To cut a long story short, Green thinks it’s because Ovid was witness to some kind of meeting or evidence about a conspiracy to overthrow Augustus in 8 AD and didn’t report it. Over half of Peter Green’s immense introduction to the Penguin edition of Ovid’s love poems is taken up speculating about why the emperor Augustus abruptly exiled Ovid to the furthest outpost of the Roman Empire, to the miserable frontier town of Tomis, on the Black Sea. He, Ovid, the teacher of love, pickup artist extraordinaire, seduction guru par excellence, is going to share his top tips with the excited young reader. But all these things have a technique, an expertise, traditions and methods to guarantee success. Any fool can try to chat up a woman just as any fool can try his hand at sports, angling or taming horses. His premise is that any woman can be seduced but only if you have technique, and that’s what he’s going to teach. He is interested in the chase, the pursuit. ‘Love’ suggests a steady state, an ongoing condition. This is a hard-headed book by a professional pickup artist and consists of practical advice to young men on where and how to pick up, chat up, seduce and take to bed women married or single, young or old.

(The Art of Love, book 1, line 17) Ovid the pickup artistĪnyone expecting a treatise on the philosophical types of love à la Plato or Castiglione, or expecting a text about sentimental or romantic forms of love, will be very disappointed and possibly repelled.

Ovid the art of love translation