1. Printing: This poster is 48” wide by 36” high. It’s designed to be printed on a large-format printer. Customizing the Content: The placeholders in this poster are formatted for you. Type in the placeholders to add text, or click an icon to add a table, chart, SmartArt graphic, picture or multimedia file. To add or remove bullet points from text, click the Bullets button on the Home tab. If you need more placeholders for titles, content or body text, make a copy of what you need and drag it into place. PowerPoint’s Smart Guides will help you align it with everything else. Want to use your own pictures instead of ours? No problem! Just click a picture, press the Delete key, then click the icon to add your picture. LOVE AND WAR IN THE SAME IMAGES AT THE SAME TIME: OVID’S DUALITY IN AMORES 1 Kurt Ristroph What is Ovid’s Love-War Metaphor in Amores 1?. In his first book of poems in the elegiac Amores (The Loves) collection, Ovid frequently highlights the similarities between love and war or the lover and the soldier. Since the metaphor that love is war appears across several poems in the book, it can be considered as one of the work’s themes. Ovid uses both indirect and direct comparisons to establish his thematic metaphor that love is war. In the second poem of the book, the narrator describes a scene in which Cupid has used his powers of love to conquer and subjugate him in a military triumph. A later poem, 1.9, focuses entirely on the argument that a lover works at least as hard as a soldier. This poem makes direct comparisons between love and war, whereas 1.2, with its military imagery that accompanies a discussion of love, describes the similarities between love and war abstractly. The use of flexible images, such as fire and wine, allow Ovid to further reinforce his metaphor. These images are the focus of my research. Fire and Wine Imagery Used on Both Sides of the Metaphor Fire and wine can be applied to instances of both love and war. Fire can be a violent tool in wars as well as a representation of ardent desire in a lover, and wine carries secret messages between lovers at a dinner party but can also drive an individual or group to rage and violence. When Ovid uses these images, he does so in a way that blurs the distinction between love and war. In this way, he reinforces his metaphor through flexible imagery. For example, near the end of the first poem, the narrator has been struck by the weapons of Cupid: Me miserum! certas habuit puer ille sagittas. Uror, et in vacuo pectore regnat Amor. (Am.1.1.25-6) Wretched me! That boy has sure arrows. I am burned, and love rules in my empty chest. The arrows (sagittas) and the love (Amor) are juxtaposed to the image of fire (uror). Sagittas and Amor are emphasized by their position at the ends of lines. Uror, the first word in a line and therefore also emphasized, lies between two other stressed words that are terms for arrows and love. An act of war has created love, so Ovid blends love and war together in this one burning wound. In poem 15, the narrator says that Tibullus, another Latin elegist, will live forever because his verses will be read donec erunt ignes arcusque Cupidinis arma, “as long as there are fires and bows, the weapons of Cupid” (Am.1.15.27). The fires and bows are set in apposition to the weapons of Cupid, so Ovid thereby syntactically ties the two together. The image of fire is flexible enough to allow for employment almost a dozen times in Amores 1. Fire’s dual nature as both an agent of conflict and a metaphorical symbol of love therefore helps Ovid support his theme through imagery and syntax. The second image that Ovid uses to highlight the similarities between love and war is wine. Instances of wine play on the drink’s ability to heighten emotions, physically convey images or messages on a table, and remove inhibitions. Wine causes a heightened lust and a heightened sense of violence, which will become indistinguishable, just as love and war are. As an example, in poem 1.4, Ovid explains his overwhelming physical, sexual desire for his mistress by saying: desine mirari, posito quod candida uino Atracis ambiguos traxit in arma uiros (Am.1.4.7-8) Cease to wonder that, after wine was served, The Atracian dragged ambiguous men to battle. Under the influence of wine, centaurs (ambiguos viros), lusting for the beauty of Hippodamia (Atracis) enter into violent conflict. Wine is a catalyst in breaking down their inhibitions, and Ovid cleverly uses wine in his mythological image in order to break down the distinction between love and battle. These are only three of many examples of fire and wine imagery in Amores 1. Not every poem contains one of these images, but when Ovid does use them, he reinforces one of the themes of the Amores, that love can be equated to war.