Publius Ovidius Naso was born at Sulmo, a small town about 90 miles (140 km) east of Rome. His family was old and respectable, and sufficiently well-to-do for his father to be able to send him and his elder brother to Rome to be educated. Ovid was thought to have the makings of a good orator, but he neglected his studies for the verse-writing that came so naturally to him. He spent some time at Athens to study and traveled in Asia Minor and Sicily. Afterward he dutifully held some minor judicial posts, but he soon decided that public life did not suit him.
translated into English verse under the direction of Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, William Congreve and other eminent hands