Book IV

BOOK IV

1–4 In Tr. IV.9 Ovid was confident enough to feel that naming his enemy would expose that person to public obloquy. Now he fears that such publicity will bring X fame and favour. Even if we assume a purely literary exercise, the change in attitude is significant.

29ff. The main thrust of Ovid’s warning is that old rhetorical saw about the mutability of Fortune, best known from Juvenal’s Tenth Satire. The image of Fortune on her wheel is one to which Ovid refers more than once: see Tr. V.8.7–20; EP II.3.55–6, with notes ad loc.

37–8 Croesus, the wealthy king of Lydia (c. 560–546 BC) was captured by Cyrus at the fall of Sardis, but (according to Herodotus, 1.86–7), rescued from the pyre on which he was to be immolated.

39–40 The ‘tyrant lately dreaded in Syracuse’ was Dionysius II (c. 397–?330), ruler of Syracuse from 367, who, after being ejected from the fortress of Ortygia by Timoleon (344: see Plut. Timol. 13; DS 16.70), lived many years as an exile in Corinth, where on account of poverty he was forced to be a schoolteacher (Val. Max. 6.9.6), and became a famous object-lesson on ‘the fate of tyrants’.

40–44 After his defeat at Pharsalus (August 48 BC), Pompey sought refuge in Egypt with the boy-king Ptolemy XIII, but was stabbed to death as he stepped ashore by a group of Alexandrian courtiers, who sent his severed head as a gift to Caesar, leaving the headless corpse on the shore, an image that was to reverberate through Augustan poetry (Plut. Pomp. 77–9, Caes. 48; Caes. BC 3.102–4; App. BC 2.83–6; Dio Cass. 42.2–5; Lucan, 8.33–872, offers a long, florid and heavily dramatized version of Pompey’s death, which nevertheless well catches its psychological impact on future writers).

Line 44 is missing in B and C (A, maddeningly, terminates at III.2.67), and the fill-in attempted by later scribes is useless. (Némethy EP, p. 62) saw that what the line had to contain, given the rhetorical thrust of the passage as a whole, was a reference to Pompey’s wretched end, in contrast to the power and glory of his earlier career. I have inserted a supplement accordingly. (What would the Latin have been? Perhaps something like ‘is caput in Pharia triste reliquit humo’?)

45–8 C. Marius, driven from Rome in 88 BC by Sulla’s armed usurpation of power, sought refuge in the marshes of Minturnae (Vell. Pat. 2.19, Plut. Mar. 37–8). His victories in Numidia over Jugurtha had won him a triumph in 104; in 102–1 he faced down a serious threat from invading Germanic tribesmen (Teutones and Cimbri) in successful battles at Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae. He held a record seven consulships, the last (86) amid the factional chaos of civil war.

53–4 Both black and white hellebore (Helleborus niger, Veratrum album) were popular in antiquity as purges, being believed to clear the brain as well as the belly: Carneades and Chrysippus were said to dose themselves with hellebore to sharpen their minds (Plin. HN 25.15, 51–52, 58; Val. Max. 8.7.5; Aul. Gell. NA 17.15.1). In fact both drugs are highly poisonous irritants, and produce symptoms that include not only diarrhoea but vomiting, muscular spasms, asphyxia and cardiac failure.

55–8 The threat is clear: the ‘high god’ (Augustus) who brought Ovid to this pass may well turn his attention to Ovid’s enemy.

IV.4

For Sextus Pompeius see introductory note to EP IV.1 (above, pp. 350–51). The poem, a standard ‘consular encomium’ (laudatio consulis), offers an imaginative — and anticipatory — account of Pompeius’s forthcoming inauguration as consul for AD 14 (Tac. Ann. 1.7.2), and must post-date by some months the July elections. It thus resembles earlier triumph poems (Tr. IV.2, EP II.1 and III.4), and offers one of Ovid’s most interesting exilic exercises in the use of the literary imagination to bridge distances, evoke absent friends or places, and in general fantasize over the unobtainable (well analysed by Nagle, pp. 95–100), thus winning a certain vicarious satisfaction (7–10). ‘By immersing himself in fantasies of Rome, Ovid can forget, temporarily, his actual surroundings’ (Nagle, pp. 99). As in III.3 (9ff.), Ovid obtains his information through an epiphany rather than by direct exercise of the imagination. This time his visitor is not Eros, but an allegorized abstraction, Rumour (11ff.), as though to stress the artificiality of his literary construct; and the encounter takes place on the seashore, a reminder of Ovid’s exilic shipwreck (Evans PC, p. 155). At the same time the poem is very similar (Helzle (3), p. 105) to the kind of letter that Cicero was in the habit of addressing to a consul-elect: the form both evokes and parodies polite convention.

11–18 This little scene is interesting on two counts: first, it shows Ovid, for once, behaving like a normal human being in his new surroundings, taking a stroll along the (seemingly iceless) beach; and second, it reminds us of the equally mundane prose correspondence that he clearly maintained, as part of a complex lifeline, with friends in Rome: the real ‘invisible voices’ that provided the material he attributes here to Rumour (Fama). As so often with Ovid, there is an ambiguity here. Ovid presents Rumour as the bearer of good news, whereas elsewhere (see, e.g., Hes. WD 760ff.; Virg. Aen. 4.173ff.; and indeed Ovid himself, Met. XII.39ff.) she is a vengeful and malevolent figure. What did Ovid really think about Pompeius? Or is Rumour malevolent here for Ovid simply by teasing him with a prospect of the unobtainable?

23–6 Janus, in origin the spirit of gates or doors, came by natural evolution to be a god of beginnings, in particular the beginning of the year. His image was two-faced (looking both forward and back), he was addressed first in prayers, and what became the first month in the new Julian calendar (Ianuarius, January) was named after him. All that Ovid is really saying here is that the consul’s inauguration took place on New Year’s Day. Cf. Fast. I.63–88.

27–42 What Ovid describes here is the regular order of events for a consul’s first day in office (Helzle (3), pp. 106–7): (i) initial attendance in the consul’s house (27–8), (ii) a procession from there to the Capitol (29, cf. EP II.1.57–8), where (iii) sacrifice was conducted before the temple of Jupiter (30–34), and finally (iv) an inaugural speech to the Senate (35–7), followed by (v) further ritual prayers of thanksgiving (38–40) and (vi) another procession back to the consul’s house, escorted by the whole Senate (41–2). Ovid is demonstrating, not just personal nostalgia, but public loyalty to the regime, a nice balancing-act: behind the traditional trappings of the Republic lurks the powerful numen of Caesar (39–40), the divinized Great One — and his still-living avatar (33–4).

31–4 The text has caused editors considerable difficulty. Ovid, beginning at line 27, is embarking on his visualized fantasy (‘already I seem to see . . . ’, cernere iam uideor . . .) of the inauguration: the crowded halls and (et) people crushed in the throng, and (-que) the approach to the temple, and (et) the propitious response of the gods — a ‘polysyndetic string of four accusatives and infinitives’ (Helzle (3), pp. 115). There follows a fifth (reading niueos in line 31), but instead of being polysyndetic, it offers so jolting an asyndeton (no ‘and’ at all) that Richmond posits a lacuna of a couplet after 30 (and Ehwald, less understandably, after 32). As Helzle (ibid.) saw, this is unnecessary. Read uideo with some minor MSS rather than niueos, and line 31 can then stand as a new sentence with its own verb; also, the intensification of fantasy that some have noted in this passage (from ‘seem to see’ to ‘see’ tout court: cf. 45–6) is thus reinforced, and the asyndeton becomes tolerable. A similar change from adjective to verb in line 33 (read ores for omnes) relieves us of a tortuous and uncomfortable interpretation (accepted hesitantly (‘dubitans’) by Richmond). Line 32 is repeated from Fast. I.84, and (with a change of gender) from Am. III.13.14. Sacrificial beasts had to be pure white, and the water of Falerii was supposed to whiten the hair of cattle that drank it: Plin. HN 2.230.

47–50 What was Pompeius supposed to make of the end of this poem? He is portrayed as wondering, briefly and casually, how that ‘poor man’ is getting on — ‘What’s he up to these days?’ Hardly a picture of devotion. Even that much concern, Ovid declares, will make his exile easier to bear. If he was hoping to shame or embarrass Pompeius into more positive action on his behalf, the technique was certainly subtler than anything he had previously tried.

IV.5

Once again the addressee is Pompeius; but now he is well launched on his consular activities (17–26). Augustus, on the other hand, is still alive (23); since the news of his death on 19 August will have reached Ovid by October, we can confidently date the poem to the first half of the year, and if the wintry conditions described (3–6) are not mere rhetorical hyperbole, it would be reasonable to assume a composition date c. February (AD 14). As in earlier poems (Tr. I.1, III.7), this is a literary envoi (propemptikon), in which the poem, quasi-anthropomorphized as the poet’s messenger, is given its travelling-instructions (1–14) and a prepared speech (31–44) with which to address the consul. The tone is formally encomiastic, not least in the elaboration of Pompeius’s official duties, and the virtues he brings to them (17–26: cf. Helzle (3), p. 122). Yet there is, again, something ambivalent about the praise. Behind the catalogue of traditional Republican functions there stand huge numinous figures, the Imperial family, to whom the only proper attitude is worship (23–6), so that everything else — judgments, fiscal regulations, ‘high debate’ — takes on, in relation to this ultimate authority, the unreal quality of a shadow-show. At best, as his payment of ‘official respects’ (salutem) makes plain, Pompeius’s relationship to Augustus and the rest is that of a client to his patron. We should also note (though by now without surprise) that while Germanicus gets an enthusiastic two-line endorsement (25–6), Augustus is restricted to a bare mention (23), while Tiberius is not even named, merely identified through his (fictitious, adoptive) paternity.

5–8 The route Ovid describes clearly follows his own outward journey in reverse, including the overland section between Tempyra and Thynias (cf. Tr. I.10 and Green OEP, p. 48): thus, ‘a subtle reminder for Sex. Pompeius that it is not only Ovid’s poetry which should return to Rome but also the poet himself’ (Helzle (3) p. 122). Ovid allows ten days for a comfortable march from Brundisium (Brindisi) along the Appian Way to Rome; someone in a hurry (like the elder Cato bent on announcing his victory) could make it in half the time (Plut. Cat. Maj. 14; Liv. 36.21). The passage strongly hints at exaggeration elsewhere by Ovid (cf. p. 342) of the time it took to travel to and from Tomis.

9–10 The Forum of Augustus, dedicated 12 May 2 BC by the Princeps, lay north-east of the Capitol, immediately beyond the Forum Iulium, and at the foot of the Quirinal Hill, close to the Subura. The proximity of Pompeius’s house to this forum may well be stressed — so Helzle (3), p. 127 — as an implication of closeness between consul and emperor.

17–18 The language used here (in particular Quirites for ‘citizen body’) emphasizes ancient Republican tradition; so does the mention of the ‘inlaid ivory chair’ (sella curulis) specially reserved for magistrates of the SPQR (cf. below, EP IV.9.27–8).

19–20 The ‘contract-spear’, again by age-old tradition, was put up as a ’sign of sale’ (signum uenditionis) in the Forum before the temple of Jupiter when taxes were either being farmed out or collected, a process which it was the consul’s duty to supervise, and which included public works contracts, the revenues of the mines, and sales of the property of public debtors.

21–2 This ‘Julian temple’ was the Curia Iulia, begun by Caesar in 45/4 BC on the site of the old Comitium, flanking the Forum Romanum to the north-east, and finally dedicated by Augustus in 29 BC (Aug. Res Gest. 4.19; cf. Dio Cass. 51.22.2). The consul still had the duty of presiding over meetings of the Senate.

31–2 Imperial mercy (clementia) is a virtue that Ovid, alone of the Augustan poets, regularly emphasizes, and always in his exilic poetry (Tr. II.125, IV.4.53, 8.39, 9.3, V.4.19; EP I.2.61, II.2.121, III.6.7, cited by Helzle (3), p. 132, who explains it as an attempt ‘to put pressure on the emperor to live up to his reputation’ — but also, surely, a reminder of the gap between appearance and reality?).

33–8 On Pompeius’s provision of protection and financial aid to Ovid during the overland stage of his journey into exile see introductory note to EP IV.1 (above, pp. 350–51). If we are seeking a reason for why the poet had not invoked Pompeius’s further aid earlier, the answer is probably that he felt himself already (on the do ut des principle of Mediterranean reciprocity) over-indebted to this generous official, and loath to impose on him further. By AD 14 the failure of other sources of support seems to have overcome his initial reluctance.

40 ‘Chattel’ (mancipii) is something less than a client: virtually a piece of property, at best a servant. Ovid is humbling himself in no uncertain fashion.

41–4 Once again we have a string of adynata (see above, pp. 216–17) to emphasize the impossibility of Ovid’s changing his mind, the constancy of his gratitude. The examples chosen are a little odd, since (a) deforestation was by now a chronic problem in the Mediterranean, and (b) witches and magicians were widely believed to be able to reverse the flow of rivers (cf. Am. I.8.5–6, and below, EP IV.6.45–8).

45 The embarrassment is palpable: Ovid, well aware of Pompeius’s prior generosity, can do no more than invite him to ensure that his ‘gift of life’ is maintained.

IV.6

For Brutus, Ovid’s friend and editor, see above, EP I.1 and III.9, with notes ad loc. (cf. also note to Tr. I.7.5, above, p. 216). The present poem confirms their close and long-standing relationship (23–8) and highlights Brutus’s fine-honed venom as a courtroom advocate (33–8), with a teasing reference (38, and see note) to his massive girth. Identification with the rhetor Bruttedius Brutus (Sen. Controv. 5.9, 9.1.11) is pure speculation. The date of the poem can be worked out fairly closely from 5–6 and 15–18. If Ovid is ‘moving into’ his ‘second five-year spell’, we are late in AD 14. Augustus had died on 19 August of that year, and was deified 17 September. The news was brought to the provinces by express messenger (cursus celer), and could have reached Ovid before the end of October. We can therefore assign this poem to November or December. Brutus has not been asked for help previously, and even now the solicitation remains generalized and oblique: the final expression of gratitude, complete with adynata (43–50), is addressed, not to Brutus personally, but to all those who have stood by Ovid in his troubles.

9–12 On Fabius’s death (at some point after 15 May AD 14), and its possibly suspicious circumstances, see introductory notes to EP I.2 and III.3 (above, pp. 296 and 338). The key text is Tac. Ann. 1.5.1–2. What did Ovid mean by asserting that he had been responsible for his patron’s demise? Explanations vary. Because Fabius had supported his case too strongly? Because malign Fortune was determined to block the poet’s return from exile? Or (as I think more likely) because Ovid was fatally associated with the anti-Claudian movement that had earned him exile in the first place, so that Fabius’s covert visit with Augustus to Agrippa Postumus on Planasia became part and parcel of the same general charge?

15–16 The claim that Augustus’s attitude to Ovid had begun to ameliorate is generally dismissed out of hand as mere wishful thinking based on no evidence: see, e.g., Staffhorst, p. 113, André Pont., p. 171, n. 3. But if Augustus was prepared to consider a reconciliation with Agrippa, why not a reprieve for Ovid? Unless we reject both claims (and many do), the one seems a natural consequence of the other.

17–18 This poem celebrating the deification of Augustus has, perhaps mercifully, not survived. Ovid refers to it again at EP IV.8.63–4, 9.131–2, and in some detail (supposedly in a ‘Getic’ version: but see above, p. 336), at 13.23–32.

35–8 These four lines would not require comment had not a series of scholars insisted on obfuscating (and mistranslating) their very clear meaning. Ovid is commenting on Brutus’s forensic savagery against his opponents in court. The orator’s verbal missiles (tela) are worked over with the file (limantur) with such ‘fine subtlety’ (tenui cura) that ‘none would ever credit so delicate a talent [ingenium] in that great frame of yours [istius corporis]’. The contrast is clear: Brutus was a Falstaffian figure, in whom any ‘fine-drawn’ quality (the root meaning of tenuis is ‘thin’, ‘slender’) seemed paradoxical. Why, then, a translation like Wheeler—Goold’s (‘you use the file with such extreme care that none would recognise in them your real nature’)? Claassen (PEV, pp. 61–2) rightly arguing that this bears little relation to the Latin, replaces it with something even more grotesque, even further away from the Latin, and an insult into the bargain: ‘. . . which you polish with so little care that no one would admit that there is any natural talent attached to your family name’. André (Pont., p. 127) gets nearer the Latin, but still fudges the joke: ‘. . . que tu limes avec un soin si subtil que personne ne croirait qu’un tel esprit habite ton corps’. We have to turn to Shackleton Bailey (2), p. 398 to find out what has really been bothering everybody. ‘Was Brutus then . . . a clumsy elephant of a man? Whatever the implication of corporis, it is in impossibly bad taste.’ So much so that he feels compelled to replace it with nominis. In other words, you mustn’t call anyone fat. Seldom can a contemporary social fetish have so disrupted a perfectly sound ancient text. Throughout most of history girth has been associated with dignitas: the joke here is made in a friendly and admiring spirit.

47–8 According to Ovid (Tr. II. 391–2, with note, above, p. 230; AA I.327–30) the Sun reversed its course in horror at Atreus killing Thyestes’ children, cooking them, and serving them to their father at dinner. There was, however, an alternative explanation given, i.e. that Zeus engineered this reversal of the natural order in order to support Atreus’s claim to the throne of Argos (Apollod. Epit. 2.11–12, with Frazer’s note).

IV.7

Vestalis, the addressee of this poem, was (Syme HO, p. 82) ‘the son of the native prince M. Julius Cottius, whose name stands on the arch at Segusio and is perpetuated in the designation of a small province, the Alpes Cottiae [Cottian Alps]’. His grandfather was the C. Iulius Donnus mentioned here (29), and referred to by Strabo (4.6.6, C.204) as reigning over certain Ligurian tribes. He himself served, probably for the regulation year, as senior centurion (primus pilus) of a legion, under P. Vitellius (on whom see note to line 27), during the recapture in AD 12 of Aegisos (modern Tulcea): cf. PE I.8.13 and note ad loc. Subsequently (?AD 13) he was appointed — possibly as legate, more probably as prefect — to the command of the ‘coast of Pontus’ (praefectus orae maritimae: cf. note on line 1 below), and it is clearly in this capacity that Ovid now (?AD 14/15) addresses him.

Though he does not solicit support (and indeed it is unlikely that Vestalis could have helped him in his appeals to Rome), it would obviously be advantageous for Ovid to cultivate this important (and still-young) local commander, son of a client king. Besides, Vestalis’s hands-on familiarity with conditions in the area could be used (7–12) to validate Ovid’s complaints about the climate and, in particular, the constant danger from barbarian assaults (cf. EP III.9 to Cotys). The graphic praise of his military valour (15ff.) also serves to underline the perils of a half-subjugated frontier, the harshness of Ovid’s relegation. The poem is a formal encomium.

1 Was Vestalis posted to the Black Sea’s ‘waves’ or ‘waters’ (undas, B, perhaps with an allusion to the Danube: 19–20, 27) or ‘shores’ (oras, an obvious correction for C’s horas)? Editors have, with some unanimity, decided in favour of the former; but I suspect Ovid of making a delicate complimentary allusion to the title of Vestalis’s appointment orae maritimae; and besides, his position was that of a land-based administrator or commander, not (what undas suggests in conjunction with the Black Sea, Euxinas) an admiral. Read oras.

7–12 For frozen wine, barbarian carts crossing the ice-bound Danube, and the icing of the offshore sea, cf. Tr. III.10.23–50. Poisoned arrows, as we have seen, recur again and again: Tr. III.10.63–4 is characteristic. Cf. Tr. IV.1.77–8 and 84, V.7.16; EP I.2.15–16; and below, line 36.

21ff. For Aegisos see EP I.8.11ff. and note ad loc.

27–8 This officer has been convincingly identified as P. Vitellius (PIR¹ III, no. 502), praetor in AD 14, Germanicus’s legate on the Rhine a year later (Tac. Ann. 1.70), and his close friend: he was present at his deathbed in Antioch (10 October AD 19: Tac. Ann. 2.74), and afterwards was one of Cn. Piso’s prosecutors (Piso was believed to have been instrumental in procuring Germanicus’s premature demise: Plin. HN 11.187; Suet. Vitell. 2.3). He later attempted suicide after being implicated in the conspiracy of Sejanus (Tac. Ann. 5.8; Suet. ibid.). Helzle (3), p. 168 points out the obvious link Vestalis—Vitellius—Germanicus: ‘yet another reason for Ovid to address the prince’ — and, as Vitellius’s subsequent career shows, yet another anti-Claudian caucus.

41–2 A reference to Hom. Il. 15.674–746 when, after the Greeks retreated to their ships and Hector called for fire to set them ablaze, Ajax son of Telamon held off the assault.

52 For the winged horse Pegasus see Glossary, and below, note to EP IV.8.79–80.

IV.8

P. Suillius Rufus had a double claim on Ovid’s attention: he had married (c. AD 12) the poet’s stepdaughter Perilla (9–12, 89–90; cf. Tr. III.7), and at the same time he was already quaestor to Germanicus (Tac. Ann. 4.31.3, cf. Syme HO, p. 89). Like Cotta Maximus, he had dubious political habits. In 24, probably the year after his praetorship, he was exiled by Tiberius for accepting bribes during litigation (Tac., ibid.). He returned to Rome after Tiberius’s death, became consul in 41 or 43, and earned an unsavoury reputation as a corrupt informer (terribilis ac uenalis) under Claudius. In 58, however, his enemies, encouraged by Nero, once more succeeded in procuring his exile: Tacitus (Ann. 13.42–3) gives a characteristically lurid account of his downfall. He seems to have been a thoroughgoing opportunist: it has been suggested (Syme HO, p. 90) that the cognomen Nerullinus given to his son ‘was selected to advertise loyal devotion to the Claudii’. But in AD 12 Germanicus was the coming man (cf. lines 21–6); and Ovid, like Suillius himself, could hardly have ignored so promising a connection.

The poem should probably be dated late in AD 15. We may note that, for the first time since EP II.1, Ovid allows himself to use a poem ostensibly addressed to one of Germanicus’s supporters as the vehicle for an extended apostrophe (27–88) to Germanicus himself. Though some earlier epistles (e.g. EP II.5 to Salanus) were clearly aimed at the Imperial patron the addressee served, Ovid had hitherto avoided repeating his previous open appeal. Whether this change of tack indicates confidence or desperation is a moot point. The appeal itself (well analysed by Evans, PC, p. 160) is tripartite: (i) the exile cannot offer Germanicus wealth in the common sense, but only the coin of poetry; (ii) as a ruler and man of action Germanicus can acquire fame and kudos through this celebration of his deeds; (iii) since Germanicus is not only a patron of the arts but an artist himself, so that (81) he and Ovid have ‘rites in common’, it is incumbent on him to help Ovid win release from his Black Sea exile.

1–20 From this preamble it would seem that Ovid and Suillius were not personally acquainted: quite understandable if Suillius married Perilla some four years after Ovid’s relegation (see above). We do not know on what grounds (presumably literary or rhetorical: his speech against Cn. Piso was well received) Ovid describes him as ‘most refined of savants’.

17–18 Ovid was fond of stressing his ancient Equestrian pedigree: see, e.g., Am. I.3.8, III.15.5–6; Tr. IV.10.7–8.

23 Germanicus was born 24 May 15 BC, and thus at the time of writing was still no more than twenty-nine or thirty.

31 The Aegean island of Paros was famous for its pure white marble, reckoned second only to the Pentelic marble of Attica, and widely used both in architecture and by sculptors (Plin. HN 35.14).

41 The ‘Tarpeian altars’ were those associated with the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline (Tarpeian) rock.

47ff. On poetry as the one sure bestower of immortality (a regular topos in Augustan verse, not least Ovid’s) see, e.g., Am. I.3.19–26, 10.59–64, III.9.25–32.

51–4 Ovid is here referring to the Iliad and the lost epics of the Theban cycle, e.g. the Epigoni and the Thebaid, besides such plays as Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Seven against Thebes or Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus.

55–60 The obvious reference here is to Hesiod’s Theogony (especially 116ff.), but there is also a suspicion of self-promotion, since Ovid treated the same theme himself, in the opening book of the Metamorphoses (50–150), and along very similar lines (separation of the elements, formation of earth and heaven, creation of living beings, the ages of man, etc.). The defeat of the Giants (Gigantomachia) was also told by Hesiod (Th. 629–721), and picked up, with modern political allusions, by Ovid (Met. I.151ff.).

61–2 For the triumphal progress of Bacchus (Dionysus) through India see DS 3.63, 4.3.1. Eurytus, king of Oechalia, offered his daughter Iole as a prize to whoever defeated him and his sons at archery (Apollod. 2.6.1). Heracles won the contest, but was refused his prize, on the grounds that if he had children by Iole, he might (as he had done once before) go mad and kill them. In his rage at this he attacked and captured Oechalia, killed Eurytus, and carried off Iole (Apollod. 2.7.7; DS 4.37.5; and cf. Soph. Trach. 351–65, 476–8). There were at least five cities named Oechalia (in Messenia, Euboea, Thessaly, Trachis and Aetolia), and each had its proponents as the target of Heracles’ wrath: Homer, our oldest source, plumps for Thessaly (Il. 2.730).

63–4 For Ovid’s poem on the apotheosis of Augustus see EP IV.6.17–18, with note ad loc. (above, p. 359). ‘Caesar’, here, is Germanicus, who was only Augustus’s ‘grandson’ in so far as his grandmother, Livia, married Augustus en secondes noces, Germanicus being in fact the son of Drusus, whose father was Livia’s first husband Tib. Claudius Nero.

67–70 Germanicus’s best-known (and still surviving) literary work was his Latin translation of the Phaenomena of Aratus, a heavily Stoicized verse guide to the constellations, on which he seems to have been working at the exact time of this poem, i.e. soon after AD 14 (in his version, lines 558–60, Germanicus inserted a reference to Augustus’s apotheosis, decreed 17 September that year). Ovid alludes to his literary interests in his rededication of the Fasti (I.23–4).

79–80 The winged horse Pegasus was supposed to have struck the Muses’ spring of Hippocrene (‘the Horses’ Fountain’) from the rock of Helicon with a blow of its hoof (Paus. 9.31.3).

IV.9

For Graecinus and his brother L. Pomponius Flaccus see introductory note to EP I.6 (above, pp. 308–9): further information on the latter in introductory note to EP I.10 (above, pp. 313–14). Cf. also Syme HO, pp. 74–5. Ovid is celebrating Graecinus’s installation as consul suffectus (see below, note on line 5) in AD 16, and looking forward to Flaccus succeeding him on 1 January 17 (59–60). Thus the tone differs from that of earlier approaches: Ovid’s friend is no longer a coming man, but has very much arrived. It would therefore be inappropriate to read him a homily on the responsibilities of friendship, especially now he is in an excellent position (as a senior magistrate and intimate of Tiberius) to intercede on the exile’s behalf, which Ovid now hopes he will do (71–4). Since Flaccus has served with distinction in the area (75–80) he can corroborate Ovid’s complaints about the climate and the risk of native attacks (81–6), and may even have taken note of Ovid’s ostentatious loyalty and piety (105–20), his exemplary conduct throughout his exile, the privileges granted him locally (93–104). As in EP IV.4 and 5, the occasion of a consul’s installation gives Ovid an excuse to travel to Rome in imagination, letting the poem act as his surrogate (7–50). For the ceremonial details see EP IV.4.27–42, with note (above, p. 355).

It is noteworthy that though Ovid concludes with an apostrophe (127–34) to the deified and enskied Augustus, he still can manage no more than a quick third-person reference (125–7) to Tiberius (whom in the Latin he does not even name, merely describing him, generically, as ‘Caesar’). The tone, as Evans points out (PC, p. 161) is now much more lively: though Ovid’s mind is obsessively locked on his one objective, the promotion of a friend to high office offers new hope of seeing that objective fulfilled.

4 The ‘rods and axes’ (fasces: hence ‘fascism’) were carried before the consul, as a symbol of his power, by twelve attendants, known as lictors: each lictor had an axe bound up (rather like a chimney-sweep’s brush) in a bundle of rods, the one being the instrument of execution, the other of flogging.

5 Graecinus, in contrast to his brother, was appointed as a ‘supplementary’ (suffectus) consul, to serve for a part of the year, and thus it is not clear just when he took office: probably around midsummer of 16, since the appointment of suffects (begun by Julius Caesar) had not yet swollen to the farcical proportions it later achieved. Flaccus, on the other hand, had been appointed a ‘regular’ consul (ordinarius), and thus served for the whole of AD 17.

9–10 This probably refers (see above, pp. 321–2) to Ovid’s early choice of the ‘uneven’ elegiac couplet (hexameter followed by pentameter) rather than the repeated hexameter appropriate for epic. Had he chosen the latter, he muses, his destiny might have proved different.

17–18 In the inaugural procession (above, p. 355) escorting the new consul, members of the Equestrian Order to which Ovid himself belonged (Tr. IV.10.8; EP IV.8.17, cf. above, p. xiii) rode ahead of him.

26 The ‘purple’ mentioned here refers to the purple-edged toga praetexta worn by senior magistrates of the SPQR.

27–8 For the consul’s ‘curule chair’, inlaid with ivory and gold, cf. EP IV.5.17–18. ‘Numidian’ implies north African elephants.

29 The ‘Tarpeian stronghold’ was the Capitol: cf. note to EP IV.8.41–2. For the ceremony see (in addition to IV.4.29–32 above) Fast. I.63–88. The ‘mighty god’ is Jupiter Optimus Maximus (above, p. 362), but there is also, as so often, an oblique reference to Augustus (now deified) as the ‘Capitoline deity’ (cf. line 39).

45–6 Cf. EP IV.5.19–20, and note ad loc. (above, p. 357).

65 ‘Mars’ Rome’ because Romulus and Remus, Rome’s traditional founders, were believed to be sons of Mars: cf. Tr.III.7.52; EP I.8.24.

74 For the equation of Tomis with Hades (and hence for the Styx as the river on which Ovid’s metaphorical vessel-of-circumstance found itself) see above, p. 312.

75–80 Flaccus had distinguished himself thus during the campaign of AD 12 (not 15, as previously argued: see Syme HO p. 83). Troesmis (modern Igliţa) on the right bank of the lower Danube in Moesia Inferior was later the headquarters of the Fifth Legion (Macedonica). Flaccus served as the legate of C. Poppaeus Sabinus (consul AD 9).

81–6 Most of these complaints are familiar; but the offerings of human heads strike a new note.

93–104 The substitution of force for law by local tribesmen is something that had earlier made a deep impression on Ovid: cf. the similar point at Tr. V.7.47–8. Heinsius and most subsequent scholars have seen that something is amiss with the text as transmitted (sic ego sum longe sic hic ubi barbarus hostis). Ehwald posited a lacuna (of two half-lines and a line) between longe and sic, which Richmond accepts. This is unnecessary. The corruption (as Richmond sees: he obelizes it) lies in the second sic. What in fact is Ovid saying? That even in this barbarous backwater, where brute force usurps the rule of law, over the years no one — man, woman or child — has had cause to complain of him. Longe should be taken in a temporal (rare, but possible) rather than, as hitherto, a locative sense: Ovid is stressing the length of his unspotted record, not (for once) the remoteness of his exile. Sic must conceal a (verbal?) adjective referring to Ovid. Read situs (‘situated’, ‘positioned’, especially in relation to external circumstances, OLD s.v., §3.c). The honours Ovid describes seem to have been immunity from local taxes, and perhaps honorary civic status in recognition of his literary work in the local patois (cf. André Pont., p. 138, n. 3, with further reff.).

105–20 The miniature Caesarean pantheon described by Ovid in EP II.8 (see note on 1–6, above, p. 326) has now been extended to include images of Drusus II and Germanicus (109–10). It is impossible to tell how much, if any, irony underlies Ovid’s description of his (doubtless widely publicized) habit of offering prayers and incense to these ‘present deities’, of celebrating ‘the birthday festival of the God’. As in the case of Vestalis (who could in fact have succeeded him) it is not entirely clear just what Flaccus’s official position on ‘the leftward coast of Pontus’ (119) may have been. Pontus was ‘under his control’ (sub praeside) which could refer to any kind of command, civil or military.

131–2 For this poem see note to EP IV.6.17–18, above, p. 359.

134 A flattering allusion to the title ‘Father of his Country’ (pater patriae) bestowed on a hitherto reluctant Augustus 5 February 2 BC (Aug. Res Gest. 6.24–5; Suet. Div. Aug. 58) by Senate and People, including the Equestrian Order to which Ovid himself belonged: Fast. II. 127–8.

IV.10

Ovid had arrived in Tomis by the late spring of AD 9 (cf. introductory note to Tr. IV.6, above, p. 264): this ‘sixth summer’ is therefore that of AD 14. Albinovanus Pedo, Ovid’s addressee, was both soldier and littérateur: again, an officer under Germanicus (though Germanicus himself, we may note, is not mentioned in this poem). In AD 15 we find him carrying out a cavalry raid against the Frisians (Tac. Ann. 1.60.2); the following year he was present during the terrible storm that overtook Germanicus’s fleet in the North Sea (Tac. Ann. 2.23–4 passim). He wrote an epic poem on this campaign: the elder Seneca (Suas. 1.15) has preserved twenty-three lines of it describing the North Sea episode, and also confirms Albinovanus’s friendship with Ovid (Controv. 2.2.12), who here addresses him one of the oddest and most intriguing poems in the entire exilic corpus.

To begin with, Ovid concedes that he is writing in summer: the myth of perpetual cold has been abandoned. There is also, strikingly, no appeal for help in getting the exile out of Tomis: instead, a good deal of the poem is devoted to demonstrating Ovid’s toughness (duritia), his capacity for endurance, which even triumphs, with superb (and Donne-like) self-assurance, over death itself (7–8), in sharp contrast to the stock examples of remorseless attrition (worn rings, work-thinned ploughshares, water-hollowed stone, 5–6) trotted out by Ovid from Lucretius (1.312–14) and his own erotic verse (AA I.473–6; Am. I.15.31–2). ‘Time, that great corrosive’ (tempus edax), with its echoes of Horace (Odes 3.30) and the defiant close of the Metamorphoses (XV.871–9), suggests that once again Ovid will advance poetry as the conqueror of time; but no, it is the poet’s duritia. As Davisson (DCE, p. 32) says, ‘by the end of the poem the nature of Ovid’s victory is clear: through his poetry he not only endures but also transcends the sufferings he describes’.

In the process he delivers several surprises. He begins with what is by now (cf. above, p. 211) a routine mythological comparison between himself and Odysseus/Ulysses: who had the worse time of it? who proved tougher? Obviously, we are to think, the poet; but the dishonesty of the arguments advanced, not least with regards to a poem, the Odyssey, that all educated readers knew virtually by heart, is remarkable. Ovid mentions Ulysses’ long stay with Calypso, but not his impatience to leave her (13–14, cf. Od. 4.555–60, 5.151–8); the gift by Aeolus of the bag of winds (15–16), but not how the gift was turned into a disaster (Od. 10.34–9); the sweet taste of the lotus (18), but not the fact that Ulysses abstained from it (Od. 9.91–102). The comparisons that follow are more generalized, less controvertible: Cyclops and Laestrygonians set against putatively cannibal local tribes (21–4); Scylla and Charybdis against the danger of Black Sea corsairs (25–30). Then we get three of Ovid’s stock complaints — leafless steppe, poisoned arrows, frozen sea (31–4) — and prepare ourselves for yet another self-pitying jeremiad.

But, it turns out, the exponent of duritia has other things on his mind. Reports from Rome suggest that people disbelieve his horror-stories. Very well: he will take one of them (the freezing of the Black Sea) and offer scientific proof that he is right. A prevailing north wind combined with the influx of numerous rivers into the sea produces the necessary conditions: fresh water rides above salt, and is more easily frozen, while the wind aids the process by creating a chill-factor (37–64). This not-quite-parody of didactic epic gains considerable force from the fact that it happens to be scientifically impeccable: cf. J. Rouch, La Méditerranée (1946), pp. 187–93, cited by André Pont., pp. 142–3, n. 1. Dr Stefan Stoenescu informs me that ‘the rich salty waters [of the Danube delta] create a brackish region near and along the littoral which allows an inversion of temperature to take place. The unsalty waters of the Danube have sufficient power to maintain a thin layer of comparatively sweet fresh water above the deeply settled salty Mediterranean current. As a result, near the Danube delta shores freezing is not an unusual occurrence. Ovid was right.’

Why, Ovid asks, at the conclusion of this demonstration, is he versifying such information and retailing it to Albinovanus? To kill time, he informs us; to distract him from his surroundings (65–70). Why writing about the Black Sea should help him to forget Tomis is a question neither asked nor answered. Nor are we told why Ovid has mysteriously abandoned his pleas for a transfer (at IV.14.59–62 he speaks affectionately of Tomis, merely wishing the gods might shift it further south!). Albinovanus, it transpires, is writing a poem (probably in epic form) about Theseus (71–4). After all that has gone before, this stale mythological dabbling is made to sound artificial, if not downright frivolous: Ovid is good at what Mrs Malaprop termed ‘odorous comparisons’. Having in the past deployed his own clichés concerning this hero (cf. above, p. 280), he now points out that Theseus possesses one quality it is open to all to emulate: loyalty (75–80). Yes, Ovid repeats, loyalty is the key. We confidently await the usual exhortation.

But again there comes the unforeseen twist. There is ambiguity in the choice of Theseus: his loyalty was decidedly selective. Pirithoüs, yes — but what about Ariadne? That unedifying tale of desertion Ovid had treated on no less than four separate occasions (Her. X; AA. I.527ff.; Fast. III.459ff.; Met. VIII.172ff.). The final couplet (83–4) is, on the face of it, a handsome tribute, yet somehow leaves us wondering just what Ovid’s true attitude, and message to Albinovanus, really was. If he needed to be bombarded with scientific proofs, how far had he been receptive to Ovid’s grim portrait of the eternally frozen outback? We know today, just as Ovid himself knew very well then, that in many respects his portrait was exaggerated and distorted to make good propaganda. Against such a background the emphasis on loyalty assumes fresh meaning: Ovid’s truly loyal friends will not hamper his efforts by querying his poetic fictions, since these (which anyway represent a higher truth) are maintained for the best of personal reasons. Nor, indeed, are they always false. Very often (as the scientific proof here adduced makes clear) the least credible phenomena turn out to be no more than the bare truth. Pity the sufferer, then (36), whose complaints provoke disbelief!

13–14 No one seems certain how many years Odysseus spent with Calypso: Ovid’s six is one among a variety of estimates. Homer put the figure at seven (Od. 7.259), Apollodorus at five (Epit. 7.24), while Hyginus cut it down to one (Fab. 125).

15–16 While Odysseus was asleep, his crew opened the bag of winds given him by Aeolus (thinking it contained treasure), and the resultant hurricane blew them far off course: Hom. Od. 10.1–79; cf. Met. XIV. 223–32.

17 Odysseus heard the Sirens’ song lashed to his vessel’s mast, while his companions rowed on past them, ears stopped with wax (Hom. Od. 12.165–200; Apollod. Epit. 7.18–19).

18 For the Lotus-Eaters see Hom. Od. 9.82–104; Apollod. Epit. 7.3.

21–4 For the Laestrygonian attack on Odysseus and his crew see Hom. Od. 10.80–132; Apollod. Epit. 7.12–13; Ovid Met. XIV.233–44. For Odysseus’s adventure in the Cyclops’ cave see Hom. Od. 9.105–542. Ovid’s point here is that both the Laestrygonians and the Cyclops were cannibals, and that this practice could be matched in the Black Sea region in his own day.

25–30 For Scylla and Charybdis see Hom. Od. 12.73–126 and 222–59; Apollod. Epit. 7.20–21 with Frazer’s note ad loc. The physical characteristics of Scylla were variously described: see in particular schol. Plat. Rep. 588C (face and breasts of a woman, six dog-heads and twelve feet about the groin), Ovid Met. XIV.59–67. For the Black Sea pirates here mentioned (the Heniochi and Achaei) see Strabo 11.2.12–14, C. 495–6.

31–4 For these stock examples see above, note to EP III.1.11–28 (pp. 332–3).

39–44 A nice mixture of fact and fiction: as we have seen (above, p. xxiv), Tomis lay on a latitude very little further north than Rome — but at the same time it is quite true that the predominant winds on the Black Sea littoral blow from the north-east in winter and the north-west in summer (cf. Rouch, op. cit., pp. 187–8).

45–58 This Alexandrian catalogue of rivers flowing into the Black Sea can be matched by other similar catalogues in Met. I. 579–80, II. 243–59; Am. III.6.23–54. Most of the rivers named here are little-known: I identify only the more famous ones (for information on the rest see André Pont., pp. 174–5). The Halys (modern Kizil-Irmak) is the longest river in Asia Minor, flowing through Cappadocia, Galatia and Paphlagonia to debouch in the Black Sea between Sinope and Amisos. The Thermodon (Terme Tchai, east of the Halys) traversed what was traditionally Amazon territory. The Phasis, in Colchis, was explored by the Argonauts (Ap. Rhod. 2.1260–61). The Borysthenes is the Dnieper. Several of the rest (Pénius, ?Cynapses, ?Dyrápsus) are either unknown or disputed (see Richmond STP, pp. 116–17). The Nile and the Danube are often compared (e.g. by Herodotus, 2.33.4, 4.50), though, as André justifiably points out (Pont., p. 176, n. 18), the Nile is over twice the length of its supposed rival.

59–64 This explanation is precisely correct: cf. Rouch (op. cit.), p. 193.

79–80 Theseus’s journey along the Isthmus of Corinth to Athens brought him into conflict with various local brigands, all of whom he disposed of: Periphetes the Club-Man, Sinis the Pine-Bender, Sciron who forced travellers to wash his feet, and Procrustes (or Polypemon) who invited them in for the night and then stretched or chopped them to fit the length of his bed. See Plut. Thes. 6–10, and Apollod. 3.16.1–2, Epit. 1.4, with Frazer’s note on further sources.

IV.11

Junius Gallio, the recipient of this short epistle, was a noted and powerful rhetorician (Sen. Controv. 10, praef. 13), a friend of the elder Seneca (whose eldest son he later adopted) and, probably, of Messalla Corvinus. Seneca also testifies to his friendship with Ovid, and, it would seem, with Tiberius (Suas. 3.7): ample reason for his cultivation (better late than never) by the exile. His senatorial career was abruptly cut short in AD 32 as the result of his suggestion that ex-praetorians should be given seating privileges in the theatre: Tiberius reprimanded him, removed him from the Senate, and sent him into exile (Tac. Ann. 6.3; Dio Cass. 58.18.3). He had the good sense (as I can testify) to choose Lesbos for his residence: this was, understandably, considered too pleasant a punishment, and he was hauled back to Rome and placed under house arrest. See PIR² pt. iv.1, no. 756 (pp. 334–5), and Syme HO p. 80 (who, however, wrongly identifies him as no. 757, L. Iunius Gallio Annaeanus, his adopted son (see above)). Apart from what Ovid tells us, we know nothing of his private circumstances.

4 Ovid’s normal image for his punishment by Augustus is a divine lightning-bolt. By changing this to a spear, he contrives to suggest that he and his friend are fellow fighters in some Homeric-style battle.

11–14 The commonplaces of consolation for exiles — not least that of time’s all-healing power — had (as Seneca conceded, Epist. 63.12) acquired a trite and shop-worn appearance as early as Cicero’s day: Ovid was by no means the first to argue that time and common sense could alleviate almost any grief. Cf. Cic. Fam. 5.16.5 and 4.5.6, appositely cited by Davisson (SSO, p. 179). But Cicero, characteristically, felt that he was an exception to the rule (Att. 3.15.12); and so, as we have seen (above, EP IV.10.5–8) did Ovid.

15–16 Ovid’s exaggeration (cf. EP III.4.59–60 and note ad loc.) of the time it took for letters to travel between Tomis and Rome is here used not only to emphasize the writer’s exilic isolation, but also as a handy excuse for not having written before. He suspects (13–14) that Gallio’s sorrow at the death of his wife may already have run its course; in the same way he feared (EP III.4.54) that his triumph poem would have arrived too late to be topical.

17–20 For the varying prescriptions (couched in medical terms) for dealing with grief — immediate treatment? leave well alone later? — see above, EP I.3, with note on 13–16.

IV.12

We know almost nothing about Tuticanus apart from the impossibility of fitting his name, metrically, into elegiac verse: a double trochee (–˘–˘) could not be integrated into a dactylo-spondaic schema (–˘˘––). This is odd. On Ovid’s own admission, they had been friends almost since childhood (19–20), had criticized each other’s literary efforts (23–8). Why does Tuticanus receive only these two late and somewhat perfunctory poems (IV.12 and 14)? And granted the apparent absence of previous communication, why does he get them now? The excuse about his name is the merest joke, and treated as such. He had been steadily advanced in office by Augustus’s patronage (39–40); André (Pont., p. xxviii) could be right in linking Ovid’s tepid and non-specific appeal for support (43ff.: it makes a change for him not to know what to ask for!) to Tuticanus’s probable influence with the Germanicus faction; but he could just as easily have been an adherent of Tiberius, which might explain the earlier lack of communication between them, and the palpable awkwardness detectable in both epistles.

7–8 Ovid here describes the only possible way of accommodating ‘Tuticanus’ (–˘–˘) to an elegiac couplet, i.e. by splitting the name between the last, catalectic, foot of the hexameter ( Catalectic Foot )—and the first (dactylic or spondaic) foot of the pentameter, (–˘˘) or (––).

9–14 The alternative solutions all involve changing, in one way or another, the vowel-quantities in ‘Tuticanus’: unlike English — where rhythm is determined solely by stress, not quantity — Latin (and Greek) assigned fixed lengths to all vowels, so that to accommodate his friend’s name Ovid would be forced to countenance basic metrical violations.

26–8 Tuticanus’s Phaeacid will have been an adaptation or reworking of the ‘Phaeacian books’ (6–12) of Homer’s Odyssey (and is almost certainly the work referred to by Ovid below at IV.16.27).

33ff. It is noteworthy that Ovid now includes among his adynata not only such regular bugbears as the climate and warlike tribes of Pontus, but also the possibility of reprieve. Fatalism, in these last poems, has progressively replaced hope: it is difficult not to connect this increasing pessimism with the death of Augustus. Yet Ovid still looks for a ‘hoped-for breeze’ (42) of some sort to keep his raft afloat. But how? He has, he confesses, no idea. He has run out of solutions. Let his friends decide. The significance of this abject nolo contendere has never been emphasized as it deserves. Ovid now presents a very different persona from what has gone before. His resignation seems almost to signal and foresee the death that was so soon to claim him. Even the get-me-out-of-here explosion at IV.14.5–14 (above, p. 196) moves into a reconciliation with Ovid’s angry neighbours. He knows he is there for good.

IV.13

Carus, one of Ovid’s closest friends, was, as we have seen, the probable recipient of Tr. I.5, I.9, III.5 and V.4. We know little about him, except that he was a poet, who wrote about Hercules (11–12; cf. EP IV.16.7–8), and that — like so many of Book IV’s addressees — he was an intimate of Germanicus, and tutor to his sons (47–8). But the interest of this much-discussed poem lies not in its addressee (who is routinely appealed to on the grounds of his familiarity with Germanicus, 43–50), but in the picture Ovid presents of himself as ‘almost a Getic bard’ (18). What this means, it seems fairly certain (see EP III.2, with note to line 40, above, p. 336) is that he had mastered the local Greek-derived lingua franca rather than true Getic or Sarmatian. In any case, as Evans saw (PC, p. 165), the primary significance of this poem is ‘as Ovid’s final apology for his poems from exile’. The date (39–40) is the winter of 14/15 (see below on 27–8).

Despite his perfunctory plea in the final couplet (49–50) for a change of residence, Ovid here re-emphasizes his fundamental separation, literary no less than personal, from Rome. ‘Here I’m not hated,’ he had told Graecinus (EP IV.9.89ff.), and proceeded to list, with modest pride, the civic honours locally conferred on him. Now he has taken a further step towards acclimatization: by changing his language he has found himself a new audience (33ff.), one suitable (it is clearly implied) for the run-down poet he has become. His faulty verse should not cause surprise (17–18). Why not? Because he is virtually a Getic poet. We remember his patronizing attitude to the literary efforts of Cotys (EP II.9.51–2). If he despises himself, he feels greater contempt for these uncouth provincial admirers. (The resentment of the locals at his non-stop invective against Tomis (see below, IV.14.15ff.) is scarcely to be wondered at.) He no longer regards himself as an active participant in Roman literature — the final valediction of IV.16 speaks of his achievements as something in the past — nor does he now claim to be judged by Roman standards. Severed from his country by seemingly irrevocable fiat, he completes the process of isolation by this formal downgrading of his literary status. Yet (one keeps coming back to this paradox) his powers have not diminished, his Latin has lost none of its elegance: the self-isolation is personal and psychological, yet insistent (as always with Ovid) on expressing itself in literary terms.

At the same time Ovid remains, despite his self-deprecating stance, quintessentially Roman throughout. His ironical sense of the ridiculous has seldom been better displayed. Evans sees this clearly (PC, p. 165): ‘Ovid cannot resist playing with the incongruities of a poetic reading in the midst of barbarism.’ The picture of this elegant sophisticate taking the apotheosis of Augustus and turning it into a kind of missionary singsong (the genre is instantly recognizable in any language) designed to impress simple fur-clad quiver-toting natives has its own weird humorous charm. And of course, even this barbarian audience is made to recognize the injustice of his relegation: how, one honest fellow asks, can so faithful an acolyte of Caesar not be restored to Caesar’s favour (33–8)? Everyone else has been roped in to plead for him, so why not the Getae? Even while abrogating his Roman persona, Ovid can still, at the same time and almost in the same breath, stand aside and laugh knowingly at the social incongruities of his new role. Right to the end, nothing could kill his well-honed sense of the absurd.

15–16 Just as Thersites (cf. EP III.9.10 and note) was the ugliest Greek who fought at Troy, so Nireus, king of the island of Syme, and a former suitor of Helen’s, was the most beautiful: Hom. Il. 2.673–4.

20 One of the best arguments in favour of this ‘barbarian patois’ being a Greek-based lingua franca is its apparent adaptability to the strict quantitative requirements of Latin verse. Cf. note on EP III.2.40 (above, p. 336). It is highly unlikely that genuine Getic or Sarmatian would have been so amenable.

21 Ovid’s dismissal of the Getae as ‘stupid peasants’ (Tr. V.10.38: stolidi) and, here, as ‘uncultured’ (inhumanos) gives the lie to his excuses in EP IV.14.23–6, when he assures the locals that he loves them ‘although I loathe your land’, and that ‘there’s not one letter/makes any complaints about you’. Having one persona for Rome and another for Tomis was bound, in the long run, to create embarrassing problems of this sort.

23ff. For this essay in post-Hellenistic catasterism cf. EP IV.6.17–18 with note ad loc. (above, p. 359).

27–8 For Tiberius’s elaborate pantomime of feigned refusals to accept the succession, and his touchy anger at various senators who, however sedulous, tended to puncture his pretensions, see the acid account given by Tacitus, Ann. I.11–13 passim — all very different from the simple modest recusatio implied here by Ovid. But clearly he had been briefed by friends on events in Rome. Since the deification of Augustus and Tiberius’s succession did not take place till September AD 14, and Ovid is writing in the winter of 14/15 (39–40), we have here further confirmation that communications between Rome and Tomis took considerably less time than he sometimes (as evidence of remote isolation) tried to claim.

29–30 Vesta (Greek Hestia) was the goddess of the hearth, and hence of domesticity, being a key element in family worship. This is clearly Ovid’s symbolic (and ostensibly flattering) point in identifying her with Livia. Yet, as so often, an irreverent subtext forces itself on one’s attention. Vesta’s favourite animal was the lubricious ass; and the Vestalia on 9 June was an ill-omened occasion associated with the disposal of dung (Vesta had succeeded an ancient local deity called Caca: Servius on Aen. 8.190). Further, the rhetorical query as to whether Livia was worthier of husband or son was indeed, as Ovid says, ambiguum: which son, Tiberius, or Germanicus’s father Drusus I? and, even more, which husband — Augustus (who married her when she was pregnant by her previous husband, after a forced divorce), or Tib. Claudius Nero, the father of both her sons?

31–2 The ‘two youths’ were Drusus II (Tiberius’s actual son, but by his first wife Vipsania) and Germanicus (his adopted son, in fact his nephew, son of Drusus I).

35 For the Getic habit of going armed with bow and full quiver on all occasions cf. Tr. IV.10.110, and especially V.7.15–19.

39–40 Ovid had left Rome in December AD 8, and reached Tomis by the early summer of 9: the ‘sixth winter’ is thus that of 14/15.

41–2 This assertion by Ovid (that his erotic poems were the prime cause of his exile) contradicts all previous statements claiming the mysterious (and unexplained) error as responsible (see, e.g., EP III.3.71–6). Was his change of line one more by-product of Augustus’s death?

43–8 In the winter of 14/15 Germanicus’s military future remained problematical: as Ovid in all likelihood, and Carus (as tutor to the Imperial children) quite certainly knew, on the news of Augustus’s death in August the legions of Lower Germany had mutinied, and Germanicus had, on his own initiative, accepted most of the mutineers’ demands (Tac. Ann. 1.34ff.). The campaign he then (14/15) launched against various German tribes (the Marsi, Chatti, Cherusci and Bructeri) was difficult, and brought heavy losses — even though he did achieve valuable publicity by paying the last rites to Varus at the scene of the latter’s defeat in the Teutoburger Forest (Tac. Ann. 1.60–62; and cf. above, p. 299, note to EP I.2.89–90). The following year the fleet suffered considerably during a particularly severe North Sea storm (above, p. 366). The sons of Germanicus in Carus’s care at this time were Nero (b. AD 6, d. 31) and Drusus III (b. AD 7/8, d. 33).

IV.14

Tuticanus (see IV.12) is also the recipient of this poem, but otherwise, after the first four lines, seems to have been forgotten. Ovid is totally preoccupied with his own problems. His frustration extends even to being irritated by his own good health (5) — presumably on the grounds that this undercuts the notion of Tomis as an intolerable hell-hole (it would be nice to think he was joking, but somehow I doubt it). His get-me-out-of-here motif (cf. introductory note to EP III.9) reaches a furious crescendo (5–14). Such complaints, however, we learn, have created considerable resentment against him among the local inhabitants (15ff.), whose generous treatment of the exile (below, 51–6) has made Ovid’s jeremiads look ungrateful as well as impolite. He therefore sets out — not convincingly, cf. note to IV.13.21, above, p. 373 — a defence that claims he has only attacked the region, not its inhabitants (23–46). Scholars have disagreed as to whether the story of local honours was true (Fränkel, pp. 158–9; Wilkinson, pp. 364–5) or merely ‘protreptic exempla’, ‘a rhetorical challenge to Roman readers’ (Evans PC, pp. 158, 191) to demonstrate their own larger humanity by supporting Ovid (Nagle, p. 167). I see no reason why both notions should not be correct. Rhetorical challenges do not have to be invented; life can often supply very satisfying material with which to argue a point.

9–10 Ovid here offers a nice slide between the mythical (Charybdis) and the geographical (the Syrtes) — even though tradition located Charybdis in the Straits of Messina, while the Syrtes (the two great Libyan gulfs of Sidra and Gabes, between Tripolitania and Cyrenaica) acquired a vastly exaggerated, not to say mythic, reputation for dangerous sunken reefs, shallows, quicksands, dust-storms etc. (Strabo 17.3.17 and 20, C.834, 836). Ovid probably has the Syrtes still in mind when he gives a fresh twist (21–2) to his favourite metaphor of shipwreck for the calamity that overtook him.

23–6 On the patent falsity of this claim see note to IV.13, 21, above, p. 373; cf. also Tr. V.7.9–22 and 45–6. There is also another point raised by this passage. If Ovid’s recriminations became known in detail to the citizens of Tomis, it cannot be true that, as he alleges elsewhere, no one there understood Latin (Tr. V.7.53–4, 12.53–6, cf. III.14.47). Indeed, the ‘malicious interpreter’ (malus interpres) of line 41 directly contradicts these earlier statements, while providing a self-exculpatory source for the rumour. Cf. André Pont., p. 151, n. 1.

31–4 Hesiod brings the charge against Ascra-by-Helicon in the Works and Days (639–40): ‘. . . a miserable village . . . nasty in winter, hard going in summer, good at no season’.

35–6 Odysseus, describing Ithaca to the Phaeacians (Hom. Od. 9.21–7) calls it ‘rugged, but a good nurse of young men’.

37–40 Metrodorus of Scepsis in Mysia, philosopher and historian (early 1st cent. BC) was a favourite of the great Mithridates of Pontus, but later deserted him, transferring his allegiance to Tigranes of Armenia (Strabo 13.1.55, C.609–10). He was noted for his powers of memory (Cic. De Orat. 2.360) and — the point that Ovid picks up — for his rabid loathing of Rome and the Romans (Plin. HN 34.34): he was nicknamed, in Greek, misorōmaios, i.e. ‘Rome-hater’.

44 The claim that ‘there’s no one alive today whom my words have wounded’ had already been made at Tr. II.563–4, composed in AD 9. It was not true at the earlier date: by then Ovid had almost certainly composed his great curse-poem, the Ibis; and it was (as we have seen) not true now (even if ‘Ibis’ had since died) — certainly not as far as the ruffled citizens of Tomis were concerned. One may suspect that what Ovid really meant was ‘whom my words were intended to wound’.

49–50 Ovid refers with (well-justified) affection to his home town of Sulmo (modern Sulmona) in the Abruzzi, among the Paeligni: Am. II.16.1–10; Tr. IV.10.3–4; and cf. Green OEP, pp. 15–16.

51–4 For Ovid’s immunity from taxation see EP IV.9.101–2, and note to 93–104 (above, pp. 365–6).

55 André and others (Pont., p. 177, n. 5) argue that Ovid was appointed honorary president of the local games (agōnothētes). This is surely a strained and improbable explanation. The wreath placed round his head was one of Apolline laurel in tribute to him as a poet.

57–8 When Leto (Roman Latona) was pregnant with Apollo and Artemis, Hera in jealousy forbade anywhere in the world to offer her shelter. Only Delos agreed to take her in, and she gave birth to her divine twins there. The Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo (HH 3) and Callimachus’s Hymn to Delos (Callim. H. 4) offer slightly differing versions of this myth.

IV.15

For Sextus Pompeius see introductory note to EP IV.1 (above, pp. 350–51). The opening section of this poem (1–22) is so lavish in its thanks that Ovid’s earlier appeals for continued support (EP IV.1.25–6, 4.47–8, 5.28ff.) have, it seems clear, been met. What makes Ovid’s relationship with Pompeius unusual is that at IV.1.29–36, 5.39–40, and, here, 13–22, 35–42, he expresses that relationship in terms of legal possession. Ovid is ‘not the meanest’ of Pompeius’s chattels, his gift, his creation (in a context suggesting artistic value: IV.1.35–6). In return for the great man’s opportune aid in Thrace, Ovid ‘swears he’ll be your chattel [mancipii: IV.5.39–40, with note, above, p. 358] for all time’.

Now — another hint of his preoccupation with death, real or metaphorical — Ovid’s confession or testament, legally signed and witnessed (11–12: cf. André Pont., p. 178, n. 6), wills Ovid himself as a minor piece of property (paruam rem) to be added to Pompeius’s rich and varied estate. The transfer of property is to be made by personal declaration — ‘no need of legal process’ (12) or of ‘formal purchases’ (42) — by the ancient and traditional method of mancipatio per aes et libram, ‘transference of property by bronze and scales’. Gaius (1, §§119–20, ed. E. Poste, 3rd ed., Oxford, 1890, p. 96) describes the transaction as an ‘imaginary sale’, where in the presence of five adult witnesses, and a sixth who holds a pair of bronze scales, the purchaser, clutching a bronze ingot, formally claims ‘this man . . . as belonging to me by right quiritary and be he purchased to me by this ingot and this scale of bronze’. He then strikes the balance with the ingot, and delivers the latter to the mancipator ‘as by way of purchase money’ (quasi pretii loco). The process can be used for the mancipation of free men (not to mention horses, oxen, asses and mules) as well as slaves. Even if Ovid, whose legal knowledge was considerable (E. J. Kenney, ‘Ovid and the Law’, Yale Classical Studies 21 (1969), pp. 242–63 — though he oddly fails to mention these passages), is dealing purely in literary metaphor, the degree of self-surrender envisaged here (and nowhere else) is still striking, and goes well beyond the normal duties of client to patron. Neither Fabius Maximus nor Messalla Corvinus had ever elicited so abject an expression of obligation. A last desperate hope of rescue, perhaps, reinforced by Ovid’s fervent trust in Germanicus?

10 Ovid, as we have seen, was fond of these catalogues of multiplicity: see Tr. IV.1.55–8, V.6.37–44, both with notes on further instances, and the latter documenting (10) Hybla’s bees. North Africa was Rome’s main granary under the early empire: R. M. Haywood in An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, ed. T. Frank (1938), vol. iv, pp. 39ff. For the sweet Lydian wine made from grapes grown around Mt Tmolus see Virg. Georg. 2.98; Plin. HN 14.74; Strabo 14.1.15, C.637 (Ovid refers to it also at Met. VI.15, XI.86). The town of Sicyon, about eleven miles west of Corinth, and slightly inland from the Gulf, had a broad coastal plain especially suitable for the cultivation of the olive: Virg. Georg. 2.519.

15–16 Pompeius had clearly taken advantage of his tour of duty in Macedonia (IV.1.2, 5.33–4) to acquire property there. Whether he served in Sicily also we do not know, but it would seem likely. His house by the Forum had earlier caught Ovid’s attention: EP IV.5.9–10. The coast of Campania (and the Bay of Naples in particular) was, then as now, a popular resort for the wealthy, whose luxurious villas cluttered the littoral: Augustus himself owned several. See John H. D’Arms, Romans on the Bay of Naples: a social and cultural study of the villas and their owners from 150 BC to AD 400 (Cambridge, 1970), especially chs. iv–v, pp. 73ff.

25–6 Easy enough to see how Pompeius had been Ovid’s succour against the consequences of his notorious error; but how was he to be considered its proof (argumentum)? Goold (p. 484) suggests, tentatively, that Pompeius was in a position to prove its truth; but what would be the point of Ovid’s emphasizing this? More likely is the explanation of Némethy (2), p. 81: Pompeius could show, authoritatively, that it was a mistake, rather than a crime.

IV.16

This plea to an unnamed, and probably generalized, enemy, whenever it may have been written (the early months of AD 16?) forms a natural tailpiece to the entire exilic corpus. Was it so intended by Ovid himself? We cannot be certain. If we take it, structurally, as an afterword extra ordinem, that gives us one of the few signs of conscious organization in Book IV: 1 and 15 then form a ring, both addressed to Pompeius, both stressing the theme of Ovid as obligated chattel; while 8, the central poem, acts as a pivot, emphasizing the immortality that poetry alone can provide, and looking forward to the theme of the envoi itself. However, any attempt to produce a more complete ring-pattern of structural correspondences (such as can be done for Books I–III: cf. above, p. 293) ultimately breaks down.

In essence, what Ovid simulates for us here is an autobiographical epitaph. The poet’s voice reaches us from beyond the grave, describing the fame he enjoyed when he was numbered among the living (4: cum uiuis adnumerarer). It is the final expression of Ovid’s death-in-life theme, of his severance from the world of living Roman poets, whose selective roll-call (5–46) takes up the greater part of the poem, between appeals (1–4, 47–52) to jealousy and malice (liuor) to desist from their attacks: they cannot damage posthumous fame, they will get little joy from transfixing a corpse, and the corpse anyway has no space for another wound.

5–35 (i) Domitius Marsus wrote an epitaph on Tibullus, some mildly licentious epigrams which won Martial’s approval (Mart. 2.71 and 177; 5.5; 7.99) and an epic on the Amazons (Mart. 4.28).

(ii) Rabirius, another epic poet who, like Lucan somewhat later, seems to have sought his theme in the civil wars (Sen. De Benef. 6.3.1), was regarded by Velleius Paterculus (2.36.3) as the equal of Virgil.

(iii) For Macer see EP II.10, with note to 13–14 (above, p. 329).

(iv) For Albinovanus Pedo see introductory note to EP IV.10 (above, p. 366).

(v) For Carus see introductory note to EP IV.13 (above, pp. 371–2). Hercules (Heracles) became the son-in-law of Juno (Hera) through his marriage, after his apotheosis, to Hebe, her daughter (Apollod. 2.7.7). Juno’s original anger had been occasioned by marital jealousy: Jupiter (Zeus) had slept with Alcmena, who bore him Hercules (Apollod. 2.4.8): it was Juno who, while Hercules was still a baby, sent two great snakes to kill him.

(vi) For Cornelius Sevérus see introductory note to EP IV.2 (above, p. 352).

(vii) Numa is otherwise unknown.

(viii) Priscus (A) was probably Clutorius Priscus (Tac. Ann. 3.49–51), who was paid by Tiberius for writing a lament on the death of Germanicus, but then, in the hope of further profit, sealed his fate by reciting another such dirge about Drusus when the latter was not dead but merely ill. Accused by an informer, Priscus found himself hauled before the Senate, condemned, imprisoned and executed (AD 21). Priscus (B) is unknown.

(ix) Julius Montanus was a friend of Tiberius: the elder Seneca rated him as an ‘excellent poet’ (egregius poeta: Controv. 7.1.27), but his son — more literary, less rhetorical — was not so enthusiastic, calling Montanus merely ‘passable’ (tolerabilis: Epist. 122.11).

(x) All we know of Sabinus (a very common name) is what Ovid tells us here (15–16) and at Am. II.18.27–34, where we find further details of his poetic ‘replies’ to six of the letters in Ovid’s Heroides: he thus goes back, as a literary friend, to Ovid’s earliest youth. The ‘local battle-epic’ (15) involves a textual crux: what was its name? The main MSS have trisomem, a meaningless jumble. Some minor MSS offer Troezen (good idea, wrong case). The context suggests a feminine Greek name, probably of a place, in the accusative, terminating in -en, scanned –– or ˘˘–: suggestions have included Troiam (impossible, since the following word begins with a vowel, and -am would elide before it); Heinsius’s Troezena (––˘, final syllable in elision); and Ehwald’s Troesmin (the recovery of Troesmis — see EP IV.9 — hardly seems adequate to support a whole epic, and anyway the emendation is impossible because Troesmin is scanned –˘; Owen’s Troesmen (––) simply invents a variant metri gratia). None of these is satisfactory: perhaps Troezen (home of Pittheus, Theseus and Hippolytus, haven for refugees before Salamis) raises fewest difficulties. Could Ovid (or Sabinus) have Ionicized the form of Troy, writing Troien (––)?

(xi) Largus (17–18) is unknown himself, but the allusion is to Priam’s adviser Antenor, who after the fall of Troy, according to one account, made his way up into the Cisalpine region by way of Macedonia and Illyria: cf. Strabo 13.1.53, C.608; Livy 1.1.1–3; Servius on Aen. 1.1.

(xii) Camarinus (19) is also unknown, but evidently (like so many aspiring epic poets) dealt in post-Homerica, filling in the Trojan War from the death of Hector to its conclusion.

(xiii) Tuscus (20) cannot be identified, though he may be the poet referred to by Propertius (2.22.2) under the name of Demophoön, this being Theseus’s son, whose ill-starred love-affair with Phyllis, daughter of a Thracian prince, provided Tuscus with subject-matter and title, and was a favourite topic of Ovid’s: see Her. II; A A II.352–3, III.37–8 and 459–60; RA 55–6 and 591–608.

(xiv) The ‘old sea-dog of a poet’ (21–2), together with his work, has passed into oblivion; so has the bard (23) who made an epic — again, long before Lucan! — out of Rome’s battles in north Africa (Carthage? Jugurtha? Thapsus?), along with the omnicompetent Marius (24), the Sicilian (25) who celebrated the deeds of Perseus, and Lupus (26) on the adventures of Menelaus and Helen after the fall of Troy, on their way back to Sparta.

(xv) The author of this Phaeacid was Tuticanus (introductory note to EP IV.12, and note to line 27).

(xvi) We cannot say with any confidence that the Rufus mentioned here (28), a lyric poet, is to be identified with the addressee of EP II.11 (see introductory note, above, p. 330). Turranius the tragedian is equally unknown.

(xvii) About Gaius (or possibly Cilnius) Melissus we know quite a lot, thanks chiefly to Suetonius (De Gramm. 21). A protégé of Maecenas, he was commissioned by Augustus to organize the public library in the Portico of Octavia. Besides developing a new, if short-lived, type of Roman social comedy, the trabeata, dealing with life among members of the Equestrian Order, Melissus occupied his old age by compiling a series of joke-books.

(xviii) L. Varius Rufus is the most distinguished figure in Ovid’s list. Like Melissus, he was a member of Maecenas’ circle; unlike him, he was also the intimate friend of Horace and Virgil. He wrote tragedies, a panegyric to Augustus (in the days when the Princeps was still known as Octavian), and an Epicurean-inspired epic On Death (with special reference to that of Caesar). Probably older than Virgil (cf. Hor. Sat. 1.10.44), he was one of the three poets who in 38 BC accompanied Maecenas to Brundisium (Hor. Sat. 1.5.40ff.). His tragedy Thyestes, performed in 29 BC as part of the victory celebrations after Actium (an odd choice of subject, when you come to think of it, for a happy occasion: see Glossary, ‘Thyestes’) was ranked by Quintilian (3.8.45, 10.1.98) above the great fifth-century Athenian classics (compare the hyperbolic puffs printed in the end-papers of forgotten Victorian three-decker novels by critics who ought to have known better). With Plotius Tucca he was, after Virgil’s death, commissioned by Augustus to edit the Aeneid.

(xix) All we know about Graccus (whose very name is in doubt) is that he too is said to have composed a Thyestes.

(xx) Proculus, the imitator of Callimachus (32), and thus a neoteric (see Glossary), is otherwise unknown.

(xxi) Line 33 presents textual and interpretative problems. With Luck I read — not confidently — reuocaret for -que rediret. I also assume, with Housman and others, that Passer (‘The Sparrow’?) is the name of an unknown poet: this is by no means certain either, but it offers the most economical explanation. If so, his genre will have been pastoral or bucolic (cf. André Pont., pp. 180–81, n. 15), and a natural lead-in to (xxii) below.

(xxii) Grattius (34) was the author of, inter alia, a 540-line verse Cynegetica, on hunting and the training of hunting-dogs, still extant. He thus has the honour of being the only poet in the whole of Ovid’s roll-call any of whose works survive intact.

(xxiii) Fontanus and Capella are both unknown.

41–4 For Cotta Maximus see introductory notes to Tr IV.5 and EP I.5.

47 On a possible covert meaning in the apostrophe to Malice (Liuor) see above, p. 341.

52 This final line repeats EP II.7.42 — except that the earlier version claimed there was barely (uix) space for another wound, while now, with bleak finality, there is none.