Otus and Ephialtes, sons of Neptune. See: [Aloides].
Otys, a prince of Paphlagonia, who revolted from the Persians to Agesilaus. Xenophon.
Ovia, a Roman lady, wife of Cneaus Lollius. Cicero, Letters to Atticus, bk. 12, ltr. 21.
Publius Ovīdius Naso, a celebrated Roman poet, born at Sulmo on the 20th of March, about 43 B.C. As he was intended for the bar, his father sent him early to Rome, and removed him to Athens in the 16th year of his age. The progress of Ovid in the study of eloquence was great, but the father’s expectations were frustrated; his son was born a poet, and nothing could deter him from pursuing his natural inclination, though he was often reminded that Homer lived and died in the greatest poverty. Everything he wrote was expressed in poetical numbers, as he himself says, et quod tentabam scribere versus erat. A lively genius and a fertile imagination soon gained him admirers; the learned became his friends; Virgil, Propertius, Tibullus, and Horace, honoured him with their correspondence, and Augustus patronized him with the most unbounded liberality. These favours, however, were but momentary, and the poet was soon after banished to Tomos, on the Euxine sea, by the emperor. The true cause of this sudden exile is unknown. Some attribute it to a shameful amour with Livia the wife of Augustus, while others support that it arose from the knowledge which Ovid had of the unpardonable incest of the emperor with his daughter Julia. These reasons are, indeed, merely conjectural; the cause was of a very private and very secret nature, of which Ovid himself is afraid to speak, as it arose from error and not from criminality. It was, however, something improper in the family and court of Augustus, as these lines seem to indicate.
Cur aliquid vidi? Cur noxia lumina feci?
Cur imprudenti cognita culpa mihi est?
Inscius Actæon vidit sine veste Dianam;
Præda fuit canibus non minus ille suis.
Again,
Inscia quod crimen viderunt lumina plector,