This is a great way-- perhaps the best-- to get acquainted with the poet Horace. The Latin is printed on the left-hand page, much like the Loeb editions. James Michie often translates into rhymed verse and iambic meter but in many odes he uses the rhythms of the original Latin, which are very complex. Only the Odes are included here, so if you want the Epodes, you'll have to look elsewhere (the same is true for the Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica). I enjoy this book because it allows me to see and hear the Latin-- this is essential-- but I also have a decent English equivalent to help me out. I do wish the editors or translator had included a list of the meters Horace uses, because it is hard to read the original without knowing the proper cadence. But this is a very inexpensive and thoughtful way to read one of the greatest of all poets.

This is one of the best books that i have read on "love".Intellectual eroticism always gives a sophisticated veneer to less lofty primordial sexual impulses.Throws new light on the Roman decadence and hedonistic society.So if you want to take a journey and delve into the very essense of Ovid's eroticism and human sexuality or just learn to show some 'love' read this book.

I read the Duane Humphries translation. His preface is superbly written--he is definitely a superb English stylist. Since I don't read Latin, I cannot attest to his accuracy.

He observes in his preface, and emphasizes in his translation, the commonalities between Ovid's scene, and that of our contemporary world. You will get a strong sense of a society that was very similar to that of our own.

Ovid's Loves, the Art of love, the Art of Beauty, and Remedies for Love are combined in this book and show how Ovid lived and loved. The poetry is surprising at times when I didn't expect someone from around 2 B.C. to write about impotence, sex, and how to get a lover. That is not all that he writes about, though. His poetry of Corrina, a woman he loved, is described with elegance and passion. The Art of Love tells how to court and win a lover and surprisingly many of the ideas can be directly related to modern day life. I found this book to be very interesting in poetic content and also in seeing how alike the world is today with that of the ancient roman empire.

Martial, like many of the Latin poets, was born in Bibilis, Spain, probably around 38-41 AD. He appears to have lived in Rome for nearly thirty-four years, under the patronage of the great Spaniard Senaca the Younger. He belonged to a class of intellectuals who were in resolute opposition to the emperor Domitian, so many times figures like Cicero, Brutus, and Pompey are used as literary devices against the crazed tyrant. Martial's poems are definitely modeled off of Catullus' epigrams and elegiac verses, although they are different in meaning and theme. These poems are hilarious and audacious, cruel, lewd, charming, spiteful, and creative; and they bring to life the social and political milieu of Rome. Martial's poems make for great bedtime reading and they are at their best when read in small doses. Michie's Anglo-cized translation, with a parallel Latin text, is good, however the rhyming couplet certainly does Martial's epigrams a grave injustice. The poems are excellent, although another translation is recommended; but another one will be hard to find which remains faithful to the original. The Loeb editions are always great, but the translators nearly always kill the original poetic song with dry early-twentieth-century prose.