[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Carl and Julie—

Thanks so much for your comments! I respect both of you and appreciate the time and consideration that you are both so generous with.
I set out to have some fun with this, and I agree that there is always going to be a Drydenesque anachronism in any attempt to render elegiac couplets as IP.
My thinking on the awkward enjambments and inversions in lines 5-12 was to try to capture the spluttering anger of the speaker and the ridiculous incongruity of the gods swapping duties and attributes. I thought that the ABAB ballad in IP would most closely approximate the spirit of the Latin elegiac couplet. I see upon reflection, and thanks to your guidance, that this was a doomed mission.

Carl, your eagle eye caught some punctuation errors, which I have fixed. I thought “Punk” might have been a bit OTT, and I had some qualms about “runs,” too. I thought about replacing “plowed” in the next line with “in,” and just presenting the image of Diana running (which, in representations of her, she is almost always doing), but decided that the speaker’s point was to focus on the gods’ areas of control.
You are right about “lute” being an anachronism. I wanted to amplify the humor by styling Mars as a troubadour. More literal alternatives are “lyre” or “harp.” I tried researching what an Aonian lyre was, to see if it was somehow different from the kind of lyre we see represented above piano keyboards, but came up empty.

Julie, your point is well-taken. What I set out to do has already been done. I suppose I might try to create an even more contemporary 21st Century rendering, but that task would probably be better left to younger Classics scholars who actually talk that way among their friends. I did try to think of a way of rendering the mildly bawdy humor while demonstrating the metrical wit, but couldn't come up with a way to do it. If “promise” ended with a stressed syllable, the contrast of masculine and feminine rhymes in lines 17 and 18 might serve to suggest Ovid’s point about the martial manliness of the hexameter line contrasting with the simpering effeminacy of the pentameter. Unfortunately, if I replaced “promise” with a word that is a spondee or iamb, I would lose my “promise/dramas” rhyme—a price I’m not willing to pay.

It will probably just be us, so thanks again! I always enjoy and appreciate your company.
Glenn