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Ovid
43 BC - 18 AD
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| Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid) was probably buried in or
around the ancient town of Tomis which is now part of
Constanta on the Black Sea coast of Romania. |
Scythians at Ovid's Tomb by
Johann Heinrich Schönfeld c.1640
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Over the centuries there has been much interest in
finding Ovid's tomb but the exact location has never been
determined. Some have suggested that Ovid's ashes were
actually taken back to Rome and interred there.
Ovid
is regarded as one of the most significant of the Roman
poets - alongside Virgil and
Horace. He was a prolific writer and some of his most
important works include: Heroides (comprising 14
dramatic personae letters from the following goddesses:
Penelope, Phyllis, Briseis, Phaedra, Oenone, Hypsipyle,
Dido, Hermione, Deianeira, Ariadne, Canace, Medea, Laodamia
and Hypermestra), Amores (3 books of love poems),
Ars Amatoria (mock didactic verse), Fasti
(based on the Roman calender January - June) and the
Metamorphoses (or transformations - which comprised 15
books written in dactylic hexameter couplets and dealing
with up to 250 myths). The first book of
Metamorphoses is similar in some ways to a pre-Christian
Genesis.
Metamorphoses contains a vast
body of material and it had a profound influence on English
literature. Shakespeare drew
on The Pyramus and Thisbe section from the fourth
book and used it in both A Midsummer Night's Dream
and Romeo and Juliet.
John Gower also used it in Confessio Amantis.
Swift drew on Baucis and Philemon,
Prior on Daphne and Apollo
and Swinburne on Atalanta in
Calydon to name but a few.
Metamosphoses
has also been widely translated. Chaucer was heavily
influenced by the Ovide moralisé - a
huge French text written by Pierre Bersuire - which
moralised the original Latin text and helped to bring it to
a wider audience. More recently Ted
Hughes translated Metamorphoses in his
Tales from Ovid.
Ovid was born in Sulmo in the
Apennine valley east of Rome of wealthy parents. He was
educated in rhetoric and held various minor posts before
abandoning them to devote himself to poetry between 29-25
BC.
In AD 8 Ovid was exiled to Tomis on the Black Sea
by the emperor Augustus. It is not known for certain why he
was exiled but there may have been a scandal connected with
the emperor's granddaughter. Ovid describes the problem as
carmen et error ( 'a poem and a mistake'). It is felt
that Fasti remained uncompleted because Ovid did not have
access to the libraries of Rome while in exile.
While
in Tomis Ovid continued to write and in particular he
produced the Epistulae ex Ponto - which
were poems directed at friends back in Rome appealing to
them to request that the emperor end his exile; to no avail.
Below are the opening lines of the Metamorphoses: |
Of bodies chang'd to various
forms, I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did
spring,
Inspire my numbers with celestial heat;
'Till
I my long laborious work compleat:
And add perpetual
tenour to my rhimes,
Deduc'd from Nature's birth, to
Caesar's times.
The Creation of Before the seas, and this
terrestrial ball,
The World And Heav'n's high canopy,
that covers all,
One was the face of Nature; if a face:
Rather a rude and indigested mass:
A lifeless lump,
unfashion'd, and unfram'd,
Of jarring seeds; and justly
Chaos nam'd.
(From Metamorphoses, Book 1) |
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