The Poetry of Ovid's Exile

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In the general revaluation of Ovid's poetry that began in earnest with the publication of Hermann Fränkel's book in 1945, and received a vigorous impetus from the celebrations attending the bimillenary of his birth in 1958, the poetry of his later years has not adequately shared. Even Mr Wilkinson's warm sympathies have not been moved to more than what, with great respect, I would call a somewhat perfunctory appraisal: for his chapter on the poems of exile, though not unjust, gives the reader no idea of how good some of the best of them are and—which perhaps is more important—why and how they are good. In a word, I do not believe that this poetry has yet been read with the critical attention that is its due, and a glance at the relevant pages of L'Année Philologique for the past thirty years or so reinforces this impression. Not that no opinions respecting it are on record. For instance, in the Preface to A. Scholte's edition of Book 1 of the Epistulae ex Ponto (Amersfurt, 1933) will be found a substantial section entitled ‘Iudicia de Epistulis ex Ponto’, in which are recorded the opinions of editors and readers ranging from Edward Gibbon to P. J. Enk. Such doxographies tend to recur in editions of classical writers: a recent example is to be found in Raoul Verdière's very disappointing edition of Grattius (Wetteren, [1964]). What value they have is not critical but historical—and also, indirectly, admonitory: for they ought to remind us of our obligation to read the poems for ourselves, looking for enlightenment not to the experience of previous readers but to our own experience in the light of the guidance provided by the poet.