0:00:06 > 0:00:09Many writers in history have fallen foul of power.
0:00:11 > 0:00:13But only one became a legend.
0:00:16 > 0:00:21Exactly 2,000 years ago, in the year 17,
0:00:21 > 0:00:23the most famous poet in Rome
0:00:23 > 0:00:26died here in exile on the shores of the Black Sea
0:00:26 > 0:00:28in what's now Romania.
0:00:31 > 0:00:35He'd been sent here as punishment by the Emperor himself, Augustus,
0:00:35 > 0:00:37the most powerful man in the world.
0:00:42 > 0:00:46His crimes, he said, were a poem and a mistake.
0:00:48 > 0:00:50But though his works were condemned,
0:00:50 > 0:00:55he would become one of the most influential writers in the whole
0:00:55 > 0:00:57story of Western culture -
0:00:57 > 0:01:00the inspiration for Chaucer and Shakespeare,
0:01:00 > 0:01:02for Botticelli and Titian.
0:01:02 > 0:01:05Not to mention, believe it or not, Bob Dylan.
0:01:06 > 0:01:11This is the story of Publius Ovidius Naso -
0:01:11 > 0:01:13- Ovid.
0:01:13 > 0:01:17# Well my ship is in the harbour
0:01:17 > 0:01:20# And the sails are spread... #
0:01:20 > 0:01:24And Dylan's exile songs are just the latest in a 2,000-year tale of
0:01:24 > 0:01:29creation and reinvention, all inspired by Ovid.
0:01:29 > 0:01:33# Beyond here lies nothin'
0:01:33 > 0:01:36# Nothin' done and nothin' said. #
0:01:36 > 0:01:39MUSIC: Beyond Here Lies Nothin' by Bob Dylan
0:02:02 > 0:02:05This is Sulmona in central Italy, Ovid's hometown.
0:02:07 > 0:02:11Every year, they hold a festival here to celebrate his life and work.
0:02:11 > 0:02:13But this year is special.
0:02:13 > 0:02:16It's the 2000th anniversary of the poet's death.
0:02:16 > 0:02:18And in the square, by his statue,
0:02:18 > 0:02:21the crowds are waiting for the President of Italy himself.
0:02:21 > 0:02:27APPLAUSE
0:02:28 > 0:02:31And if you're wondering why all the fuss,
0:02:31 > 0:02:33you just have to remember that Ovid
0:02:33 > 0:02:35is one of the world's greatest poets.
0:02:35 > 0:02:36He's one of the immortals.
0:02:40 > 0:02:44He mined the ancient myths and gave them modern meanings.
0:02:44 > 0:02:48And ever since, his books, like The Art Of Love or The Metamorphosis,
0:02:48 > 0:02:51have been the most influential works in European literature.
0:02:51 > 0:02:56APPLAUSE
0:03:23 > 0:03:26And it's not just the great and good who are gathered here.
0:03:26 > 0:03:30Students have come from all over the world to celebrate him.
0:03:32 > 0:03:34And there are leading Ovid scholars, too.
0:03:34 > 0:03:39Ovid is probably the only ancient author who is really part of the
0:03:39 > 0:03:41creative discourse today.
0:03:46 > 0:03:49There are exhibitions, there are art works, there are ballet, films,
0:03:49 > 0:03:54music, theatre plays, which actually feed on Ovid,
0:03:54 > 0:03:57recreate Ovid in a completely imaginative
0:03:57 > 0:03:59and completely vital way,
0:03:59 > 0:04:02and that is really something that you can't say about some other
0:04:02 > 0:04:05enormously important ancient poets like Virgil, for instance.
0:04:05 > 0:04:07It just doesn't happen.
0:04:08 > 0:04:11The poet of love, the poet of change.
0:04:11 > 0:04:15More than any of the ancients, Ovid still feels like one of us.
0:04:15 > 0:04:19And the things he wrote about seem almost more relevant now than at any
0:04:19 > 0:04:21time since his own.
0:04:24 > 0:04:28In his poems, he left us an autobiography.
0:04:28 > 0:04:30And with the help of actor Simon Russell Beale,
0:04:30 > 0:04:33we're going to tell Ovid's life story in his own words.
0:04:36 > 0:04:39"So, who was this I that you read?
0:04:39 > 0:04:42"This trifler in tender human passions.
0:04:42 > 0:04:45"You want to know who I was, posterity?
0:04:46 > 0:04:48"Then listen.
0:04:50 > 0:04:52"Sulmona is my homeland.
0:04:53 > 0:04:57"Where ice cold mountain streams make lush pastures.
0:04:57 > 0:04:59"Just 90 miles from Rome.
0:05:02 > 0:05:04"I was born here to an ancient family.
0:05:06 > 0:05:08"It's no great place,
0:05:08 > 0:05:10"but the streams make health-giving
0:05:10 > 0:05:12"land where the grass grows green in fertile soil.
0:05:14 > 0:05:16"The acres are rich in corn and
0:05:16 > 0:05:19"fruit from the vineyards and silvery olive groves.
0:05:24 > 0:05:26"It's just a little town, whose
0:05:26 > 0:05:28"walls enclose no great domain of ground.
0:05:31 > 0:05:33"A place where one day, some
0:05:33 > 0:05:37"traveller may rest or some tourist take time to look around.
0:05:38 > 0:05:44"I'm reminded that a poet came from here, say, oh, little town, oh,
0:05:44 > 0:05:48"small estate, however unimportant you appear,
0:05:48 > 0:05:51"because of him, I'll call you truly great."
0:05:56 > 0:05:59Ovid was born here in 43 BCE.
0:05:59 > 0:06:02The son of a noble equestrian family,
0:06:02 > 0:06:05he had an idyllic childhood and a charmed youth.
0:06:10 > 0:06:12An upper-class Roman with land and wealth,
0:06:12 > 0:06:14his career was mapped out for him.
0:06:14 > 0:06:17A life of privilege, born to serve the state.
0:06:28 > 0:06:34And to do that, as Ovid tells the story, all roads led to Rome.
0:06:36 > 0:06:38"We began our education young,
0:06:38 > 0:06:42"sent by our father to study under the best teachers in Rome.
0:06:44 > 0:06:46"My brother was the gifted one.
0:06:46 > 0:06:49"Eloquent, born for a career in politics.
0:06:49 > 0:06:53"But me, even as a boy I held out for higher things."
0:07:00 > 0:07:04Ovid's father planned for him to get a government job in the Board of
0:07:04 > 0:07:07Prisons or the Treasury, and then the Senate itself.
0:07:13 > 0:07:15But Ovid was in love with words.
0:07:16 > 0:07:20Even as a boy, he dreamed of being a poet.
0:07:20 > 0:07:23And for an aspiring poet, too, there was only one place to be.
0:07:25 > 0:07:30"Rome - the city that from its seven hills scans the world's orbit.
0:07:31 > 0:07:35"Rome - centre of Empire, seat of the gods.
0:07:37 > 0:07:38"And now my home."
0:07:46 > 0:07:51In Ovid's teens, Rome was recovering from a savage civil war.
0:07:51 > 0:07:54The victor was Julius Caesar's nephew, Octavian,
0:07:54 > 0:07:58now the Emperor Augustus the majestic.
0:07:59 > 0:08:03Abroad, his legions would create a Pax Romana, a Roman peace.
0:08:04 > 0:08:07At home, wealth flowed into Rome,
0:08:07 > 0:08:11which Augustus transformed with huge building projects.
0:08:12 > 0:08:16And the poets saluted him as the founder of a new golden age.
0:08:17 > 0:08:20When Ovid first came to Rome, the world was his oyster.
0:08:20 > 0:08:23He was a young man with private means.
0:08:23 > 0:08:25He had a town house near the
0:08:25 > 0:08:29Palatine for his social life, which was busy,
0:08:29 > 0:08:33and a lovely villa out in the hills with a garden and an orchard,
0:08:33 > 0:08:36where he could work without distractions if he needed to.
0:08:37 > 0:08:44And as for the city itself, the palindrome, Roma - Amor -
0:08:44 > 0:08:50was of more than casual significance to his youthful post-war generation.
0:08:53 > 0:08:57What a time to be young, gifted and Roman.
0:08:57 > 0:09:04CLASSICAL VIOLIN SOLO
0:09:04 > 0:09:07It was also the golden age of Latin poetry,
0:09:07 > 0:09:09when a string of brilliant poets
0:09:09 > 0:09:12explored the very heart of the human condition.
0:09:17 > 0:09:19"The muse of poetry seduced me.
0:09:19 > 0:09:23"My father kept asking, why study such useless stuff?
0:09:24 > 0:09:29"I put on the striped toga, dressed for a life of privilege,
0:09:29 > 0:09:31"started on the ladder to a government job.
0:09:32 > 0:09:35"But that way lay a burden I could not bear.
0:09:37 > 0:09:41"The stress of ambition left me cold, but the muse,
0:09:41 > 0:09:44the creative spirit, urged me on."
0:09:49 > 0:09:52Poetry then was a performance art
0:09:52 > 0:09:55recited to music in the private houses of the rich.
0:09:56 > 0:10:01The Emperor himself had shed tears at Virgil's Roman epic The Aeneid.
0:10:01 > 0:10:06THEY RECITE IN ITALIAN
0:10:06 > 0:10:10Ovid was 16 when he first recited in public.
0:10:10 > 0:10:13RECITATION CONTINUES
0:10:13 > 0:10:15"The poets of those days were like gods to me.
0:10:17 > 0:10:19"Horace held us spellbound with his verses.
0:10:19 > 0:10:22"I saw Virgil, but I was next.
0:10:22 > 0:10:26SHE SINGS
0:10:28 > 0:10:30"When I first recited my poems in public,
0:10:30 > 0:10:33"my beard had only been shaved once or twice.
0:10:34 > 0:10:38"And she was the one who fired my genius.
0:10:38 > 0:10:41"She who is now a byword in Rome because of my verses.
0:10:41 > 0:10:45"The girl to whom I gave the pseudonym Corinna."
0:10:48 > 0:10:49"Hot noon,
0:10:49 > 0:10:51"and I was lying on my bed,
0:10:51 > 0:10:54"the window half open and the light
0:10:54 > 0:10:56"the way it is in woods when sun has fled.
0:10:56 > 0:11:00"Just the right kind of light.
0:11:00 > 0:11:04"And there, Corinna entered with her gown loosened a little,
0:11:04 > 0:11:08"and on either side of her white neck, the dark hair hanging down.
0:11:10 > 0:11:15"So soon she stood there naked and I saw perfection.
0:11:15 > 0:11:17"Beauty without flaw.
0:11:17 > 0:11:22"Naked I took her, naked till we lay worn out, done in.
0:11:23 > 0:11:27"Grant me, O gods, the boon of other sultry afternoons like this."
0:11:27 > 0:11:35APPLAUSE
0:11:36 > 0:11:40Ovid's audiences loved his youthful take on sex and passion.
0:11:41 > 0:11:45The self-deprecating jokes, the male bravado.
0:11:46 > 0:11:49And copies of his poems began to sell like hot cakes -
0:11:49 > 0:11:53readers avid for his words, burning with the fire of love.
0:11:55 > 0:11:59Today, we find the young Ovid's predatory view of sex shocking.
0:11:59 > 0:12:04But just when you think you know him, he gives us women's voices.
0:12:04 > 0:12:08He writes a book of imaginary letters from literary heroines.
0:12:08 > 0:12:11And the playboy of the love elegy
0:12:11 > 0:12:14becomes the poet of female suffering.
0:12:15 > 0:12:21In his early life, he writes about sex in a rather casual, ironical,
0:12:21 > 0:12:26man about town, male-gaze way, but this is different, isn't it?
0:12:26 > 0:12:30This is putting yourself in the shoes of the woman and a woman of
0:12:30 > 0:12:33experience and emotional depth.
0:12:33 > 0:12:37And to give the woman that intellectual agency
0:12:37 > 0:12:39is quite exciting.
0:12:39 > 0:12:40You know, a lot of the modern
0:12:40 > 0:12:43writers have missed a point there when they
0:12:43 > 0:12:47go back and take these Greek heroes, these women,
0:12:47 > 0:12:53that they tend to reduce them in size, where his scope is so vast.
0:12:59 > 0:13:01"O! How I wish that when Paris
0:13:01 > 0:13:05"sought Sparta with his ships, he had drowned in the angry seas.
0:13:05 > 0:13:08"Then I would not have had to lie here,
0:13:08 > 0:13:10"cold in an empty bed.
0:13:13 > 0:13:16"I have imagined dangers worse than any reality.
0:13:17 > 0:13:20"Love is a thing full of anxious fears.
0:13:21 > 0:13:23"I fear everything.
0:13:24 > 0:13:25"Insanely.
0:13:27 > 0:13:31"I don't know whether the sea holds the danger or the land,
0:13:31 > 0:13:35"but such long delays make me think that you want to stay away.
0:13:38 > 0:13:41"Could you be captive now in some foreign beauty?
0:13:42 > 0:13:46"Maybe you tell her that your wife is an innocent,
0:13:46 > 0:13:49"who stays at home spinning."
0:13:54 > 0:14:00When you go back and you read these gorgeous passages that are so
0:14:00 > 0:14:04fluid and bright and confident and
0:14:04 > 0:14:09intellectually sound and emotionally sound, you wonder -
0:14:09 > 0:14:11what are these later writers playing at here?
0:14:13 > 0:14:15What frightens them so?
0:14:18 > 0:14:21Ovid soon became a celebrity.
0:14:21 > 0:14:23He recited before the Emperor himself.
0:14:24 > 0:14:29But the Emperor had a very different view of what poets should do.
0:14:29 > 0:14:32Augustus' rule was becoming more and more dictatorial,
0:14:32 > 0:14:37and like other authoritarians, he wanted to create a moral society
0:14:37 > 0:14:39with conservative family values -
0:14:39 > 0:14:42to return to an idealised past.
0:14:46 > 0:14:49Recently, the houses of Augustus and
0:14:49 > 0:14:53his wife Livia have been excavated and restored.
0:14:53 > 0:14:58And now you can walk into the plain, austere rooms where Augustus lived,
0:14:58 > 0:15:04next door to the house of Rome's mythic founder, Romulus.
0:15:04 > 0:15:07The tiny bedroom where he slept for 40 years.
0:15:10 > 0:15:17He was in his 60s during the period of Ovid's fame and Ovid's fall.
0:15:17 > 0:15:21Clear-eyed, hard-bitten, experienced,
0:15:21 > 0:15:24ruthless when he needed to be.
0:15:24 > 0:15:29He was a man who believed in the old-fashioned virtues of strength
0:15:29 > 0:15:31and order, and believed that a
0:15:31 > 0:15:34strong man was best positioned to deliver them.
0:15:38 > 0:15:40Augustus thought morals and sexual
0:15:40 > 0:15:44behaviour should be controlled by the state.
0:15:44 > 0:15:46And not for the first or the last time,
0:15:46 > 0:15:49the dolce vita became a target for the moralisers.
0:15:55 > 0:15:58The Emperor Augustus was basically setting up a monarchy,
0:15:58 > 0:16:02and to try and distract attention from this, he had a whole programme
0:16:02 > 0:16:04of returning to traditional morals.
0:16:04 > 0:16:06Above all, traditional sexual morals.
0:16:08 > 0:16:10Augustus looked to people like Ovid,
0:16:10 > 0:16:13who was from the old Italian aristocracy,
0:16:13 > 0:16:15who were supposed to preserve the old values,
0:16:15 > 0:16:18to enter the Senate and to bolster these values.
0:16:20 > 0:16:22But Ovid wasn't having any of this.
0:16:22 > 0:16:25He was not interested in returning to older morals.
0:16:29 > 0:16:33Ovid refused to become a senator, actually gave up the career path,
0:16:33 > 0:16:35and wrote highly irreverent poetry,
0:16:35 > 0:16:41so when Augustus made adultery illegal, Ovid responded by writing
0:16:41 > 0:16:43a poem called The Art Of Love,
0:16:43 > 0:16:47which is entirely dedicated to teaching men how to seduce women.
0:16:47 > 0:16:51ACCORDION PLAYS
0:16:51 > 0:16:54The Art Of Love was a self-help seduction manual.
0:16:55 > 0:16:59But it was doubly subversive, because it satirised the Emperor's
0:16:59 > 0:17:02architectural vision for Rome,
0:17:02 > 0:17:07with his showpiece monuments now recommended in the poem as the best
0:17:07 > 0:17:09pick-up places.
0:17:09 > 0:17:13It's a poem about love and sex and seduction,
0:17:13 > 0:17:20with witty and practical tips on how and where to find and to consummate
0:17:20 > 0:17:22your dangerous liaisons.
0:17:22 > 0:17:25Places like this, the portico of Octavia,
0:17:25 > 0:17:28or the theatre of Marcellus.
0:17:28 > 0:17:29In Ovid's pages,
0:17:29 > 0:17:32the Emperor's grand design for the
0:17:32 > 0:17:35city becomes a kind of erotic memory map.
0:17:35 > 0:17:39And the immortal is turned into the immoral.
0:17:43 > 0:17:48"When the heat hits, seek shade and comfort under Pompey's colonnade.
0:17:49 > 0:17:51"And don't avoid Livia's portico,
0:17:51 > 0:17:53"adorned with the emperor's new tableau.
0:17:55 > 0:17:59"You pray for love, then this is fertile ground.
0:17:59 > 0:18:01"Whether you want to love or just to play,
0:18:01 > 0:18:04"you'll find a one-night stand or one who'll stay.
0:18:09 > 0:18:14"And remember, discreet sex pleases woman just as man.
0:18:14 > 0:18:17"She merely hides it better than he can.
0:18:20 > 0:18:22"They don't need provoking to their pleasure.
0:18:22 > 0:18:25"Women and men feel joy in equal measure.
0:18:29 > 0:18:32"Call me a prophet, young men.
0:18:32 > 0:18:36"Sing my praise, let my name be proclaimed in every place.
0:18:37 > 0:18:43"Conquer wherever you go, and if you win an Amazon with my sword,
0:18:43 > 0:18:47"mark on the spoils that Ovid is my lord."
0:18:59 > 0:19:03To speak to men in that way is not unusual, then or now.
0:19:04 > 0:19:05But Ovid addresses the next
0:19:05 > 0:19:08instalment of The Art Of Love to women.
0:19:09 > 0:19:12"Girls, take this lesson while I have still the wit,
0:19:12 > 0:19:15"if modesty or laws or rights permit.
0:19:15 > 0:19:18"Remember that old age arrives in haste.
0:19:18 > 0:19:22"Years like streams quickly flow to waste.
0:19:22 > 0:19:25"Youth is for using.
0:19:25 > 0:19:27"Soon it will run.
0:19:27 > 0:19:29"Nothing that follows it will be such fun."
0:19:31 > 0:19:34And with a growing number of women readers,
0:19:34 > 0:19:36why wouldn't you talk about their desires, too?
0:19:38 > 0:19:40That's very typical of Ovid.
0:19:40 > 0:19:43So there are two books addressed to men,
0:19:43 > 0:19:45then he writes a book addressed to women.
0:19:45 > 0:19:47He also writes the Remedia Amoris
0:19:47 > 0:19:50for the person who's followed the advice of those books,
0:19:50 > 0:19:54has fallen in love and realises they're totally miserable because
0:19:54 > 0:19:58elegiac love is miserable - it's about NOT getting the girl,
0:19:58 > 0:20:01NOT having a good time, being denied what you want.
0:20:01 > 0:20:06So Ovid writes a didactic manual on how to fall out of love as well.
0:20:06 > 0:20:09And I think that gives you some idea of how he's really keen to rework
0:20:09 > 0:20:13material to see new angles on it, to do something different.
0:20:13 > 0:20:16He just... He's endlessly inventive.
0:20:22 > 0:20:26Later, Ovid tried to persuade the Emperor that the art of love
0:20:26 > 0:20:28was only a bit of fun.
0:20:28 > 0:20:32But everyone could see the thinly veiled digs at the sex life
0:20:32 > 0:20:33of the Emperor's family.
0:20:36 > 0:20:41The Art Of Love was published here in Rome in the immediate aftermath
0:20:41 > 0:20:45of a sensational sex scandal which, embarrassingly,
0:20:45 > 0:20:48involved the Emperor himself.
0:20:48 > 0:20:51In the year 2 BCE, his only daughter Julia
0:20:51 > 0:20:54was exiled on charges of immorality.
0:20:54 > 0:20:57She'd had numerous affairs
0:20:57 > 0:21:01with several highborn and politically suspect lovers.
0:21:01 > 0:21:05For Ovid, whose poetry, after all, had condoned -
0:21:05 > 0:21:08well, encouraged - that kind of thing,
0:21:08 > 0:21:10the timing couldn't have been worse.
0:21:14 > 0:21:16That same year, the Senate had
0:21:16 > 0:21:18proclaimed Augustus Father of the Nation,
0:21:18 > 0:21:20the guardian of morals.
0:21:22 > 0:21:26Ovid's love lessons were increasingly out of step.
0:21:26 > 0:21:29He was Rome's star poet, but in the streets,
0:21:29 > 0:21:31people were starting to talk.
0:21:32 > 0:21:33He was making enemies.
0:21:35 > 0:21:38"Maybe you should turn to a more serious subject,"
0:21:38 > 0:21:40he wrote to himself.
0:21:40 > 0:21:42"Ovid, it's time to grow up."
0:21:43 > 0:21:46He started off as a love elegist.
0:21:46 > 0:21:51He wrote poems in which he professed his love for one woman,
0:21:51 > 0:21:54and later on, a series of women.
0:21:54 > 0:21:56And he wrote three books of the Amores.
0:21:56 > 0:22:00And then, I think he wanted to do something different.
0:22:03 > 0:22:05There's a real hierarchy of genres
0:22:05 > 0:22:08in antiquity, with epic right at the top.
0:22:08 > 0:22:13If you are an ambitious poet
0:22:13 > 0:22:15and you want your name to be known,
0:22:15 > 0:22:17you write an epic poem.
0:22:19 > 0:22:22Ambition probably is one of the things
0:22:22 > 0:22:24that led him to write the Metamorphoses.
0:22:27 > 0:22:28The Book Of Changes.
0:22:29 > 0:22:31It was six years in the writing,
0:22:31 > 0:22:34and it's one of the world's great poems.
0:22:36 > 0:22:37It's easy to forget what an
0:22:37 > 0:22:41incredibly ambitious book the Metamorphoses is.
0:22:41 > 0:22:46It's nothing less than the history of the cosmos in 15 books of poetry.
0:22:46 > 0:22:50It begins with the timeless pre-creation void
0:22:50 > 0:22:53and takes us to the making of the world.
0:22:53 > 0:22:57It goes from primordial mythology to human history.
0:22:57 > 0:23:01It tells all the great myths that every one of us should know.
0:23:01 > 0:23:07It's expressed in some Ovid's most beautiful poetry and he tells it
0:23:07 > 0:23:12with that characteristic confiding, playful voice.
0:23:14 > 0:23:18"I want to speak about bodies changed into new forms.
0:23:19 > 0:23:21"You gods, since you are the ones
0:23:21 > 0:23:23"who alter these and all other things,
0:23:23 > 0:23:28"inspire my attempt and spin out a continuous thread of words
0:23:28 > 0:23:31"from the world's first origins to my own time.
0:23:40 > 0:23:45"Now, since the sea's great surges sweep me on,
0:23:45 > 0:23:47"all canvas spread, hear me!
0:23:49 > 0:23:52"In all creation, nothing endures.
0:23:54 > 0:23:55"All is in endless flux.
0:23:57 > 0:24:00"Each wandering shape a pilgrim passing by.
0:24:01 > 0:24:04"And time itself glides on in ceaseless flow,
0:24:04 > 0:24:07"a rolling stream and streams can never stay.
0:24:07 > 0:24:11"And each pursued, pursues the wave ahead.
0:24:14 > 0:24:18"So time flies on and follows, flies and follows.
0:24:18 > 0:24:19"Always forever new.
0:24:21 > 0:24:27"What was before is left behind - what never was is now,
0:24:27 > 0:24:29"and every passing moment is renewed."
0:24:37 > 0:24:40In Ovid's poetic universe, nothing dies.
0:24:41 > 0:24:43Human beings are turned into
0:24:43 > 0:24:46animals, trees, flowers, constellations.
0:24:46 > 0:24:50And now, as we know, that all life is change.
0:24:50 > 0:24:53That everything that exists is connected.
0:24:53 > 0:24:56That creatures grieve and trees feel.
0:24:56 > 0:25:00Ovid speaks again to a new generation.
0:25:01 > 0:25:06There is no other poem in Latin, and very few poems in eastern literature
0:25:06 > 0:25:08which combine fantasy,
0:25:08 > 0:25:13creativity and intellectual originality to the same degree.
0:25:13 > 0:25:17The visual imagination of Ovid in the Metamorphoses,
0:25:17 > 0:25:20as well as the philosophical complexity of the poem,
0:25:20 > 0:25:22together are really unique.
0:25:22 > 0:25:25And I think they are a constant source of fascination
0:25:25 > 0:25:28for me, of course, but I think for generations of people before.
0:25:32 > 0:25:35One of the stories in the Metamorphoses is Actaeon,
0:25:35 > 0:25:37the young hunter who accidentally sees
0:25:37 > 0:25:41the goddess Diana, the Huntress, naked in her bath.
0:25:42 > 0:25:46For this innocent transgression, he's cruelly punished.
0:25:46 > 0:25:48The goddess turns him into a stag,
0:25:48 > 0:25:50and he's torn to pieces by his own hounds.
0:25:53 > 0:25:55Titian had a copy of Ovid by his side
0:25:55 > 0:25:58as he painted the very moment of transformation.
0:26:01 > 0:26:04It's an image of divine anger and human fate
0:26:04 > 0:26:06which has fascinated poets,
0:26:06 > 0:26:09painters and film-makers ever since.
0:26:14 > 0:26:16Well, many of the stories he tells
0:26:16 > 0:26:20deal with issues that one can see were not as popular perhaps
0:26:20 > 0:26:2450 years ago or 100 years ago, but they're crucial for us today.
0:26:28 > 0:26:32The issue of identity, the issue of the body,
0:26:32 > 0:26:34the issue of the relationship between
0:26:34 > 0:26:38the female and a male elements in the world and in society.
0:26:39 > 0:26:43Things like the transformation of nature, entropy,
0:26:43 > 0:26:47these are all topics that perhaps were not as popular in a different
0:26:47 > 0:26:49culture, in a post-romantic culture,
0:26:49 > 0:26:51immediately post-romantic culture,
0:26:51 > 0:26:53but they resonate with us today.
0:26:53 > 0:26:56Some of the de-structuring of the world that he describes
0:26:56 > 0:26:59is something that resonates with our imagination very well today.
0:27:04 > 0:27:06To the last horrible detail,
0:27:06 > 0:27:11Ovid asks us to imagine how the goddess changed Actaeon into a stag.
0:27:11 > 0:27:15Giving him horns, but leaving him with his human mind.
0:27:16 > 0:27:19And last of all, injecting him with dread.
0:27:21 > 0:27:25"Actaeon bolted, fleeing from the dogs who had served him faithfully,
0:27:25 > 0:27:28"longing to shout to them, 'Stop, it is I,
0:27:28 > 0:27:30"'Actaeon, your master. Do you not know me?'"
0:27:32 > 0:27:33"But no words followed.
0:27:34 > 0:27:38"All the sound he produced was a moan,
0:27:38 > 0:27:42"as the tears streamed down his strange new face."
0:27:44 > 0:27:46GUNSHOT
0:27:49 > 0:27:53The Metamorphoses fascinated Shakespeare and his contemporaries,
0:27:53 > 0:27:55and in Ovid's anniversary year,
0:27:55 > 0:27:58the RSC are staging some of the famous plays
0:27:58 > 0:27:59inspired by Ovid's tales.
0:28:00 > 0:28:04It has to be the most influential book of the entire Renaissance.
0:28:04 > 0:28:08If you think of all the artists that were influenced by it,
0:28:08 > 0:28:10from Titian to Bernini, to Cellini,
0:28:10 > 0:28:12to Rembrandt, and of course,
0:28:12 > 0:28:14Shakespeare right at the centre of it,
0:28:14 > 0:28:16it must have been his favourite book.
0:28:16 > 0:28:18I can't think of another
0:28:18 > 0:28:23book at all that appears twice in Shakespeare's plays as a prop!
0:28:23 > 0:28:25It actually appears in the plays.
0:28:25 > 0:28:28His tone of voice, almost alone among the ancients,
0:28:28 > 0:28:32still sounds really kind of modern, doesn't it?
0:28:32 > 0:28:36I think in some ways, and in some ways rather sadly,
0:28:36 > 0:28:44Ovid's Metamorphoses do chime and resonate with the modern era because
0:28:44 > 0:28:47their experience of violence is so particular.
0:28:47 > 0:28:52And I suppose it's about the extreme nature
0:28:52 > 0:28:54of attraction and obsession.
0:28:54 > 0:28:57He takes a human life and pushes it to the extreme
0:28:57 > 0:28:59and takes it beyond that.
0:28:59 > 0:29:02I mean, in the story of Apollo and Daphne,
0:29:02 > 0:29:06Daphne is turned into a laurel tree
0:29:06 > 0:29:10in order to escape the ravages of the gods.
0:29:10 > 0:29:13I mean there's no Christian consolation in any of these stories,
0:29:13 > 0:29:15is there? The gods are implacable, aren't they?
0:29:15 > 0:29:18They're implacable. Maybe this is why Shakespeare loves them.
0:29:18 > 0:29:21The gods are capricious, they're childish.
0:29:21 > 0:29:29And I think the violence is a really key element of those tales and,
0:29:29 > 0:29:34indeed, of their understanding that human nature
0:29:34 > 0:29:36contains that violence within it.
0:29:38 > 0:29:40Not content with controlling morals,
0:29:40 > 0:29:44the Emperor reformed time itself with a new calendar.
0:29:44 > 0:29:49Imperial festivals were inscribed on steles and Egyptian obelisks.
0:29:49 > 0:29:51August is named after him.
0:29:52 > 0:29:56And in response, Ovid writes a poem about the calendar,
0:29:56 > 0:30:00about Rome's festivals and myths, the Fasti.
0:30:00 > 0:30:02In it, he asks the gods themselves
0:30:02 > 0:30:05for the true story of time and its reasons.
0:30:07 > 0:30:11Ovid's muse now is Flora, the goddess of the good times.
0:30:13 > 0:30:16Her festival was for the common people.
0:30:16 > 0:30:21She stood for their rights and pleasures, not imperial propaganda.
0:30:23 > 0:30:25So what was Ovid up to?
0:30:25 > 0:30:30Flattering the now ageing Emperor, but still undermining him?
0:30:32 > 0:30:35Ovid seems to me very untrustworthy,
0:30:35 > 0:30:38very slippery throughout all of his works.
0:30:39 > 0:30:43I think there's a lot of subversion of the Emperor
0:30:43 > 0:30:48and the Emperor's ideas about what Rome should be like in there.
0:30:48 > 0:30:50And it's hard to take Ovid as
0:30:50 > 0:30:54sincerely singing the praises of Augustus a lot of the time.
0:30:54 > 0:30:59Not least because he gets in various unpleasant little digs at Augustus.
0:31:01 > 0:31:03So though Ovid, in the Fasti,
0:31:03 > 0:31:06appears to celebrate the Emperor's new calendar,
0:31:06 > 0:31:09he's also being subversive,
0:31:09 > 0:31:11and there's a clue even in his title.
0:31:12 > 0:31:15Well, the word Fasti has a curious ambiguity.
0:31:15 > 0:31:20In its root it means, "the things that are permitted."
0:31:20 > 0:31:21And through the poem,
0:31:21 > 0:31:26there are many references to the curtailment of freedom of speech.
0:31:27 > 0:31:29And in the year 8,
0:31:29 > 0:31:34when Ovid was just halfway through writing the poem, disaster struck.
0:31:38 > 0:31:42The cause of his downfall, Ovid wrote later, was twofold.
0:31:42 > 0:31:45A poem and a mistake.
0:31:45 > 0:31:48"And on the latter, my lips are sealed forever."
0:31:50 > 0:31:52The poem, we know, is the art of love.
0:31:52 > 0:31:55The mistake, we are not sure what it was.
0:31:56 > 0:31:58There are many theories.
0:31:58 > 0:32:00He perhaps was involved with adultery
0:32:00 > 0:32:03with Augustus's granddaughter.
0:32:03 > 0:32:05The most likely explanation is that he was somehow
0:32:05 > 0:32:09caught in the dynastic jostling to succeed Augustus.
0:32:11 > 0:32:15Perhaps there was a conspiracy and Ovid knew about it,
0:32:15 > 0:32:16and he'd failed to tell.
0:32:18 > 0:32:22All Ovid does tell us is that it was something he saw,
0:32:22 > 0:32:24just like the story of Actaeon.
0:32:27 > 0:32:28"Why did I see what I saw?
0:32:31 > 0:32:32"Why make my eyes guilty?
0:32:35 > 0:32:37"Why was mischief made to known to me unwittingly?
0:32:41 > 0:32:43"Actaeon never intended to see Diana naked,
0:32:43 > 0:32:46"but still was torn to pieces by his hounds.
0:32:48 > 0:32:53"Among the high gods, even accidents demand atonement.
0:32:53 > 0:32:57"When a deity is outraged, mischance is no excuse."
0:33:00 > 0:33:05There was no Senate hearing, no court case, just a private meeting.
0:33:05 > 0:33:07But Ovid's enemies had primed the Emperor
0:33:07 > 0:33:11with the most offensive passages in Ovid's Art Of Love
0:33:11 > 0:33:13to underline his guilt.
0:33:15 > 0:33:18You can just imagine the scene.
0:33:18 > 0:33:20Who does he think he is?
0:33:20 > 0:33:22He's undermining the state.
0:33:23 > 0:33:27For the Emperor Augustus, that was enough.
0:33:27 > 0:33:31And he pronounced the sentence of relegatio,
0:33:31 > 0:33:34permanent banishment from Rome.
0:33:43 > 0:33:45Ovid says he was so numbed with shock
0:33:45 > 0:33:47that he delayed sorting out his affairs
0:33:47 > 0:33:50right up to the December deadline to leave the country.
0:33:53 > 0:33:55"I was dazed.
0:33:55 > 0:33:57"As if struck by lightning.
0:34:00 > 0:34:02"Nagging reminders of the black ghost vision
0:34:02 > 0:34:04"of my final night in Rome.
0:34:07 > 0:34:10"The night I left behind all the things I treasured,
0:34:10 > 0:34:13"the whole house in grief, like a noisy funeral.
0:34:15 > 0:34:19"My wife embraced me, cheeks rivered with tears.
0:34:19 > 0:34:23"She threw herself down before the family shrine and touched the cold
0:34:23 > 0:34:25"hearth with her trembling lips.
0:34:28 > 0:34:31"And our little household gods turned a deaf ear."
0:34:43 > 0:34:46He had a married daughter who was living in North Africa.
0:34:46 > 0:34:47She didn't know what had happened.
0:34:47 > 0:34:50His wife was here. She wanted to go with him,
0:34:50 > 0:34:53but he couldn't bear the thought of her suffering
0:34:53 > 0:34:55all the hardships of exile.
0:34:55 > 0:34:58And, at this point, his enemies were trying, through the courts,
0:34:58 > 0:35:03to get hold of his wealth, his treasure, his land.
0:35:03 > 0:35:05So they decided that his wife would stay here
0:35:05 > 0:35:07to fight the family's corner,
0:35:07 > 0:35:11and maybe even try to get a reprieve.
0:35:11 > 0:35:16But that was to underestimate the visceral hatred of his enemies.
0:35:21 > 0:35:24Ever since, for poets and artists,
0:35:24 > 0:35:27Ovid has become the archetypal exile.
0:35:29 > 0:35:34Turner's painting shows soldiers dragging him away to his ship.
0:35:34 > 0:35:36A lurid farewell to his beloved Rome.
0:35:42 > 0:35:47Sadly recalling a youthful trip to Greece on the grand tour,
0:35:47 > 0:35:50he set sail, praying for a calm sea and a good wind.
0:35:52 > 0:35:55But he ran into a Shakespearean tempest.
0:36:01 > 0:36:05"You gods of sea and sky, what's left now but prayer?
0:36:09 > 0:36:11"The waves tower up,
0:36:11 > 0:36:14"mountains of heaving water touch the highest stars.
0:36:16 > 0:36:20"The lightning cracks the clouds, the crash shatters the heavens,
0:36:20 > 0:36:23"the seas pound our timbers like artillery hitting a city wall.
0:36:25 > 0:36:26"The steersman is at a loss.
0:36:28 > 0:36:29"We are surely done for.
0:36:30 > 0:36:32"No hope of safety."
0:36:41 > 0:36:45And out of the tempest, Ovid crossed the boundary
0:36:45 > 0:36:46into a new life.
0:36:49 > 0:36:52Prevented by winter storms from sailing into the Black Sea,
0:36:52 > 0:36:55he landed in North Greece and went on over land.
0:37:00 > 0:37:04He found it a poor country after his native Italy.
0:37:09 > 0:37:14Wherever you look, it's the same flat, uncultivated landscape.
0:37:14 > 0:37:17No fruit from orchards and vineyards,
0:37:17 > 0:37:19just huge vistas of empty steppe.
0:37:22 > 0:37:26"If anyone had told me I'd end up here, I'd have said,
0:37:26 > 0:37:27"'You need to see a doctor.'"
0:37:44 > 0:37:50His place of exile was a small port on the Black Sea called Tomis.
0:37:50 > 0:37:53It's now Constanta in Romania,
0:37:53 > 0:37:55up near the Danube border with the Ukraine.
0:37:57 > 0:38:00He'd been banished to the very edge of the Roman world.
0:38:08 > 0:38:11In the poems he sent home from exile,
0:38:11 > 0:38:13Ovid paints a bleak picture of Tomis...
0:38:16 > 0:38:19..a small provincial town which had seen better days.
0:38:24 > 0:38:26Tomis had been a Greek colony,
0:38:26 > 0:38:29founded over 500 years before Ovid's day.
0:38:30 > 0:38:33He portrays it as an isolated backwater.
0:38:35 > 0:38:37But surviving tombstones from his time,
0:38:37 > 0:38:40with their pious tags from Greek poetry,
0:38:40 > 0:38:42show that it wasn't uncultured.
0:38:45 > 0:38:47There are still Greeks here today.
0:38:47 > 0:38:51In his time, the spoken Greek was a kind of patois,
0:38:51 > 0:38:54mixed with the local dialect, and no one spoke Latin.
0:38:58 > 0:39:02Ovid tells a strange dark myth about how Tomis got its name.
0:39:04 > 0:39:08The myth connects with the famous story of Medea,
0:39:08 > 0:39:12the barbarian sorceress who fell in love with the Greek hero Jason,
0:39:12 > 0:39:14and helped him steal the Golden fleece
0:39:14 > 0:39:18from the land of Colchis, across the other side of the Black Sea.
0:39:21 > 0:39:24And as they were being chased by the people of Colchis,
0:39:24 > 0:39:28to delay the pursuers, Medea killed her young brother,
0:39:28 > 0:39:31the boy prince of Colchis,
0:39:31 > 0:39:34and cut his body up and threw the pieces into the sea.
0:39:36 > 0:39:41But writing in exile, Ovid says the story took place here in Tomis.
0:39:43 > 0:39:48Hence its name means, as it does in modern Greek,
0:39:48 > 0:39:50to cut, to slice,
0:39:50 > 0:39:53to dissect.
0:39:53 > 0:39:58And so, perhaps in Ovid's mind, this became the place of dismembering.
0:40:01 > 0:40:05Just as with the story of Actaeon, then, here in exile,
0:40:05 > 0:40:09Ovid is reworking the myth to reflect his own story.
0:40:11 > 0:40:14And so he began his new life.
0:40:14 > 0:40:18He was even forced to join the local militia, as he was living in a
0:40:18 > 0:40:23fortified border zone, subject to constant raids by barbarian tribes.
0:40:25 > 0:40:30To the north of Tomis were the Roman frontier forts along the Danube.
0:40:30 > 0:40:34Among them, Aegyssus, which Ovid describes in his Black Sea poems.
0:40:35 > 0:40:38Today, it's the port of Tulcea.
0:40:40 > 0:40:43From here, Roman galleys supplied the garrisons
0:40:43 > 0:40:46which kept the fragile Roman peace.
0:40:56 > 0:40:58And from this viewpoint,
0:40:58 > 0:41:01Ovid got a new perspective on the reality
0:41:01 > 0:41:04of the Augustan Empire on the ground.
0:41:06 > 0:41:08Just across the River Danube,
0:41:08 > 0:41:12they were fighting wars with Pannonians and Scythians and Celts.
0:41:12 > 0:41:16"This is our bridgehead against the barbarians," Ovid wrote,
0:41:16 > 0:41:18sarcastically.
0:41:18 > 0:41:23"Our latest and shakiest bastion of law and order,
0:41:23 > 0:41:27"only marginally adhering to the very rim of the Empire."
0:41:30 > 0:41:35So he begins to write about his exile to plead his case in Rome,
0:41:35 > 0:41:38hoping for a reprieve,
0:41:38 > 0:41:40maybe to stave off despair.
0:41:44 > 0:41:49"I'm sending my greetings from the Danube's seven-armed delta,
0:41:49 > 0:41:53"where I shiver under the dead weight of sullen northern skies.
0:41:55 > 0:41:57"Here, only the river lies between me
0:41:57 > 0:42:00"and the numberless barbarian hordes."
0:42:02 > 0:42:05"Beyond here lies nothing."
0:42:14 > 0:42:18He was 50 now, a shipwrecked man, as he called himself,
0:42:18 > 0:42:22the lifelong celebrity poet, cut off from home and family,
0:42:22 > 0:42:25but also from his public, his readers.
0:42:27 > 0:42:30"Writing a poem with no one to read it to," he said,
0:42:30 > 0:42:32"is like dancing in the dark."
0:42:33 > 0:42:37Even an exchange of letters could take up to a year.
0:42:43 > 0:42:46Inland from Tomis was the wilderness of the Dobruja,
0:42:46 > 0:42:49a shifting frontier land,
0:42:49 > 0:42:51still now with a dozen languages,
0:42:51 > 0:42:54and a linguistic border zone then, too.
0:42:54 > 0:42:58In the local speech, Scythian or Getic,
0:42:58 > 0:43:01Ovid says he never got much beyond sign language.
0:43:01 > 0:43:04All her ancestors came from Ukraine.
0:43:04 > 0:43:06And they settled here.
0:43:06 > 0:43:08Before that,
0:43:08 > 0:43:10no Ukrainian or nothing.
0:43:10 > 0:43:14But he learned to speak the native Greek creole and, pining for an
0:43:14 > 0:43:17audience, he even composed an epic poem in it,
0:43:17 > 0:43:19and recited it to the locals.
0:43:23 > 0:43:26Life here was basic at the best of times,
0:43:26 > 0:43:27and very harsh in the winter.
0:43:28 > 0:43:30And then there was the food.
0:43:32 > 0:43:34Thank you! Merci!
0:43:34 > 0:43:37Back home, Ovid had had cooks and pastry chefs,
0:43:37 > 0:43:40with slaves at his beck and call.
0:43:40 > 0:43:42He dined at the imperial table.
0:43:42 > 0:43:45But now deprived of Italian cuisine,
0:43:45 > 0:43:48he turned his nose up at the local food.
0:43:48 > 0:43:51"I detest mealtimes," he wrote.
0:43:51 > 0:43:53Everything in the table comes from
0:43:53 > 0:43:57the immediate neighbourhood, doesn't it?
0:43:57 > 0:44:00But he came to respect and admire the people.
0:44:02 > 0:44:05"The local people here like and support me,
0:44:05 > 0:44:08"though they know I wish I were elsewhere.
0:44:08 > 0:44:12"They are ever loyal and hospitable to this exile from his native land."
0:44:12 > 0:44:14I will have some of this.
0:44:14 > 0:44:16"Kindly souls,
0:44:16 > 0:44:19"you could not have been more compassionate to my woes.
0:44:19 > 0:44:21"Though I loathe your land,
0:44:21 > 0:44:23"you, I love."
0:44:29 > 0:44:32So, Ovid throws himself into work,
0:44:32 > 0:44:34writing poems to his wife and friends back home.
0:44:36 > 0:44:39Compulsively revising his manuscripts,
0:44:39 > 0:44:44determined that exile wouldn't mean the end of Ovid the poet.
0:44:51 > 0:44:55And in our times, Ovid's exile has generated a vast,
0:44:55 > 0:44:58fictional literature in novels and poetry,
0:44:58 > 0:45:03in which some have imagined that out here he discovered his true self.
0:45:10 > 0:45:112,000 years ago,
0:45:11 > 0:45:14this was the last frontier of the Roman Empire.
0:45:16 > 0:45:18Only here. That's it.
0:45:18 > 0:45:21The border. From here on out, the barbarians.
0:45:21 > 0:45:26- Right, right.- It's very tough, very rigid, dangerous, who knows?
0:45:26 > 0:45:29Not on the map, you know?
0:45:29 > 0:45:33- The last frontier.- As you can see, it's an amazing nature.
0:45:33 > 0:45:36There are amazing sounds, amazing people,
0:45:36 > 0:45:38and it's an amazing territory,
0:45:38 > 0:45:43and this poet will find here a beautiful source of inspiration.
0:45:43 > 0:45:46He don't need something more.
0:45:48 > 0:45:49It's nice to be here.
0:45:49 > 0:45:51No, don't get up.
0:45:54 > 0:45:56- Fantastic.- Nice to see you.
0:45:59 > 0:46:03Ovid, you'd have to say, is one of the most inventive of all poets.
0:46:03 > 0:46:08He creates a new genre with almost everything that he touches.
0:46:13 > 0:46:16And now in the poems that he sends from the Black Sea,
0:46:16 > 0:46:21back to his friends and family in Rome, he creates another.
0:46:21 > 0:46:26One with a special resonance for us today in our world where so many
0:46:26 > 0:46:29millions of people have been turned into refugees,
0:46:29 > 0:46:31and that's the poetry of exile.
0:46:34 > 0:46:38Born of his own bitter and painful personal experience,
0:46:38 > 0:46:41he writes about displacement,
0:46:41 > 0:46:43but he also writes about loss.
0:46:44 > 0:46:47The loss of one's history,
0:46:47 > 0:46:50of one's social and cultural identity,
0:46:50 > 0:46:53and indeed loss of one's self.
0:47:11 > 0:47:14The winters were hardest when the Danube froze over,
0:47:14 > 0:47:16as its still does.
0:47:16 > 0:47:19And even the Black Sea congealed with ice.
0:47:26 > 0:47:29"And if, in the crowds, there's someone who remembers me,
0:47:29 > 0:47:32"who should chance to ask how I am,
0:47:32 > 0:47:35"tell them I live, not that I'm well.
0:47:37 > 0:47:39"For here I only survive.
0:47:45 > 0:47:49"Look at me. Stripped of my home, country, friends -
0:47:49 > 0:47:52"tossed up like flotsam on the Black Sea shore.
0:47:54 > 0:47:58"There's no more dismal land than this beneath either pole.
0:47:58 > 0:48:02"I'm in the last outback at the world's end."
0:48:06 > 0:48:07In the 20th century,
0:48:07 > 0:48:11countless writers have been inspired by Ovid's exile poems.
0:48:11 > 0:48:14Mandelstam, Neruda, Seamus Heaney.
0:48:14 > 0:48:17For Samuel Beckett, another exile,
0:48:17 > 0:48:19such displacement would become his great theme.
0:48:21 > 0:48:25Actor Lisa Dwan is Beckett's foremost interpreter.
0:48:25 > 0:48:28That tension creates a journey,
0:48:28 > 0:48:33where the poet must go on a pilgrimage into the self
0:48:33 > 0:48:35to find that home.
0:48:37 > 0:48:40And that transcends nationalism.
0:48:40 > 0:48:42It transcends time and sex.
0:48:42 > 0:48:44It's genderless.
0:48:46 > 0:48:49Exile is part of the human condition.
0:48:53 > 0:48:56What I adore about these poets,
0:48:56 > 0:48:59these tortured people who failed to find solace
0:48:59 > 0:49:04in their immediate world, or were allowed to find solace,
0:49:04 > 0:49:05has been our gift.
0:49:05 > 0:49:10How their pain has meant that they have had to,
0:49:10 > 0:49:14in order to exist and understand themselves, and to communicate,
0:49:14 > 0:49:20have to kind of weave these wounds into work,
0:49:20 > 0:49:22into great works of art,
0:49:22 > 0:49:26that have become our vehicles to understand ourselves.
0:49:38 > 0:49:41But he says his powers are declining,
0:49:41 > 0:49:45and he's been ruined by having been sent into exile,
0:49:45 > 0:49:48that he has no one to read his poetry to,
0:49:48 > 0:49:50nobody understands Latin...
0:49:51 > 0:49:55And yet he is so productive. He's just writing, writing, writing.
0:49:58 > 0:50:01There are other candidates, potentially,
0:50:01 > 0:50:04for the role of the icon of exile,
0:50:04 > 0:50:07so Dante could have performed that role,
0:50:07 > 0:50:09Pushkin could have performed that role, but they don't.
0:50:09 > 0:50:12It's Ovid, and it's Ovid that they look back to.
0:50:17 > 0:50:19Bob Dylan, in some ways,
0:50:19 > 0:50:23is the most famous Ovidian exile,
0:50:23 > 0:50:26because he casts himself in that tradition.
0:50:26 > 0:50:28In his album, Modern Times,
0:50:28 > 0:50:30he's quoting again and again
0:50:30 > 0:50:34from Peter Green's Penguin translation of the exile poetry.
0:50:34 > 0:50:37# Ain't talking
0:50:37 > 0:50:40# Just walking
0:50:40 > 0:50:45# Up the road Around the bend
0:50:45 > 0:50:50# Heart burning Still yearning
0:50:50 > 0:50:56# In the last outback at the world's end. #
0:51:00 > 0:51:04Dylan might not have been exiled literally,
0:51:04 > 0:51:08but if you want someone to express alienation,
0:51:08 > 0:51:12a way of feeling at odds with the culture you're living in,
0:51:12 > 0:51:14Ovid is the perfect person to look to.
0:51:39 > 0:51:42Ovid was in poor health now and, back in Rome,
0:51:42 > 0:51:45his wife and friends were still working to get him a reprieve,
0:51:45 > 0:51:48but their pleas fell on deaf ears -
0:51:48 > 0:51:53for the Emperor, after all, was a deity like Jupiter himself.
0:51:54 > 0:51:57He talks a lot in the exile poetry about the anger of Augustus,
0:51:57 > 0:51:59which is linked to the anger of Jupiter,
0:51:59 > 0:52:03a sort of massive wrath of an all-powerful God.
0:52:04 > 0:52:06So how do you talk to an all-powerful god
0:52:06 > 0:52:09whom you've desperately offended?
0:52:09 > 0:52:13That's a really tricky question - how you engage with power anyway,
0:52:13 > 0:52:17but when it happens to be the god you've offended,
0:52:17 > 0:52:20I think that makes things even more difficult for Ovid.
0:52:24 > 0:52:26So he's definitely picking up on that idea
0:52:26 > 0:52:30- of the writer and the tyrant, isn't he?- Absolutely.
0:52:30 > 0:52:32And that real power imbalance there,
0:52:32 > 0:52:35that you're one writer and all you have is words.
0:52:35 > 0:52:39And there's this huge power ranged against you.
0:52:39 > 0:52:42Absolutely, Ovid is this real icon of the writer
0:52:42 > 0:52:45who is punished for his writing.
0:52:48 > 0:52:51"Until now, when I've reached my 50s,
0:52:51 > 0:52:55"all my muse's poetry has been harmless,
0:52:55 > 0:52:58"and my books have hurt no one but myself.
0:52:58 > 0:53:01"It was the author's own life that was ruined by his art.
0:53:06 > 0:53:10"But one person won't grant me the title of an honest man.
0:53:10 > 0:53:13"He won't let me hide myself away in exile,
0:53:13 > 0:53:17"but rubs salt into the wound of a man seeking peace.
0:53:20 > 0:53:24"While I cling to the shattered fragments of my boat,
0:53:24 > 0:53:26"he fights for the planks from my shipwreck.
0:53:28 > 0:53:32"May you who violently trample on me and my fall
0:53:32 > 0:53:34"be made wretched for it.
0:53:34 > 0:53:36"I'll be your dearest enemy."
0:53:50 > 0:53:54So the anger of Jupiter was answered by Ovid with his pen.
0:53:56 > 0:53:59Words were his weapon, as they always had been.
0:54:00 > 0:54:04And today, we only know the story because he wrote it.
0:54:04 > 0:54:08As he said, "I am the author of my own narrative."
0:54:09 > 0:54:12So in the end, you could say that Ovid won.
0:54:12 > 0:54:15Though, still today, no one knows the truth
0:54:15 > 0:54:20of what happened back in Rome when he was sent into exile.
0:54:21 > 0:54:26The poem and the mistake on which his lips were sealed forever.
0:54:31 > 0:54:33The reprieve never came.
0:54:34 > 0:54:38Ovid died here in Tomis in the winter of AD17,
0:54:38 > 0:54:40exactly 2,000 years ago.
0:54:42 > 0:54:44And of course he always wanted the last word,
0:54:44 > 0:54:47so he made sure that we've got his epitaph.
0:54:48 > 0:54:53"Here I lie, the poet of tender passions, sweet Ovid,
0:54:53 > 0:54:55"I was ruined by my talent.
0:54:57 > 0:55:03"You who pass by, if you have ever been in love, don't grudge me this.
0:55:03 > 0:55:06"Let Ovid's bones lie softly."
0:55:22 > 0:55:24"So much for an epitaph.
0:55:25 > 0:55:28"My books make a more enduring and greater monument.
0:55:28 > 0:55:31"They, I feel confident, though they have hurt me,
0:55:31 > 0:55:36"will yet win their author a famous name and years of renown."
0:55:38 > 0:55:41He never lost faith in his own genius -
0:55:41 > 0:55:44Augustus couldn't take that from him.
0:55:44 > 0:55:47And you'd have to say he was right.
0:55:47 > 0:55:49He is one of the greats.
0:55:49 > 0:55:52Our 21st-century contemporary,
0:55:52 > 0:55:55as a new generation is discovering.
0:56:28 > 0:56:31My sense of Ovid now
0:56:31 > 0:56:34is his importance because of his influence.
0:56:34 > 0:56:37Because of the way that so many
0:56:37 > 0:56:40artists and writers have drawn upon him,
0:56:40 > 0:56:45and because those stories are iconic,
0:56:45 > 0:56:49they are archetypal stories which explain us to ourselves.
0:56:53 > 0:56:56He talks about gender fluidity, he talks about identity,
0:56:56 > 0:56:59he talks about love, exile,
0:56:59 > 0:57:02all of these things matter to us,
0:57:02 > 0:57:05and one of the greatest literary talents
0:57:05 > 0:57:09of the world has written extensively about them.
0:57:11 > 0:57:13Why would you not want to read Ovid's poetry?
0:57:29 > 0:57:31So, there's the story of Ovid,
0:57:31 > 0:57:34a poet who lived 2,000 years ago,
0:57:34 > 0:57:38but whose words still have the power to move us
0:57:38 > 0:57:40over that great gap of time.
0:57:44 > 0:57:49And if we are still to read the classics, the works of the ancients,
0:57:49 > 0:57:53then they have to be not just objects of study, but living texts,
0:57:53 > 0:57:56still working themselves out in our world.
0:57:58 > 0:57:59And in our world,
0:57:59 > 0:58:03what's not to like about a poet who speaks for our
0:58:03 > 0:58:09humanity despite our egotism, our cruelty and violence?
0:58:09 > 0:58:14A poet who celebrates the mysteries and beauty of the universe.
0:58:14 > 0:58:18A poet who affirms the importance of the artist,
0:58:18 > 0:58:22and the transcendent value of the written word.
0:58:24 > 0:58:27Not to mention, the enduring power of love.