Ovid in Augustan Tomis

Abstract

Ovid enacts his own poetic biography in his letters from Tomis, with implications for his ostensibly fawning position towards the princeps. Ovidian seafaring language in Tristia 1 recreates the circumstances under which carmina led to relegatio, while his resurrection of the Hero and Leander myth (Tr. 3.10 from Heroides 18 and 19) reflects the impossibility of his pre-exilic themes being continued in Tomis. Such a focus on the intersection between poetry and reality necessitates a reconsideration of Ovid’s Augustus, and renders the poet’s encomium at P. 4.13 a condemnation of the emperor as little more than a malus interpres.