For the first 25 years of his career, Ovid wrote almost exclusively about love and yet, Rebecca Armstrong argues, he was no romantic. He was, however, preoccupied with poetics, with proving his wit, his knowledge of the great poets of the past and his right to be included among their number. This is a fascinating and perceptive analysis of Ovid's love poetry in which Ovid's persona seeks to advise young men and women on how to attract the opposite sex, how to love and how to end unhappy relationships, drawing on his own personal experiences. This contrast between the poet and the lover, between the head and the heart, forms the focus of Armstrong's study of the Amores , Ars Amatoria , Medicamina Faciei Femineae and Remedie Amoris . Initially, she discusses the history of the Latin love elegy before considering how Ovid played with its traditions. Armstrong considers the relationship between the poet-lover and teacher' and the other characters of the poems, Ovid's eroticism, his use of mythology, his inclusion of the city of Rome as a character and his attitude towards the morality' of Augustus, a figure who ultimately determined the course of Ovid's life. Finally, Armstrong examines the reappearance of love during Ovid's later career, in the Metamophoses and in his exile poems. Numerous extracts throughout, In Latin and with English translation.