The third and final Book of Ovid\'s love Elegies is a complex farewell to the genre.
Joy Littlewood..
Mckeown and R.
As Volume IV.i of the four-Volume Prolegomena, Text, and Commentary on the Amores begun in 1987, it is jointly authored by J.
C.
The present volume, a Commentary on Poems 1 to 8, goes halfway on Ovid\'s journey towards this final renunciation, up to the point where Ovid is resoundingly defeated in love by his wealthy military rival.
The last poem, 3.15, bids Elegy a final farewell, while asserting the magnitude of Ovid\'s achievement as a love-poet.
Other Elegies manifest Ovid\'s developing interest in alternative poetic modes and subjects.
As the Book progresses, familiar obstructions to the pursuit of illicit love in urban Rome, beyond the easily circumvented Leges Iuliae, are interspersed with conclusive impediments, such as impotence or even Death.
It begins, programmatically, with Ovid, torn between Tragedy and Elegy, persuading Tragedy to give him a little more time for his love poetry and love affairs.
The third and final Book of Ovid\'s love Elegies is a complex farewell to the genre
