The Scapegoat: Ovids Journey Out of Exile

(Paperback)

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Publius Ovidius Naso (43BC 17/18AD), known as Ovid, was known as much for his disgrace as for his poetry. By pleasing his contemporaries, befriending patricians and subtly mocking the emperor Augustus, he was transformed from a provincial outsider to Romes darling and, for some, its corrupter. Banished without trial to a remote port on the Black Sea, he continued to write. It is fortunate that most of his work has not been lost. The transformation stories of his masterpiece The Metamorphoses inspired not just Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton, but have been a major influence on European culture. His handbooks of erotic love taught men and women the art of dealing with the opposite sex. They brought him instant literary glory and notable adversaries. His works were banned by the emperor Augustus, by Savonarola, by the Bishops Ban, by the Vatican and eventually by the US Custom Office; this latter only lifted in 1930. To discover who was Ovid the man, Michael Solomon travelled in his footsteps, seeking the same landscapes today that Ovid found two thousand years ago.

Author Bio

Michael V. Solomon is a Romanian and German writer living in London. He started to write mainly plays and poetry during his teenage years in Bucharest, Romania. Later he became an engineer, designing and building bridges throughout Europe, America and the Middle East. During the pandemic, with new insights, he rewrote his debut novel The Scapegoat: Ovid's Journey Out Of Exile for an anglophone audience who, following years of lockdowns and isolation, understand freedom and exile perhaps more than ever before.