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Ovid

43 BCE–17
Image of Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso, known as Ovid, was born in Sulmo, Italy on March 20, 43 BCE. Considered to be one of the most influential poets in Western literary tradition, Ovid wrote several important works, including Heroines and The Art of Love. His most famous and revered work, and considered alongside the works of Homer and Virgil as among the world's masterpieces, is Metamorphoses, which he finished around 8 BCE. He died at the age of 61, in exile in the Black Sea port of Tomi, known today as Constantsa, Romania

Of the details of Ovid's life, historians know very little. He was born into an upper-middle-class family. To prepare for a professional career, he was sent to Rome to study rhetoric, the standard core of study for Roman education at the time. Upon completion of his studies in Rome, Ovid spent a year in Athens studying philosophy, following which it was presumed by his family that he would return to his home to begin his career. Ovid did return home to spend a year as a public official; however, poetry soon became his passion, and, rather than choosing the life of a professional careerist, he began to work on his first book, Loves, or Amores, when he was 20 years old.

Loves was followed by Heroines, a collection of fictional letters from mythical heroines to their absent lovers. Soon thereafter came The Art of Love, and in a six-year period between 2 and 8 CE, Ovid penned Metamorphoses. Between the publications of Amores and Metamorphoses, Ovid was married three times and fathered a daughter.

The fact about Ovid's life that came to define him was his banishment in 8 CE to Tomi by the Roman Emperor Augustus. Tried personally by Augustus himself, Ovid was found guilty of a crime that remains unclear. Although Ovid wrote about banishment in the poem Tristia, or Sorrows, the reasons for the exile remain uncertain. “Two offenses, a poem and a mistake, have destroyed me,” was all that Ovid wrote in Tristia.

Ovid's final years would be spent in Tomi writing long letters and poems of appeal to Augustus to allow him to return to Rome. The pleas were useless, and Ovid remained in exile until his death in 17 CE.

Poems by Ovid
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Bibliography

WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:

MAJOR WORKS—EXTANT

  • Heroides (Heroines, single letters 1-14, before 16 B.C.; double epistles 16-21, ca. A.D. 8).
  • Amores, second version in three books (Loves, after 16 B.C.).
  • Ars Amatoria (Art of Love: books 1-2, ca. 1 B.C.; book 3, added later).
  • Remedia Amoris (The Cures for Love, between 1 B.C. and A.D. 2).
  • Metamorphoses (A.D. 8).
  • Fasti (Calendar, A.D. 8, with later revisions).
  • Tristia (Sorrows, A.D. 9-12).
  • Ibis (ca. A.D. 11).
  • Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters from the Black Sea, books 1-3, A.D. 13; book 4, probably posthumous).

MAJOR WORK—FRAGMENTARY

  • Medicamina Faciei Femineae, the first one hundred lines survive (Cosmetics for a Woman's Face, before book 3 of Ars Amatoria).

WORKS—LOST

  • Amores, first version in five books (Loves, ca. 16 B.C.).
  • Medea.
  • Phaenomena.

WORKS—SPURIOUS

  • Heroides (Hermione, 8), (Deianira, 9), (Medea, 12), (Laudamia, 13), (Hypermestra, 14), (Sappho, 15).
  • Priapea, 3.
  • Somnium (Am. 3.5).
  • Halieutica.
  • Nux.
  • Consolatio ad Liviam.

Editiones principes

  • P. Ovidius Naso: Opera (Rome: Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, 1471).
  • P. Ovidius Naso: Opera (Bologna: Baldassare Azzoguidi, 1471).

Standard editions

  • Heinrich Sedlmayer, P. Ovidi Nasonis Heroides (Vienna: Konegen, 1886).
  • Heinrich Dörrie, P. Ovidi Nasonis Epistulae Heroidum (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971).
  • E. J. Kenney, P. Ovidi Nasonis Amores, Medicamina Faciei Femineae, Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris, second edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
  • Hugo Magnus, P. Ovidi Nasonis Metamorphoseon Libri XV (Berlin: Weidmann, 1914).
  • William S. Anderson, Ovidius: Metamorphoses, fifth edition (Stuttgart & Leipzig: Teubner, 1991).
  • E. H. Alton, D. E. W. Wormell, and E. Courtney, P. Ovidi Nasonis Fastorum libri sex (Leipzig: Teubner, 1978).
  • S. G. Owen, P. Ovidi Nasonis Tristium Libri Quinque, Ibis, Ex Ponto Libri Quattuor, Halieutica, Fragmenta (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1915).
  • J. A. Richmond, Ovidius: Ex Ponto Libri Quattuor (Leipzig: Teubner, 1990).
  • Friedrich Walther W. Lenz, P. Ovidi Nasonis Halieutica, Fragmenta, Nux. Incerti Consolatio ad Liviam, second edition (Turin: Paravia, 1952).
  • Lenz, P. Ovidi Nasonis Ibis, second edition (Turin: Paravia, 1952).

Translations in English

  • Arthur Golding, The XV Bookes of P. Ouidius Naso, entytuled Metamorphosis, translated oute of Latin into English meeter (London: Willyam Seres, 1567).
  • George Turberville, The Heroycall Epistles of the Learned Poet P. Ovidius Naso Translated into English Verse (London, 1567).
  • Christopher Marlowe, Ovid's Elegies (ca. 1596).
  • George Sandys, Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished (London: W. Stansby, 1632):
  • John Dryden, and others, Ovid's Epistles Translated by Several Hands (London: Jacob Tonson, 1680).
  • J. G. Frazer, Ovid: Fasti (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931).
  • Guy Lee, Amores (New York: Viking, 1968).
  • G. Showerman, Ovid: Heroides and Amores, second edition, revised by G. P. Goold, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977).
  • F. J. Miller, Metamorphoses, 2 volumes, second edition, revised by Goold, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977).
  • J. H. Mozley, Ovid: The Art of Love and Other Poems, second edition, revised by Goold, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979).
  • A. D. Melville, Ovid: Metamorphoses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).
  • A. L. Wheeler, Ovid: Tristia, Ex Ponto, second edition, revised by Goold (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).
  • Ovid: The Love Poems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
  • Sorrows of an Exile (Tristia) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
  • Peter Green, The Poems of Exile (London: Penguin, 1994).
  • Betty Rose Nagle, Ovid's Fasti: Roman Holidays (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).

Commentaries

  • J. C. McKeown, Ovid: Amores, 4 volumes (Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1989- ).
  • Peter E. Knox, Heroides. Select Epistles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
  • E. J. Kenney, Heroides XVI-XXI (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
  • A. S. Hollis, Ars Amatoria I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).
  • A. A. R. Henderson, P. Ovidi Nasonis Remedia Amoris (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1979).
  • Guy Lee, Metamorphoses I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953).
  • Hollis, Metamorphoses VIII (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).
  • Franz Bömer,P. Ovidus Naso: Metamorphosen (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1969-1986).
  • James George Frazer, P. Ovidii Nasonis Fastorum Libri Sex (London: Macmillan, 1929).
  • Elaine A. Fantham, Fasti. Book IV (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  • Bömer, Die Fasten (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1957-1958).
  • Georg Luck, Tristia (Heidelberg, C. Winter, 1967-1977).
  • S. G. Owen, P. Ovidi Nasonis Tristium Liber Secundus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924).
  • R. Ellis, P. Ovidi Nasonis Ibis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881).
  • J. A. Richmond, The Halieutica Ascribed to Ovid (London: Athlone Press, 1962).
  • R. M. Pulbrook, P. Ovidii Nasonis Nux Elegia (Maynooth, Ireland: Maynooth University Press, 1985).