The elegiac couplet is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, adopted the same form in Latin many years later. As with the English heroic couplet, each pair of lines usually makes sense on its own, while forming part of a larger work.
Publius Ovidius Naso, known in English as Ovid, 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. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus banished him to Tomis, a Dacian province on the Black Sea, where he remained a decade until his death.
Domitius Marsus was a Latin poet, friend of Virgil and Tibullus, and contemporary of Horace.
Nicander of Colophon, Greek poet, physician and grammarian, was born at Claros, near Colophon, where his family held the hereditary priesthood of Apollo. He flourished under Attalus III of Pergamum.
Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus was a Roman general, author, and patron of literature and art.
Caius Pedo Albinovanus, sometimes known as Albinovanus Pedo, was a Roman poet who flourished during the Augustan age.
GrattiusFaliscus was a Roman poet who flourished during the life of Augustus. He is known as the author of a Cynegeticon, a poem on hunting.
Sextus Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet of the Augustan age. He was born around 50–45 BC in Assisium and died shortly after 15 BC.
Marcus Valerius Messalla Messallinus was a Roman senator who was elected consul for 3 BC.
The Tristia is a collection of letters written in elegiac couplets by the Augustan poet Ovid during his exile from Rome. Despite five books of his copious bewailing of his fate, the immediate cause of Augustus's banishment of the most acclaimed living Latin poet to Pontus in AD 8 remains a mystery. In addition to the Tristia, Ovid wrote another collection of elegiac epistles on his exile, the Epistulae ex Ponto. He spent several years in the outpost of Tomis and died without ever returning to Rome.
Epistulae ex Ponto is a work of Ovid, in four books. It is a collection of letters describing Ovid's exile in Tomis written in elegiac couplets and addressed to his wife and friends. The first three books were composed between 12–13 AD, according to the general academic consensus: "none of these elegies contains references to events falling outside that time span". The fourth book is believed to have been published posthumously.
Troesmis was an ancient Roman legionary fortress, a major site situated on the Danube and forming a key part of the Limes Moesiae frontier system. Around this fortress the Geto-Dacian town later developed. It was situated in what is now Romania near Igliţa-Turcoaia. Between 107 and 161, it was the home of the Roman Legio V Macedonica. Notitia Dignitatum shows that during 337–361, it was the headquarters of Legio II Herculia.
The Heroides, or Epistulae Heroidum, is a collection of fifteen epistolary poems composed by Ovid in Latin elegiac couplets and presented as though written by a selection of aggrieved heroines of Greek and Roman mythology in address to their heroic lovers who have in some way mistreated, neglected, or abandoned them. A further set of six poems, widely known as the Double Heroides and numbered 16 to 21 in modern scholarly editions, follows these individual letters and presents three separate exchanges of paired epistles: one each from a heroic lover to his absent beloved and from the heroine in return.
GaiusPomponius Graecinus was a Roman politician who was suffect consul in AD 16 as the colleague of Gaius Vibius Rufus. He was probably a novus homo raised to the Senate by Augustus. He was a friend and patron of the poet Ovid, who addressed three letters of his Epistulae ex Ponto to him around AD 10.
Sabinus was a Latin poet and friend of Ovid. He is known only from two passages of Ovid's works.
Paullus Fabius Maximus was a Roman senator, active toward the end of the first century BC. He was consul in 11 BC as the colleague of Quintus Aelius Tubero, and a confidant of emperor Augustus.
Angelo Sabino or in Latin Angelus Sabinus was an Italian Renaissance humanist, poet laureate, classical philologist, Ovidian impersonator, and putative rogue.
Ovid, the Latin poet of the Roman Empire, was banished in 8 AD from Rome to Tomis by decree of the emperor Augustus. The reasons for his banishment are uncertain. Ovid's exile is related by the poet himself, and also in brief references to the event by Pliny the Elder and Statius. At the time, Tomis was a remote town on the edge of the civilized world; it was loosely under the authority of the Kingdom of Thrace, and was superficially Hellenized. According to Ovid, none of its citizens spoke Latin, which as an educated Roman, he found trying. Ovid wrote that the cause of his exile was carmen et error, probably the Ars Amatoria and a personal indiscretion or mistake. The council of the city of Rome revoked his exile in December 2017, some 2000 years after his banishment.
Lucius Pomponius Flaccus was a Roman senator, who held a number of imperial appointments during the reign of Tiberius. He was consul in AD 17 with Gaius Caelius Rufus as his colleague.
The gens Turrania, occasionally written Turania or Tyrannia, was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens are first mentioned in the time of Varro, but none of them ever rose any higher than the praetorship.
