"Ovid's love poems were brilliant and innovative. In the Amores (Loves) his witty and ironic analysis explodes the romantic mystery of elegiac love-poetry, so that after the poems appeared it was simply no longer possible to write love-elergy: Ovid had skillfully dealt the genre its death blow. In its place he offers in the Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) and Remedia Amoris (The Cures for Love) an alternative conception of love, as a game at which both sexes can ply without getting hurt - providing they stick to the poet's rules."--BOOK JACKET.