(b Sulmo [now Sulmona, Italy], 43 bce; d Tomis [now Constanţa, Romania], 17 ce). Roman poet.
Ovid was born into a family of equestrian rank and educated for public life, but as a young man he decided on a literary career. He first attracted attention with his light, sophisticated love elegies, the Amores. His Heroides, love letters written between mythological figures, and Ars amatoria established him by the time he was 40 as the leading exponent of Roman wit and elegance. His masterpiece is the Metamorphoses (see Pan; Syrinx), a vast collection of legends and mythology using the theme of change as a unifying device. In 8ce he was exiled by Augustus for some unknown indiscretion. He spent the last years of his life pining for Rome in the Black Sea fishing village of Tomis, where he wrote the Tristia and Epistulae ex ponto (‘Letters from the Black Sea’).
His work is of some musical significance. In the Tristia he mentioned that some of his poems were performed in the pantomime, although they were not intended for it. Medea, a lost drama presumably had musical portions. A passage in the Amores suggests that he may have played the lyre on occasion. Wille argued strongly that Roman lyric and elegiac poetry in general, and that of Ovid in particular, was regularly sung. Most classicists, however, maintain the view that, unlike Greek lyric poetry, it was recited rather than sung.
Ovid has provided inspiration, notably through the Heroides and Metamorphoses, for European literature (from the 12th century) and eventually a wide range of music. Letters in the Heroides from Penelope to Ulysses, Phaedra to Hippolytus, Dido to Aeneas, Ariadne to Theseus, Medea to Jason, and the epistolary exchanges between Paris and Helen, Leander and Hero were absorbed by many librettists and composers. The Metamorphoses became a main source for works treating the myths of Greece and Rome, particularly involving such characters as Acis and Galatea, Apollo and Hyacinth, Ariadne, Daphne, Echo and Narcissus, Hercules, Medea, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion, Venus and Adonis.
In Rinuccini's libretto Dafne, set by Jacopo Peri and Jacopo Corsi (Carnival 1598), Marco da Gagliano (1608) and (in translation) Schütz (1627), Ovid actually delivers the prologue. Other Ovidian operas are Cornacchioli's Diana schernita (1629); Gli amori d'Apollo e di Dafne by Cavalli (1640); the Venus and Adonis of Blow (c1683); Rameau's Pigmalion (1748); Galuppi's Arianna e Teseo (1763 and 1769); the Paride ed Elena of Gluck (1770); Auber's Actéon (1836); Héro et Léandre by Augusta Holmès (1875); settings of Boito's Ero et Leandre by Bottesini (1879) and Luigi Mancinelli (1896); Pizzetti's projects for an Apollo and Leda (c1900); a one-act poème lyrique, Hélène, by Saint-Saëns (1904); the Narcissus of Rebikov (1913); and Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos (1912 and 1916) and Daphne (1938). Further dramatic works are the festa teatrale Ercole in Tebe of Boretti (1670), and an Actéon pastorale by M.-A. Charpentier (1683–5), with a Metamorphoses ballet by Maximilian Steinberg (1914). In a genre of their own are Handel's Apollo e Dafne (c1708), Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (1708), Acis and Galatea (1718) and Hercules (1745). Vocal settings have been as diverse as Mudarra's songs with vihuela accompaniment (1546) and a Tarantella chorus by Elliott Carter (1936). Instrumental works include Dittersdorf's 3 symphonies exprimant 3 métamorphoses d'Ovide and Six Metamorphoses after Ovid for solo oboe by Britten (1951).
G. Wille: Musica romana (Amsterdam, 1967), 282–6
S.E. Hinde: ‘Ovid’, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (Oxford, 3/1996)
JAMES McKINNON (1), ROBERT ANDERSON (2)