This chapter presents a new, annotated translation of the Ora maritima, a poem in Latin iambics preserved incompletely under the name of Avienus (or rather Avienius), who can be identified with a Roman aristocrat of the mid-4th century AD. The translation approximates a metrical form. The extant portion of the poem describes the coast from Brittany to Massalia, citing early sources (not necessarily consulted at first hand) including Himilco of Carthage. The chapter introduction examines the identification of the author with a known aristocrat, and sees the Ora as part of a systematic exposition of the earth, sea, and heavens; it is, furthermore, not a translation but a development of the available material. Avienus adds observations from his reading, or in one place from autopsy, but seems usually to be working off one earlier source, perhaps Apollodoros of Athens (2nd century BC) or the archaic ‘Massaliote periplous’ whose existence has been deduced. If this be the case, the poem preserves valuable knowledge of the Atlantic coasts in early times. A new map shows the principal locations in Iberia that are named in the poem.

The epilogue draws out some broader conclusions from this study, encouraging us to rethink traditional narratives of ancient literary history. Archaic poets already participated in a sophisticated and well-developed allusive system, and Hellenistic/Roman poets’ ‘footnoting’ habits are not as novel, bookish or scholarly as we might think. The epilogue further asks why these indices have not been identified or studied at such length before; it explores variation in indexical practice across genres and time; and it highlights further avenues for further research.

Ovid’s Epistulae ex Ponto 2.8 commemorates the exiled poet’s receipt of a gift of silver images of the Caesars from Rome. This paper argues, with reference to Augustan coinage and Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism, that the poem deconstructs Romans’ self-subjugation to imperial iconography and highlights their role in vesting it with power. Through comic deployment of the pathetic fallacy via a naïve narrative persona, Ovid shows how, from a provincial perspective, the emperor's numen might really appear to reside in his image, placing the emperor literally in his subjects’ hands. Pont. 2.8 therefore comments more generally on the interpretive possibilities, social practices, and psychology surrounding Roman imperial images, locating their power in plural, subjective, democratic acts of creative consumption.