Rome Journal: Ovid II

"One Art" by Hallie Cohen

Ovid's Metamorphoses is one of those classic compendia of human existence. De Rorum Natura, Lucretius great poem on "the nature of things," stands beside it. Dante's Commedia
with its architecture of heaven and hell is another. Dante was more interested in terra cognita, since the circles of his hell are wallpapered with real people who might not have liked what he had to say about them.That's where Ovid differed. His is the world of Mount Olympus where, for instance, Daphne eludes Apollo by turning herself into a tree. Ovid like Dante was exiled--in this case by Augustus who turned his poetry into the ancient world's Samizdat.

read "Rome Journal: Ovid" by Francis Levy, TheScreamingPope

and watch the animation of Erotomania