Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso, known as
Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet best known for the
Metamorphoses, a 15-book continuous mythological narrative written in the meter of epic, and for collections of love poetry in elegiac couplets, especially the
Amores and
Ars Amatoria. His poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and greatly influenced Western art and literature. The
Metamorphoses remains one of the most important sources of classical mythology. Ovid is traditionally ranked alongside Virgil and Horace, his older contemporaries, as one of the three canonic poets of Latin literature. He was the first major Roman poet to begin his career during the reign of Augustus, and the Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. He enjoyed enormous popularity, but in one of the mysteries of literary history he was sent by Augustus into exile in a remote province on the Black Sea, where he remained until his death.