'Ovid is not a researcher,' claimed Concetto Marchesi nearly a century ago, a remark recently echoed by John Scheid: 'Ovid is not a colleague.' Undoubtedly. Yet Ovid’s poetry is permeated with knowledge, from the religious and aetiological focus of Fasti, ostensibly the result of dogged antiquarian investigation, to the mythological feats of the Metamorphoses, but also in the abundance of, for instance, legal vocabulary in his love poetry or of recherché anecdotes in Ibis. It is hardly surprising that Ovid’s encyclopedic aspirations gained a telling, if dubious, recognition: he was considered the author of the Halieutica, a rather detailed poem on the art of fishing, as well. Equally, it is perhaps unfair further to complain that modern scholars have unduly exploited Ovid as a wealthy repository of information, since didacticism is a fundamental component of his narrative strategy even in the unexpected form it takes in the Ars amatoria and Remedia. Indeed, throughout his oeuvre Ovid plays extensively with the well-established traditions of Greek and Roman didactic poetry. On his profound knowledge of, and admiration for, the masters of the genre – Empedocles, Lucretius, Virgil – he builds a radical revision of the objectives and strategies of a form of poetry which was supposed to provide an authoritative interpretation (or at the very least a compelling description) of the universe and its fundamental principles.