Mathias Hanses Love’s Letters: an Amor-Roma Telestich at Ovid, Ars Amatoria 3.507 – 10 Summary: This paper argues that Ovid deliberately arranged lines 3.507– 10 of the Ars Amatoria to have the letters at line end spell out AMOR when read ver- tically. Together with the last word of the passage, which is itself Amor , this tele- stich produces a shape (û) that recalls a famous Γ-acrostic in Aratus. Since the relevant Ovidian lines discuss mirrors, they also constitute an invitation to read AMOR backwards as ROMA. The telestich thus emerges as engaging inter- textually with a variety of plays on the city’s name, including the famous AMOR-ROMA word squares that are preserved in Imperial Roman graffiti. Within the mildly subversive genre of elegy, Ovid’s palindromic wordplay creates a con- trast between traditional expressions of Roman military valor—familiar from works like the Aeneid, where an acrostic significantly spells out MARS—and his own world, where the city of ROMA has come to be dominated by AMOR. Keywords: telestich; acrostic; wordplay; Amor; Roma; mora; Ovid; Ars Amatoria; Virgil Ovid’s Ars Amatoria abounds in playful advice on the exchange of hidden mes- sages: lovers should compose their notes in secretive handwriting or use milk as invisible ink; they should have trustworthy servants carry these letters back and forth; and they should encode hidden meanings in their missives that are dis- cernible only to the knowing recipient.¹ This interest in clandestine communica- tions makes the poem an obvious hunting ground for modern students of an- cient wordplay,who have in recent years increasingly uncovered acrostics and similar ‘intexts’ in Greek and Latin poetry. In what follows, I will point out an instance of such playfulness at Ars amatoria 3.507– 10—where the letters at line end spell out the noun AMOR or, inversely, ROMA—and discuss this tele- stich’s relevance to the themes and poetics of the work. The poet’s fascination with covert correspondence is discernible throughout the Ars, but it is particularly apparent in Book Three. Here, the praeceptor Amoris revisits the advice he gave to male lovers in the first two books of his poem, but turns the tables to now instruct women in the corresponding ways of conducting  For milk as a substitute for sympathetic ink, see Ov. Ars Amatoria . – . Ovid’s other letter-writing advice is adduced below.