Ovid Was Born
Rome's poet of love and transformation
In the Apennine town of Sulmo, Publius Ovidius Naso was born, the poet who would give the world the Metamorphoses, one of the most influential works in all of Western literature. Ovid's verses, filled with stories of gods and mortals transformed by love, desire, and fate, have inspired artists from Bernini to Shakespeare. His eventual exile by Augustus for mysterious reasons only deepened the mystique surrounding Rome's most imaginative storyteller.