ABSTRACT
Cohen’s essay examines the role played by exile in the formation of Roman identity in two of the great poets of the reign of Augustus, Vergil and Ovid, and situates their works in the historical context of the expansion of Roman power, and with it Roman citizenship. For Vergil, the figure of Aeneas, the mythical founder of the Roman people, as both exile and Roman allows him to explore the openness of Roman identity and the losses entailed in becoming Roman; Ovid, himself an exiled Roman, expresses the difficulty of maintaining his identity in the face of Roman power.
