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Ovid was born in the Paelignian town of Sulmo (modern-day Sulmona, in the province of L'Aquila, Abruzzo), in an Apennine valley east of Rome, to an important equestrian family, the gens Ovidia, on 20 March 43 BC – a significant year in Roman politics.
Ovid, the Latin poet of the Roman Empire, was banished in 8 AD from Rome to Tomis (now Constanța, Romania) by decree of the emperor Augustus. The reasons for his banishment are uncertain. [ 1 ] Ovid's exile is related by the poet himself, and also in brief references to the event by Pliny the Elder and Statius .
Ovid Banished from Rome (1838) by J. M. W. Turner. The Tristia ("Sad things" or "Sorrows") is a collection of poems written in elegiac couplets by the Augustan poet Ovid during the first three years following his banishment from Rome to Tomis on the Black Sea in AD 8.
Ovid apparently worked on the poem while he was in exile at Tomis. The Tristia, a collection of elegiac letters on the poet's exile, mentions the Fasti, and that its completion had been interrupted by his banishment from Rome. Ovid also mentions that he had written the entire work, and finished revising six books.
Ovid, who advocates generally for a heterosexual lifestyle, finds it "a desire known to no one, freakish, novel ... among all animals no female is seized by desire for female" [391] —and yet Ovid's story of Iphis and Ianthe in the Metamorphoses (9.666–797) is "the most extended surviving account in ancient literature of female-female desire."
Later, Ovid adopted the city of Rome as his home, and began celebrating the city and its people in a series of works, including Amores. [6] Ovid's work follows three other prominent elegists of the Augustan Era, notably Gallus, Tibullus, and Propertius. [6] Under Augustus, Rome underwent a period of transformation.
Relegatio (or relegatio in insulam) under Roman law was the mildest form of exile, involving banishment from Rome, but not loss of citizenship, or confiscation of property. It was a sentence used for adulterers, those that committed sexual violence or manslaughter, and procurers. A notable victim of relegatio was Ovid.
In Latin literature, Augustan poetry is the poetry that flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus as Emperor of Rome, most notably including the works of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. In English literature, Augustan poetry is a branch of Augustan literature, and refers to the poetry of the 18th century, specifically the first half of the century.