Ovid

Hello! My name is Ovid, and I was a poet in ancient Rome. I was born in a town called Sulmo on March 20th, in the year 43 BCE. My family wanted me to study law and become a politician, which was a very important job. But my heart was filled with words, not rules! Instead of writing speeches for my studies, I found myself dreaming up poems and exciting stories in my head.

When I grew up, I moved to the big, busy city of Rome. There, I decided to follow my heart and become a full-time poet. I wrote about love, grand adventures, and the amazing myths of gods and goddesses that everyone loved to hear. My most famous book was called Metamorphoses. That’s a big word that means 'transformations' or 'changes.' It was a giant collection of stories about how people and things changed into something new, like a girl turning into a spider or a man getting wings to fly!

I was very popular in Rome, and many people read my work. But one day, the emperor, a powerful man named Augustus, became unhappy with me and one of my poems. In the year 8 CE, he told me I had to leave Rome for good. He sent me to live in a faraway town called Tomis, right by the Black Sea. I was very sad to leave my home. I had to say goodbye to my family and all of my friends, and I missed Rome every single day.

Even though I was far from home, I never stopped writing. I wrote many poems about how much I missed my beloved city. I lived to be about 60 years old. Though I never got to return to Rome, my stories traveled all over the world. For more than two thousand years, people have read my poems and my book of myths, and I am happy my words can still take you on an adventure.