Ovid
Ovid ( Publius Ovidius Naso ) ( 43 BC – AD 18 ),Roman writer of love elegies (Amores), who then experimented with the imaginary letter (Heroides), mock didactic verse (Ars Amatoria), ‘collective’ narrative relating disconnected stories inside a large historical (Metamorphoses) or chronological (Fasti) frame, and finally with elegies of nostalgic complaint (Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto), when Augustus had exiled him in AD 8 to the Black Sea for some mysterious indiscretion. Ovid continued in favour with writers and public so long as Rome was pagan, but the Christian Church disapproved of his immorality, so that little is heard of him during the six centuries that followed the conversion of Constantine. His works were certainly copied, and interest in them revived with the 11th cent. Poets in the cathedral schools took him for a model. The Metamorphoses, rendered edifying by...
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