The Political Background To Ovid's Tristia 2

Abstract

Although the view dies hard that the poetry which Ovid wrote during his years in exile at Tomi consists largely of the ‘querulous and sycophantic’ complaints of a weak man unable to come to terms with a personal disaster, it has been recognized for many years that the Tristia and the Epistolae ex Ponto are not mere expressions of emotion but are as well thought out and constructed as any other of the doctus poeta's products. Of these poems, Tristia 2 must be placed in a category by itself-if only because of its length (578 lines—four times the length of the next longest of the poems from exile) and because it purports to be a plea by Ovid to Augustus, the man responsible for his exile, on the very practical matter of mitigating the sentence.