Banished from Rome for unclear offense, Ovid wrote this series of poems bemoaning his exile and desperately trying to regain the graces of the Octavian. Comically lacking in the stoic virtues for which Roman society is traditionally esteemed.

This wasn't really my thing. Probably should not have started with this as my introduction to Ovid. My area of interest and expertise is more Chinese poetry and I think ill stick with that.

I actually feel bad for Ovid icl. Huge contrast from the love poems (understandably, because now he is exiled and depressed and older and has matured to hopefully be less of a fuck boy - I mean he was like he wasn't really a fuck boy and just hyperbolised things for the sake of it being more poetic and witty and entertaining). But nevertheless, as per usual, writing is incredible. The way he talks about his wife and consoles her is so romantic Ovid do you need a 4th wife i volunteer as tribute

The famous Roman poet Ovid was exiled by Augustus in 8AD, following a scandal, to Tomis on the shore of the Black Sea (modern day Constanta in Romania). We don’t know what exactly the scandal involved. It seems his work the Art of Love - which instructed young Romans in seduction - offended the moral revolution led by Augustus, and earned Ovid the resentment of some high ranking officials. Furthermore, he may have been involved in an incident with Augustus’ own daughter Julia, who was accused of adultery with a number of wealthy Romans, and who was herself exiled to an island of Pandataria.

Tomis was remote, a Greek colonial foundation on the edge of the Roman Empire. In his introduction to this volume, Peter Green explains that the choice of Tomis cut Ovid off not only from Rome, but from all current Graeco-Roman culture. Tristia (poems of sadness) and epistulae ex ponto (letters from the Black Sea) are the works he wrote in exile. In them he compares his new home unfavorably to Rome and Italy (which he portrays as centers of culture constructed in opposition to the "barbaric" Black Sea region), and begs Augustus to allow him return. The poems were sent back to Rome where they were circulated by his friends. The letters too were not intended to be private, but were to be circulated and read more broadly, in the hope that Augustus would be pressured to give in. They essentially amounted to a propaganda campaign for his recall. Unfortunately Augustus never relented, and Ovid died in Tomis. In one of his poems (Tristia III.3) he writes ‘my Roman ghost will wander among wild Danubian spirits for ever, a stranger’. These collections are, I think, my favourite of Ovid's works.

I normally like Loeb translations of classical texts since they are accurate and authentic even where they translate poetry into prose, but this is one of the few exceptions where another translation is better than the Loeb equivalent.

Green translates both the four books of the Tristia as well as the Epistulae ex Ponto (Black sea letters), and does a good job of making these difficult texts readable. Where Loeb is very stilted in English, here the texts flow.

There are also extensive notes of a fairly basic type, and I tend not to agree with Green's interpretations which seem to me to be simplistic and out-of-date. But for a good English text of these works to accompany the Latin this is excellent.

Ovid is a bit pathetic as a writer at the end of his life. Don't read this unless you feel like being depressed.

The Tristia is acknowledged by Ovid to get a bit samey; an extended whinge on the subject of his exile. As the Tristia and Ex Ponto continue the sight of Ovid, whose poetry had so much life and innovation, sinking into repetition and complaining that "writing poetry without an audience, is like dancing in the dark" is a bleak one. He rails against those who've dropped him as a friend, and flatters and cajoles those who have not, to speak up for him and he toadies to the Caesars as Gods he worships. It is interesting and has moments, but the psychological pain of the exile here is not a laugh and (other than the Fasti) these are Ovid's least readable poems.

Although kind of a “one-note” work — I’m in exile and I hate it — one can hardly blame Ovid for feeling as he does. The contemporary translation seems excellent (at least the translator footnotes many choices in which he displays the original Latin, and his choices seem to me good at those points; I have not looked at it in a parallel edition, still less attempted to dust off my “slightly more antiquated than Rome itself” Latin vocabulary and read the original) and the sense of the poems are scanned and rhymed verse is preserved. I have never been a serious classics scholar—literally little Latin and less Greek—but I do enjoy seeing how so many essential aspects of human nature seem to remain largely unchanged over the millennia.

Very self-affirming and funny, but also at points moving--

"You ask, why send my scribbles:
Because I want to be with you somehow."

Ovid’s laments and pleas are a salutary reminder that might makes right.

Ovid blows

You can really see the impact of the exile through these poems. The epistles are sad and repetitive and Ovid knows it, however I did find his descriptions of Tomis and the getae quite interesting (especially as a romanian). Reading his lamentations while waiting for the tram at night in Bucharest is a vibe which I 100% recommend.