cannot come to plead his cause himself. Ultimately, the destiny that
Augustus allots to it will ensure (or not) the safety of its master, depend-
ing on whether he is recognized as a poet (or not) and placed in the library
of Apollo.
In the first poem of theTristia, the book on its way to Rome is
physically the image of its exiled master:incultus, that is, without any of
the ornaments that make an object beautiful, without the oil which
protects the papyrus from insects and dyes it yellow, without a title in
red, without having been polished with pumice, without the edges of its
pages being dyed in black.
Like Horace’s book, it speaks to the poet’s friends who are worried
about him (Trist. 1.1–12):
Parue nec inuideo sine me, liber, ibis in urbem:
ei mihi, quod domino non licet ire tuo!
uade, sed incultus, qualem decet exulis esse;
infelix habitum temporis huius habe.
nec te purpureo uelent uaccinia fuco
non est conueniens luctibus ille color
nec titulus minio, nec cedro charta notetur,
candida nec nigra cornua fronte geras.
felices ornent haec instrumenta libellos:
fortunae memorem te decet esse meae.
nec fragili geminae poliantur pumice frontes,
hirsutus sparsis ut uideare comis.(Little book, without me and I’m not jealous you will go to Rome,
alas, something your master’s not allowed to do!
Go, but go unadorned, as it is right that an exile’s book should be.
Unhappy one, wear the clothing of this time.
No vellum will veil you in dark purple,
That color is not suitable for mourning;
Your title will not be marked with scarlet or your pages with cedar oil.
You may not wear white knobs next to your dark edges;
These are the trappings of happy books.
It is fitting that that you be a reminder of my fate.
Nor should your two edges be polished by friable pumice:
you should appear unkempt with your tangled locks.)The goal of the voyage is to meet Augustus and to take its place in the
library where the other books of Ovid are already locked away (penetrale
nostrum, ‘‘our sanctuary’’) by obtaining a box (scrinia) in order to be lined
up there beside its ‘‘brothers,’’ that is, Ovid’s previous books that bear
tituli—their titles and the name of the author (105–10):
cum tamen in nostrum fueris penetrale receptus,
contigerisque tuam, scrinia curua, domum,The Corrupted Boy and the Crowned Poet 157