View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Ovid tell women about youth?

2. What does Ovid say about keeping a lover once you have won her?

3. Which of the following best describes the nature of The Art of Love Book 1?

4. What does Ovid encourage at parties?

5. What does Ovid mean when he says, "You get the best vintage from well-cared for grapes?"

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Ovid say about the way a woman walks and carries herself?

2. Does Ovid recommend seclusion as a cure for love? What does he say on the subject?

3. What advice does Ovid give regarding makeup? What does he say about how much to wear and when to apply it?

4. What point does Ovid make when he describes the affair of Mars and Venus being discovered and exposed by Vulcan? What does he recommend?

5. What is Ovid referring to when he says "A fire's blown up by the wind, by the wind extinguished: a gentle breeze fans the flame, a harder gust puts it out?"

6. What is Ovid's advice regarding how much to drink at parties?

7. What advice does Ovid give women regarding hair?

8. What does Ovid recommend your behavior be like towards a lover you are trying to get over?

9. What does Ovid say about time apart in a relationship?

10. What activity does Ovid say is guaranteed to "let Cupid in" when he is not wanted? What does he recommend as an alternative?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Summarize the advice that Ovid gives to men and/or women regarding what to do to be successful in obtaining and securing a lover.

Part 1. What suggestions does he make regarding appearance?

Part 2. What suggestions does he make regarding behavior?

Part 3. How accurate or valuable to you feel his advice is?

Part 4. Is any, most, or all of it still applicable today? What has changed and what hasn't?

Essay Topic 2

Assuming that Ovid has not created a persona for his poems, what is the nature of the man we get to know through his poems?

Part 1. Is it likely that Ovid was writing through a persona or that his poems are from personal experience?

Part 2. What is his character like in the poems? Does it evolve?

Part 3. What logical life history or situation can explain his changing nature?

Essay Topic 3

Ovid's erotic poems are written in elegiac couplets. Discuss this choice of meter form.

Part 1. What are the component parts of meter?

Part 2. What is a system of scansion and how is it used?

Part 3. What are elegiac couplets? What problems are there in translating this meter from the Latin?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,040 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample