Ovid (ESE): Personality Type Analysis

Publius Ovidius Naso, known in the English-speaking world as Ovid, was a Roman poet known for his legacy of bringing a diverse array Latin poems into that of Western canon. He lived during the reign of Augustus (LIE), as a contemporaries of the legendary Virgil (ILI) and lofty Horace (ESI). At an early age, Ovid was tutored under Arellius Fuscus and Marcus Porcius Latro in Rome to study rhetoric and law along with his older brother. However, when his brother died at the age of 20, Ovid abandoned his studies altogether and devoted the rest of his life to poetry. His first success was penned around 16 BCE, known as Amores, a collection of erotic poems that were praised for their descriptiveness and consistently light-hearted themes. Ovid followed this work with more romantic poetry, eventually producing Metamorphoses, - 12,000 lines written in dactylic hexameter chronicling all of human history up until the death of Julius Caesar (SEE).

The majority of what is known of Ovid comes from his own writings. He was an ardent, passionate lover of women, he married thrice and divorced twice before turning 30. As a young adult, he travelled about the Empire to Athens and Asia Minor, squandering his family fortune on his relationships with women until returning home. He loved the popularity he got from writing poetry and understood that his poetry began to reach out to a certain group of people who not only had an appreciation for romance, but knew that romance certainly wasn't the only manifestation of human affection that could be shared between others. Ovid didn't want to be perceived as an expert on these topics, his motivation was out of pure fascination and interest with love's role in facilitating the quality of life's pleasures. It is clear that Ovid's great enthusiasm and engagement in the arts for the emotional experience of it, is first and foremost an indication of E1.

His most ambitious work, Metamorphoses, was organized by Ovid through the large amount of material covered in it and its engaging way of connecting topics discussed in the story to a different theme or by relating to the real world in some way. Ovid works his way through this subject matter, often in an apparently arbitrary fashion, by jumping from one transformation tale to another, sometimes retelling what had come to be seen as central events in the world of Greek mythology and sometimes straying in odd directions. It begins with the ritual 'invocation of the muse', and makes use of traditional epithets and circumlocutions. But instead of following and extolling the deeds of a human hero, it leaps from story to story with no dynamic connections, almost as if the author didn't acknowledge the importance of the progression of time. Ovid attempts to use I, out of pure interest to start a new trend of story-telling, with no sign of T in comparison to Virgil's literary prose. He is a man who was comfortable with exploring and improving upon I, even in the cases where he would get it wrong (I6) and almost a confusing disdain for using T when there was no valid reason to (T4).

The one person who definitely seemed to hate Ovid was Emperor Augustus, he didn't really care for Ovid's charisma and was annoyed with his lack of personal integrity. Augustus observed that Ovid's humanizing perspective of the gods was concerning and he believed Ovid's lifestyle to be in direct opposition to his efforts for incorporating Roman standards of morality. His own hatred towards Ovid was made clear when he eventually banished him from Rome to the live on the coast of the Black Sea. The details as to why he was banished is still a historical mystery. Historians tend to think that it had to do with a political or sexual scandal involving Augustus's granddaughter Julia, though there is a very thin basis for this assessment, and so it is thought that Augustus valued his standards of morality to such a degree that he banished his own granddaughter Julia for adultery. Ovid was in Julia's circle of friends, and Augustus perhaps blamed Ovid for venting the flame that led to her banishment. However, the only potential evidence that would allude to such an event occurring was in a poem that he had written on the topic of his recent mistakes that briefly mentioned, "something that I saw but shouldn't have seen". Ovid in this situation, failed to understand why Augustus was so concerned about the importance of R, the matter with Julia only being one example of many. Ovid's R7, or simply the greater emphasis on E > R, is evident based on what information is available in Ovid's relationships, not devoting himself singularly with one person and instead wanting to please anyone (or even everyone) he loved.

During his forced exile to the Romanian coast, the topics of his poems became excessively melodramatic as a result with his dissatisfaction of how horrid the scenery and weather was there, hoping for the chance that he could return to Rome one day. However, his attitude towards his banishment could be seen as an overreaction, since Ovid still retained his property rights and Roman citizenship. This, along with his appreciation of the passionate expression of love is intertwined with material pleasures works with a combination of E+S, more specifically S2.

Ovid worked tirelessly to produce these poems. A great amount of personal energy was directed to produce these works, with little or no intention of 'taking a break' - as was a common occurrence with Roman poets who were busy with a second job to earn more money. While never an underlying theme in his poetry, his use of F was only for the purposes of 'toughing it out' when tying up loose ends, and not giving up or considering switching professions during the period of time when his poems weren't doing as well as his earlier works. This shows that he had strong enough F, but unvalued for the most part, thus making F8 the best possibility.

In conclusion, Alpha values with no interest in T whatsoever, valued I though obviously not strong, devalued R to the point of getting him in trouble, a high focus on E and S, using F for personal ambitions only and conveying the impression of a friendly, joyful and even carefree man. Thus far, what has been mentioned about Ovid clearly points towards E1, S2, T4, I6, R7 and F8, suggesting consistently that he was the ESE type of information metabolism.

To learn more about ESE, click here.

If you are confused by our use of Socionics shorthand, click here.