Ovid

The works composed during the period of Ovid's exile are pervaded by melancholy and despair. They include the Tristia, five books of elegies that describe his unhappy existence at Tomi and appeal to the mercy of Augustus; the Epistulae ex Ponto, poetic letters similar in theme to the Tristia; the Ibis, a short invective invoking destruction on a personal enemy; and the Halieutica, a poem extant only in fragments, about the local fish. The Nux and the Consolatio ad Liviam are usually considered wrongly attributed to Ovid. A poem written in Getic, the native language of Dacia, has not survived. With the exception of the Metamorphoses and the fragmentary Halieutica, both of which are in the dactylic hexameter meter, all the poetry of Ovid is composed in the elegiac couplet, a meter that he brought to its highest degree of perfection.

Ovid was one of the most influential of Roman poets during the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century) and the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century). Italian poets Ludovico Ariosto and Giovanni Boccaccio and English poets Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower found in his mythological narratives a rich source of romantic tales. English poets Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Milton, and many others were also influenced by him.