Common name for Publius Ovidius Naso, one of the most prolific poets during Rome's Golden Age. He is best known for penning "Metamorphoses" in A.D. 8.

Born in the region of Sulmo, Ovid was intended by his father for a political career, but instead went to Rome at an early age and began to study the literature and poetry there. By the time he was twenty, he was reading his work publicly, and his success grew for decades until, at the age of fifty, he was exiled to the town of Tomis by then-Emperor Augustus for reasons which to this day remain unclear.

Ovid's poetry falls into three divisions: the works of his youth, of his middle age, and of his years in exile. They include:

All the poetry of Ovid is composed in the elegiac couplet, with the exception of the Metamorphoses and the Halieutica, both of which are in dactylic hexameter.