He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace , with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. Ovid himself attributed his banishment to a "poem and a mistake", but his reluctance to disclose specifics has resulted in much speculation among scholars.
Ovid is most famous for the Metamorphoses , a continuous mythological narrative in fifteen books written in dactylic hexameters. 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 today. Ovid wrote more about his own life than most other Roman poets. Information about his biography is drawn primarily from his poetry, especially Tristia 4.
Other sources include Seneca the Elder and Quintilian. Ovid was born in the Paelignian town of Sulmo modern-day Sulmona , in the province of L'Aquila , Abruzzo , in an Apennine valley east of Rome , to an important equestrian family, the gens Ovidia , on 20 March 43 BC β a significant year in Roman politics.
His father wanted him to study rhetoric so that he might practice law. According to Seneca the Elder, Ovid tended to the emotional, not the argumentative pole of rhetoric. Following the death of his brother at 20 years of age, Ovid renounced law and travelled to Athens , Asia Minor , and Sicily. Ovid's first recitation has been dated to around 25 BC, when he was eighteen. In Tristia 4.
He only barely met Virgil and Tibullus , a fellow member of Messalla's circle, whose elegies he admired greatly. He married three times and had divorced twice by the time he was thirty. He had one daughter and grandchildren through her.
