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In Our Time: Ovid

29/04/2021

Ovid

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Ovid

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most influential poets of Rome's Augustan Age.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet whose influence is arguably greater than any poet of the classical age, besides Homer, even though his writing led to his exile.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (43BC-17/18AD) who, as he described it, was destroyed by 'carmen et error', a poem and a mistake.  His works have been preserved in greater number than any of the poets of his age, even Virgil, and have been among the most influential.  The versions of many of the Greek and Roman myths we know today were his work, as told in his epic Metamorphoses and, together with his works on Love and the Art of Love, have inspired and disturbed readers from the time they were created. Despite being the most prominent poet in Augustan Rome at the time, he was exiled from Rome to Tomis on the Black Sea Coast where he remained until he died.   It is thought that the 'carmen' that led to his exile was the Art of Love, Ars Amatoria, supposedly scandalising Augustus, but the 'error' was not disclosed.

With 

Maria Wyke
Professor of Latin at University College London

Gail Trimble
Brown Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Trinity College at the University of Oxford

And 

Dunstan Lowe
Senior Lecturer in Latin Literature at the University of Kent


Producer: Simon Tillotson

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