Ovid

Biography

Ovid (43 BC–AD 17/18), full name Publius Ovidius Naso, was a Roman poet who was one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature alongside Virgil and Horace. Born in Sulmo (modern Sulmona) in central Italy to an equestrian family, Ovid was educated in rhetoric at Rome and briefly practiced law before devoting himself entirely to poetry. His early works—the Amores (love elegies), Heroides (fictional letters from mythological heroines), and Ars Amatoria (a witty manual on love and seduction)—established his reputation as the supreme poet of love and desire. His masterpiece, the Metamorphoses, is a vast narrative poem of over 11,500 lines telling more than 250 myths united by the theme of transformation, from the creation of the world to the deification of Julius Caesar. In AD 8, for reasons never fully explained—Ovid cryptically cited "a poem and an error"—Augustus exiled him to Tomis on the Black Sea (modern Constanța, Romania), where he spent the remaining decade of his life writing the melancholy Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. The Metamorphoses has been one of the most influential works in Western literature, shaping art, music, and literature from the Middle Ages to the present.