The Amores, or Loves, is Ovid's first major work, a collection of short Latin elegies, originally in five books and later reduced to three. The speaker is a poet in love with a woman he calls Corinna. The poems follow flirtation, jealousy, quarrels, betrayal and reconciliation, with a good deal of humour. Ovid plays with the conventions of Roman love poetry and with the idea of the devoted, suffering lover. They are lively, ironic and sharply observed, and they established his reputation as a poet of love.