Ovidiy Nazon

Ovid was born on March 20, 43 BC (in 711 A.U.C.) in the city of Sulmo, in the district of the Peligni, a small people of the Sabellian stock inhabiting the mountainous part of central Italy east of Latium. Ovid states the place and time of his birth precisely in one of his “sorrowful elegies” (Trist., IV, 10). His family had long belonged to the equestrian order; the poet’s father was a man of means and gave his sons an excellent education. While attending the schools of famous teachers in Rome, Ovid revealed a passion for poetry from his earliest years: in the same elegy (Trist., IV, 10) he admits that even when he had to write in prose, verses would involuntarily flow from his pen. Following his father’s wishes, Ovid entered public service, but after holding only a few minor offices he abandoned it, preferring poetry to everything else. Married at an early age at his parents’ request, he soon was forced to divorce; his second marriage was also short-lived and unsuccessful; and only the third, to a woman who already had a daughter by her first husband, proved lasting and, it would seem, happy. Ovid had no children of his own. After completing his education with a journey to Athens, Asia Minor, and Sicily and entering literary life, Ovid was immediately noticed by the public and won the friendship of outstanding poets such as Horace and Propertius. Ovid himself regretted that Tibullus’s early death prevented the development of close relations between them and that he had managed only to see Virgil, who usually did not live in Rome. In AD 8, Augustus, for reasons that are not entirely clear (scholars have proposed several explanations), banished Ovid to the city of Tomis, where he died in the ninth year of his exile.