“My mind is bent to tell of bodies changed into new forms.”
Metamorphoses, opening
Ovid retrained from law to poetry and wrote of love, myth and change. The Metamorphoses strings some 250 legends into one continuous poem, from the creation of the world to the deification of Julius Caesar.
His Fasti explains the Roman religious calendar month by month. In 8 CE Augustus exiled him to Tomis on the Black Sea, where he died. His absence from Rome is one of literature's enduring mysteries.
Legacy
Painters, playwrights and poets from Titian to Shakespeare to Kafka took their myths from Ovid first.