ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. Ovid's Corinna poses the reader with two quite distinct, if related, problems. First, in the Amores, the main action is centred on the poets various successes and disappointments in his relationship with Corinna, and so she occupies a similar position in his poems to that of Cynthia in the poems of Propertius or Delia and Nemesis in Tibullus. The second problem connected with Corinna is that we cannot be sure whether she ever existed or whether she merely represents an amalgam of all the women Ovid had ever known from both life and literature. The Amores are, however, only implicitly poems of protest against the Augustan Establishment. Ovid is eager to enjoy the fruits of the peace, not to brood over the cost of achieving and maintaining it.
