Ebook: Ovid in Exile: Power and Poetic Redress in the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto

After being banished to the Black Sea by the Roman emperor Augustus in 8 AD, Ovid responded in verse by composing the "Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto". Here the poet establishes for himself a place of intellectual refuge, where he can reflect out loud on how and why his own art has been legally banned and left for dead on the margins of the empire. As the last of the Augustan poets, Ovid is in a unique position to take stock of his own standing and of the place of poetry itself in a Rome deeply restructured during the lengthy rule of the city's first emperor. This study considers exile in the "Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto" as at once a place of genuine suffering and a metaphor for poetry's marginalization from Rome. It analyzes, in particular, Ovid's representation of himself and the emperor Augustus against the background of Roman religion, law, and poetry