Ovid was born in
Sulmo (modern Sulmona), which lies in a valley within the
Apennines, east of Rome. He was born into an
equestrian ranked family and was educated in Rome. His father wished him to study
rhetoric with the ultimate goal of practicing law. As stated by
Pliny the Elder, Ovid leaned toward the emotional side of rhetoric as opposed to the argumentative. After the death of his father, Ovid renounced law and began his travels. He traveled to
Athens, Asia Minor and
Sicily. He also held some minor public posts, but quickly gave them up to pursue his poetry. He was part of the circle centered around the patron
Messalla. He was married three times and, from one marriage, had a daughter.
In 16 BC, the
Amores were published. Book 1 of this collection of love elegy contains 15 poems, which look at the different areas of love poetry. Much of the
Amores is tongue-in-cheek, and while Ovid initially appears to adhere to the standard content of his elegiac predecessors — the
exclusus amator (left-out lover), he actually portrays himself as more than capable at love, and not particularly emotionally struck by it (unlike, for example,
Propertius, who in his poems portrays himself as crushed under love's foot). He writes about adultery, which had been made illegal in
Augustus's marriage reforms of 18 BC.
Ovid's next poem, the
Ars Amatoria, or the
Art of Love, was a parody of didactic poetry and wittily focused on the arts of seduction and intrigue. This work is suspected to be the
carmen, or song, that was one of the causes of Ovid's banishment.
By AD 8, Ovid had completed his most famous work called the
Metamorphoses, an epic poem drawing on Greek mythology. The poem's subject, as the author indicates at the outset, is "forms changed into new bodies". From the emergence of the cosmos from formless mass into the organized material world to the deification of Julius Caesar many chapters later, the poem weaves tales of transformation. The stories are woven one after the other by the telling of humans transformed into new bodies — trees, rocks, animals, flowers, constellations and so forth. Many famous myths are recounted such as Apollo and Daphne, Orpheus and Eurydice and Pygmalion. For literary scholars today the book is very valuable, as it offers an explanation to many alluded myths in other works. It is also a valuable source for those attempting to piece together Roman religion, as many of the characters in the book are Olympian gods or their offspring.
Augustus banished Ovid in AD 8 to
Tomis on the
Black Sea for reasons that remain mysterious, though it is largely speculated that something in the
Art of Love offended him. Ovid himself wrote that it was because of
carmen et error — "a poem and a mistake" (
Tr. 2.207). The error Ovid made is believed to have been political in nature — possibly he had knowledge of a plot against Augustus, or stumbled into some sensitive state secret. As
Julia the Younger (the granddaughter of Augustus) and Ovid were exiled in the same year, some suspect that he was somehow involved in her affair with
Decimus Silanus. Still, Ovid only moved on the perimeter of Julia's circle, suggesting that reports that he seduced Julia or facilitated her affairs is likely romantic hearsay. The Julian Marriage Laws of 18 BC were still fresh in the minds of Romans; these laws promoted monogamous, marital sexual relations in Rome to increase the population, but Ovid's works concerned adultery, which was punishable by severe penalties, including banishment.
It was during this period of exile — more properly known as a relegation — that Ovid wrote two more collections of poems, called
Tristia and
Epistulae ex Ponto, which illustrate his sadness and desolation. Being far away from Rome, Ovid had no chance to research in libraries and thus was forced to abandon his work
Fasti. Even though he was friendly with the natives of Tomis and even wrote poems in their language, he still pined for Rome and his beloved third wife. Many of the poems are addressed to her, but also to
Augustus, whom he calls
Caesar and sometimes God, to himself, and even sometimes to the poems themselves, which expresses his heart-felt solitude. The famous first two lines of the
Tristia demonstrate the poet's misery from the start:
:
Parve – nec invideo – sine me, liber, ibis in urbem:
::
ei mihi, quod domino non licet ire tuo!
:
Little book – and I won't hinder you – go on to the city without me:
::
Alas for me, because your master is not allowed to go!
Ovid died at Tomis after nearly ten years of banishment. He is commemorated today by a statue in the Romanian city of
Constanţa (modern name of Tomis) and the 1930 renaming of the nearby town of
Ovidiu, alleged location of his tomb. The Latin text on the statue says (
Tr. 3.3.73-76):
:
Hic ego qui iaceo tenerorum lusor amorum
::
Ingenio perii, Naso poeta, meo.
:
At tibi qui transis, ne sit grave, quisquis amasti,
::
Dicere: Nasonis molliter ossa cubent.
:
Here I lie, who played with tender loves,
::
Naso the poet, killed by my own talent.
:
O passerby, if you've ever been in love, let it not be too much for you
::
to say: May the bones of Naso lie gently.
