However much offense Emperor Augustus may have taken to The Art of Love, it quickly became and has long remained a favorite with readers, who celebrate the poem for its vivid scenes of life in imperial Rome as well as its witty treatment of amorous intrigue. Ovid’s third wife remained steadfast throughout his exile scholarly texts speak of her devotion and the tender feelings between them. Before he was banished, the poet married three times and fathered a daughter, probably during his second marriage. Ovid would continue to live in exile until his death in 17 CE. While the error was an unspecified indiscretion that remains a mystery to this day, apparently the poem was The Art of Love. Ovid himself identified the causes of his offense, speaking of them vaguely as an error and a carmen (poem). In 8 CE, Emperor Augustus, offended by Ovid’s poetry and by some other transgression, exiled the poet to Tomis on the Black Sea (in modern Ro-mania). Other works, composed between 15 bce and 2 CE, include Heroides (Heroines), a series of verse letters written by mythological heroines to their beloveds Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), a didactic poem concerning the arts of courtship and erotic intrigue and the Remedia Amoris (“Remedies of Love”), a poem instructing readers how to end a love affair. 25 bce), for example, re-counts the poet’s seemingly autobiographical misadventures in love.

Most of Ovid’s early work explores romantic and erotic themes.

With the help of an influential patron, Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, Ovid quickly gained prominence as a writer, becoming the leading poet in Rome by 8 CE. Although his family wished him to pursue a political career, Ovid soon abandoned public life to become a poet. Like most young men of his class, Ovid was educated in Rome, where he studied rhetoric under Arellius Fuscus and Porcius Latro after completing his education, he toured the Greek lands. Ovid tutors young men and women on the arts of finding, courting, and keeping a lover.Įvents in History at the Time of the Poemīorn at Sulmo in the Abruzzi (central Italy) in 43 bce, Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) was the son of a wealthy family. A didactic poem written in Latin in three books on the art of courtship and erotic love, set in Rome during the late first century bce published around the first year bce.

The art of love roman poet