In the melancholy elegies of the Tristia and the Ex Ponto, Ovid (43 BCE 17 CE) writes as from exile in Tomis on the Black sea, appealing to such people as his wife and the emperor.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BCE-17 CE), born at Sulmo, studied rhetoric and law at Rome. Later he did considerable public service there, and otherwise devoted himself to poetry and to society. Famous at first, he offended the emperor Augustus by his Ars Amatoria, and was banished because of this work and some other reason unknown to us, and dwelt in the cold and primitive town of Tomis on the Black Sea. He continued writing poetry, a kindly man, leading a temperate life. He died in exile.
Ovid's main surviving works are the Metamorphoses, a source of inspiration to artists and poets including Chaucer and Shakespeare; the Fasti, a poetic treatment of the Roman year of which Ovid finished only half; the Amores, love poems; the Ars Amatoria, not moral but clever and in parts beautiful; Heroides, fictitious love letters by legendary women to absent husbands; and the dismal works written in exile: the Tristia, appeals to persons including his wife and also the emperor; and similar Epistulae ex Ponto. Poetry came naturally to Ovid, who at his best is lively, graphic and lucid.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Ovid is in six volumes.
... Humphries has rendered (Ovid s) love poetry with conspicuous success into English which is neither obtrusively colloquial nor awkwardly antique. Virginia Quarterly Review
This cohesive collection of stories from Greek and Roman mythology recounts tales of recorded transformations. Comprised of over fifty stories, it chronicles the legends of King Midus, Daedalus, Icarus, Hercules, and the Trojan War, making this the definitive work of classical mythology.
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