Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso, known as Ovid, was born in 43 BCE in Sulmo, Italy, into a wealthy equestrian family. He studied rhetoric in Rome but abandoned a legal career for poetry. His early works, including the "Amores" and "Ars Amatoria," were playful love elegies that brought him fame but also imperial disfavor. In 8 CE, Emperor Augustus banished Ovid to Tomis on the Black Sea, likely due to the perceived immorality of his erotic poetry and some unknown political offense. During exile, he wrote the "Tristia" and "Epistulae ex Ponto," lamenting his fate. His magnum opus, "Metamorphoses," completed just before his exile, is a fifteen-book narrative poem weaving over 250 classical myths through the theme of transformation. It remains one of the most influential works in Western literature, inspiring countless artists from Dante and Chaucer to Shakespeare and Picasso. Ovid died in exile in 17 CE.