Ovid was born on 20 March 43 BCE in Sulmona. A Roman poet of the Augustan age, Publius Ovidius Naso came from Sulmo, east of Rome, and became famous for elegiac poems of love such as the Amores and the Ars Amatoria. His masterpiece, the Metamorphoses, is a long hexameter poem retelling Greek and Roman myths of transformation, and it became a major source of stories for later European art and literature. In 8 CE the emperor Augustus banished him to Tomis on the Black Sea, in present-day Romania, for reasons Ovid described only as a poem and a mistake. He wrote the Tristia and Letters from the Black Sea in exile and never saw Rome again.
Before and after
- 1 January 45 BCEThe Julian calendar takes effect
- 17 March 45 BCEBattle of Munda
- 44 BCEDiscovery of Caesar's Comet
- 15 March 44 BCEDeath of Julius Caesar
- 20 March 43 BCEBirth of Ovid
- 7 December 43 BCEDeath of Cicero
- 16 November 42 BCEBirth of Tiberius
- from 37 BCE to 668 CEGoguryeo
- 2 September 31 BCEOctavian defeats Antony and Cleopatra at Actium
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- 196 BCERosetta Stone
- 48 CEPublication of Epistle to the Galatians
The era
This moment belongs to the Ancient civilizations (3,200 BCE to 500 CE), writing, cities and empires. You can also browse everything in the 1st century BCE.