A thundering account of the poets tempest-tossed exile, this fascinating journey may not have actually taken place
What with his elegies on sex scenes and gallivanting gods, Ovid was nothing if not a provocateur on Rome’s first-century BC literary circuit. The double whammy of these risque writings and an unknown misdemeanour eventually proved too much for the emperor, Augustus, whose pious PR agenda clashed with Ovid’s leanings towards the erotic. So, the poet claimed, he was packed off on a stormy voyage to waste away on the bleak Black Sea coast – the backdrop for his most provocative poetry of all: the Tristia (“Sorrows”).
Gone is the raunchy scandal of his earlier work, for Ovid’s number-one goal in these elegiac letters is a return ticket to Rome. Often here it is not content but style that offends. Ovid apologised for this shoddy, monotonous output, saying it was composed “not by inspiration, not by art [but] by its own evils”. By and large, his apology has been accepted, though increasingly the question has been asked: was this journey actually just a barefaced hoax? Did he in fact compose his “exilic” work in the sanctuary of his Italian villa?
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