galatea, from the oriental exoticism of Pyramus and Thisbe to the naive Italian apple-orchard girl Pomona. His wit and shrewd psychology in matters of love, apparent in the youthful Amores, are equally prominent in the double Heroides. Acontius and Cydippe came from Ovid's favourite Greek poet, Callimachus, who also inspired the Fasti; following Callimachus' Aetia, Ovid takes a detached look at Rome's religious calendar. His exile poetry (Tristia 1.3, Ovid's last night in Rome, is memorable) deserves its renewed attention. Ovid constantly provides paradoxes: the poet who suffered Augustus' displeasure was in some ways more Augustan than Virgil or Horace; the man banished for allegedly undermining marriage expresses touching devotion in letters to his wife.

A sympathetic general account is L. P. Wilkinson, Ovid Recalled (Cambridge 1955) (abridged as Ovid Surveyed, 1962)