Publius Ovidius Naso (43 B.C. - 17/18 A.D.) was, after the deaths of Virgil (19 B.C.) and Horace (8 B.C.) , undoutedly Rome's most celebrated living poet but his banishment in 8 A.D. to Tomis (modern Constanza in Romania) deprived him of the sophisticated, urban milieu in which he had felt so much at home. He is most famous for the Metamorphoses, a 15-book summary in hexameter verse of Greek myths featuring trasnformations. He also planned a summary in elegiac couplets of myths associated with Roman festivals, under the title Fasti (`the calendar'), but had only completed the first six months of the year when exiled. Another mythological work , perhaps the first thing he published, was the Heroides, letters from famous heroines to their lovers. He is also famous for his more personal, and frequently cynical love poetry, including the Amores and Ars Amatoria and for the Tristia (`Sad Matters') and Epistulae ex Ponto (`Letters from the Black Sea') bewailing his lot in exile.
His Metamorphoses forms the basis for a popular textbook, Latin via Ovid, and materials for use with this can be found in the `Teaching Aids for Latin via Ovid' section on https://linguae.weebly.com/latin--greek.html
Sulmona, Ovid's birthplace in Eastern Italy.
0Essays published to mark the 200th anniversary of his death in 2018: