Ovid is now firmly established as a central figure in the Latin poetic canon, and his Fasti is his most complex elegy. Drafted alongside the Metamorphoses before the poet's exile, it was only published after the death of Augustus, and involves a wide range of myth, Roman history, religion, astronomy and explication of the calendar. In its aetiology and conversations with gods, it is a Latin equivalent of Callimachus' Aetia. This invaluable new commentary on a central book of the poem explores Ovid's playful inversion of genre, his witty but challenging style of Latin, his use of the elegiac couplet, intertextuality and much more. With a comprehensive introduction providing key background for students and instructors, this guide to Book 3, the first in English for nearly a century, makes use of the latest scholarly research to illuminate Ovid's wide-ranging and amusing account of Roman life.

Book IV of the Fasti, Ovid's celebration of the Roman calendar and its associated legends, is the book of April and honours the festivals of Venus, Cybele, Ceres, and their cult, as well as the traditional date of the foundation of Rome and many religious and civic anniversaries. Elaine Fantham accompanies her commentary with a revised text and an extended introduction. Besides including surveys of language, style, versification, and textual transmission, the introduction looks at the shifting generic traditions of Greek and Roman elegy, and situates Ovid's composite poem in its Augustan literary and historical context. Other sections explain the recurring religious, astronomical and dynastic material of the Fasti. It has been a particular concern to relate features of Book IV to the other books of the Fasti and to Ovid's other elegiac works, and the Metamorphoses.