The Art of Love

Ovid includes many references to Greek and Roman mythology. Some of these allusions are a retelling of a myth, such as the story of Daedalus and Icarus, which takes up most of a stanza.

Other examples are listed without much context. For instance, Ovid says, “Though known the tale, it’s well to tell again / The Scyrian maid’s amour with Haemon’s thane” (Book 1, Lines 681-82). His audience, he assumes, knows this Greek myth well enough that they can recognize the import of the reference even without many character names. However, 21st-century readers might have a hard time parsing these lines without footnotes. The maid is Deidamia and the thane is the Greek warrior Achilles, most famous for his starring role in Homer’s Iliad. In the myth Ovid references, which is not in Homer’s poem, Achilles hides dressed as a woman, with Deidamia and her sisters—an attempt to avoid being conscripted into the Greek army. After Ovid’s death, Roman poet Statius wrote about this episode, and others, in the Achilleid.

Ovid alludes to the Iliad and Homer many times. The Art of Love demonstrates how much Ovid cares about mythology. It was probably written before Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which is now considered one of the most important sources for Greek and Roman myths.