‘Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep’: Uxorial Consolation in Ovid's Tristia

Abstract

In the poetic epistles addressed to his unnamed wife, Ovid makes a number of recognisably consolatory exhortations that poignantly reframe her perception of grief. By depicting exile as a form of living death and his departure from Rome in Tristia 1.3 as a funeral, Ovid is able to cast his wife in the role of a mourning widow whom he consoles from his exilic grave. The moment of their separation becomes a traumatic event that gives the wife the emotional endurance to handle any future adversity. Such appeals to earlier resilience, frequently found in consolation, are employed in Tristia 3.3 and 5.11. In these poems, Ovid also draws upon the consolatory argument that death is not a malum and reframes this same notion about exile to assert his status as a relegatus to his wife and a broader audience. This paper connects Ovid's use of these ideas with the broader tradition of Graeco-Roman consolation, expanding our understanding of the genre and the Tristia's place therein.