Fasti

Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.9

Word count: 615K words
Chapters: 62

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971, and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. Fasti by Ovid. Author: Ovid, 43 BCE–18?. Language: Latin. Class: PA: Language and Literatures: Classical Languages and Literature. Release Date: August 1, 2005.

Editor's review

Fasti is Ovid's calendrical poem in Latin, unfolding month by month the Roman religious festivals, ritual practices, and myths, combining poetic imagination with the value of source material on ancient Roman customs. The Project Gutenberg edition preserves the original Latin and is suitable as a primary text for classical language study and research on Roman culture. Its strength lies in weaving the origins of festivals, ritual details, and stories of the gods into poetic lines, offering both narrative interest and a glimpse of early imperial conceptions of time and religious life. It is best read as a classical text that needs commentary: first understand the structure of the Roman calendar, then proceed month by month, without aiming to read it straight through quickly. For general readers, the allusions and institutional background in the poem may pose obstacles, but with a translation or annotated edition for comparison, a vivid cultural picture can still be gained. This electronic edition is easy to search and carry, suitable for classroom selections, checking citations in papers, and slow reading by those with a sustained interest in classical poetry and the history of customs.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Students of classics and Latin who need to read Ovid's original text
Readers interested in Roman religious festivals and the calendar system
Readers who enjoy mythological narrative and are willing to read classical poetry with notes
Teachers who need the original electronic text for classroom selections or citation checking

Not a good fit for

General literary readers seeking a modern Chinese translation
Those without Latin who are unwilling to use commentaries and reference works
Readers expecting a continuous novel-like plot

Reading tips

Begin with the introduction or an overview of the Roman calendar to grasp the framework of monthly festivals before entering the text.
Read month by month; after each section, summarize the main festivals and associated deities.
Use it alongside an English or annotated Chinese translation; when encountering an allusion, look it up first and then return to the original.
There is no need to read the whole book straight through; begin with the months most relevant to farming and household gods.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book the original Latin text or an English translation?

According to the Project Gutenberg record, the book's language is Latin and it belongs to classical languages and literature, so the main text is Ovid's original Latin poem, not a modern translation. Reading it requires some Latin foundation or use alongside a translation or annotated edition.

Can someone without a classics background read this book?

You can try, but the threshold is relatively high. The poem involves many Roman gods, ritual practices, and calendrical institutions, and without background knowledge it is easy to read in a fragmentary way. It is advisable first to understand the basic structure of the Roman calendar and the main festivals, then read month by month with the help of notes or a translation, treating the original as cultural material rather than a plot-driven read.

What use scenarios does the electronic edition suit?

The Project Gutenberg electronic edition is convenient for searching keywords, carrying, and copying quotations, and is suitable for classroom selections, checking the original text for papers, and looking up passages on specific festivals by month. For systematic study, it is still advisable to pair it with a paper annotated edition or scholarly translation so that background explanations are readily available.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) Author · Roman

Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BCE–18 CE?), a poet of ancient Rome. Public sources give no definite year of death; he is generally thought to have died in 17 or 18 CE. Ranked alongside Virgil and Horace, he is best known for the Metamorphoses, a fifteen-book narrative poem in hexameters that links numerous tales of transformation. His other works include Ars Amatoria, Fasti, the Amores, and Remedia Amoris, treating themes of love, myth, and the Roman calendar. In 8 CE Augustus exiled him to Tomis on the Black Sea, where he wrote his late poems and died. His work is noted for fluent narrative, rich imagination, and delicate psychological portrayal, and has deeply influenced later European literature.