Ovid
One of the most prolific poets of Rome's Golden Age, Ovid, the name by which Publius Ovidius Naso is commonly known, specialized in the witty and sophisticated treatment of love in all its permutations. Born Mar. 20, 43 BC, a year after the murder of Julius Caesar, Ovid passed his youth in his native Sulmo, untouched by the civil wars. Shortly after peace resumed, when Augustus ruled unthreatened, Ovid went to Rome to continue his education. His father intended him for a political career, but Ovid quietly rebelled. The literary temptations in the capital and his own spectacular talents drew him inevitably into writing poetry. Before he was 20, he was reading his works to appreciative audiences, and by age 30, he was Rome's most successful poet. Success followed success for two more decades, when Augustus suddenly dispatched Ovid, then 50, into exile. The exact circumstances behind this event remain unclear even today. Ovid himself deliberately obscured them (as did the emperor), merely referring to a poem of his and some mistake. The place of exile was Tomis (modern Costanza, in Romania), a rather primitive town on the Black Sea. Arriving there in spring of AD 9, Ovid fought his loneliness and longing for his friends and beloved Rome by writing poetry about exile. The last datable poems refer to the year 16, and presumably he died soon after, an unhappy man of 60 whose suffering exposed the authoritarian nature of Augustus.
Ovid's principal poetry reflects his concern with love's complexities. Beginning under the influence of his friend Propertius, who wrote about a tormented lover and his irrational, inarticulate passion, Ovid in the Amores, written between 10 and 1 BC, depicted a witty lover who refuses to be tormented and instead turns love into a sport. Ovid's next great poetic endeavor, the Heroides, also developed a situation suggested by Propertius. Here Ovid imagines famous heroines like Ariadne or Dido writing passionate letters to the men who have abandoned them. Fifteen single and three paired letters permit the poet an elaborate exploration of the female psyche. In the Art of Love (c.1 BC) Ovid assumes the role of "professor" to teach men how to seduce women in Rome. Although in actuality he exposes the folly of those who try to turn love into a "science," this probably was the poem that most irritated Augustus.
Ovid proposed in the Fasti (AD 8) to deal wittily with the events (holidays, national heroes, seasonal changes) suggested by the Roman calendar, devoting one book to each month. When exiled, he had completed six. In the METAMORPHOSES (AD 8), his greatest poetic achievement, Ovid vied with the epic poet Vergil. Using Greco-Roman mythology as the material of his 15 books and change as his theme, he particularly isolates love as the agent of change, love now seen in its more profound ethical dimensions. Among readers of the late Middle Ages, the Metamorphoses rivaled the Bible in popularity. From his last years, five books of elegiacs, Tristia (8-12 AD), addressed to anonymous Roman friends, and four books of elegiac letters, From the Black Sea (12-16 AD), to named friends, show Ovid's talents adapting to his personal tragedy. These poems are antiquity's most significant example of "exile literature." WILLIAM S.