Remedia Amoris; or, The Remedy of Love Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes — Text and Context

A Poet Defending His Craft

The opening lines dramatize a confrontation between poet and deity. Cupid reads the title and immediately suspects betrayal: “War, I see, war is being meditated against me.” Ovid counters by claiming he has always served love and that this new work is merely an extension of his earlier teaching. He distinguishes himself from violent figures like Tydeus, who wounded Venus herself. Instead, Ovid frames his project as a peaceful remedy for those who would otherwise hang themselves or pierce their own entrails—a stark image that grounds the poem in real emotional danger. The poet insists that Cupid, being a boy, should only play; his stepfather Mars may wage bloody war, but love's torch should not be applied to funeral pyres. This rhetorical strategy positions Ovid as a loyal physician rather than a traitor.

Practical Steps for Cooling Passion

Ovid offers a series of concrete, almost behavioral instructions for ending an unwanted love. He advises the sufferer to travel to another region, because proximity rekindles desire: “When hungry, you will not be easily restrained, the table being laid; the gushing water, too, provokes excessive thirst.” The lover must sever all connections—not just with the beloved but with her sister, mother, nurse, and confidant. Even a feigning handmaid who says “Hail!” in her mistress's name is a danger. Ovid warns against asking after the beloved's health or complaining about her: “The man who is too often saying to many a one, ‘I love her not,’ is still in love.” The recommended method is gradual extinction, like a stream that runs less violently than a torrent but lasts longer.

The Danger of Hatred and the Value of Silence

Ovid cautions against turning love into hate, calling such a termination “befitting a brutal disposition.” He argues that hating a former beloved is a sign that love persists: “he who terminates his love with hate, either still loves on, or with difficulty will cease to be wretched.” Instead, the goal is indifference. He illustrates this with an anecdote: a young man he was with threatened his mistress in a litter, but when she stepped out, he fell silent and rushed into her embrace. The moral is that it is safer and more becoming to depart in peace than to go to court. Ovid advises keeping gifts without litigation, as “trivial losses are wont to be of great benefit.” If forced to meet, the lover should arm himself with memories of the beloved's faults—the rival, the obdurate threshold, the vain oaths—and neglect his appearance.

The Limits of Precept and the Role of Example

Ovid acknowledges that his own example may undermine his advice. He notes that what especially stands in the way of his endeavours is “his own example”—a self-aware admission that the poet who teaches how to stop loving may himself still be in love. This meta-textual moment complicates the didactic stance. The translation's footnotes (not reproduced in full here) likely amplify such ironies, as Riley's edition is described as “with Copious Notes.” The poem's structure—a series of precepts punctuated by mythological references and personal asides—creates a voice that is both authoritative and fallible. Ovid's final instruction to let love “die out by degrees imperceptible” suggests that the remedy is not a sudden cure but a slow, deliberate process, one that the poem itself enacts through its own digressions.

Rhetorical Strategies in the Translation

Riley's prose translation makes Ovid's argumentative moves visible. The poet uses direct address (“Come, then, ye deceived youths”), hypothetical scenarios, and vivid analogies (the bull and heifer, the horse and mare). The conversational tone—marked by rhetorical questions and parenthetical asides—is preserved in English. For instance, Ovid interrupts his own advice to say, “But I will tell what especially stands in the way of my endeavours; his own example instru...” (the text breaks off). Such moments remind the reader that the poem is a performance, a dialogue between poet and reader, and between poet and god. Riley's notes likely clarify the mythological references (e.g., Penthesilea, the Appian Goddess) that anchor Ovid's arguments in a shared cultural framework.

Readers approaching this translation should attend to the interplay between Ovid's playful self-defense and his earnest advice. The poem is not a simple manual but a rhetorical exercise that questions its own efficacy. Riley's literal prose and notes provide access to the original's wit and learning without smoothing over its complexities. For those interested in how classical authors constructed authority and irony, Remedia Amoris offers a compact, rewarding case study.

Reading Riley’s Ovid—his amused, patient notes on how gently we must unlearn a love—I found myself thinking of her. Sappho knew that same ache, that willed forgetfulness, though her words refuse remedy. I lingered over one fragment and heard Ovid’s warning echo. Curious, how two poets agree. Sappho: A New Rendering — Text and Context lies beside him now, quietly.