How to Get Over a Breakup: An Ancient Guide to Moving on

A modern translation of the ancient Roman poet Ovid’s Remedies for Love--a witty and irreverent work about how to fall out of love

Breakups are the worst. On one scale devised by psychiatrists, only a spouse’s death was ranked as more stressful than a marital split. Is there any treatment for a breakup? The ancient Roman poet Ovid thought so. Having become famous for teaching the art of seduction in The Art of Love, he then wrote Remedies for Love (Remedia Amoris), which presents thirty-eight frank and witty strategies for coping with unrequited love, falling out of love, ending a relationship, and healing a broken heart. How to Get Over a Breakup presents an unabashedly modern prose translation of Ovid’s lighthearted and provocative work, complete with a lively introduction and the original Latin on facing pages.

Ovid’s advice--which he illustrates with ingenious interpretations of classical mythology--ranges from the practical, psychologically astute, and profound to the ironic, deliberately offensive, and bizarre. Some advice is conventional--such as staying busy, not spending time alone, and avoiding places associated with an ex. Some is off-color, such as having sex until you’re sick of it. And some is simply and delightfully weird--such as becoming a lawyer and not eating arugula.

Whether his advice is good or bad, entertaining or outrageous, How to Get Over a Breakup reveals an Ovid who sounds startlingly modern.

Michael Fontaine is professor of classics at Cornell University. His books include three other volumes in the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series, How to Grieve, How to Tell a Joke, and How to Drink (all Princeton).