Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known as
Ovid in the
English-speaking world, was a
Roman poet who lived during the reign of
Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older
Virgil and
Horace with whom he is often ranked as one of the three
canonical poets of
Latin literature. The
Imperial scholar
Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. He enjoyed enormous popularity, but, in one of the mysteries of literary history, he was sent by Augustus into exile in a remote province on the
Black Sea, where he remained until his death. Ovid himself attributes
his exile to
carmen et error, "a poem and a mistake", but his discretion in discussing the causes has resulted in much speculation among scholars.