We must also remember that Ovid’s style, with its abundant echoes of other authors, sometimes puts his value as an observer in doubt. His description of the Black Sea’s winter climate is, for example, embarrassingly close to a passage in Virgil’s Georgics.14 One Ovidian commentator rightly points to resemblances between his portrayal of the Pontic barbarians and those of the Aeneid’s later books, in which Virgil visualizes the primitive tribes of Italy.15 Where, then, do Ovid’s descriptions end and his plagiarisms begin? After forty years weaving poetic spells, was he capable of straight reporting? Probably not. Certainly, allusion was indispensable to his compositional method. Ovid’s motives were idiosyncratic and no one could call him an impartial witness. But he was not necessarily a perjured one.
As well as personal pleading there is also the more general bias of Roman against non-Roman. The steppe barbarians bequeathed few impressive remains and no written evidence. As ever, the reputation of the illiterate was in the hands of the literate, who had no reason to depict Rome’s potential enemies with sympathy and understanding. Here Ovid is as culpable as other ancient authors. It did not occur to him that fate had placed him at a unique vantage point, a forward listening post from which the steppe could be monitored and a fascinating study written.16 What he does give are glimpses of the grassland barbarians at their grimmest; strikingly perceived and expressed, but always subordinated to his own propaganda intention: that he should be allowed to return to Rome. In view of contemporary literary tastes, it is in any case barely conceivable that he would have placed the barbarian in the foreground of his work. As we have said, literature tended to feed on its own traditions and to be more intent on refining subject-matter than enlarging it in an ethnic or social sense. One may doubt whether any man of letters would have respected Sarmatian society sufficiently to be its ethnologist or lexicographer. Today, by contrast, we live in an age which professes to cherish less advanced peoples and their cultures; guilty perhaps that so few are left. Furthermore the modern Western nations are comfortingly distant from alien continents. Theirs were maritime empires, with oceans between themselves and their colonies. Even now, direct First World–Third World interfaces (as between South Africa and Mozambique, or the United States and Mexico) are surprisingly rare. Classical antiquity’s sense of being adjacent to and surrounded by the envy of less happy lands was stronger; with fear and prejudice correspondingly more acute.
It is time to turn to the Roman side of the story. This was the eighth year of the Christian era and the thirty-ninth since the battle of Actium had brought peace to the Roman world and Octavian, generally known as Augustus, its first emperor, to unchallengeable power. Ovid, aged fifty-one, with his wife (whose name is unknown to us) was on vacation in the Isle of Elba. She was his third wife and the only one with whom he had found lasting happiness. By rank he was a member of the equestrian order,17 entitling him to the white toga with a thin, purple stripe. He was proprietor of a fine estate, the Villa Ovidio at Sulmo, the family seat, ninety miles inland from Rome; and a comfortable town house close under the Capitoline Hill. As a young man he had studied law, indeed begun its practice and even held minor office. However, as he put it, ‘no matter what I tried to write, it came out verse’.18 The Muse beckoned and he followed, abandoning the substance and respectability of a public career. Not that poetry was without respect. Despite his father’s warning that ‘even Homer died broke’,19 there was no more propitious moment at which to excel, especially for one who could combine poetry with patriotism. It is a peculiarity of the Augustan Age that its greatest artists were able to reconcile themselves to the political background, matching stirring events with noble song. Here Ovid was a misfit, whose destiny was to be the ancient world’s supreme poet of love. His counterpart is surely Byron, with echoes of subject-matter, of attitude, even of place.20 Both were associated with scandal. Both would end in the loneliness of a Greek exile. And for both, success came early and in a rush. ‘I awoke one morning to find myself famous’,21 said Byron of the publication of Childe Harold; and Ovid’s first work, the Amores, brought much the same response. ‘When pressed to give public recitations’, he tells us, ‘my beard had been trimmed but twice.’22 At a stroke he attracted distinguished patronage and the acclaim of dilettantist Rome. This early reputation would be confirmed, indeed outshone, by the Ars Amatoria (Art of Love), published during his early forties: a sparkling essay on seduction, sometimes compared to Pope’s Rape of the Lock and, it seems to us, as inoffensive. Be that as it may, Ovid would thenceforward choose subjects more suited to his maturity: the less successful and uncompleted Fasti (the Festivals), a poetical calendar of the Roman year and its holy days. Then came his central work, the Metamorphoses: a series of verse episodes, each concerning a supernatural change; a thesaurus of transmogrification; a glittering amalgam of myth, magic and invention. In all Ovid enjoyed thirty years’ homage, first as the enfant prodige then as the literary lion of Rome. And yet, during the last decade of this happy and productive time, a cloud began to smudge his sky.
He had never sought the approval of officialdom. In this sense he was the odd man out in the golden quartet of Augustan writers. Livy’s History, in 142 books, had Rome’s greatness as its unswerving theme. Virgil’s Aeneid, a patriotic epic, climaxed in the birth of Rome and its rebirth under Augustus. Even the hedonistic and satirical Horace reflected, in his Odes, the great pageant of the Roman story. These were, in the highest sense, the Augustan apologists. Rome’s mission had been their inspiration and they lifted Latin to parity with Greek as the supreme language of civilized mankind. All three were, however, older than Ovid. Theirs was the civil war generation, which had longed for peace and prized the blessings it brought. Ovid’s was the post-war generation, which took peace for granted and had heard enough of valiant deeds. Understandably he turned toward less patriotic themes, unrelated to public events. His commitment was total but it was to poetry itself, not to a regime, however glorious. It is of course clear to us that, far from being contrary to the glory of the Augustan Age, Ovid’s achievement was a proud part of it; and that his deviations from orthodoxy were refreshing as well as harmless.
Not entirely harmless. The emperor had long been disturbed at the state of morals, behind which lay a genuine concern for the falling upper-class birthrate. Laws were passed to protect marriage and outlaw adultery. Though carrying stiff penalties, these were regarded as unenforceable and something of a joke, especially in view of gossip about Augustus’ own peccadilloes and his ability to reconcile them with his position as praefectus moribus (corrector of morals). Nor was he exceptionally prolific himself, having produced only one child, Julia, despite four marriages. The birthrate remained low, the morals uncorrected.
Joke or not, Augustus took the matter seriously. Dio has left an account of his harangue, directed toward unmarried or childless knights during the year of Ovid’s banishment. It was a long and scathing speech, of which a few sentences give a flavour:
How should I address you? As Romans? You are heading toward the elimination of that name. The truth is you are on a collision course with our national future. What would be left of mankind if everyone behaved like you? You are murderers, in the sense of not giving life to those who should be your descendants; and traitors, in the sense of leaving your country bereft of heirs. For it is people who make a city, not empty houses or deserted squares. How can we preserve the state if we neither marry nor have children?23
Further laws were passed to penalize the unmarried, both fiscally and in matters of inheritance. These were called the Papia-Poppaea laws, after the consuls of that year. To the discomfort of some and the amusement of others, it was then realized that Papius and Poppaeus were bachelors.
Despite severity on this issue, Augustus could hardly be called a figure of fear. On the contrary, with middle age he had become increasingly relaxed and approachable. Unfortunately this was about to change. Events within the imperial family would trigger outbursts of that youthful
ruthlessness which had won battles and eliminated opponents. Robert Graves,24 not without support from Roman historians, would have us believe that Augustus’ blood relatives were being disposed of through the bad offices of his fourth wife, Livia, in favour of her son (by her first husband) Tiberius. This is the woman called by Tacitus, ‘a curse to the state as a mother; to the house of Caesar as a stepmother’.25 Though there is no hard evidence, her alleged methods were either to poison her stepchildren and step-grandchildren, or to poison her husband’s mind against them. True or not, public splendours were to be soured by a succession of private griefs. In AD 2 a scandal broke around the emperor’s daughter, Julia, who was accused of adultery and exiled to a tiny and desolate island. Such harshness is explainable only in terms of her father’s acute sensitivity to ridicule. Another source of amusement was that the adultery law was part of a code called the Lex Julia; named after Augustus’ family, the Julians.
The appearance of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, only a year or so later, was an all-time publishing gaffe. Here was what appeared to be a philanderer’s charter. It would have been less humiliating for the administration had the book flopped. But no, it sold like hot cakes! Ovid argues somewhat lamely that adultery had been far from his thoughts, that the poem was intended as a divertissement relating only to affairs with courtesans. In his favour was the fact that his own personal life was relatively blameless. ‘No scandal ever attached itself to my name,’26 he maintains. ‘My muse was merrier than myself’,27 meaning he had been a playboy in poetry rather than practice. Whatever Augustus’ feelings, there was no official rebuke and no action was taken. In any case, Ovid’s pen now pursued more seemly subjects. However, to the government’s and perhaps the author’s embarrassment, that poem on illicit love refused to lie down. On the contrary, its popularity continued to soar.
In AD 8 there was another hammerstroke to the greying, imperial head: the arrest and banishment of his granddaughter, daughter of his already exiled daughter, also called Julia, again for adultery, complicated this time by an alleged conspiracy to replace Tiberius as heir. Livia, if Graves’ theory is correct, was working overtime. It is probable that the same year also saw the death of Ovid’s patron, M. V. Messalla Corvinus, distinguished general, statesman and honoured friend of Augustus. Without subscribing to the poet’s indiscretions, Messalla’s very presence would disarm retaliatory measures. With his passing, a trusty shield had fallen quietly away.
We return to Ovid, unaware of the gathering shadows, on his visit to Elba during this same year. If he had offended Augustus, surely he had by now redeemed himself? Ars Amatoria may have been an almighty faux pas, but seven years had elapsed since publication and no harm had come. At this juncture, out of the blue, a man (or probably men) appeared at the villa where the happy couple were guests. Perhaps they were plain-clothes officers of what later became known as the frumentarii28 (military supply services), a cover-name for the secret police. The poet was staggered. Under arrest … for writing a love poem! But that was not apparently the question. Ovid was party to some knowledge. He had seen something. Something he should have reported.
In the lonely years ahead, Ovid would brood interminably on this fateful moment. He had blundered. An indiscreet poem, certainly; that he would rue, long and deeply. He had erred too in the direction of his work: its disregard for all the age had accomplished. But of the other matter, the last straw which broke the imperial patience, Ovid would never speak. That is to say he would never mention it in his verse. Though the desire for self-justification was obsessional, to speak out clearly on the reason for his banishment could only rekindle the emperor’s anger and damage his chance of reprieve. Doubtless the secret was fully discussed in his private correspondence and was common gossip in Rome. Nothing of either has survived; and hints in the Tristia are all we have:
Two ‘crimes’, a poem and a faux pas
Have brought me to this pass.
On the latter I must hold my peace
Lest insult to injury be added.
For it is enough, O Caesar,
That you should have been injured
Once already.29
And again
Why did I get my eyes into trouble?
Why was I so stupid as to cover up
That which I knew?30
He swears that what he saw was by accident:
And I am punished because my blundering
Eyes beheld a wrong, as if it were a
Sin that I have eyes.31
Whatever he beheld, his implication in this ‘wrong’ seems not to have been deep:
And yet the gods, who see through all
Men do, know that I have
Nothing done which could be called
Great guilt.32
What was it, this wrong of which he dared not speak? Scholars have speculated endlessly. As the poet implies several times, Ars Amatoria was only a contributory cause. It has often been surmised that the true reason concerned the indiscretions of the younger Julia, for both his and her banishments occurred in the same year. Perhaps he knew of those indiscretions. Perhaps, in some peripheral way, he was accessory to them. It is unlikely we will ever know.
Ovid would, however, be let off lightly. Not even exsilium (exile): something milder; something called relegatio (demotion). He would keep his knighthood, estate and fortune. Ars Amatoria, now in all the public libraries, would have to go; but otherwise he could continue to work as he pleased, write as he pleased, correspond with whom he pleased. Only he must return immediately to Rome, pack his bags and take ship for somewhere in Greece; a place called Tomis.
Back in Rome he tried to steel himself for suicide. But there was little steel in Ovid. One thinks of Romans as martial, but here was a quiet man, a meek and on the whole a modest man; physically timid, frail and nervous. Even in boyhood he had shrunk from sport and the mandatory war games. He loved his wife, his home, his work and the adulation it brought. Virgil had died a generation earlier, Horace that very year, leaving Ovid as the language’s greatest living poet. Above all he loved Rome herself; the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, talk and endless stimulus of this mother city; queen and crossroads of the world. Now the cup was snatched away. A sudden confrontation by nameless men; a verdict and a sentence pre-imposed.
And yet life among the Greeks might be bearable. Romans of his class saw Greece as a spiritual home. Indeed he had studied in Athens. Neither was this to be relegatio in insulam; banishment, like that of the tragic Julias, to some God-forsaken rock. Nor in oasim; expulsion to an oven-hot clump of datepalms on Egypt’s fringe. At least he was bound for a city, long established, older even than Rome herself. Nevertheless, however packaged, the reality was exile: the destination to which he would be brought by the ‘crooked axle’ of his luck, ‘the destiny, knitted at my birth from a black fleece’.33 Nor was it a comfort to recall that until half a century earlier ‘exile’ had been the traditional grace-period during which a citizen condemned to death was allowed to flee Roman territory. This suggests that flight into the Barbaricum was scarcely preferable to execution: for where, in that lawless wilderness, might refuge be found? The view was that earth’s most felicitous regions by now belonged to Rome and what she did not have was not worth having. Though Ovid was not being sent into barbarian territory (the Pontic cities were already under Roman protection) the point was a fine one, for as yet this protection was largely nominal and in a day-to-day sense the Tomitans were expected to defend themselves. It was a place of which he was soon to write:
Only guarded wall and barred gate
Shield us from the baleful Getans’ hate.34
Ovid’s fear of mutilation or violent death, though natural enough, was in his case morbidly acute. This would make exile to the Sarmatian steppe a singularly unpleasant experience, so much so that one might wonder whether it had been devised with his particular sensitivities in mind. We have compared Ovid to Byron, but there is also a resemblance to Wilde. Both were brilliant, witty me
n. Both defied the orthodoxies of their age. Both were early fêted and abruptly dropped. Both served spiteful, life-shortening sentences. And both produced two ‘poems of exile’,35 works strikingly different from anything they had previously written.
By the spring of AD 9 Ovid was in Tomis and had begun work on the Tristia. Its opening book describes his last night in Rome; how he looked up toward the Capitol, flooded in moonlight; how, the next morning, his wife, hysterical, rolled in the hearth, clutching the household gods. Glimpses of the voyage follow: lying awake beneath the thwarts of a creaking ship, with seas so mountainous that the terrified helmsman abandoned the tiller and turned to prayer. Since he later mentions an exchange of letters as requiring a year, we may guess his journey was long, with various pauses, changes of vessel and overland stretches. Here is a characteristic passage about Tomis and its ambience:
Would you like to know just how things are
In Tomis town and how we live?
Though Greek and Getan mingle on this coast
It owes more to the Getan than the Greek.
Great hordes of them and their Sarmatian
Cousins canter to and fro along the rough roads,
Everyone with bow and quiverful of
Arrows, yellow-nibbed and vile with venom.
Villainy of voice and face betray their thoughts;
Hairiness of head and beard tell us they
Have never seen a barber. Right hands itch
To pull the universal knife. Such is, alas,
The company your Bard must keep.36
The steppe peoples were formidable archers, using bows perhaps thirty inches long and shooting from the saddle at full gallop. A cavalry bow must of course be short, but strength was added by means of horn tips and plates, bound and glued to the wood. It is possible that the Sarmatians were the first in Europe to develop stirrups, in their original form of leather footloops, which steadied the mounted archer while riding hands-off and greatly increased his accuracy. To be ready to hand, the bow was carried strung, in a large holster attached to the belt, which served also as a quiver. The arrows were poisoned. Ovid’s imagination brooded on the Getan arrow and he developed a special revulsion toward it. He described it as ‘dealing double death’: from the venom as well as the wound itself. The arrowhead was spliced around its base with a collar of thorns, to increase tearing power. The venom’s recipe has been reconstructed from ancient references and with medical advice by a German scholar, C. J. Bucher.37 Extracts from the rotted corpses of adders, including the venom sac, were steeped in putrefying human blood tainted, in its turn, with excrement. The intention was clearly to manufacture a blend of toxicity with gangrenous and tetanoid infections. If the wound failed the poison would succeed; and if the poison did not the diseases would. Herodotus confirms this ferocity in gruesome terms; though he is speaking of the Sarmatians’ predecessors, the Scyths. On the matter of head-hunting, Ovid tells us that the Sarmatians continued Scythian practice.38 Being related peoples we might expect this to be true of a number of customs.
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