Publius Ovidius Naso was born in Italy on 20 March 43 BC. He was educated in Rome and worked as a public official before taking up poetry full-time. His earliest surviving work is the collection of love poems called the Amores, which was followed by the Heroides. The Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) and the Remedia Amoris (The Cure for Love) were probably written between 2 BC and 2 AD. These were followed by his two epic poems the Fasti and the Metamorphoses. In 8 AD Ovid fell out of favour with the Emperor Augustus due to a 'carmen et error' ('a poem and a mistake') and was banished to what is now Romania. While in exile he wrote Tristia, Ibis and the Epistulae ex Ponto which consists of letters appealing for help in his efforts to be recalled to Rome. Ovid died in exile in 18 AD.
Publius Ovidius Naso, known to the English world as Ovid, was born in 43 BC in the Abruzzo, Italy, studied oratory in Rome and travelled to Greece. Intended for public career, he instead devoted himself to poetry. Amongst his other works are the Amores (loves), Heroides (heroines) and the Arts Amatoria (art of love). For reasons which remain unclear, he was banished to the Black Sea by the Emperor Augustus in AD 8. Grief-stricken, he composed there his Tristia (elegies). He was never allowed to return to Rome, and died in exile in AD 17. TRANSLATOR BIOGRAPHY- Allen Mandelbaum was born in 1926 and died in 2011. His translations of Homer, Dante, Virgil, Quasimodo and Ungaretti have all been published to great critical acclaim. For the Aeneid he won the National Book Award. He is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Humanities at Wake Forest University, North Carolina. INTRODUCER BIOGRAPHY- Formerly a Research Fellow and Senior Tutor at the University of Cambridge, J.C. McKeown is now Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His publications include a commentary on Ovid's Amores and A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities. He is currently working on The Oxford Anthology of Roman Literature which will be published in summer 2013.
