Fasti (poem)

Fasti (poem)

The Fasti is a six-book Latin poem by Ovid believed to have been left unfinished when the poet was exiled to Tomis by the emperor Augustus in the year 8. Written in elegiac couplets and drawing on conventions of Greek and Latin didactic poetry, the Fasti is structured as a series of eye-witness reports and interviews with deities by the first-person vates ("poet-prophet" or "bard"), who explains the origins of Roman holidays and associated customs, often with multiple aetiologies. It is thus a significant and sometimes unique source for the study of Roman religion, and the influential anthropologist and ritualist J.G. Frazer translated and annotated the work for the Loeb Classical Library series. Each book covers one month, January through June, of the Roman calendar, which had been revised only recently by Julius Caesar into the form known as the Julian calendar.

The reputation of the Fasti has suffered more ups and downs than any other of Ovid's major works. It was widely read in the 15th–18th centuries, and influenced a number of mythological paintings in the tradition of Western art. But as one scholar has noted, throughout the 20th century "anthropologists and students of Roman religion … found it full of errors, an inadequate and unreliable source for Roman cultic practice and belief. Literary critics have generally regarded the Fasti as an artistic failure." Starting in the late 1980s, however, the work has enjoyed a revival of scholarly interest, and has appeared in new English translations.