March 20

On This Day In Roman History, March 20

Publius Ovidius Naso is born in Sulmo, Italy, on March 20, 43 BCE. This famous poet, more commonly referred to as Ovid, was the first major poet debuting his career during the reign of Augustus. He was born from a well-off Equestrian family and excelled at in school where he studied Rhetoric. He was educated in Rome by the teachers Arellius Fuscus and Porcius Latro alongside his brother. Ovid's career was already becoming established by 19-16 BCE when he wrote a collection called Amores which addressed a lover named Corinna. In 8 CE he had completed his most famous and one of his most important works, Metamorphoses, which explains and talks about hundreds of myths found in Latin and Greek cultures. 

Did you know?

Ovid was banished under direct order of Augustus without any participation from the Senate. He was sent to a Black Sea settlement known as Tomis, where he continued writing and living out his days until he died there in 17 or 18 CE. He claimed his crime was "carmen et error" or "a poem and a mistake." The "Epistulae ex Ponto" was written by him to a number of friends asking them to politically influence a return to Rome, but they were left largely unanswered. 

Pictured: Statue (1887) by Ettore Ferrari

commemorating Ovid's exile in Tomis

(present-day Constanța, Romania). Photo by Romeo Tabus, via Wikimedia Commons. 

Todays selected quote is by retired professor Ian Johnston: "No work from classical antiquity, either Greek or Roman, has exerted such a continuing and decisive influence on European literature as Ovid's Metamorphoses. The emergence of French, English, and Italian national literatures in the late Middle Ages simply cannot be fully understood without taking into account the effect of this extraordinary poem. ... The only rival we have in our tradition which we can find to match the pervasiveness of the literary influence of the Metamorphoses is perhaps (and I stress perhaps) the Old Testament and the works of Shakespeare."

Opinion

Welcome to my daily opinion! Ovid was the man. He was easily the most well-known Roman poet in the middle-ages and Renaissance. His writing would help to spur thoughts and ideals on humanism within the late Renaissance. I mean, even Jesuit schools were teaching with his works in the 16th century, after cutting the passages that seemed too corrupted. This writer spanned the bridges of time and religion, maintaining relevance up to this very day. My opinion is that this is the most influential writer that ever lived.

Sources

   Naso, P. O., & Green, P. (2005). The poems of exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters. Berkeley: University of California press.

   Otis, B., & O. (1970). Ovid as an epic poet. 2nd ed. London: Cambridge University Press.

   Ziolkowski, T. (2005). Ovid and the moderns. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Further Reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphoses
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasti_(poem)

"A creature of a more exalted kind

Was wanting yet, and then was Man designed;

Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,

For empire formed, and fit to rule the rest."