Prayer to Apollo
ApolloFrom the very outset I pray to You, Apollo, inventor of music and of all the healing arts, come to my aid and this undertaking; bless it with Your laurel.
The invocation that opens the Remedia Amoris — Ovid's handbook on how to fall out of love.
Apollo is invoked here in exactly two of his capacities at once: "discoverer of song and of healing aid". That is both the joke and the argument. The poem pretends to be a medical treatise, and love in it is the disease; so what is needed is a god who is physician and poet together, because the author is claiming to be both himself.
Two lines, and the whole programme of the book is already set out in them.
Fons · Source
AuthorOvid
WorkRemedia Amoris
Section75-76
PeriodAugustan
Classificatio · Taxonomy