Mar. 20: Ovid, Roman poet

BORN MARCH 20:

Ovid (43 BCE-17 CE) in full Publius Ovidius Naso, was a Roman poet during the reign of Augustus. He is ranked with Virgil and Horace, his older contemporaries, and was enormously popular during his lifetime (even though the emperor banished him for the last decade of his life, perhaps on morals charges). He is best-known today for the Metamorphoses, a 15-book work of mythology, and one of the most important sources on the subject; and for collections of love poems like Love Affairs and The Art of Love.

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Jan. 8: Su Dongpo, Chinese poet

BORN JANUARY 8:

Su Dongpo (1037-1101), also called Su Shi, major Chinese poet; around 2,700 poems, including "Chibifu" ("The Red Cliffs"); "Nian Nu Jiao: Chibi Huai Gu" ("Remembering Chibi"); and "Shui diao ge tou" ("Remembering Su Zhe on the Mid-Autumn Festival"). One of "Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song."

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Oct. 15: Virgil, Roman poet

BORN OCTOBER 15th:

Virgil (70 BCE-19 BCE) Roman poet known for The Aeneid, a sort of sequel to Homer's works on the Trojan War which ties the Greeks to the founding of Rome; The Eclogues, peopled by strangely political shepherds; and The Georgics, which he explores the themes of agriculture. Virgil's status as a poet led Dante to choose him as the narrator's guide through Hell and Purgatory in The Divine Comedy.

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Sep. 28: Confucius, Chinese philosopher

BORN SEPTEMBER 28th:

Confucius (551-479 BCE) Chinese philosopher; credited with three of Confucianism's "Four Books" (the fourth is The Mencius, attributed to Mencius, a disciple of Confucius's grandson): The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, and--probably most important of all--The Analects; he is credited with several other books, but most likely everything attributed to him was written by his disciples. His ideas are the foundation stones of all of Chinese culture, and have inspired numerous horrible jokes.

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