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Ladies and gentlemen, today I am standing up for Ovid.

So Ovid is born in 43 BC, in March, I think.

It's almost exactly a year, just over a year, I think, after Julius Caesar has been assassinated on the theatre steps, not with the words et to Brute, as Shakespeare would have you believe, incidentally, but instead his final words are in Greek. Do you know this? He says, Kaisu Technon, you too, my child, he's talking to Brutus. I merely mention it. It's a bit more Oedipal, isn't it, than a rubbishy old Shakespeare.

That's all I'm saying. Treater. And Ovid is born in Solmo, in the centre of Italy, and his full name, Publius, Ovidius, Neso. Neso means nosy. But he is growing up at a time of amazing Roman poetry,

and particularly of love poetry.

And so perhaps it's no surprise

that probably the first published works

are the Amores, his love poems,

which deal with lots of the themes of love poetry,

lots of themes like lover's war,

the locked out lover suffering outside his mistress's house. But in the case of love poetry, lots of themes like lover's war, the locked out lover suffering outside

his mistress's house. But in the case of Ovid, as with Catullus, they really are quite racy.

They're quite racy. They're mores. I'll tell you that for nothing. And the good news is,

well, the bad news is, it's because Ovid is basically a bit of a sex pest. I'm not going to lie to you.

It's border a sex pest. I'm not going to lie to you. Borderline sex. When I say borderline, the border is behind him. And he's right in front of it, sex pesting away. But on the plus side, because of that, we get poems like in the third book of the Moraes, in the second poem there,

he talks about why he likes going to the races, because he can press up against the girl that he's attracted to. I know, well, one man's frotage is another woman's handy evidence

about daily Roman life. So, while Ovid is pushing in for a bit of a cheeky grope, the good news is that we now know, therefore, that men and women could sit next to each other at the races, right? We might have thought they'd have segregated seating because of Ovid, and, you know, perhaps we wouldn't have otherwise known it. So, hooray. Sorry about the sex pestery. I mean, when I say he's racy I'm really not messing about a few years ago

one of the poems 314 oh the pie a moray even I am mortified by how lame that just made me sound

oh pie and Roman fir tree so so in 314 it was set as an AS exam question, and it made a scandal in the pages of both the Times and the Daily Mail.

I know, because it's full of discussion about his mistress is having affairs with other men, and he's outraged about it, but in a sort of relatively charming way. And the bit that they chose for the exam was all about, you know, you open your lovely crimsony lips, and you press your thighs against each other, and everyone was scandalised, because who could be less interested in kissing than 16 and 17-year-olds? More on that a bit later. But now, please welcome my guests for today.

Michael Squire and Llewellyn Morgan.

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