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THE POEMS OF EXILE
distinction is carefully observed by the punctilious Horace {Odes 3.5.1—4,
Episu 2.1.15). In ascribing actual divinity to Augustus, as he had already done
more than once in the Fasti, Ovid was no doubt voicing a common sentiment.
In the Tristia, however, the reiteration of the idea, given the writer's situation,
was bound to be tinged with bitterness, more especially when it is remembered
how often in the Metamorphoses divine anger is the prelude to an act of cruelty
or injustice. This repeated equation of Augustus with the traditional Jupiter
and of his power with the thunderbolt is more critical than complimentary.
Ovid's reflections on the character of 'divine' justice are indeed not always
merely implicit: in his apologia he observes that the gods punish mistakes just
as savagely as crimes:
scilicet in superis etiam fortuna luenda est,
nee ueniam laeso nutnine casus habet. (Trist. 2.107—8)
Apparently when one is dealing with the gods even ill-luck must be expiated, and
when a deity is offended misfortune is not accepted as an excuse.
Recurring variations on these ideas and catalogues of exempla illustrating them
leave no room for doubt as to what Ovid thought of the way in which he had
been treated. The message is clear: he was a victim of tyranny and injustice.
It is not, however, primarily as a citizen wronged before the law or at all
events in equity that Ovid presents his case, but in his special quality of poet.
This is clearly evident in the elaborate apologia that forms the whole of the
second book of the Tristia; it is also implicit in the poetry itself, often unjustly
belittled by critics, and in the very fact that it was through the public medium
of poetry that he chose to appeal. The existence of the Tristia was a demonstration
that Ovid still counted; that his hat, so to say, was still in the ring. Even
a poem that begins by apologizing for the technical deficiencies of his work
(Trist. 4.1.1—2) will modulate into a more positive strain:
utque suum Bacche non sentit saucia uulnus,
dum stupet Idaeis exululata modis,
sic ubi mota calent uiridi mea pectora thyrso,
altior humano spiritus ille malo est;
ille nee exilium Scythici nee litora ponti,
ille nee iratos sentit habere deos. (Trist. 4.1.41—6)
And as a Bacchante though wounded does not know it, so rapt is she while she shrieks
in orgiastic strains, so when my spirit has taken fire, struck with the burgeoning
thyrsus, it rises above human ills; it does not feel exile or the Scythian shore or the
anger of the gods.
A similar apology ushers in Book 5 (5.1.3—4); the promise that follows, to
write in a better and happier vein if Augustus will relent (35—46), is another
way of bringing moral pressure to bear. It is a fresh reminder that Ovid, as
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