Ovid's Tristia

The fall of a poet

Many people, if they have heard of the poet Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) at all, know him for the Metamorphoses, that glimmering, slippery handbook of Greek and Roman myth. Others might have come across his love poetry, the Amores and the Ars Amatoria, the latter of which instructs people in how to be successful in seduction.

We are extremely lucky when it comes to what has survived the centuries, as we also have the Heroides - brilliant letters from mythical heroines to their lovers, including some replies; the Fasti, which explores the Roman calendar, and his poetry from exile, as well as a little poem about make-up and a curse poem called Ibis.

We don’t know why Ovid was exiled, bar the words “carmen et error”. The emperor Augustus was a moralist (or at least, moralism was his proposed program), and it may be that Ovid’s poetry was considered too scandalous. It may be that he had an affair with the emperor’s daughter, Julia. It may be too that he simply discovered, or even overheard, something about Julia’s adultery. Either way, the poet was given his marching orders, and sent to the edges of the known world. There, he continued to write, and even, apparently, wrote a poem in the local language of the Getae, which is sadly lost. (I love these moments where the Greek and Roman worlds collide with others: I very much doubt a manuscript of this poem exists, but I wish one day we could find it.)

The Tristia - literally “sorrowful things” - were produced from his exile in Tomis, on the Black Sea, as well as his Ex Ponto (which never fails to remind me of a pun in Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker: 'I cannot, however, approve of his drowning my poor dog Ponto, on purpose to convert Ovid's pleonasm into a punning epitaph - deerant quoque Littora Ponto’. The Latin means that the shores were lacking to the sea (ponto). The pun: that the shores were lacking Ponto.)

I think that Ovid’s Tristia are often neglected, even by those familiar with his poetry, but in my view it contains some powerful and beautiful moments.

I wanted to share the following evocative passage, as an introduction to the poem. This piece describes the poet leaving home on the night of his exile. I’ve translated it (fairly literally and somewhat badly) below.

cum subit illius tristissima noctis imago,

quae mihi supremum tempus in urbe fuit,

cum repeto noctem, qua tot mihi cara reliqui,

labitur ex oculis nunc quoque gutta meis.

iam prope lux aderat, qua me discedere Caesar

finibus extremae iusserat Ausoniae.

nec spatium nec mens fuerat satis apta parandi:

torpuerant longa pectora nostra mora.

non mihi servorum, comitis non cura legendi,

non aptae profugo vestis opisve fuit.

non aliter stupui, quam qui Iovis ignibus ictus

vivit et est vitae nescius ipse suae.

ut tamen hanc animi nubem dolor ipse removit,

et tandem sensus convaluere mei,

alloquor extremum maestos abiturus amicos,

qui modo de multis unus et alter erat.

uxor amans flentem flens acrius ipsa tenebat,

imbre per indignas usque cadente genas.

Ovid, Tristia, 1.3 1-18

When the intensely sad memory of that night¹ returns,

Which was my final time in the city,

When I go over that night, on which I lost so many things dear to me,

A tear slips out of my eyes.

Now it was near the dawn on which Caesar had ordered me

To leave the furthest bounds of Ausonia [Italy].

There wasn’t enough time or space to prepare properly;

Long delay had numbed my heart.

There was no care for me in choosing slaves or a companion,

Nor in choosing clothes and things suitable for a refugee.

I was struck dumb, like someone who’s been hit by Jove’s fire,

Yet still lives, and doesn’t know his own life.

Soon, however, grief itself removed the cloud from my mind,

And at last, my sinews strengthened.

About to depart, I spoke, for the last time, to my gloomy friends,

I once had many - now only a couple remain.

My loving wife, weeping herself, holds me, weeping more bitterly,

Tears falling down her cheeks, though not deserving of them.

Ovid is remembering, from his lonely position by the sea, surrounded by people unknown to him. The sense of a fall permeates these lines, with “supremum” and “extremum” reinforcing this. The passage is bracketed with tears - those of Ovid as he remembers, and those of his wife and himself (and, presumably, his friends, few though they are now) in the flashback to his final night in the “urbe” - and that, I think, is very significant too, as Ovid was very much a poet of the city.

The “imago” in the first line is a mental picture, and has an almost painterly quality, although its force is underlined by the verb “subit” (comes). This sense of statis also seems to tug back in the lines, as Ovid has experienced long delay, his heart is numb; he doesn’t want to go. The simile of the bolt of lightning stupefying a man shows this beautifully.

Yet the statis is broken, and the poet must leave, without any care at all for what he might need and, heart-breakingly, not even a companion. It’s tempting to imagine messengers galloping through the night; final warnings from Augustus; an ultimatum. The sword is about to fall.

The swiftness with which Ovid has been abandoned is brought out by the lines “amicos,

qui modo de multis unus et alter erat.”

You expect hisfriends to be there, because of the enjambement; but Ovid teases us along - in the Latin, literally, “only, out of many, one and another were there.” His isolation is complete, and he is alone with his family.

Someone who was an urbane, witty, dazzling citizen, now has nothing left. The line that has always struck me most, though, is the final one, where Ovid’s wife - “flens”, weeping, is holding him “flentem”, also weeping. The two words almost merge into one another, as the pair are drowned in tears.

Is it too much? Is it a little arch? I’ve never particularly thought so. Ovid was a witty and ironic writer, and I’m sure there are many other layers here - mythological as well as literary. Consider that the greatest Roman epic, The Aeneid, by Virgil, is about a “profugus”, someone who’s fleeing the fall of Troy. It’s entirely possible that Ovid is somewhat grandiloquently hinting at similarities between himself and that hero, as he does more explicitly later on.

And why not? That was the vocabulary and the material available to poets of the time, and I don’t think it makes it any the less sincere. For me, this passage expresses pure, agonising grief, as Ovid wanders the cold shores of the sea, himself like Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus, as if he too has wandered, at last, into myth.

Philip Womack’s latest novel is Ghostlord.

How to Teach Classics to Your Dog is a quirky introduction to the Greeks and Romans.

1. Thank you to

Caroline Spearing

for, ahem, reminding me that “tristissima” goes with “imago”. You could say that it was a transferred epithet, I suppose…