Ovid
1 book analyzed
Biography
Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BCE - 17/18 CE) was born in Sulmo, east of Rome, to a prosperous equestrian family. He trained in rhetoric, briefly practiced law, then abandoned it for poetry — a decision his father lamented. Ovid became the most celebrated poet of Augustan Rome, famous for his Amores (love elegies), Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), and Heroides (fictional letters from mythological women). The Metamorphoses, his masterwork, was completed around 8 CE — the same year Augustus exiled him to Tomis (modern Constanta, Romania) on the Black Sea. Ovid attributed his exile to 'carmen et error' — a poem and a mistake — but the specific causes remain Rome's most enduring literary mystery. He spent the last decade of his life in Tomis, writing mournful poems of exile (Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto), begging to return. He never did. He died around 17 CE, far from Rome, but his poem conquered the world he was forbidden to inhabit.