Ovid's Exile

Ovid was another famous exile from the ancient world. By some accounts, he was exiled to Tomis on the Black Sea for writing erotic and  subversive poetry that was at odds with the strict moral codes imposed by Emperor Augustus. In his poems Tristia and Ex Ponto he describes exile as a crestfallen and desolate state, made worse by his isolation from civilized Rome. In Ex Ponto, he defines the fundamental mood of exile as one of sadness: "laeta fere laetus cecini, cano tristia tristis" (happy, I once sang happy things, sad things I sing in sadness). Ovid was especially concerned with his legacy at home--the fate of his poetry--and his poems take the from of letters imploring for his restoration to Rome.

Here is a short lament from Tristia, describing the "weariness of exile":

Still, while I was hurled, anxious, over land and sea,

the effort masked my cares, and my sick heart:

so, now the journey’s done, the toil is over,

and I’ve reached the country of my punishment,

only grieving pleases, there’s no less rain from my eyes

than water from the melting snow in springtime.

Rome’s in my thoughts, and home, and longed-for places,

whatever of mine remains in the city I’ve lost.

Ah, how often I’ve knocked at the door of my own tomb

and yet it has never opened to me!

Why have I escaped so many swords, so many

storms that threatened to overwhelm an ill-starred life?

Gods, I’ve found too constant in cruelty,

sharers of the anger one god feels,

I beg you, drive my slow fate onwards

forbid the doors of death to close!

(Book TIII.II:1-30 The Weariness Of Exile)

Ovid's poetry also describes the encounter with the Other, in this case the Scythian tribes in Tomis. While in Tristia  he feels isolated and estranged from them as a civilized poet among the "barbarians", in Ex Ponto he  forms friendships with them and even starts writing poems in their language. 

                Eugene Delacroix, Ovid Among the Scythians, 1862.