One of the greatest poets of the Augustan age, Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC-AD 17) was born into a wealthy equestrian family at Sulmo (modern Sulmona, Italy). As such he was destined for a public career but soon realised that his proper sphere was poetry – and indeed primarily love poetry, although he wrote in many modes. Among his most important works are the Amores (Loves: a collection of love elegies), the Ars Amatoria (a didactic poem on the art of love), the Heroides (rhetorical love letters by heroines of mythology), and the Tristia (Sorrows: a set of laments). His most famous work, though, has always been the Metamorphoses, a sui generis epic in 15 books in which the poet relates the whole of Ancient Greek and Roman mythology from the creation of the world to his own time. Ovid died in exile at Tomis, on the Black Sea, having been banished from Rome by Augustus.