in my misery, that I should at least enjoy all this countryside! And my books are more deserving of consideration. If you suddenly saw me, you wouldn’t know me. and be sent to a place free of the Scythian bows. Smyrna held that hero, not Pontus a hostile land. for I recall in thought my sweet friends sometimes. than will Graecinus let an old friend down. Do any of your friends, except myself, who pray I am. Patroclus left Opus, when young, having killed a man. I’m one not allowed to enter any kind of tree: I’m one who wishes in vain to become stone. They consist of letters to the emperor and to Ovid’s wife and friends describing his … Themistocles, who beat the Persians, weapon. I lack the motive for too intense a labour. Behold, instead of the sistrum or Phrygian boxwood pipe. who conquers only that he might spare the conquered, who’s placed an eternal bar on civil war, who rules. Set me in whatever place you will, Messalinus. You’ll find, though the title’s not about anything sad. who admired the writings you sometimes read me: I’m he who was granted a bride from your house. he, the spur, the torch, the reason for my studies: for whom I shed tears, the last gift to the dead. And, I suppose, though I’m distant from my native land. or the titles of illustrious ancestors, make for greatness. At least death will make me, when it comes, no longer an exile: but death can’t arrange things so I never offended either. Perhaps a scar will form in sufficient time: the raw wound quivers at the touch of a hand. as if peace was taken from me with my native land: they double the chance of death from a cruel wound. search this work: Fasti. and sometimes, at length, with my beloved wife. Nor can you celebrate the sea rather than the land. But now, as you still can, I beg you, bring me one thing. lest Sarmatian soil should cover my bones. by the enemy, I least of all to whom he himself granted life. A bad one, I admit, but it will become a good one. Graecinus, but if I truly know you it must have been sad. and wrote verses to be sung in the midst of the forum. Strong though it may be, the ship that’s never hauled. I come bearing the sacred names of the Julian race. saying: ‘What are you doing? However they were inflicted on me, cease asking. So, when I’ve known this brief and unreal joy. No fields bear fruit, or sweet grapes, here. So it’s fitting I make libation of tears for dead Celsus. Of all those banished it’s I who am soldier and exile: the rest, I don’t begrudge them, live in safety. no willows green the banks, no oaks the hills. When Ovid, already renowned for his love poetry, the Metamorphoses and other works, was exiled by … Because I’ve earned and experienced the prince’s anger. and a barred gate between me and the enemy? With frontispiece map 2. and, clasping your slight body in my arms, say: ‘It’s love for me that’s made you thin,’. Eds Anne Wiseman and Peter Wiseman (2013) Oxford Classical Texts: P. Ovidi Nasonis: Tristium Libri Quinque; Ibis; Ex Ponto Libri Quattuor; Halieutica Fragmenta. Bows and full quivers supply them with courage. I live amongst endless conflict, deprived of peace. be trampled under Thracian horses’ hooves. now I think of each portico with its levelled grounds. P. OVIDI NASIONIS EPISTVLAE EX PONTO LIBER SECVNDVS I. Whether you wish to call it love or unmanly tenderness. quid tibi cum Ponto? Ed. - rightly each comes to the god they honour - and begs. and poured the spices over your cold breast. was such there could actually be room for conceits! the name, and you’ll read what’s left with a hostile mind. Where’s worse than cold Scythia? [1] It is especially important for our knowledge of Scythia Minor in his time. of linen-robed Isis kneeling before Isis’s altar. Book EI.II:1-52 To Paullus Fabius Maximus: His Life In Exile, Book EI.II:53-100 To Paullus Fabius Maximus: His Need, Book EI.II:101-150 To Paullus Fabius Maximus: His Request, Book EI.III:1-48 To Rufinus: Yearning For Rome, Book EI.III:49-94 To Rufinus: The Exile List, Book EI.IV:1-58 To His Wife: Time Passing, Book EI.V:1-42 To Cotta Maximus: The Compulsion To Write, Book EI.V:43- 86 To Cotta Maximus: The Use Of Writing, Book EI.VII:1-70 To Messalinus: His Claims For Remembrance, Book EI.VIII:1-70 To Severus: Memories of Home, Book EI.IX:1-56 To Cotta Maximus: News Of Celsus’ Death, Book EI.X:1-44 To Flaccus: His State Of Health, Book EI.I:1-36 To Brutus: The Nature of His Book. After five books of Tristia, he composed a collection of verse letters, the Epistulae ex Ponto, in which he appeals to his friends and supporters in Rome, lamenting his lot and begging for their help in mitigating it. If I told you all, you’d weep. When you’ve thought deeply about what I should do. and my pulse keeps to its regular rhythm. Here a fourth winter wearies me, contending as I am.