1783 Scarce French Book - OVID's Art of Love. Traduction nouvelle de l'Art d'aimer d'Ovide. Ars amatoria.
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Author: OVID (Publius Ovidius Naso) Ovide.
Title: Traduction nouvelle de l'Art d'aimer d'Ovide.
Language: Text in French.
Publisher: Londres, (no publisher), 1783. (Probably published by Cazin in France).
Size : 5 " X 3 ".
Pages: 175 pages.
Binding: Very good full calf leather binding (hinges fine, overall slightly worn and scuffed - as shown) under a removable protective mylar cover. All edges gilt.
Content: Good content (bright, tight, and clean, staining mainly to the preliminary pages' upper margin - as shown).
Illustrations: Complete with the elegant frontispiece.
The book: Rare and nice French translation of The Ars amatoria (English: The Art of Love) -- an instructional elegy series in three books by the ancient Roman poet Ovid. It was written in 2 CE. Book one of Ars amatoria was written to show a man how to find a woman. In book two, Ovid shows how to keep her. The third book, written two years after the first books were published, gives women advice on how to win and keep the love of a man ("I have just armed the Greeks against the Amazons; now, Penthesilea, it remains for me to arm thee against the Greeks...").
The author: Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. He enjoyed enormous popularity, but, in one of the mysteries of literary history, was sent by Augustus into exile in a remote province on the Black Sea, where he remained until his death. Ovid himself attributes his exile to carmen et error, "a poem and a mistake", but his discretion in discussing the causes has resulted in much speculation among scholars.