illinoisrbml:“A poem and a mistake”On January 2nd in either 17 or 18 AD, the Romanpoet Ovid died. Ov
illinoisrbml:“A poem and a mistake”On January 2nd in either 17 or 18 AD, the Romanpoet Ovid died. Ovid spent the last years of his life in exile in a remoteprovince on the Black Sea, sent there by Augustus for what Ovid described as“carmen et error” or, “a poem and a mistake”. While Ovid hints at why he wasexiled in his work, the true reason behind his exile is not known. Born in 43BCE, Ovid was a massively popular Roman poet, known for writing poetry inelegiac meter with erotic themes. Today, he is remembered as one of Rome’scanonical poets, along with Virgil and Horace, and is best known for his Metamorphoses, an important source ofclassical mythology.This illuminated manuscript comes from 15th-centuryItaly. In it, various poems – mostly by Ovid – are copied down in Latin withornamental borders and gold-ruled edges. Passages pictured above come fromOvid’s Trista (“Sorrows”), Heroides (“The Heroines”), and Epistulae ex Ponto (“Letters from the Black Sea”). While Heroides come from an earlier part of Ovid’s career, Trista and Epistulae ex Ponto were written while he was in exile, and theirsomber subject matter reflects Ovid’s inner turmoil during that time.Ovid, P. OuidiiNasonis desue tristitiae conquestione liber primus. Italy: 1400-1499?. Pre-1650MS 0020. -- source link