Having won an assured position among the poets of the day with his erotic poems, Ovid turned to more ambitious projects, the Metamorphoses and the Fasti ("Calendar"). The former was nearly complete, the latter half finished, when his life was shattered by a sudden and crushing blow. In AD 8 the emperor Augustus banished him to Tomis (or Tomi; near modern Constanta, Romania) on the Black Sea. The reasons for Ovid's exile will never be fully known. Ovid specifies two, his Ars amatoria and an offense which he does not describe beyond insisting that it was an indiscretion (error), not a crime (scelus). Of the many explanations that have been offered of this mysterious indiscretion, the most probable is that he had become an involuntary accomplice in the adultery of Augustus' granddaughter, the younger Julia, who also was banished at the same time. Fasti is an account of the Roman year and its religious festivals, consisting of 12 books, one to each month, of which the first six survive. The various festivals are described as they occur and are traced to their legendary origins. The Fasti was a national poem, intended to take its place in the Augustan literary program and perhaps designed to rehabilitate its author in the eyes of the ruling dynasty. It contains a good deal of flattery of the imperial family and much patriotism, for which the undoubted brilliance of the narrative passages does not altogether atone. The Metamorphoses is a long poem in 15 books written in hexameter verse and totaling nearly 12,000 lines. It is a collection of mythological and legendary stories in which metamorphosis (transformation) plays some part, however minor. The stories are told in chronological order from the creation of the universe (the first metamorphosis, of chaos into order) to the death and deification of Julius Caesar (the culminating metamorphosis, again of chaos--that is, the Civil Wars--into order--that is, the Augustan Peace). In many of the stories, mythical characters are used to illustrate examples of obedience or disobedience toward the gods, and for their actions are either rewarded or punished by a final transformation into some animal, vegetable, or astronomical form. The importance of metamorphosis is more apparent than real, however; the essential theme of the poem is passion (pathos), and this gives it more unity than all the ingenious linking and framing devices the poet uses. The erotic emphasis that had dominated Ovid's earlier poetry is broadened and deepened into an exploration of nearly every variety of human emotion--for his gods are nothing if not human. This undertaking brought out, as his earlier work had not, Ovid's full powers: his wit and rhetorical brilliance, his mythological learning, and the peculiar qualities of his fertile imagination. The vast quantities of verse in both Greek and Latin that Ovid had read and assimilated are transformed, through a process of creative adaptation, into original and unforeseen guises. By his genius for narrative and vivid description, Ovid gave to scores of Greek legends, some of them little known before, their definitive form for subsequent generations. No single work of literature has done more to transmit the riches of the Greek imagination to posterity. By AD 8, the Metamorphoses was complete, if not yet formally published; and it was at that moment, when Ovid seemed securely placed on a pinnacle of successful achievement, that he was banished to Tomis by the emperor.