Metamorfoses

Publius Ovidius Naso was born in Sulmo, present-day Sulmona, on March 20, 43 BC. He quickly entered the literary circles of Rome and became close to the best poets of the time. Thus began his journey into love and erotic poetry, which would lead him, successively, to compose the Heroides, the Art of Love, the Remedies Against Love, and the Treatments for the Beauty of Women. In the midst of such great success, and when nothing foreshadowed it, a harsh blow of fortune struck him, sudden and unexpected: Augustus, in 8 BC, expelled him from Rome and condemned him to exile in Tomis, on the borders of the Empire, in present-day Romania. And, already in Tomis, he composed letters addressed to his wife, friends, and family who remained in Rome. He organized them into two collections: the Tristes, first, or perhaps, in a more faithful translation, Songs of Sorrow, and later, the Letters from Pontus. Both abound with poems of lament, of sadness, a sickly and monotonous song of one who feels inspiration fleeing him for anything other than the celebration of his own pain. The aesthetic quality of these poems has divided scholars; be that as it may, however, the truth is that, with these collections, Ovid inaugurated a new modality of poetry, which we could, without exaggeration, call the "poetics of exile".