Authors

Roman · 43

Ovid

Ovid was a Roman poet whose Metamorphoses — 250 myths organized around the theme of transformation — became the primary source of classical mythology for European literature from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance. His erotic works Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) and Amores established him as the master of Roman love elegy. Augustus exiled him to Tomis (modern Constanța, Romania) in 8 CE for reasons still debated ('a poem and a mistake,' he wrote); he spent the last decade of his life there, writing to friends and the emperor to be allowed home. He never was.