3 Who was Ovid?
Our main source for what Ovid’s life was like is Ovid’s own writing. This poses a number of problems, as it makes it very difficult to distinguish between who Ovid was in real life, and the image of himself that he describes to his readers. The most well-known aspect of Ovid’s life is said to have taken place in 8 CE. Ovid tells us that he was exiled from Rome to Tomis, a town on coast of the Black Sea (in what is now Romania). The reason for his exile has been the subject of much debate. Ovid himself leaves tantalisingly few clues. He was exiled, he tells us, for two reasons: ‘a poem and a mistake’. Or, as Ovid wrote in Latin: carmen et error.
In the next activity, you will have a go at a task that many scholars working on Ovid today still find difficult: establishing the events of Ovid’s life. The outline that you will create in Activity 6 will show you what most scholars think happened to Ovid, but you should bear in mind that there is very little evidence for his life outside of his poems. As you work through this activity, think critically about each of the pieces of information you have been given. Which of them do you think are real, and which might Ovid have exaggerated or perhaps even made up in order to make his life seem more interesting to his readers?
Activity 6 Ovid: a life
Place these events in Ovid’s life into the order in which you think they might have happened, starting with the poet’s birth. You can use any of the information you have learned so far in this course to help you – and by reading the descriptions of the events carefully you will also find some clues!
Using the following two lists, match each numbered item with the correct letter.
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20 March, 43 BCE, Ovid is born in Sulmo, Italy. The date is well known because Ovid was born two years after Julius Caesar had put in place a new calendar, the Julian calendar.
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8 CE, Ovid’s is exiled (or so he says!) to Tomis. By the time of his exile he had written the Metamorphoses and was working on a poem called the Fasti, about the Roman calendar and its religious holidays.
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As a young man, Ovid started out on a political career but quickly abandoned it, committing his life instead to poetry.
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Ovid died in Tomis around 17/18 CE.
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After establishing himself as a love poet, Ovid wrote didactic poetry, which was designed to educate his readers (although the educational content of this poetry often concerned scandalous themes!). Famous works from this period include Ars Amatoria (‘The Art of Love’) and Remedia Amoris (‘Cures for Love’).
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Early in his career, Ovid was famous for his poetry about love and sex. He wrote a book of love poems called the Amores, and also wrote the Heroides (‘The Heroines’). In the Heroides, Ovid often took up the point of view of famous women characters from myth (like Medea and Phaedra) and imagined what they would write to their lovers.
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After Ovid’s exile his work changed dramatically. He wrote the Tristia (‘Sadnesses’) and Epistulae Ex Ponto (‘Letters from the Black Sea’), attempting to convince the emperor to bring him back to Rome.
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19 BCE, death of two of Rome’s most famous poets, Virgil and Tibullus.
Match each of the previous list items with an item from the following list:
a.6
b.5
c.4
d.3
e.7
f.8
g.1
h.2
- 1 = g,
- 2 = a,
- 3 = h,
- 4 = f,
- 5 = b,
- 6 = c,
- 7 = e,
- 8 = d
So far you have followed the path that Ovid himself sets out for you in the opening lines of his poem, ‘from creation to my own time’. Now, you will move on from the first major act of transformation in the Metamorphoses (i.e. the creation of the world out of nothing) to the second: the metamorphosis of humans out of clay.