From the Introduction.
The Heroides have been more than once translated into English verse, and they were published in prose by Davidson about the middle of the last century. Though the latter is professedly a literal Translation, it has no pretensions to be considered as such. It is, however, accompanied by many useful Notes, a portion of which, as embodying a careful analysis of the spirit of the writer, have been made available in the present Translation.
The Amores have also been previously translated into English verse, but not into prose.
The Ars Amatoria and the Remedia Amoris have never appeared in English prose, but a poetical version of them was made by Dryden, Congreve, and others. Their fluent lines, however, as might be presumed from the frequent allusion to powdered beaux, wigs, the playhouse, and other fashions of their day, are less a translation, than an adaptation of the work to the manners of the times. Their version, too, entirely omits a considerable portion of the original, and, in many instances, apparently for no other reason than because the passages so omitted are difficult of interpretation.
In the present translation of the Amatory Poems, paraphrases have in a few instances been found necessary, where a literal rendering could not have been presented to the public without a violation of the rules of decorum. It has also been thought advisable to leave the more exceptionable passages in the original Latin. The reader, if he is classical, will be able to translate them for himself; if he is not, he may rest assured that he sustains no loss. At the same time, it must in justice be acknowledged that both the Amours and the Art of Love contain a vast amount of most interesting information upon the domestic life of the Romans, not to be found in any other of the Classics, with the exception, perhaps, of Petronius Arbiter.
The fragment De Medicamine Faciei, on the Care of the Complexion, better known to the English reader as the Art of Beauty, has been once previously translated into English verse, but not, it is believed, into prose.
The Nux, or Walnut-tree, has never before been published in English; nor has the Consolation to Livia Augusta, a poem of considerable beauty, and now generally admitted to be the composition of Ovid.