Ovid's "Ars Amatoria" (The Art of Love), "Elegies"
- Artist/Author/Producer: Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)
- Confronting Bodies: Emperor Augustus, Savonarola, Archbishop of Canterbury
- Dates of action: 8 A.D.
- Location: Italy, Rome and Florence; England.
- Description of the Art Work
- "Ars Amatoria" (The Art of Love) c. 1 B.C.: Brilliant treatise on the art
of seduction and intrigue. The message was subversive of the official
program of moral reforms then being fostered by August. It also included
a number of references in their contexts both flippant and tactless to
symbols of August's personal prestige.
"Elegies" B.C.: Poems.
- Description of incident
- A.D. 8 Rome : The Emperor Augustus banished Ovid for writing "Ars
Amatoria" and for an unknown act of folly.
1497 Florence : The Works of Ovid were cast with those of Dante and his
friend Propertius, into the great bonfire of Savonarola, as erotic,
impious, and tending to corrupt.
1599 The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London ordered the
burning of, among other works, Christopher Marlowe's translation of
Ovid's "Elegies" and Sir John Davies "Epigrammes," which satirizes
contemporary authorities - apparently less because of their content than
because of the work with which they were bound.
- Results of incident
- A.D. 8 in Rome: Ovid was sent to the Greek town of Tomi, near the mouth
of the Danube, where he died in exile eight years later.
Source: Banned Books 387 B.C. to 1978 A.D., by Anne Lyon Haight, and Chandler B.
Grannis, R.R. Bowker Co, 1978.