Ovid
Overview
Publius Ovidius Naso known as Ovid in the English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

-speaking world, was a Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

 poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides
Heroides
The Heroides , or Epistulae Heroidum , are a collection of fifteen epistolary poems composed by Ovid in Latin elegiac couplets, and presented as though written by a selection of aggrieved heroines of Greek and Roman mythology, in address to their heroic lovers who have in some way mistreated,...

, Amores, and Ars Amatoria
Ars Amatoria
The Ars amatoria is an instructional love elegy in three books by the Roman poet Ovid, penned around 2 CE. It claims to provide teaching in three areas of general preoccupation: how and where to find women in Rome, how to seduce them, and how to prevent others from stealing them.-Background:After...

. He is also well known for the Metamorphoses, a mythological hexameter
Hexameter
Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter...

 poem; the Fasti
Fasti (poem)
The Fasti is a six-book Latin poem by Ovid believed to have been left unfinished when the poet was exiled to Tomis by the emperor Augustus in the year 8...

, about the Roman calendar; and the Tristia
Tristia
The Tristia is a collection of letters written in elegiac couplets by the Augustan poet Ovid during his exile from Rome. Despite five books of his copious bewailing of his fate, the immediate cause of Augustus's banishment of the greatest living Latin poet to Pontus in 8 AD remains a mystery...

and Epistulae ex Ponto
Epistulae ex Ponto
Epistulae ex Ponto is a work of Ovid, in four books. It is especially important for our knowledge of Scythia Minor in his time....

, two collections of poems written in exile on the Black Sea.
Quotations

Sic ego nec sine te nec tecum vivere possum.

Translation: So I can't live either without you or with you.

Exitus acta probat.

Translation: The result justifies the deed.

Resist beginnings; the prescription comes too late when the disease has gained strength by long delays.

Remedia Amoris, 91.

Qui finem quaeris amoris/Cedit amor rebus; res age, tutus eris.

Translation: Love yields to business. If you seek a way out of love, be busy; you'll be safe then.

Poetry comes fine-spun from a mind at peace.

Tristia, I, i, 39.

So long as you are secure you will count many friends; if your life becomes clouded you will be alone.

Tristia, I, ix, 5.

Cura quid expediat prius est quam quid sit honestum

It is annoying to be honest to no purpose.

Note too that a faithful study of the liberal arts humanizes character and permits it not to be cruel.

Ex Ponto, II, ix, 47.

The mind, conscious of rectitude, laughed to scorn the falsehood of report.

Fasti, IV, 311. Compare: "And the mind conscious of virtue may bring to thee suitable rewards", Virgil, The Aeneid, i, 604.

They come to see; they come that they themselves may be seen.

I, 99. Compare: "And for to see, and eek for to be seie", Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, "The Wif of Bathes Prologue", line 6134.

 
x
OK