The Art of Love

Ovid's poem on the art of love, composed in Latin around the turn of the first century BCE, is a three-book lesson in seduction set in Rome. Books one and two tell men how to meet women in public places, how to write and give gifts, and how to hold a lover's interest; book three advises women on appearance, play, and the timing of yielding. Stories from myth sit beside races, dinners, and the city's walks. The work is a witty verse manual that treats desire as a technique to be learned, not a narrative of one pair of lovers moving toward marriage or ruin.

Bound in cream cloth with inset brown, black and white image printed paper cover label and gilt spine titling. Blue or brown slipcase.