This date in 43 BC was the birthdate of Ovid. 10 things you might not know about him:
Who was Ovid, anyway? He was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus, a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace. These poets are the three canonical poets of Latin literature.
His real name was Publius Ovidius Naso.
Most of what we know about him comes from his own work, as he wrote more about his life than most Roman poets did. In particular, his poem Tristia gives a lengthy autobiographical account of his life.
He was born in a town called Sulmo, now known as Sulmona, east of Rome.
His father had him and his brother educated in rhetoric. Ovid’s father wanted him to practice law and rhetoric was needed for that. Owever, when Ovid’s brother died at the age of 20, Ovid went off the rails. He gave up his study of law and went travelling. He went to Athens, Asia Minor, and Sicily, taking minor public posts along the way. Eventually he resigned these to concentrate on writing poetry, much to his father’s disapproval.
He married three times and had divorced twice by the time he was thirty.
Ovid is most famous for the Metamorphoses, a mythological narrative in fifteen books, one of the most important sources of classical mythology today. However, he wrote a lot of other stuff including a tragedy about Medea, which the Roman rhetorician Quintilian thought was among his finest work, but it hasn’t survived, so we’ll never know. He also wrote a poem called the Medicamina Faciei, which was about women's beauty treatments.
He spent the last few years of his life in a place called Tomis, on the Black Sea, which is in what is now Romania. According to Ovid’s own words, he was banished there by the Emperor Augustus for a "poem and a mistake", but doesn’t elaborate on that, so speculation is rife. The poem bit is generally assumed to be one called Ars Amatoria, or the art of love, which was about adultery. Augustus was particularly concerned with loose morals in Rome at the time and promoted monogamous marriage and having lots of babies, so Ovid was going against that narrative. As for the “mistake”, theories include ogling the Emperor’s wife when she was naked or having sex with the Emperor’s granddaughter.
Ovid has been described as the originator of the dramatic monologue form, a style Tennyson and Browning would be famous for two thousand years later.
It’s also thought Ovid was a massive influence on William Shakespeare, who would have studied his works at school. There’s a fair bit in Shakespeare’s work about metamorphosis, people changing into other people and into things, which was a recurring theme in Metamorphoses.
Beta
(Combat Team Series #2)
Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?
Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.
Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.
Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.
Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.
Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.
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