Publius Ovidius Naso
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.
“Give me the waters of Lethe that numb the heart, if they exist, I will still not have the power to forget you.”
“It's a kindness that the mind can go where it wishes.”
“Our native soil draws all of us, by I know not what sweetness, and never allows us to forget.”
“He plunged his arms deep to embraceOne who vanished in agitated water.Again and again he kissed The lips that seemed to be rising to kiss hisBut dissolved, as he touched them,Into a soft splash and a shiver of ripples.How could he clasp and caress his own reflection?And still he could not comprehend What the deception was, what the delusion.He simply became more excited by it.Poor misguided boy! Why clutch so vainlyAt such a brittle figment? What you hopeTo lay hold of has no existence.Look away and what you love is nowhere.”
“Look at the four-spaced yearThat imitates four seasons of our lives;First Spring, that delicate season, bright with flowers,Quickening, yet shy, and like a milk-fed child,Its way unsteady while the countrymanDelights in promise of another year.Green meadows wake to bloom, frail shoots and grasses,And then Spring turns to Summer's hardiness,The boy to manhood. There's no time of yearOf greater richness, warmth, and love of living,New strength untried. And after Summer, Autumn,First flushes gone, the temperate season hereMidway between quick youth and growing age,And grey hair glinting when the head turns toward us, Then senile Winter, bald or with white hair,Terror in palsy as he walks alone.”
“Omnia mutantur, nihil interit (everything changes, nothing perishes).”
“Today is truly the Golden Age: gold buys hornor, gold procures love”
“Nitimur in vetitum" -- "We strive after the forbidden”
“amor crevit tempore”
“When all the other animals, downcast looked upon the earth, he [Prometheus] gave a face raised on high to man, and commanded him to see the sky and raise his high eyes to the stars.”