Two thousand years after he was banished to the outer edges of the empire, the city of Rome has formally revoked the exile of the poet Ovid.

A prolific writer famous for his Metamorphoses and The Art of Love, Ovid was exiled by the Emperor Augustus to a remote town on the coast of the Black Sea, in what is today Romania, in 8 AD.

He remained there until his death, never seeing Italy again. He found life there uncouth and uncomfortable, sending endless pleas to the emperor asking to be allowed to return to Rome.

The reasons for his banishment are one of the great mysteries of ancient literature – the poet himself attributed it to carmen et error, or “a poem and a mistake”.