ABSTRACT
The single poem which forms the second book of the Tristia is mainly an elaborate defence against one of the two grounds for the poet's exile. Chronological order concerned Ovid neither in the Tristia nor the Epistulae. The catastrophe in Ovid's life occurred towards the end of the year ad 8 when he was fifty. In Ovid's case the ostensibly milder form of banishment was severe indeed, because he was sent to live in an outlandish spot from which he was never recalled. Ovid was not by temperament a noble Roman: certain Republican virtues were lacking, such as fortitude, physical endurance, and a high moral sense. The exile poems themselves indicate the change in Ovids fortunes. For besides being unique in classical literature as poems of exile, they possess a quality which is unusual in Roman elegiac poetry: the utterance of the author is directly referable to his own experience and he emerges from the poems in his own person.
