Ovid

The works composed during the period of Ovid's exile are pervaded by melancholy and introspection. They include the Tristia, five books of elegies that describe his unhappy existence at Tomis and appeal to the clemency of Augustus; the Epistulae ex Ponto, poetic letters similar in theme to the Tristia; the Ibis, a short invective invoking destruction on a personal enemy; and the Halieutica, a poem extant only in fragments. The Nux and the Consolatio ad Liviam are usually considered spurious. With the exception of the Metamorphoses and the fragmentary Halieutica, both of which are written in the dactylic hexameter metre, all the poetry of Ovid is composed in the elegiac couplet, a metre that he brought to its highest degree of perfection.

The popularity of Ovid during his lifetime continued after his death, despite the emperor Augustus banning his works from public libraries. His influence was strong in the Middle Ages, his writing affecting scholars, poets, and troubadours. When the concept of “courtly love” was developed in France, it was Ovid's influence that dominated the Roman de la Rose, the book in which its philosophy was expounded. His popularity increased during the Renaissance. Ludovico Ariosto and Giovanni Boccaccio, in Italy, and Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower, in England, found in his mythological narratives a rich quarry of romantic tales. Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Milton, and many other English poets were indebted to him.