Ovid

Ovid is an interesting character. He was born in Sulmo, east of Rome, in 43 BCE one year after the assassination of Julius Caesar and was 13 years old when Octavian (Augustus) defeated Marc Anthony at Actium. His family was of “equestrian rank” meaning they were well-placed and Ovid’s father had him educated in Rome because he wanted his son to be a lawyer. (This means that he was educated in “rhetoric”--the art of speaking in order to persuade. We'd call it debate.) Ovid preferred poetry to law and he traveled to Athens and Asia Minor. Messalla, a Roman patrician who had supported Antony (that is, until Antony’s involvement with Cleopatra which caused Messalla to shift his support to Octavian) was Ovid’s patron. I think Augustus preferred Virgil whose patron, Maecenas, was the Emperor’s trusted adviser. (Do you see where this is going?)

Rolfe Humphries, a modern translator of Ovid, calls Ovid a “romantic” poet rather than a “classical” writer. By that he means that Ovid didn’t write as a citizen should but as he pleased. Using this definition, Virgil (70 - 19 BCE) would be considered a “classical” poet. His Aeneid celebrates the origins, growth and power of Rome and of Augustus. (Virgil knew what was to his own advantage.)

Writing as he pleased, Ovid produced three volumes of what has been called “erotic” poetry: Heroides or Letters of Heroines to their lovers or husbands; Amores, a first-person account of a love affair; and Ars Amatoria or The Art of Love, instructions to men and women in the art of seduction. This last was a very popular book. Some of the walls found at Pompeii have graffiti quoting from it. None of this poetry conformed with the “Roman virtues” and moral reforms that Augustus had established.

Ars Amatoria may be one of the reasons that Augustus exiled Ovid to Tomi on the Black Sea in 8 CE. According to Ovid his offense was “carmen et error” or a poem and a mistake. (He was sentenced to relegatio rather than exsilium which means that he didn’t lose his property or rights as a citizen of Rome; it was the mildest form of exile.) He never explained the “mistake” but scholars have speculated that it may have involved Augustus’ granddaughter, Julia, who was also exiled the same year.

In his autobiographical poem, Tristia, Ovid describes his last night in Rome, the terrible voyage to Tomis, and the boredom and deprivation of life in exile. He wrote the fifteen books of Metamorphoses in Tomi and died there in 18 CE.