The Birth of Bacchus: Ovid, Fasti III.713-718

 The third day after the Ides is famous for Bacchus:

Bless me, Bacchus, while I sing of your holiday.

I’ll not mention [your mother] Semele, whom Jupiter visited with lightning

while you were an innocent little baby—premature.

So that you could be born at an appropriate time,

A father’s body was used to complete a mother’s function.

Tertia post Idus lux est celeberrima Baccho:

     Bacche, fave vati, dum tua festa cano.

nec referam Semelen, ad quam nisi fulmina secum               715

     Iuppiter adferret, ~parvus inermis eras~;

nec, puer ut posses maturo tempore nasci,

     expletum patrio corpore matris opus.

--Ovid, Fasti III.713-718

Ovid was one of the most famous love poets of Rome’s Golden Age. His most famous work, the Metamorphoses, provides a history of the world through a series of interwoven myths. Most of his poetry is erotic in nature; for this reason, he fell into trouble during the conservative social reforms under the reign of the emperor Augustus. In 8 CE he was banished to Bithynia, where he spent the remainder of his life pining for his native homeland.