Ovid

I was born at Sulmo in 43 BCE, and at Rome I learned the cadences of the forum. They groomed me for pleadings; I preferred couplets. The Amores first carried my name; then the Heroides—letters in a woman’s hand to absent lovers and faithless heroes—let other mouths speak through mine. I prized wit that turns on itself and the light step that hides labor.

In a city chastened by Augustan laws, my Ars Amatoria taught arts many already practiced, and angered those who wished them unspoken. Then came the order: in 8 CE I was sent to Tomis on the Pontic shore—carmen et error, I wrote, a poem and a mistake. The poem I do not deny; the error I do not name. Cut off from Rome’s theaters and dinners, I sent back Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto—petitions and bleak reports of distance.

I loved old stories best when they could be made new. The Fasti threaded the calendar’s rites through myth and civic memory. In hexameters I stitched the Metamorphoses—fifteen books of change, from the world’s first dawn to Caesar’s star—so that one tale slid into the next as bodies and fortunes altered. I favor reversals, irony, and a fair hearing for the quieted. Exile proved my own transformation; if I could not return, the verses could.