![]() ![]() Around 1 CE he embarked on the larger-scale elegiacs of the Fasti and his epic Metamorphoses. There followed many innovative amatory compositions in elegiacs (erotodidaxis, epistles). His first compositions were innovative amatory elegiac poetry, and he was soon moving in the literary circle associated with Valerius Messalla Corvinus. After studying rhetoric at Rome and Athens and beginning an official career in minor judicial posts, he renounced public life for poetry around the age of twenty. Ovid tells us he was the second son of an established and wealthy family of equestrian rank. The chief source for his life is his own “autobiographical” poem, Tristia 4.10 and elsewhere (no ancient “life” remains see Kraus 1968 for sources, and Holzberg 1997 for cautious evaluation). Publius Ovidius Naso was born on 20 March 43 BCE in Sulmo (modern Sulmona) a town in the Abruzzi, some 90 miles (54 kilometers) east of Rome. ![]()
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