The ethno-historiographical Value of Ovid's "Sorrows" and "Pontics"

Abstract

The text of Ovid's Tomitian elegies for centuries served as not only historiographical but also ethnographical source for scientific research and will continue to be used in investigations related to antiquity. In this research, attention is drawn to the fact that since the last decades of the last century, for the first time in world historiography, in prestigious works, researchers question the historical authenticity of many facts, transmitted by Ovid in "Tristi" and "Pontic". Demonstrating the historiographical character of the rendering of local realities and eliminating the poetic framework that concerns not only the climatic image and the way of life of the inhabitants of Tomis and its surroundings, but also the ethnolinguistic situation in the country of exile, the authors try to deny the documentary and, implicitly, ethnographic value of the work Ovidian. The article refers only to information about the ethno-glottic situation in the West Pontic lands. The uncertain state of the historiography of the time with regard to the problem posed, the predominantly non-critical use of historical information from Ovid's Tomitan work, the imprecise character of the development of methods for determining the degree of reliability and informativeness of the Ovidian artistic text conditioned the servile use of historiographical sources . The problem related to understanding the interpretation and poetic specificity of Ovidiu's creation from exile defined the purpose of interpreting the artistic text as a historiographical source, in general, and the civilizational one of Ovidiu, in particular. Based on the historical-philological study of the text, the possibility of using information from Ovid's text as trustworthy in historical research is elucidated.