The Latin poet Ovid was famously exiled by the Emperor Augustus to the shores of the Black Sea for his self-confessed crimes of 'a poem and a mistake'. Throughout his poetry, he discusses his exile and embraces the themes of marginality and alterity.

This core motif is explored throughout this overview of Ovid's life, the society he lived in and his innovative, perennially popular body of work. Presenting basic biographical information and the historical context of the newly Augustan Rome, the book details the contextual instabilities inherent in living at the border between...