ContextOvid, one of Rome’s greatest poets, predictedthat his fame would live on forever. So far, his prediction hasproven accurate.
Ovid was born Publius Ovidius Naso on March 20, 43 b.c.,a year after the death of Julius Caesar. He was born in Sulmo, toa wealthy family. When Ovid was twelve years old, the battle ofActium put an end to a civil war that had been raging between Anthonyand Octavian. Octavian, the victor, became emperor. (He was laterknown as Augustus.) Because he lived in a time of calm and prosperity,and because of his family’s wealth, Ovid was able to write in peace.Ovid’s work draws on the great literary traditions of Greek, Hellenistic,and Roman cultures.
His writing owes a debt to the works of Homer, Hesiod,Euripides, Theocritus, Callimachus, Virgil, Tibullus, Horace, andPropertius. Some critics view Ovid’s opus as the culmination ofancient poetry.After Ovid’s early education in Sulmo, his father senthim to Rome to study rhetoric in preparation for a life in politics.However, Ovid claimed that whenever he tried to write prose, onlypoetry came out. After a short stint in government, he decided topursue poetry. His father disapproved of Ovid’s choice and incessantly remindedhim of the fate of Homer, who died a poor man. Ovid’s father waswrong to worry, however. Ovid found immediate success. Around 20 b.c.,he published the Amores, or Loves, which consistedof three books on the theme of love.
Ovid’s next work, the Heroides, or Heroines, tookhim into uncharted territory. In this novel work, comprising fourteenletters written by legendary women to their husbands or lovers,Ovid puts the narrative in the hands of historically voiceless,mistreated, or overlooked women. Around this time, Ovid also wrotea tragedy about Medea, a popular figure of power, magic, and revenge.This work has not survived, but there is good evidence that Ovid’scontemporaries judged it a success. Quintilian, a Roman critic ofliterature, and Tacitus, a Roman historian, comment favorably onit.Ovid continued to experiment. In the next stage of hiscareer, he moved into the realm of didactic (“how to”) poetry.
Ratherthan explore traditional didactic topics such as farming (as Virgildoes in Georgics) or science (as Lucretius doesin On the Nature of Things), Ovid wrote on theart of seduction and the art of falling out of love. Around 1 b.c.or a.d. 2, he wrotethe Ars Amatoria ( Art of Love), MedicaminaFaciei Femineae ( Makeup for a Women’s Face),and the Remedia Amoris ( Remedies of Love).In these works, Ovid consciously played off other, familiar didacticworks, particularly Virgil’s Georgics. He subvertedwhat had been an essentially serious genre and said ridiculous,comedic things about love. With a straight face, he posited thatyoung men and women should spend time learning how to commit adulteryand seduce each other.
While working on the Metamorphoses, Ovidwas also writing another piece, the Fasti, a poemdescribing the Roman religious calendar. It seems he never finishedthis work, although it is valuable for the many fascinating antiquariandetails it contains.Ovid is most famous for the Metamorphoses, asingle poem of fifteen books, which was probably completed around a.d. 8.By writing the Metamorphoses in dactylic hexameter,the meter of epic, Ovid intentionally invited comparisons with thegreatest Roman poet of his age, Virgil, who had written the epicthe Aeneid. In form, rhythm, and size, the Metamorphoses fallssquarely in the category of epic.
In content, however, the Metamorphoses haslittle in common with such epics as the Aeneid, whichare characterized by a single story line and one main protagonist.In fact, Ovid explicitly pokes fun of the epic genre. The Metamorphoses moreclosely resembles the work of Hesiod and the Alexandrian poets,who favored a collection of independent stories connected by a theme.
The Metamorphoses’roughly 250 stories are linked only by their commontheme of metamorphosis.Shortly after the publication of these two poems, Ovidfound himself in great peril. 8,Augustus exiled Ovid and banned his books from the libraries ofRome. The reason for Ovid’s exile is not entirely clear, but onecan surmise that Augustus took offense at Ovid’s lecherous poetry.Poems on the art of seduction would have hardly pleased Augustus,who sought to institute moral reform. Moreover, Augustus must havebeen especially incensed when he exiled his own daughter, Julia,for adultery. All Ovid writes concerning his exile is that a “poemand a mistake” caused his downfall. In exile, Ovid penned his lastworks at Tomis, a colony by the Black Sea.
Ovid Metamorphoses Mary Innes Pdf Writer Reviews
His final three worksare the Tristia, or Sadness, Ibis, andthe Epistulae ex Ponto, or Letters fromPontus. These works largely concern his hardships in aforeign land and his desire to dwell in Rome again. However, despiteall his pleas to Augustus and later to Tiberius, he would neversee Rome again. Ovid died in a.d.