14 - Ovid’s exile poetry

Summary

Ovid’s sudden banishment from Rome in AD 8 was precipitated by two admitted causes, carmen et error (Trist. 2.207), the second of which - an apparently 'innocent' misdemeanour (cf. e.g. Trist. 3.5.49-52, 3.6.29-36, Pont. 1.6.21-6), possibly political in nature - receives only passing mention in the exile poetry and remains mysterious despite the speculations of modern theorists. Whatever the truth of the matter, this error appears to have compounded the disfavour which Ovid had already incurred by the publication (c. 1 bc-ad 2) of the risqué Ars amatoria ('The Art of Love'), harmless on a 'sensible' reading (that naturally urged by Ovid in his defence of the poem in Tristia 2, addressed directly to Augustus) but fatally out of step with official tastes, themselves shaped by the programme of moral reform undertaken by Augustus (including legislation in c. 18 bc promoting marriage and curbing adultery). If the Ars amatoria immediately aroused hostility in high places, Ovid’s error may have supplied the pretext in ad 8 for a late but devastating retaliatory blow: relegation to Tomis (modern Constanza, on the Romanian coast of the Black Sea), a penalty less severe than exilium (which would have deprived him of Roman citizenship and property) but still extreme in its deracinating physical and psychological effects.