Ovid, the Latin poet of the Roman Empire, was banished in 8 CE from Rome to Tomis (now Constanta, Romania) by decree of the emperor Augustus. The reasons for his banishment are uncertain. Ovid's exile is related by the poet himself, and also in brief references to the event by Pliny the Elder and Statius. At the time, Tomis was a remote town on the edge of the civilised world; it lay beyond the Danube, loosely under the authority of the Kingdom of Thrace (a satellite state of Rome), and was superficially Hellenized. According to Ovid, none of its citizens spoke Latin, which as an educated Roman he found trying. Ovid wrote that the cause of his exile was carmen et error: "a poem", probably the Ars Amatoria; and a personal indiscretion or mistake.