Ovid Quotes
With wavering steps does fickle fortune stray,
Nowhere she finds a firm and fixed abode;
But now all smiles, and now again all frowns,
She's constant only in inconstancy.
Ovid. Tristia. Ex Ponto. Translated by A.L. Wheeler, Harvard University Press, 1924, Tristia, Book 5, Elegy 8, lines 15-18.
The ability of the public to change views swiftly has been observed by many earlier writers. Most of them thought the mob fickle and not worth the trouble to worry about public opinion. See {627556} for such an example. Spinoza argued the modern democratic view that it was critical. Spinoza’s ideas were considered so radical and dangerous that he was the only man in history who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims.
Publius Ovidius Naso, known as Ovid (/ˈɒvɪd/) in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. He enjoyed enormous popularity, but, in one of the mysteries of literary history, he was sent by Augustus into exile in a remote province on the Black Sea, where he remained until his death. Ovid himself attributes his exile to carmen et error, "a poem and a mistake", but his discretion in discussing the causes has resulted in much speculation among scholars.
