A subsection on “Subject and metre” follows, which treats Hellenistic models for the Fasti and previous appearances of the didactic mode in Roman elegy next comes a subsection on “Poetry and history”, which contemplates the poem’s historiographical dimension, then one entitled “Poet and princeps“, on the Fasti as Augustan poetry, and one called “The time of two lives”, which traces points of contact between the parallel biographies of Ovid and Augustus. Wiseman alone, as are the notes) opens with a clever exploration of the poet’s intersecting didactic and bardic personae. It is a thorough and meticulous work, distinguished by accuracy and fidelity to the Latin, and it will surely suit the serious Latinless reader who desires a reliable guide to this challenging and remarkable poem. Woodard (2000) to these we may now add a new translation of the Fasti into English prose by Anne and Peter Wiseman. Frazer’s Loeb edition of the Fasti (1931) had already been recently supplemented by the poetic efforts of B.R.

2 Translation of the poem into English has naturally flourished apace. One glance at a bibliography of recent work on the Fasti confirms that this unfinished and occasionally maligned sister of the Metamorphoses has, in the past twenty years or so, come utterly and completely into fashion. 1 Such a statement would scarcely be plausible today. Goold lamented the unmerited neglect of the Fasti in modern Ovidian scholarship.

Ovids fasti