Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BCE – CE 17/18), known as Ovid (/ˈɒvɪd/) in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet best known for the Metamorphoses, a 15-book continuous mythological narrative written in the meter of epic, and for collections of love poetry in elegiac couplets, especially the Amores ("Love Affairs") and Ars Amatoria ("Art of Love"). His poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and greatly influenced Western art and literature. The Metamorphoses remains one of the most important sources of classical mythology.
Ovid is traditionally ranked alongside Virgil and Horace, his older contemporaries, as one of the three canonic poets of Latin literature. He was the first major Roman poet to begin his career during the reign of Augustus, and the Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. He enjoyed enormous popularity, but in one of the mysteries of literary history he was sent by Augustus into exile in a remote province on the Black Sea, where he remained until his death. Ovid himself attributes his exile to carmen et error, "a poem and a mistake", but his discretion in discussing the causes has resulted in much speculation among scholars.
Ovid's prolific poetry includes the Heroides, a collection of verse epistles written as by mythological heroines to the lovers who abandoned them; the Fasti, an incomplete six-book exploration of Roman religion with a calendar structure; and the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, two collections of elegies in the form of complaining letters from his exile. His shorter works include the Remedia Amoris ("Cure for Love"), the curse-poem Ibis, and an advice poem on women's cosmetics. He wrote a lost tragedy, Medea, and mentions that some of his other works were adapted for staged performance.
See also Ovide.
“Blemishes are hid by night and every fault forgiven; darkness makes any woman fair.”
“Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.”
“Qui non est hodie eras minus aptus erit. He who is not prepared today will be less so tomorrow. ”
“It is convenient that there be gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe there are.”
“In our play we reveal what kind of people we are”
“When he, whoever of the gods it was, had thus arranged in order and resolved that chaotic mass, and reduced it, thus resolved, to cosmic parts, he first moulded the Earth into the form of a mighty ball so that it might be of like form on every side … And, that no region might be without its own forms of animate life, the stars and divine forms occupied the floor of heaven, the sea fell to the shining fishes for their home, Earth received the beasts, and the mobile air the birds … Then Man was born:… though all other animals are prone, and fix their gaze upon the earth, he gave to Man an uplifted face and bade him stand erect and turn his eyes to heaven.”
“O gods, \ If any gods will listen, I deserve \ Punishment surely, I do not refuse it, \ But lest, in living, I offend the living, Offend the dead in death, drive me away \ From either realm, change me somehow, refuse me \ Both life and death! -- Myrrha, before being transformed into a tree”
“Happy are those who dare courageously to defend what they love.”
“Neither can the wave that has passed by be recalled, nor the hour which has passed return again.”
“We are ever striving after what is forbidden, and coveting what is denied us.”
“or that writing a poem you can read to no oneis like dancing in the dark.”
“For such a career I lacked both endurance and inclination:the stress of ambition left me cold,while the Muse, the creative spirit, was forever urging on methat haven of leisure to which I'd always leaned.The poets of those days I cultivated and cherished:for me, bards were so many gods.”
“Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim. (Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.)”
“Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.”
“Poetry comes fine spun from a mind at peace.”
“I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot to ask that they be years of youth. ”
“My purpose is to tell of bodies that have been changed into shapes of different kinds.”
“Fas est ab hoste doceri.One should learn even from one's enemies.”