#130 Sun (10/30/22) - Ovid's Exile; a poem and an error

 

Though the general consensus until fairly recently was that Ovid was exiled for undermining Augustus’ agenda of moral reform in Rome, there are two major problems with this position. The first issue is: why would Augustus wait for nine years before banishing Ovid? If the Ars Amatoria were that disruptive, surely Augustus would have taken action before 8 AD, the date of Ovid’s banishment. The second issue is textual; Ovid specifically mentions two reasons for offending Augustus:

       Perdiderint cum me duo crimina, carmen et error,

            alterius facti culpa silenda mihi:

       nam non sum tanti, renovem ut tua vulnera, Caesar, (Tr.2.207-209)


       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 your wounds, Caesar,

 

By Ovid’s own admission there is more to his exile than the carmen; there is also the error. Many scholars have argued that this is an example of hendiadys (a rhetorical technique, where two words joined by ‘and’ are used to convey a single idea), yet Ovid distinguishes between the reason he can talk about and the one he cannot, so hendiadys can be ruled out. Whatever was the prime cause for exile, it was a convenient time for Augustus to remove Ovid from a Rome troubled by political unrest.

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