Ovid
43–17
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BC – AD 17/18) was a Roman poet born in Sulmo, in central Italy. He was the most popular poet of Augustan Rome, until the emperor banished him in AD 8 to Tomis on the Black Sea, where he died.
His love poetry — the Amores, Ars Amatoria and Heroides — is witty and playful. His masterpiece, the Metamorphoses, retells some 250 myths of transformation, from Apollo and Daphne to Pyramus and Thisbe, and has inspired artists and writers from Chaucer and Shakespeare to the present.