Ovid’s Exile Poetry

Abstract

Ovid’s poetry of exile, once considered of interest only as a source of historical and biographical details, now enjoys ever-increasing appreciation and esteem as poetry. Ovid was Rome’s best-known poet when in 8 ce he was abruptly exiled by Augustus for reasons that remain unclear. He regarded his place of exile at Tomis, on the shore of the Black Sea, as irredeemably desolate, and longed to return to Rome. Though wretched, he continued to write, producing two large collections of elegiac poetry, the Tristia, “sad poems,” and the Epistulae ex Ponto, epistolary elegies addressed to friends and supporters at Rome, in which he laments his lot and begs their help in lessening its misery. He also attacks an unnamed enemy in a poem of invective, the Ibis. To suit his new identity as a poet of lament, Ovid refashions himself and his elegiac style, remaining no less inventive and ingenious than in his earlier works.