Ovid in Tomis

Publius Ovidius Naso—in English everyone just calls him Ovid—was one of the greatest, and most popular, poets of the early days of imperial Rome. He wrote many poems before The Metamorphoses, but The Metamorphoses is his greatest work, and Ovid ended it with some heavy flattery of the Emperor Augustus: “Jove rules the Heavens, the Earth Augustus sways,” Ovid wrote, comparing Augustus to the god Jupiter (also known as Jove).

Yet shortly after the poem came out Augustus exiled Ovid to an...