Ovid

Ovid (20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. His works include the Heroides, Amores, Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris, Metamorphoses, Fasti, and Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, which are written in exile on the Black Sea.

Life

Ovid was born in Sulmo (modern Sulmona), in an Apennine valley east of Rome, to an important equestrian family, on 20 March, 43 BC. That was a significant year in Roman politics. He was educated in Rome in rhetoric under the teachers Arellius Fuscus and Porcius Latro.

Works

Ovid's works are widely considered masterpieces of Latin literature. They are characterized by their innovative form, their deeply emotional content, and their wide range of subject matter.

Heroides

The Heroides (Heroines) or Epistulae Heroidum are a collection of twenty-one poems in elegiac couplets. The Heroides take the form of letters addressed by famous mythological characters to their partners expressing their emotions at being separated from them, pleas for their return, and allusions to their future actions within their own mythology.

Amores

The Amores is a collection in three books of love poetry, following the conventions of the elegiac genre popular at the time.

Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris

The Ars Amatoria (Art of Love) and Remedia Amoris (Remedies for Love) are instructional elegies, teaching the arts of love and how to recover from it.

Metamorphoses

The Metamorphoses is a narrative poem in fifteen books that describes the creation and history of the world by means of mythological tales.

Fasti

The Fasti is a six-book poem in elegiac couplets on the theme of the calendar of Roman festivals and astronomy.

Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto

The Tristia (Sorrows) and Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters from the Black Sea) are two collections of elegiac poetry composed by Ovid in exile in Tomis.

Legacy

Ovid's works have had a profound influence on Western literature, influencing such authors as Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, and William Shakespeare. His works have been translated into every major living language and are performed worldwide.

Ovid Resources
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