Publius Ovidius Naso was born in 43 BCE in Sulmo, a small town nestled in the Apennine hills east of Rome, into a wealthy equestrian family. His father hoped he would pursue a career in law and public service, so Ovid studied rhetoric in Rome and even took on minor public roles. However, poetry constantly drew him back, and he eventually abandoned any pretense of a legal career to focus entirely on writing.
Ovid entered the Roman literary scene at a remarkable time. Virgil and Horace were the titans of the era, and Ovid, being younger than both, was able to absorb their influence while also carving out his own path. While Virgil explored themes of empire and destiny, and Horace offered measured Stoic insights, Ovid celebrated love, desire, transformation, and myth with a wit and energy that felt strikingly modern. His early work, the *Amores*, cleverly played with the conventions of love elegy. The *Ars Amatoria* — a humorous and mock-didactic guide to seduction — was both scandalously funny and hugely popular. Then came the *Metamorphoses*, his crowning achievement: fifteen books of mythological transformations, spanning the creation of the world to the deification of Julius Caesar, all told in a continuous, dazzling flow of hexameter verse.
“At the peak of his fame, everything fell apart.”
Around 8 CE, Emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis, a remote outpost on the Black Sea coast, in modern-day Romania. Ovid claimed the reason was "a poem and a mistake" — the poem likely being the *Ars Amatoria*, which Augustus deemed morally objectionable, and the mistake possibly involving something he witnessed or was involved in that affected the imperial family. He never elaborated further, leaving scholars to debate the matter ever since.
Ovid spent the last decade of his life in Tomis, penning letters and poems pleading for his return — notably the *Tristia* and *Epistulae ex Ponto* — but he never received it. He died in exile around 17 CE, still far from Rome.
