When it comes to offering advice to the lovelorn, classics professor Michael Fontaine thinks some of the best wisdom comes from looking back—way back.
In his latest book, "How to Get Over a Breakup: An Ancient Guide to Moving On," Fontaine translates, from the Latin, 2,000-year-old romance tips from the Roman poet Ovid, whose suggestions range from heartfelt to humorous and downright raunchy.
Says Fontaine: “There’s some actionable advice, some stuff that’s questionable, and some stuff that can’t possibly be taken seriously.”
Some of Ovid’s wisdom echoes the common-sense advice you’d get from your besties after a romantic reversal: staying busy, taking up a new hobby, going on vacation, and (in the poet’s words) “minimizing and belittling your ex’s best features.”
Even the most broken-hearted readers, however, will likely decline another of Ovid’s tips: putting your lost love out of your mind by going off to war.
“Ovid is known as the biggest jerk in all of antiquity,” Fontaine says with a laugh.
“But he was as clever as anybody who has ever lived, and wrote hilarious poetry.”
The book is the latest entry—and the fourth by Fontaine—in Princeton University Press’s “Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers” series, which packages advice from the classical world on a variety of topics.
New York State Museum
A copy of the map of dispossession of Indigenous lands, from the New York State Museum, featured in the Languages at the Brink exhibit.
Engine House and Hannah Wakeford/Provided
The shape of WASP-17b’s atmosphere mapped using transmission strings. The planet has a broad banded jet around the equator with vast wind speeds which transport material and heat from the permanently irradiated dayside to the permanently shadowed nightside.
Xi Jin/Provided
Cornell physics researcher Zhiyuan Zhang holds a chip containing an array of the devices he developed to create microscopic bubbles on demand, when and where they are needed.
