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a power before which nothing - not even the traditional immortality of the
poet through his works — is secure. There is an especial bitterness in the wording
of the final couplet: emertdsse connotes time-serving. It is not enough,
Ovid is saying, to write good poetry; the poet who wishes himself and his
work to survive must keep on the right side of the man who combines the
power with the irresponsibility (for such, after the Metamorphoses, is the
implication of numinis ird) of deity.
This is irony and not to be taken literally. The very next poem shows that
Ovid had not given up. Trist. 4.9 breathes anger and defiance; in it he claims
the power, through his poetry, of blasting his correspondent's name for all
time to come. The man addressed is not identifiable, and may be a fiction; the
message is in effect a retractation of 4.8.45-52, and the cap, were it not for the
(detachable) parenthesis of 11. 11—14, fits Augustus better than anyone else.
Only here does Ovid attribute to himself (3) the dementia which elsewhere in
the Tristia (cf. especially 4.8.39) is the prerogative of the Emperor. This is not
the only poem in which his words can be construed as a threat against Augustus.
In his prayer to Bacchus at Trist. 5.3.35-46 the references to the mythical
figures of Lycurgus and Pentheus are pointed. These were kings who offended
the god who protects poets and were in consequence destroyed. What Ovid
dwells on, however, is not their deaths but their posthumous infamy, which is
contrasted with the eternal glory reserved for those who deserve well of
Bacchus. The corollary is the unspoken question: is Augustus to figure in
their company?
It has proved unfortunate for Ovid's reputation that his fight to rehabilitate
himself and his poetry had on his side to be conducted with the gloves on. The
stakes were enormous, indeed incalculable: not merely his own existence and
poetical identity, but the freedom of the artist to express what the gods have
given him to express. Such momentous ideas could only be suggested through
the techniques of literary allusion 1 and the significant placing of poems intended
to be read in contrast or complement to each other: Trist. 4.8—10 is a striking
example of such a group. This is to demand a good deal of the reader, and even
Ovid's more sympathetic critics have preferred to dwell on the human interest -
great but essentially incidental — of the Tristia to the neglect of the qualities
which are fundamental to their message. In writing these poems Ovid's aim
was not to crystallize personal experience or communicate a sense of suffering,
though it may on occasion suit him to represent his poetry as a mere reflex,
a cry of pain. His will to write and the nature of what he chose to write
are the index of a moral strength in him for which self-respect is too weak a
term. It is bound up with his consciousness of identity as a poet. Seen in this
1 A particularly poignant instance at Trist. 1.3: Ovid's description of his last night in Rome is
presented in terms intended to recall Aeneas' last night in Troy as narrated by Virgil in Aeneid 2.
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