Ovid

Born in 43 BCE in Sulmo, east of Rome, Ovid was educated for public life but chose poetry instead. He became one of the great voices of Augustan Rome, writing playful and polished works on love, including the Amores and the Ars Amatoria, before turning to his vast mythological masterpiece, the Metamorphoses.

Around 8 CE, he was suddenly banished by Emperor Augustus to Tomis on the Black Sea, far from the literary world in which he had thrived. Ovid described the punishment as the result of "a poem and a mistake," though the exact reason is still uncertain.

In exile he kept writing, especially in the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, poems filled with grief, longing, and appeals for recall. He died in 17 or 18 CE, but his storytelling, emotional range, and gift for transformation made him one of the most influential poets in the Western tradition.