Book 4, The Cures for Love : Chapter 1, The Cures for Love Summary

This last section of summary actually contains two books of the entire work on erotic poetry. The quality of the subject matter is altered here. This book is dedicated to those who are feeling themselves to be afflicted by love rather than basking in the good fortune of love. As earlier in the Erotic Poems, Ovid himself at times smiled upon and felt blessed by Cupid but on other occasions resentfully pressed the matchmaking, love-causing entity into giving some justification for causing Ovid to be in love the way that he was. The poet was feeling his love for others as something cruel and unfair.

This entire book is designed to address those sorts of emotions. There are readers who will find this offensive. Others...