ABSTRACT
The purpose of didactic poetry is, or was, to convey information; from which one is prone to draw the conclusion that it must be the invention of an educated age. The professed aim of the new didacticism was still instruction, but its real aim was to please the connoisseurs of style. These Greek poets found admirers and imitators in Latin, who often surpassed their models. Of these by far the most influential was Ovid. His most important didactic poem was the Metamorphoses, which is Greek for ‘Changes of Shape’. Greek mythology was full of stories telling how in the childhood of the world gods and heroes were transformed into plants or animals. Of other didactic poems in classical Latin only one has had sufficient influence to detain readers. It is the Ars Poetica of Horace. Horace gives some advice about this and some general reflections on the poetical drama.
