Did Ovid deserve to be exiled?

Annie BattistaLatin IIIOvid did not deserve to be exiled because for expressing his creativity through poetry, even if the poetry was encouraging men to commit adultery. However, that is by today’s standard. It says a lot about a society, and its leaders when they exile one of the most influential and famous poets in their city for writing slightly corruptive poetry. It says that the leader, in this case Augustus, feels the need to have complete control over his citizens. Do they even belong to the leader? Should the possessive term “his” be necessary? In this case, yes.The rulers owned their citizens. Ancient Rome is a culture that the present day world owes a lot to, but no one ever looks further into the lives of the Roman citizens. They were told what to worship and what job to have; how to work and how to live; where to live and where they could go. What Ovid did was stupid. He knew that the Roman officials would not approve of his book. The reason he wrote Ars Amatoria could have been just because he wanted to teach men how to seduce married women or it could have been because he was tired of the traditional poetry that he was expected to produce. Maybe he wanted to shake things up through disregarding what was acceptable and expected and write what he wanted to write. That was reason enough for Augustus to exile him.Not only did they exile Ovid, but they also removed all his works from the libraries. Why did they care so much about Ovid’s books? They were afraid that he would influence men to commit adultery, so they did not give them the chance to decide for themselves what their morals were or what they thought of Ovid’s book.Ovid did not deserve to be punished for writing a book about adultery, however immoral it may be by Roman standards. It is a romantic idea, but people should be to express themselves and experience new ideas for themselves as long as it does not hurt anyone else. When society is burdened by having to hold the beliefs that their ruler does; it is a travesty for the human spirit.