National Geographic History - 11.2019 - 12.2019

8 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019

PROFILES

A FOURTH-CENTURY MOSAIC FLOOR IN

CONSTANTA (ANCIENT TOMIS), ORIGINALLY

FROM A FISHING WAREHOUSE

AN EXILE

LAMENTS

IN HIS LETTERS, Ovid complains bit-

terly about his conditions in exile in

Tomis: “I live in the midst of foes

and among dangers; as though

together with my country, peace

had been torn from me.” Knowing

that he may never return home,

the poet gives vent to despair: “My

mind wasting away, melts like the

water that trickles from the snow.

It is consumed like a ship infect-

ed with the hidden wood-worm;

and as the wave of the salt sea

hollows out the rocks; as the iron

when thrown by, is corroded by

the scaly rust; as the book that has

been shut up is gnawed by the bite

of the moth; so does my heart feel

the eternal remorse of its cares, to

be everlastingly affected thereby.”

Ovid’s career started when Roman lit-
erary circles were devoted to two figures:
Virgil and Horace. Virgil was writing the
Aeneid, the national epic about Aene-
as the Trojan prince and mythological
founder of Rome, while Horace was fet-
ed for his witty Satires. These two men
would embody the flowering of Roman
letters under Augustus.

Already in his 40s when he completed

Ars amatoria, Ovid was neither fabu-

lously wealthy nor well connected. He

had a loyal patron, but the literary set

he associated with were minor writers

compared to giants like Virgil and Horace.

Inspired to write a great work like the

Aeneid, Ovid wrote the Metamorphoses.

“My purpose is to tell of bodies which

have been transformed,” he wrote in his

opening lines. He informed the readers

that the theme of transformation will

influence the very form of his long poem,

which will “spin an unbroken thread of

verse from the earliest beginnings of my

world down to my own times.”

Extremely successful in its own time,

the work became one of the most in-

fluential works of Western literature,

inspiring numerous works of art, music,

and drama. Love, lust, grief, terror, and

divine punishment trigger a series of

startling changes in Ovid’s retelling of

250 stories of gods and mortals.

Sailors become dolphins. The sculptor

Pygmalion’s kiss changes a statue into

a young woman. For having spied the

goddess Diana as she bathed, the hunt-

er Actaeon is changed into a stag to be

ripped apart by his hounds. In one of the

Metamorphoses’ most famous passages,

Daphne flees Apollo’s lustful advances

and changes into a laurel tree: “Her hair

SEDUCTIVE WORDS

IN ARS AMATORIA (The Art of Love), Ovid

is full of advice on how to woo a lover.

He urges young men: “Nor be wea-

ry of praising her looks, her shapely

fingers, her small foot; even honest

maids love to hear their charms ex-

tolled; even to the chaste their beauty

is a care and a delight.”

A COUPLE KISS IN A FRESCO FROM POMPEII.

DEA/SCALA, FLORENCE

JOAQUÍN BÉRCHEZ