Sorrows of an Exile Tristia
Affirmation. Both directly and, as befitted the Roman Callimachus, allusively, Ovid repeatedly asserts, often with a wit and irony that borders on defiance, his conviction of the injustice of his sentence and of the pre-eminence of the eternal values of poetry over the ephemeral dictates of an earthly power. These elegies are throughout informed by Ovid's awareness of a continuing pride in his poetic identity and mission. In technical skill and inventiveness, they rank.
Reviews
Riley@coldeurydice
A work imbued with self-righteousness and self-pity that is difficult to sympathise with when contrasting Ovid's barely-punitive exile (he lost citizenship and physical access to his family and city; he retained his wealth, connections, and aristocratic status) with the horrors inflicted on women, children, slaves, and various populations treated as pawns, none of whom had a choice in being condemned as symbols of treason.
Useful when studying Augustan morality and early imperial family/gender dynamics.
Highlights
Riley@coldeurydice
Each word of the whole book that you've been reading was framed while I was on my anxious way.
1.11.1-2
Riley@coldeurydice
Were Jove to hurl his bolt at every sinner, he’d find himself unarmed at no far date.
2.33-34