Literature and history

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Hello and welcome to literature and history.

Episode 64, Ovid's Exile.

This episode is on two of Ovid's late works, the Tristia, and the Letters from the Black Sea,

written between 9 and 13 CE on the East Coast of modern day Romania.

While not nearly as famous as Ovid's metamorphosis or his art of love,

his late works have maintained a steady popularity in the past 2,000 years. Exiled from Rome in 8 CE by Augustus himself, Ovid wrote bitterly

about missing the capital and petitioned his friends and family to help him return.

The 96 poems that make up these two late works show off at running the gamut between despair and optimism,

between dismal lamentations about the strange northern land of his exile

and idyllic fantasies about an imminent return to his home city.

We'll talk quite a bit about the historical circumstances of Ovid's exile and the contents of his

later poems in a minute.

I think maybe the best way to get an introductory sense of the overall tone and contents of Ovid's

Excylic poetry is to hear a long excerpt from one of his later letters from the

Black Sea written when the poet was in his mid-50s, almost a thousand miles northeast of Rome,

in the recently conquered province of Meza.

Quote, Oh Black Sea, oh land never free from cruel enemies and snows, will the time ever

ever come when I shall leave you, bidden to an exile in a place less hostile?

Or must I ever live in such a barbaric land?

Am I destined to be laid in my grave in the soil of Thomas.

...