At the city of Sulmo, in the central
Italian region of the Peligni, Publius Ovidius Naso was born
around a.d. XIV Kal. Apr. DCCX A.U.C., or sometime between
March 19-21 43 B.C. into an equestrian family which had been
equites since the beginning of the order. Beginning
his education in Rome, under the greatest teachers of oratory
in his day, Ovid was said to have quickly shed the studies
of rhetoric and law for a pleasing addiction to verse and
the chagrin of his father. Nevertheless, Seneca records that
under the tutelage of Aurelius Fuscus and Portius Latro, Ovid
quickly became renowned as an orator.
He finished his education traveling through Greece and Asia,
and under Augustus, Ovid rose through the ranks to become
one of the triumviri. Having done this, he was able
then to wear the laticlave promoting him to the same
distinction held by many of the highest ranking senators and
giving him more opportunities to rise in the political circles
of Augustus’ Rome. Yet, the death of his father and elder
brother left him with a substantial fortune affording him
the freedom to abandon the responsibilities of Roman government
and continue with and expand his addiction to poetry. redi
He retired from the chaos of Roman senate life to continue
with his poetry, and soon became friends with Horace, Tibullus,
Macer, Severus, Gallus and many others. And even though he
had retired from politics, his poetry and wit allowed him
to count the Augustan court as a place for frequenting and
enjoying the pleasures of many powerful friends. He had been
married three times by now, and this third marriage to a widow
of noble birth and high rank had also helped to gain him popularity
among the aristocracy and the court. His position in society
at the time is clear; he was so highly regarded that both
men and women of high birth and rank wore his image cut into
stones on their rings.
By this time he had already written the Amores which
had been published in five books in 14 B.C. and three books
in 2 B.C. Only the second edition survives and several of
the poems depict the poet’s love affair with a female character
named Corinna whom several writers identified as Julia, Augustus’
daughter, though her identity is not certain. He also wrote
a work called the Epistulae or Heroïdes,
which were twenty-one love-letters sent by women to their
husbands and lovers; however, the author of Heroïdes
14 and the last six is in doubt. Fragments remain of the Medicamina
Faciei, a poem advising women on how to beautify themselves,
but perhaps it is from another author of the time copying
his style. Also by 2 B.C. he had published the Ars Amatoria
or Armandi which gave advice to both men and women
on how to gain and maintain a love affair, and soon after,
he wrote the Remedia Amoris which continued many
of the ideas of the previous work. His Metamorphoses,
which covered the stories of both Greek and Roman mythology
and was his only work not in elegiac couplets, were the last
poems he finished before being banished from Rome by Augustus.
He threw the book, which he had just completed into a fire
upon hearing of his future exile. Fortunately for us, there
were other copies and the work survived. redi
In A.D. 8, Ovid was banished to the Black Sea provinces and
sent to the town of Tomi near the mouth of the Danube. We
do not know the exact reason for the exile, but Ovid mentions
that he was guilty of a song and a fault, not a crime (Tristia
I.3.37). It does seem to have happened around the time when
Augustus was trying to “clean-up” Roman society by enacting
his moral legislation. Ovid’s early works with their more
erotic tone and subject would seem a logical scapegoat for
this expulsion, but the incident concerning Augustus’ daughter
Julia and her indiscretions might have had more influence
on the severity of Augustus’ punishment. Still, the vague
silence of Ovid and the lack of any other evidence make no
reason certain for the banishment and the truth must remain
veiled by history.
Ovid arrived after a long voyage to Tomi around A.D. 10-11
and fell into a deep melancholia over being separated by such
a distance from his friends and his beloved wife and daughter.
He spent the next many years writing many of his more somber
and mature works and continually tried to ensure his return
to Rome by softening Augustus’ anger. Ovid’s wife maintained
the state of a chaste and mourning widow during his exile
and was continually rewarded with Ovid’s praises. redi
Just before his exile, Ovid had started the Fasti,
an elegiac composition explaining the Roman calendar with
descriptions of the holidays and festivals of the Romans and
their mythological history. He must have been on his way out
of Rome about halfway through the work since he only completed
the first six months of the year. He had apparently meant
to dedicate it to Augustus but was unable to and after some
revision while at Tomi he tried to dedicate it to Germanicus.
His revision did not pass the first book and remained undedicated.
During the journey to Tomi, most of his attention was aimed
at his Tristia, five books expressing his desolation
about his banishment from family and friends and his apologies
to Caesar Augustus which he wrote from A.D. 9-13. He further
expressed his anguish in Epistulae ex Ponto and attacked
some perfidious friend in Rome with the Ibis, remarkable
for it Alexandrian style and imitation of Callimachus’ own
Ibis against Apollonius of Rhodes. Another poem which
survives is a short fragment from a didactic work on fish
of the Black Sea called the Halieutica, which Pliny the Elder
mentions in his Natural History. redi
Ovid completed his years at Tomi having been continually
denied the option to return to Rome by Augustus and then his
successor Tiberius. By A.D. 17, Ovid had died and left behind
an immense corpus of surviving works. We have unfortunately
lost a great number of other poems including a eulogy which
he wrote for Augustus in the Getic tongue of the native inhabitants
of Tomi. This last work perhaps best illustrates the poet’s
love for and skill with the language of poetry. Few authors
have had such a dedication to the art and have spanned the
number of subjects which he turned into verse compositions.
Ovid’s works have survived as examples of some of the greatest
poems of Latin literature and the succeeding classics. His
ability to use Latin to portray his stories and ideas is astounding
and the shear amount of information which we receive from
his corpus on the mythology of the ancient world makes his
works a necessity to be read as part of the repertoire of
the Classics. |
