His elegant verses on love appealed to a society being forced into a period of moral reformation by the emperor, Augustus. Ovid’s elegance, both in verse and comportment, made him a favorite among the moneyed class of Rome, and it was not long before Ovid was widely hailed as the most brilliant poet of his generation. After working in various judicial posts, Ovid made the decision to dedicate himself to a life of poetry instead. Ovid’s father, who was a respected member of the equestrian order, expected Ovid to become a lawyer and official and had him schooled extensively for that purpose. Jo-Marie Claassen, in an important book on exile poetry, argues that Ovid consistently mythologized his experiences as an exile, both by heightening the miseries and isolation of his surroundings in Tomus, and by portraying himself as “ Ovidius heros,” “a lonely, long-suffering survivor in a malevolent, mythical world.” When he arrives in the Pontic area he experiences shattering physical and pyschological symptoms-or so his poems lead us to believe-that have occasioned modern psychiatric diagnoses.On March 20, 43 BC, Publius Ovidius Naso, better known to modern readers as Ovid, was born at Sulmo, 90 miles from Rome. Exile poetry is another point of contact between Archilochus and the Roman poet. There he wrote our largest and most influential classical corpus of exile poetry, the Tristia, whose title expresses the misery of exile in the ancient world, and the Letters from Pontus. The poet lived the last years of his life in a miserable town on the Black Sea. So Ovid was exiled, and his departure apparently was accompanied by a “wave of public dislike.” Thus the community that had accepted Ovid as the best gathered to expel him as worst. Elsewhere, he says it should be called culpa, not a facinus. In the passage quoted above, Ovid calls his political offence an error, a very mild word, hardly enough to cause the harsh sentence of exile. While such an interpretation is possible, much evidence argues against it. Peter Green argues that participation in a political scandal of some sort was the reason for the exile, and that the mention of Ovid’s poetry was mere window dressing, a prophasis for the real crime. But then one wonders which was the more important crimen. Wheeler, adapted)īy Ovid’s account, then, he was exiled for a “poem” and a “mistake.” This would seem simple enough, though the error is not specified. The other remains: the charge that by an obscene poem I have taught foul adultery … … Yet if … you had happened to have the leisure, you would have read no crime in my “Art.” That poem, I admit, has no serious mien, it is not worthy to be read by so great a prince but not for that reason is it opposed to the commandments of the law nor does it offer teaching to the daughters of Rome. Though two crimes, a poem and a blunder, have brought me ruin, of my fault in the one I must keep silent, for my worth is not such that I may reopen your wounds, O Caesar it is more than enough that you should have been pained once. Even historians had to be careful about praising the Republican past, as the case of Cremutius Cordus shows. Thus, as Syme writes, “freedom of speech was curbed and subverted under the pretext of social harmony.” And one could be prosecuted for more than just invective directed against the aristocracy: any attack on ruler or government could be prosecuted. He was condemned by the senate (probably in 12 BC) and banished to Crete. Cassius Severus, another prominent orator, had published famosi libelli ‘scandalous pamphlets’ jibing at prominent aristocratic men and women. Labienus was an abusive orator who opposed the Augustan order he was prosecuted, and all his writings were burned. This had been prefigured in the cases of Labienus and Cassius Severus. He was the first major poet-victim of the repressive powers of the imperator as he was the most popular living poet, this banishment served notice that freedom of poetic expression would be severely curtailed in the Augustan regime. Perhaps the most famous poetic exile in Latin literature is Ovid’s.
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