Skip to main content
Harvard University Press - home
Appendix Ovidiana

Appendix Ovidiana

Latin Poems Ascribed to Ovid in the Middle Ages

Edited and translated by Ralph Hexter, Laura Pfuntner, and Justin Haynes

ISBN 9780674238381

Publication date: 05/12/2020

When does imitation of an author morph into masquerade? Although the Roman writer Ovid died in the first century CE, many new Latin poems were ascribed to him from the sixth until the fifteenth century. Like the Appendix Vergiliana, these verses reflect different understandings of an admired Classical poet and expand his legacy throughout the Middle Ages.

The works of the “medieval Ovid” mirror the dazzling variety of their original. The Appendix Ovidiana includes narrative poetry that recounts the adventures of both real and imaginary creatures, erotic poetry that wrestles with powerful desires and sexual violence, and religious poetry that—despite the historical Ovid’s paganism—envisions the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ.

This is the first comprehensive collection and English translation of these pseudonymous medieval Latin poems.

Praise

  • In this excellent and well-crafted volume, Hexter, Pfuntner, and Haynes have performed a great service for all scholars interested in the later tradition of Ovid…This volume marks an important addition to the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library. It makes accessible for the first time Latin poems circulating under Ovid’s name from antiquity to the late Middle Ages. It should be on every medievalist’s bookshelf.

    —Frank Coulson, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Authors

  • Ralph Hexter is Distinguished Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis.
  • Laura Pfuntner is a Lecturer in Ancient History at Queen’s University Belfast.
  • Justin Haynes is Assistant Professor of Classics at Georgetown University.

Book Details

  • 544 pages
  • 5-1/4 x 8 inches
  • Harvard University Press

Recommendations