The mystery of Ovid’s exile has haunted scholars for centuries. Why would a famous poet of first century Rome be exiled to possibly the worst location in all of the Roman Empire? Why was he sent to Tomis, a city lying on the Black Sea in the frigid climate of Romania, surrounded by barbaric tribes who had little interest in the ways of Rome; the ways Ovid praised so much and loved so dearly? How severe could his offense have been to warrant such a punishment? If it were severe enough to warrant such a punishment, then why is there little or no record or details of this unnamed offence? Many scholars claim that the Ars Amatoria was too erotic and explicit for its time, which angered Augustus and led to Ovid’s exile. Others claim that he committed or witnessed an act that implicated him of a crime and angered the Emperor. What a sad fate for a poet who was writing promising works, such as Metamorphoses and Fasti.
Ovid was born in Sulmo, the chief town of the people of Paeligni, ninety miles east of Rome in 43 B.C., to parents of the old equestrian rank. Early in his youth he aspired to be a poet, although his father had other desires for his life. Before he was through with his schooling, Ovid had won fame as a poet of love. Wheeler argues,”He was giving public recitations of his Amores when his beard had been cut but once or twice (Wheeler, ix).” If Ovid had only known that his youthful behavior would have had such dire consequences on his life later!
The Ars Amatoria was publishedin 1 B.C. The art form that Ovid teaches is that of love and lovemaking, advising his readers how to use seduction and intrigue to win another’s affection. Writes Baker:
He claimed that his advice came from personal experience and that Rome abounded with opportunities for those who wished to find love: the theater, the circus, even nightly feasts in private home were all perfect ‘battlefields’ and ‘hunting grounds’ for would be lovers (Baker, 141).
Many claim that what angered Augustus was the didactic style the book was written in, not its content.
According to Wheeler:
The Art, as the poet often calls it, is no more immoral than other erotic works, among which Ovid mentions those of Tibullus and Propertius, but it is explicitly didactic (Wheeler, xix).
The Ars Amatoria taught love explicitly, Ovid becoming known as the chief erotic expert of his time. The effect of the Ars Amatoria is not isolated to first century Rome. In 1497, the works of Ovid, along with those of Propertius and Dante, were cast into the great bonfire of Savonarola in Florence, because they were deemed too erotic. In 1599, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Mayor of London ordered the burning of Christopher Marlowe’s translation of Ovid’s Elegies, along with other works. In the twentieth century, however, there was an increase of interest in the Ars Amatoria. From the 1920s to 1960s, the Ars Amatoria was marketed and sold as a ‘sex manual’ for those hoping to liberate themselves from the Victorian attitudes towards sex.
There is little factual information availible about Ovid’s exile. What did he himself say about it? According to Wheeler, “The poet himself refers to [the sins against Augustus] again and again, but his references are so vague that it is impossible to arrive at the whole truth, and of course the lips of his contemporaries were sealed (Wheeler, xviii).” Many believe the missing link to finding out the whole truth, (not just reading the supplications and pleas for a revoked sentence) lies with the correspondence which transpired between Ovid and his friends back in Rome, those who would surely have known the reason for his exile. If these letters were available, which Ovid frequently refers to, the cause of his exile would most likely be known. He was not at liberty to argue his case to the full potential, as he would have been if he had not been trying to receive clemency from Augustus, whom he knew would surely have access to his works.
Tomis, where Ovid was exiled, was a dreary Roman outpost on the Black Sea, which was still subject to raids by neighboring tribes.
Baker described it, saying:
The region’s brutally cold winters and constant snowfalls were far different from Rome’s temperate weather, and there were few opportunities to attend cultural events or mingle with cultured people (Baker, 143).
This would have been very difficult for Ovid who would have been used to an active social life in Rome. The climate would also have been very different from the temperate region of the Mediterranean. Ovid wrote in Tristia, “Snow falls and the first snow has not yet melted when another storm comes, and the snow from a storm two years earlier is often found on the ground in some places (Baker, 144).”
In his novel God was Born in Exile, Vintila Horia gives an excellent fictional account of Ovid’s possible life spent in Tomis. He paints a vivid image of what Ovid endured.
“To escape, but where? It is only in Rome that life is worth living, or in Greece. But the habitable parts of the earth are all within reach of Augustus. I should be ready to take refuge among the Getae (the warring tribe), were I not sure that their country is just an immense Tomi where I should pay for freedom with what remains of health and hope in this old worn-out body, for which the only consolation is the hope of returning to Rome (Horia, 30). ”
Ovid’s sentence was technically not an exile (exsillium) but a relegation (relegatio). Relegation was a milder form of exile that allowed Ovid to retain his Roman citizenship, his property and his money. However, given the severe location of his banishment, these seem a small concession. It must have been difficult for Ovid, a cultured and well bred poet, famous even in his own day and admired by all of Rome, to be banished from all he held dear, everything known to him – his family, wife, and culture – and be shipped to a fortress town full of barbaric peoples and warring tribes.
In Tomis, Ovid wrote in his autobiography, Tristia, that there were two charges placed against him, which led to his exile: a poem and a mistake.
Ŕperdiderint cum me duo crimina, carmen et error, alterius facti culpa silenda mihi:
nam non sum tanti, renovem et tua vulnear, Caesar (Tristia, 207-209)
Translated from the Latin it reads:
Though two crimes, a poem and a blunder. Have brought me ruin, of my fault in the one I must keep silent, for my worth is not such that I may reopen thy wounds, O Caesar (trans. Wheeler, 71).
It is clear that Ovid makes a distinction between the two crimes, one being the poem Ars Amatoria. Wrote Ovid, “The other remains: the charge that by an obscene poem I have taught foul adultery (Tristia, trans. Wheeler, 71).”
Granted, Augustus was attempting to make moral reforms in Rome, but was the material written in Ars Amatoria really so offensive to Ovid’s first century Roman audience? Would his comments on lovemaking have been a shock to a society who thrived off of such material? Could it offend a society who had already been desensitized to such lasciviousness by the Greeks who came before them? Even sex in the household had been a promiscuous affair.
We keep prostitutes for pleasure; we keep mistresses for the day-to-day needs of the body; we keep wives for the begetting of children and for the faithful guardianship of our homes (quoted in Bewes, 170).
William Barclay, a twentieth century Scottish theologian states that “chastity was the completely new virtue which Christianity brought into the world (Bewes, 170).” Augustus’ reforms never took hold in the culture which praised the sexual. Says Suetonius, “still worse was the unnatural vice which was rampant. It began in the imperial household. Caligula notoriously lived in habitual incest with his sister Drusilla, and the lust of Nero did not even spare his mother Agrippina (quoted in Barcaly, 24-25).” How could Augustus hold Ovid to a standard which the Roman society did not meet? Surely, then, Ovid would simply have been a product of the culture in which he lived.
A possible theory argues that the Ars Amatoria was the culprit behind Ovid’s exile – that his works heavily influenced Augustus’s daughter, Julia, to act out her own sexual fantasies, (for which she was later exiled to the island of Rhegium.) In a time when orgies were commonplace and sexual impropriety happened even in the imperial court, it seems that Ovid’s work would not have affected the conscience minds of those engaged in such activities, especially Julia, who had all of Rome’s resources and power open to her sexual command. Ovid complained that he was the only erotic poet who had ever been punished for his composistions. Writes Wheeler, “In view of ancient standards in such matters it must be admitted that, so far as the Art was concerned, he was harshly treated (Wheeler, xx).”
Thus, the error must have been the major cause of exile, not the Ars Amatoria, which was written 9 years before Ovid’s exile was decreed. Either Augustus was slow to anger, or the “folly” was something so dire as to send Ovid to the far-most reaching ends of the Roman Empire. There are many unfounded speculations about what the error could have been. The most probable explanation is that he had become an involuntary accomplice in the adultery of Julia the Younger, who happened to be banished at the same time as Ovid. Her mother had also been banished in 2 B.C. for immorality and the Ars Amatoria appeared around this time. This suggests that Ovid behaved in some way that was damaging both to Augustus’ moral reforms and to the honor of the imperial family. Another theory is that Ovid discovered some crime committed by another and that he had become involved in a political plot led by Julia the Younger, her lover Silanus, and her brother Agrippa Postumus. A little light is cast on the nature of his “mistake” in Tristia II.103-6 where he likens himself to the hunter Actaeon, who accidentally came upon the virgin goddess Diana bathing, and was torn apart by his own hounds for this accident. Ovid speaks of inadvertently witnessing something that made him responsible in the guilt attached to the incident because he kept the knowledge of it to himself.
cur aliquid vidi? cur noxia lumina feci? cur imprudenti cognita culpa mihi? inscius Actaeon vidit sine veste
Dianam: praeda fuit canibus non minus ille suis. (Tristia II. 103-6)
(Why did I see anything? Why did I make my eyes guilty? Why was I so thoughtless as to harbour the knowledge of a fault?
Unwitting was Actaeon when he beheld Diana unclothed; None the less he became the prey of his own hounds.)(trans. Wheeler, pg. 63)
Yet another far-fetched theory is that Ovid’s Corinna from the Amores was one of Augustus’ many mistresses, namely Terentia, the wife of Maecenas, whose involvement with Augustus took place thirty years before the poet’s banishment. The abortion which Ovid mentions in the Amores would then have been a child of Augustus which could have saved the dynasty had it been allowed to live. The most far-fetched theory is that Ovid was, in fact, never exiled at all– that the poet’s exile was a form of poetic fiction.
Wheeler claims:
As far as what the error could have been there is only speculation. Ovid speaks of this folly in very general terms, still believing he could receive clemency. It was not a crime (scelus), not illegal, but rather a fault, (culpa, vitium), which he admitted to be wrong (peccatum, delictum, noxa). He had not been guilty wittingly, but through chance (fortuna, casus). There had been no criminal action (facinus) on his part, but he had laboured under a misunderstanding, he had blundered (error). He had been stupid (stultus), thoughtless (imprudens, non sapiens), over ingenuous (simplicitas); he had been ashamed (pudor) and afraid (timor, timidus) (Wheeler, xxi).
The true reason behind Ovid’s expulsion from Rome may never be known. It is a historical mystery which countless scholars have tried to understand. It does seem obvious that the main reason for Ovid’s exile lies with the error, and not the carmen,but the truth can only be speculated at. Ovid plead for a pardon throughout his time in Tomis, but it was never granted. After the death of Caesar Augustus in A.D. 14, Ovid hoped to be allowed back in Rome. Augustus’ sucessor, Tiberius, refused a pardon and Ovid died in Tomis in A.D. 17. The Western world lost a valuable poet when Ovid was exiled, a poet whose works would only have improved over the years had Ovid been allowed to remain in Rome. One can only imagine the potential poems that would have been written had he avoided exile. And while we may never know the true reason behind Ovid’s exile, we do have a glimpse into a dark secret, and the words of sadness in the art that was exile
Bibliography
Baker, Charles. Ancient Romans; Expanding the Classical Tradition. Oxford University Press, New York, 1998.
Balsdon, J.P.V.D, Romans and Aliens. Gerald Duckworth and Co. London, 1979.
Barclay, William. Flesh and Spirit: An Examination of Galatians 5:19-23. Baker Book House. Grand Rapids, 1976.
Balsodon, J.P.V.D. Roman Women. Greenwood Press. London, 1962.
Bewes, Richard. The Top 100 Questions. Christian Focus Publications, Ross-Shire, Great Britain, 2002.
Ferrero, Guglielmo. The Women of the Caesars. J.P Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1911.
Horia, Vintila. God was Born in Exile. St. Martin’s Press. New York, 1961.
Wheeler, A.L., trans. Tristia, Ex Ponto, Harvard University Press. Cambridge Mass. 1959.
Syme, Ronald. History in Ovid. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 1978.
