ABSTRACT
Pvblivs Ovidivs Naso, usually called in English simply Ovid, was born in Sulmo, a town of the Paeligni, ninety Roman miles from Rome. His father, who was of the equestrian order, meant him to enter the service of the state, and so, after an elaborate education which included a visit to Athens, perhaps also to the near East, he settled in Rome and began a political career. His earliest works, erotic elegies of a kind made popular by Tibullus and Propertius, but written in a manner wholly his own, quickly won favour, and he became known, not only as an admirer of the older poets, most of whom he knew personally save Tibullus and Vergil, but as a leading poet himself. Nothing in Ovid’s character or writings indicates the slightest interest in politics or discontent with the existing government. Ovid’s testimony is that he wrote letters of heroines only, and that Sabinus wrote answers to some of them.
