Ovid

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) Ancient Italy — Ovid Banished From Rome
Exhibited 1838 Oil on canvas © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY

This work treats the ancient poet Ovid’s purported exile from Rome, reconstructed here as a panoply of temples, triumphal arches, and statuary from different periods of the city’s history. Turner leaves Ovid’s identity within the image ambiguous: he could be the figure being arrested in the foreground, or he could be absent altogether, already banished or deceased (a tomb at lower left bears his full name). In any case, with the hazy scene and setting sun, Turner evokes the feeling of a final farewell to Rome and its golden age – The Frick Collection, New York

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Considered one of the most influential poets in the Western literary tradition, Ovid wrote works including Heroides (“Heroines”), Amores (“Loves”), Ars amatoria (“The Art of Love”), Metamorphoses, and Tristia (“Sorrows”). He completed his most famous and revered poem Metamorphoses around 8 BC, and it is regarded as a masterpiece alongside the works of Homer and Virgil. Near the end of his life, Ovid was exiled to Tomis by the emperor Augustus, a Black Sea port city in modern-day Constanța, Romania, where he died sometime in his sixties.

He was born Publius Ovidius Naso, in Sulmo, Italy, on March 20, 43 BC. Among his poetic influences were the Greek poet Callimachus and the two Roman poets Catullus and Propertius, who both influenced Ovid’s use of elegiac couplets.

Not much is known about Ovid’s early life. Born into an upper-middle-class family, and sent to Rome to study rhetoric, he subsequently spent a year in Athens studying philosophy, after which he was supposed to begin his career. But poetry had become his passion, and he began work on his first book. Heroides, Amores, and Ars amatoria were followed by Metamorphoses, a period in which he was married three times, and had a daughter.

In early works like Amores and Ars amatoria, Ovid adopted a poetic form taking his inspiration from Catullus and Propertius. This consisted of a line in dactylic hexameter followed by a line in dactylic pentameter. Through this he was able convey the intensity of love and desire with his particularly unique rhythm and structure.

Ovid’s work largely explores love, passion, sex, and the intracacies involved in romantic relationships, and a lot of his writing was risque to say the least, and centered around his luck with women;

non est certa meos quae forma invitet amores,
centum sunt causae, cur ego semper amem.
sive aliqua est oculos in humum deiecta modestos,
uror, et insidiae sunt pudor ille meae;
sive procax aliqua est, capior, quia rustica non est,
spemque dat in molli mobilis esse toro.

I don’t really have a “type” — there are always a hundred reasons why I might love someone. If a woman goes by with eyes lowered to the ground, I’m smitten, and her modesty is my undoing; but if she’s forward, I’m captivated, because she’s experienced, and makes me hope she might be nimble in bed.

It was his Metamorphoses, his take on Greek Myth, that became his classic work, and it is still hugely influential today. The stories in Metamorphoses span from the very creation of the world, the Gods’ influence on mankind, to the stupidity of King Midas, and the Trojan war.  Transformation is the central theme of this work which has been recognised as a treasury of both Roman and Greek mythology, influencing poets down through the ages to the modern day. The late Ted Hughes, a Poet Laureate, brilliantly translated the Metamorphoses in his book Tales from Ovid which won the 1997 Whitbread Book of the Year prize.

As well as this famous work, he also wrote Heroides, a collection of poems written from the perspective of women from mythology, women such as Penelope, Dido, and Medea, in which he addresses their absent lovers.

The defining event in Ovid’s life was his banishment to Tomis in 8 CE by the Emperor Augustus. At that time, Tomis was extremely remote, a town on the edge of the civilised world, and was loosely under the authority of the Kingdom of Thrace, which was itself a satellite state of Rome. According to Ovid none of its citizens spoke Latin, which as an educated man, he found especially hard. Speculations about the nature of Ovid’s “mistake” have differed over the centuries including the fact that Ovid had frequented circles that politically opposed the emperor, such as that of Lucius Aemilius Paullus, who conspired with others to restore the right of imperial succession to Agrippa Postumus, grandson of Augustus. Others say that Ovid had discovered that Augustus had committed incest with his own daughter Julia the Elder, or granddaughter, Julia the Younger, or that Ovid engaged in adultery with these ladies himself or had been witness to their adultery with someone else, we’ll never know for sure. Ovid referred to his downfall as being due to a ‘Carmen et Error‘, a poem and a mistake, claiming that what he did was not illegal, but worse than murder, more harmful than poetry.

He was tried in court by Augustus himself, and found guilty of a crime warranting exile, though as we’ve seen what the crime was exactly remains uncertain. Ovid spent his final years in Tomis writing long letters and poems of appeal asking Augustus to allow his return to Rome. The pleas fell on deaf ears, and Ovid remained in Tomis.

Ovid made his exile the subject of his last three works of poetry, the Ibis, a “venomous attack on an unnamed enemy”, and the two collections of literary epistles, Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. The five books of the Tristia are dated to 9–12 AD, during the first four years of Ovid’s banishment. They express the poet’s despair in exile and pleading his return to Rome. The Epistulae ex Ponto, a series of letters in verse to various influential people in Rome, asking them to help effect his return, and are thought to be his last compositions. The first three books were published in 13 AD, and the fourth book later, between 14 and 16 AD. One of these compositions was addressed to the Emperor himself: “Where’s the joy in stabbing your steel into my dead flesh?” According to Ovid himself, his banishment to the edge of the civilised world ruined any poetic genius he may have had left, and he died in Tomis in 17 AD.

Ovid’s impact on art, literature, and culture continues to be widely acknowledged, his work frequently referenced in literature, television and film. His poetry has inspired countless poets, writers, and artists throughout the ages, from Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare to modern days poets including the late Ted Hughes . Ovid’s stories appear in several Shakespearean plays, including “Romeo and Juliet,” partly taken from Metamorphoses, the lovers Pyramus and Thisbe, and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

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Below is ‘Carmen et Error’ a poem Ovid wrote whilst in exile in Tomis referring to the ghastly mistake that led to his banishment:

Book TII:207-252 His Plea: ‘Carmen et Error’

Though two charges, carmen et error, a poem and an error,

ruined me, I must be silent about the second fault:

I’m not important enough to re-open your wound, Caesar,

it’s more than sufficient you should be troubled once.

The first, then: that I’m accused of being a teacher

of obscene adultery, by means of a vile poem.

So, it’s possible somehow for divine minds to be wrong,

indeed there are many things beneath their notice.

As Jove, who watches over the gods, as well as

the high heavens, hasn’t time to notice lesser things,

so as you gaze round the world that depends on you,

inferior matters escape your care.

Should you, the Empire’s prince, leave your post

and read poetry I’ve set going on limping feet?

The weight of Rome’s name is not so light,

pressing its burden on your shoulders,

that you can turn your power to foolish games,

examining my idle things with your own eyes.

Now Pannonia, now the Illyrian coast’s to be subdued,

now Raetia and the war in Thrace concerns you,

now Armenia seeks peace, now the Parthian Horse

with timid hand offer their bows and captured standards,

now Germany, through Tiberius, feels your vigour,

and a Caesar wages war for a mighty Caesar.

Truly there’s no weak part in the body of Empire

though nothing so vast has ever existed.

The city and the guardianship of your laws, also,

wearies you, and morality you desire to be as yours.

Nor is that peace yours, that you grant the nations,

since you wage many restless wars.

So, should I wonder if, weighed down by so many things,

you’ve never unrolled my witticisms?

Yet if, by chance, as I wish, you’d had the time

you’d have read nothing criminal in my ‘Art’.

I confess the poem was written without a serious

face, unworthy of being read by so great a prince:

but that doesn’t render it contrary to established law,

or destined to teach the daughters of Rome.

And so you can’t doubt whom I wrote it for,

one of the three books has these four lines:

‘Far away from here, you badges of modesty,

the thin headband, the ankle-covering dress.

I sing what is lawful, permissible intrigue,

and there’ll be nothing sinful in my song.’

Haven’t I rigidly excluded from this ‘Art’

all whom the wife’s headband and dress deny?

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