INVENTION OF “ROMAN”, IMAGINATION OF “BARBARIAN”: THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE IMPERIAL IDENTITY OF ROME IN THE LATER TEXTS OF OVID

Abstract

Purpose. The author in the presented article considers the late texts of Ovid, presented by Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. The purpose of the article is to analyze how the texts reflect the processes of formation of the imperial political culture and identity.
 Research novelty. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of the late texts of Ovid not as literary, but as political narratives that inspired the transformation of Roman identity, contributing to the actualization of the concepts of Self and Otherness.
 Materials and methods. Methodologically, the article is based on the principles of interdisciplinarity proposed in the framework of studies of nationalism, intellectual and cultural history, transplanted into the contexts of the literary history of Rome in the 1st century AD.
 Results. The article analyzes 1) Ovid’s attempts to form an ideal and positive image of power, 2) Ovid’s contribution to the development of Roman ideas about barbarians, 3) peculiarities of Ovid’s geographical perception of the formation of Roman territory as an imperial heterogeneous space. The contribution of the later texts of Ovid, represented by Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto and written in exile, to the formation of political imperial culture and identity is shown. The results of the study suggest that 1) Ovid was one of the first Roman authors who textualized the transformations of political power, contributing to the genesis of the cult of imperial power as an element of political culture; 2) in the formation and imagination of the images of the barbarians, Ovid continued the earlier tendencies of hierarchization and idealization of the inhabitants of the peripheral provinces: 3) the later texts of Ovid, written in exile, became a contribution to the development of the cultural geography of the emerging Roman Empire, based on the glorification and positive idealization of Italy through the prism of its opposition to the provinces.