OCR Anthology for Latin AS and A Level Shorter Verse Authors

This is the OCR-endorsed edition covering the Latin AS and A-Level (Group 1) prescription for examinations in 2026–28 of Tibullus I.2, I.5, II.4 and the A-Level (Group 2) prescription for examinations in 2027–28 of Ovid's Metamorphoses VII and Lucretius' de rerum natura I. It provides the full Latin text, commentary, and vocabulary, along with a detailed introduction that also covers the prescribed material to be read in English for A Level.

The three poets contained in this volume present a wide range of Latin verse from the end of the republic and the early empire. There is some challenging philosophical poetry on the world in which we live, explaining and exploring the atomic nature of matter and seeing the wonderful ways in which nature works. Ovid’s wonderfully inventive and dramatic account of the sorceress Medea and her doomed love for the Argonaut Jason is also featured, as well as three poignant love-poems by the poet Tibullus.

These three writers, in their different ways, manage to use Latin verse to convey a picture of the world which is both strange and familiar: Lucretius anticipates much of classical Physics, Ovid is the ancient world’s magic realist before the term was coined, and Tibullus offers us a case-study in heartbreak which rings as true today as it did in ancient times.

Supporting resources are available on the Companion Website: bloomsbury.pub/OCReditions-2026-2028.