assassinated in the year before Ovid’s birth.
The poet skillfully revives the nearly for-
gotten mythologies of Greece and finds in
them an endless source of beauty, clever-
ness, and profound philosophical truths.
Ovid’s work The Art of Lovewas a
parody of conventional love poems and a
witty and biting portrayal of Roman aris-
tocrats. The poem was widely admired in
Rome but also criticized as a work of loose
morality. It also brought him trouble with
the emperor Augustus, who may have been
infuriated by Ovid’s revelation of misbe-
havior on the part of the emperor’s grand-
daughter Julia. Augustus censored all of
the poet’s works and banished him to per-
manent exile in a distant Roman colony
on the Black Sea in aboutA.D.8 (Julia was
banished from Rome in the same year).
Ovid spent the rest of his life writing com-
plaints of his lonely exile in a boring fron-
tier town, and sending petitions for a re-
call to Rome that were never granted.
The poetry of Ovid was held in high
regard throughout the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance. His elegant wit and sen-
suous writing, and his talent for storytell-
ing, inspired writers as well as sculptors
and painters, who illustrated many of his
most famous themes and subjects. The
leading writers of the Renaissance, includ-
ing John Milton, Edmund Spenser, and
William Shakespeare, freely borrowed
Ovid’s plots and incorporated Ovidian leg-
ends into their works.SEEALSO: classical literature; VirgilOvid