20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18 · Roman poet, born Publius Ovidius Naso
Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman poet of the Augustan age, best known for the Metamorphoses, the Ars Amatoria and the Amores — the three-book collection of love elegies in which this line appears. The imperative perfer et obdura (“bear it and hold firm”) was something of a personal refrain for him: it turns up as courtship advice in Ars Amatoria 2.178, and again in the Tristia, written after, as he puts it there, the emperor’s anger tore him away. Only in the Amores, though, is it followed by the clause that made the quote famous.