PROFILES
10 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019grew into leaves, her arms into branch-
es, and her feet that were lately so swift,
were held by sluggish roots, while her
face became the treetop. Nothing of her
was left, except her shining loveliness.”
By age 50 Ovid had reached the peak
of his popularity. His groundbreaking
style had established him as one of the
most popular poets in Rome. But it was
just as his fortunes were riding high that
disaster broke. In A.D. 8, as Ovid was
garnering praise for the Metamorphoses,
the emperor Augustus decided to send
him into exile.
Ovid lived the rest of his years inTomis.
His petitions to the emperor were all in
vain. After Augustus’ death in A.D. 14,
Ovid tried to get his successor Tiberius
to commute his sentence, but the new
emperor was impervious to the contin-
ued pleas of both the poet and his wife
Fabia. The Roman love poet died in A.D. 17,
far from the city where he had made his
name, and which he had loved so dearly.Mysteries of Exile
Scholars still have not pinpointed all the
reasons why Augustus wanted Ovid ex-
iled. The poet attributed his punishment
to “carmen et error”—“a poem and an
error.” Most historians agree the “poem”
was the Ars amatoria, whose rakish indif-
ference to social norms was at odds with
the new imperial morality Augustus was
promoting. As chief priest, the emperor
was guardian of laws and customs (curator
legum et morum) and was eager to restore
traditional social norms.
In A.D. 8, the year of Ovid’s banish-
ment, however, the Ars amatoria was
more than five years old. Historians
largely agree that while the poem might
have served as extra evidence of Ovid’s
undesirability in the eyes of Augustus,
it was a secondary cause for his banish-
ment. The real reason for Ovid’s exile
was the “error,” references to which are
scattered through Ovid’s later writing.
Scanning these texts for clues, scholarsOVID IN EXILE
This 1859 oil painting by Eugène
Delacroix depicts the desolation
of the poet, banished from Rome.
National Gallery, London
NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON/SCALA, FLORENCEhave found several hints as to what the
“error” might have been. The poet never
spells it out, but states that it was unpre-
meditated, the result of a foolish mistake.
Numerous hypotheses have been put
forward. American scholar John C. Thi-
bault’s 1964 book, The Mystery of Ovid’s
Exile, studies medieval writings that
speculate on Ovid’s error. Among the
most dramatic are that Ovid knew of
an incestuous affair between Augustus
and his daughter Julia, or that Ovid had a
dalliance with Livia, the emperor’s wife.
The 20th-century British Ovid scholar
Peter Green proposes that the error was
not moral, but political. A very delicate
theme at the time was the question of
Augustus’ succession. If Ovid had gos-
siped about certain political factions,
his indiscretions (combined with the
salaciousness of his earlier erotic poetry)
could have been enough to seal his fate.—Esteban Berché