Fasti
By: Ovid ; translated and edited with an introduction, notes, and glossary by A.J. Boyle and R.D. Woodard.
Contributors: Boyle, A. J.; Woodard, Roger D.
Series: Penguin classics
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2000
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng; lat
Number of pages: 360
Subjects: Didactic poetry, Latin -- Translations into English; Rites and ceremonies -- Poetry; Fasts and feasts -- Poetry; Calendar -- Poetry; Rome -- Poetry
Genres: Translations into English.; Poetry.
Description: "One of the fullest and most enjoyable sources of information on Roman myth and religion, the Fasti is both a calendar of daily rituals and a witty sequence of stories recounted in a variety of styles and genres, comic, tragic, elegiac, epic and erotic. Yet many of them contain uncomfortable political echoes. Augustus tried to control his subjects by imposing his own version of history and annual cycle of festivals on them, but Ovid - banished to the Black Sea - brilliantly debunks the official heroes and power structures. (After celebrating the emperor as a Jupiter-on-earth, for example, he deliberately juxtaposes a story showing the king of gods as a savage rapist.) Endlessly playful, this is also a work of real integrity and courage, a superb climax to the career of one of Rome's greatest writers."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. lv-lvi).