The Roman poet Ovid Nasóne Publio and other Greek poets of his generation were unaware of the civil wars that devastated Rome during the 1st century BC. Ancient poets such as Virgil and Horace, with their patriotic values and classicist aesthetics, were already far removed from the generation of Ovid, heir to the Hellenistic aesthetic that represents a taste for erudition and social policy.
The poet had numerous mistresses, married three times. Of his three marriages, the first two were short-lived, but his third wife, of whom he speaks with respect and affection, remained with him until his death. Some of his amorous adventures provided poetic material for his Loves.
As far as is known, Ovid moved to Rome at a young age to finish his studies with professors Arelio Fusco and Porcio Latrón. He had contact with the greatest writers and poets of his time, such as Messalla, Cornelius Gallo, Properzio, Orazio, and attended the court of Emperor Augustus. It was clear that he had a much greater vocation and talent for poetry, but his father insisted that he train in eloquence and jurisprudence in order to access a political career.
After an educational trip to Greece, Egypt and Asia, and a stay in Sicily, he exercised minor magistracies. According to his own words, since he went to school in Sulmona, his hometown, he already felt a strong inclination towards poetry. Everything I tried to write came out in the form of verses. As a result, he dropped out of law studies, which he needed to climb the political ladder. He went to Rome to build a future as a poet, as the city owns everything in the world.
Features of Ovid's writing
Skillful verse of extraordinary ease and expressive fluidity, fervent imagination and the intelligent temperament of a narrator, colorist and psychologist. Ovid is a dominant personality in Latin culture, and his influence is powerfully perpetuated in the Middle Ages, Humanism, and the Renaissance.
In the love elegies of the first period, an entire Roman society lives, already profoundly different from the late-Republican one, often distressed by those problems revived in poetry by Virgil and Horace. In Metamorphoses and in some passages of the Heroides, he is more incisive in his talent as a storyteller, as a painter of the marvelous and in capturing obscure aspects of the female soul.
In the first phase, his poetry has a casual tone and revolves around the theme of love and eroticism. Loves, Art of love and Love remedies stand out for their technical mastery in handling the elegiac couplet, for the brilliant and sometimes picturesque ease of the verse.
The didactic purpose, advice and examples of how to seduce women and interact with them, are mixed in these works with the burlesque anecdote and a costume tinged with satire. In modern eyes, more than love, it is about eroticism, or even a simple repertoire of spicy anecdotes. It must, of course, be taken into account that what was understood by love in ancient times is closer to what we can call eroticism today. Therefore, when these books influence the courtly love of the troubadours (twelfth century), the differences will also be noticeable.
The sad elegy of the period of exile, in which a sometimes remarkable vein of painful poetry, of vivid and dramatic evocation of the distant homeland, is spoiled by the desire to please the emperor, to move him to pity and obtain the revocation of the announcement.
Ovid's main works
Ovid's poems are all written in elegiac couplets, except Metamorphoses. He divided his pre-exile works into two groups:
Light Writings - Loves, Heroids and the Art of Loving
Compositions on more serious themes - Fasti and Metamorphoses.
Loves - A love song in elegiac couplets in five books published at intervals in 14 BC, beginning around 20 BC. They form a series of short poems that describe the various phases of a love affair with a woman named Corinna. Its keynote is not passion but a witty and rhetorical exploration of the erotic commonplace; they narrate not an actual relationship between Ovid and Corinna (which is not a real woman but a literary construct), but all the vicissitudes of a typical affair with a woman from the underworld. The work was very popular, to the point that a second edition was also published, which was not very common in antiquity.
Heroides - an idea already used by Sextus Propertius was developed into something like a new literary genre. It is the collection of letters that the wives of famous heroes sent to their loved ones, including some of their responses. Thus, we find, among others, the letter from Penelope to Ulysses, from Briseis to Achilles, from Dido to Aeneas or from Helena to Paris.
The treatment of his literary sources is particularly ingenious; the correspondence of Paris and Helena is one of the lesser masterpieces of antiquity.
Art of love (Ars amandi or Ars amatoria) – the most important work of Ovid, consisting of three books between 2 and 1 BC. It was a technical manual of burlesque seduction with instructions on how to find and conquer a partner.
Metamorphoses - is an epic of great scope but with a very particular style, as it is imbued with the playful and loving technique typical of the author. A long poem in 15 books written in hexameter lines and totaling around 12,000 lines. Ovid told and explained the history of nearly 250 myths and legends from the Roman world in which metamorphosis plays some role, however small.
It was a mature work in which the poet combined heroism with comedy, romance and elegy throughout the fifteen books that composed it. Fortunately for him, Ovid had plenty of material to work with and draw inspiration from, so he was able to choose the most familiar and satisfying version of the myths to boost his creativity.
The stories are told in chronological order from the creation of the universe (the first metamorphosis, from chaos to order) to the death and deification of Julius Caesar (the culminating metamorphosis, again from chaos (Civil War) to order (Peace Augusta).
It is not by chance that in the last lines the poet says, "I have reached the conclusion of a work that neither the wrath of Jupiter, nor fire, nor iron, nor implacable time, will be able to destroy". Ovid reached the height of his popularity. His works, undoubtedly innovative, made him one of the greatest poets of Rome.
Fasti - are inspired by the Aitia of Callimachus. The poet wanted to illustrate in elegiac couplets, in twelve books, one for each month of the year, and to sing in order the origin and myths associated with the feasts of the Roman calendar. The poem, in 8 AC, was interrupted in book 6, due to exile in Tomi.
The various festivals are described as they occur and trace back to their legendary origins. The Fasti was a national poem, destined to take its place in Augustus' literary program and perhaps destined to rehabilitate its author in the eyes of the ruling dynasty. It contains much praise for the imperial family and much patriotism, which the undoubted brilliance of the narrative passages does not fully redeem.
Medea - from the earliest years, in the circle of Messalla, Ovid composed this tragedy, much praised in antiquity. The loss of Ovid's tragedy, which he wrote while still in Rome, is particularly deplorable. It was praised by the critic Quintilian and the historian Tacitus and can hardly have failed to influence Seneca's play on the same theme.
Exile to this day unexplained
Emperor Augustus suddenly decided to exile Ovid to Tomi, a city near the Danube and on the shores of the Black Sea, which Rome had recently conquered. The causes of the exile remain unknown. The poet himself gives, quite enigmatically, two reasons to explain his fall from grace:
A poem - it is reasonable to imagine that he referred to the immorality of one of his works, The art of loving. Emperor Augustus took advantage of his position as pontiff maximum and official of laws and customs to try to control all religious, social and moral issues in society. Augustus set out to restore the ancient Roman customs, which in his opinion had made Rome strong, powerful, and blameless.
In particular, he was concerned to strengthen the marriage, which was considered until the 1st century BC. as the cornerstone of Roman morality. He amended and enacted new laws on adultery and chastity and put a limit on divorces. He also rebuilt over eighty temples and restored major priestly orders.
Therefore, the condemnation of Ovid's amorous works should not come as a surprise, as it was not difficult to find a critique of the two basic pillars of Roman society that Augustus intended to strengthen religion and family. Ovid spoke of temples as appropriate places to socialize, adulterers among the gods as role models, and gave advice on how to win someone else's wife. However, it is surprising that the emperor decided to exile the poet because of a poem composed eight years ago.
A mistake - numerous hypotheses have been formulated; although none of them are entirely conclusive. It has been said that perhaps Ovid had an affair with Livia, the emperor's bride; who may have been an unwitting witness to Augustus' incest with his own daughter Giulia; who may have participated in a conspiracy against Augustus led by Agrippa Postumus, the emperor's nephew, or even who may have secretly witnessed a mysterious rite of Isis intended only for women.
The theory that currently attracts the greatest consensus is the one that would link Ovid’s punishment with Julius, Augustus’ nephew, and with Senator Décimo Giunio Silano, both exiled in the same period as Ovid and who may have committed adultery with the poet’s complicity.
Some researchers have speculated about the veracity of Ovid's exile, since what can be assumed on the matter derives mainly from the poet's own words. However, we do not know to what extent the information provided is reliable. The contrast between his writings and the various testimonies seems to indicate, although not definitively, that Ovid created a poetic world out of a real exile experience.
However, it is unclear if the latter exactly happened to Tomi. In any case, given that his compositions are mainly works of art, it matters little whether or not they are credible testimonies of his personal stories. Neither the emperor's entreaties nor flattery helped, and although after Augustus' death in a.D 14, Ovid tried to get Tiberius to revoke the sentence, the new emperor did not heed the poet's pleas, nor those of his wife Fabia.
Works written in exile
Ovid arrived at his place of exile in the spring of 9 AC. Tomis was a semi-Hellenized port exposed to periodic attacks from neighboring peoples. Books and high society were lacking; little Latin was spoken; and the weather was severe. In his loneliness and depression, Ovid turned again to poetry, this time of a more personal and introspective kind.
Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto were written and sent to Rome at the rate of about one book a year from A.D. 9. They consist of letters to the Emperor and to Ovid's wife and friends describing his miseries and asking for clemency. For all his depression and self-pity, Ovid never backs down from the one position with which his self-respect has been identified - his status as a poet.
Epistulae ex Ponto-writing in exile of which he published three books together with the Tristia, elegies in epistolary form, each dedicated to a friend in Rome (the 4th book of the Epistulae ex Ponto was published posthumously),
Ibis - poem showing how Ovid's poetic powers had not yet been seriously impaired. This is a long and elaborate curse directed at an anonymous enemy. It is a forceful display of obscure mythological learning, composed largely without the aid of books. However, in the absence of any sign of encouragement from home, Ovid could not bring himself to continue writing the kind of poetry that made him famous.
Pontic - has clear recipients, alternating sincere expressions of gratitude for faithful friends with disappointment for those who have forgotten him. On several occasions, he even mentions that he ran out of inspiration and sense of humor and that he had suicidal thoughts.
Influences on Literature
Ovid's popularity was, however, part of a general secularization and an awakening to the beauties of profane Literature. He was the poet of wandering scholars as well as of vernacular poets, troubadours, and miners; and when the concept of romantic love, in its new chivalrous or "courtly" guise, was developed in France, it was the influence of Ovid that dominated the book in which his philosophy was expounded, the Rose romance.
Ovid's popularity grew during the Renaissance, particularly among humanists who were striving to recreate ancient modes of thought and feeling, and print editions of his works followed one another in an unending stream from 1471. In the 15th and 17th centuries, it would be difficult to name a remarkable poet or painter who was not in some debt to him. The Metamorphoses, in particular, offered one of the most accessible and attractive avenues into the riches of Greek mythology.
Nevertheless, Ovid's main appeal comes from the humanity of his writing: his joy, his friendliness, his exuberance, his pictorial and sensual quality. It is these things that have recommended him, through the ages, to troubadours and poets of courtly love, to Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Ezra Pound.
