Scholarly discussion of the landscape of Ovidâs Tomitan exile, and in particular the extensive description in Tristia 3.10, has primarily taken the form of biographical criticism out of an interest in the material conditions of Ovidâs exile; in the cross-cultural contacts between uncivilized Getans, cultured Greeks, and imperial Romans; in the dangers of sailing and travel on the margins of the Roman empire; etc.1 A welcome development of the last twenty-five years or so, however, has been to turn away from this sort of biographically-inflected criticism towards a more nuanced literary criticism, in an exploration of the poetics of Ovidâs Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto.2 My study continues the contemporary investigation of the literary metaphors at play in the exile poetry, but from the perspective of rhetorical theory, which I take to be complementary rather than antithetical to poetic and literary theory.3 Here I consider Ovidâs deployment of rhetorical terminology in the third book of Tristia in relation to his poetics of exilic composition, especially as they are set out in the programmatic opening and closing poems of the book (Tr. 3.1, 14). Five related themes of the exile poetry, which have been much discussed in the critical literature on the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, will particularly engage our attention: 1) the supposed monotony of tone and subject in the exilic collections;4 2) Ovidâs isolation as a Latin-speaker in Getic Tomis and the resulting decline of his Latin;5 3) the harsh cold of the land to which the poet has been relegated, the perpetual winter of Tomis;6 4) the poetâs ill health in this insalubrious setting;7 and 5) the resulting decline in the quality of his poetic talent.8 All these themes, introduced in the third book of the Tristia and repeatedly sounded throughout the last two books of the Tristia and the four subsequent books of the Epistulae ex Ponto, correlate significantly to contemporary discussion of rhetorical âAsianism.â I argue that Ovid deploys this rhetorical lexicon in the poetry composed in Tomis to mark a new stylistic âexcessâ appropriate to the geographical location of its production, in a departure from or, at the least, a qualification of, the standards of Callimachean elegance and restraint to which his earlier elegiac poetry adhered.9
1 Ovidâs Exile
I begin by noting the traditional biographical readings of Ovidâs exile poetry in order to lay the groundwork for a rhetorico-literary interpretation of Tristia 3. Until the early 20th century, no one doubted the historicity of Ovidâs exile on the evidence of his so-called exile poetryâthe five books of Tristia and four books of Epistulae ex Pontoâin which the poet represents himself as having been banished from Rome towards the end of 8â¯ce by the emperor Augustus and relegated to Tomis, modern Costanza in Romania, a superficially Hellenized city on the Black Sea that had come under Roman control only late in the 1st century bce and was located about as far away from the imperial capital as was geographically possible at the time. In antiquity, the elder Pliny, Statius, Jerome, and pseudo-Aurelius Victor all mention Ovidâs relegation in 8â¯ce, but in the 20th century several scholars have voiced skepticism concerning the fact of Ovidâs exile on the Black Sea, adducing a variety of reasons for disbelief.10 Despite my confidence in the historicity of Ovidâs exile, I am not altogether unsympathetic to the skepticism of these 20th-century scholars. For while I find their conclusions misguided, they have well and amply documented the pervasively literary texture of Ovidâs exile poetry in general and the rhetoricity of his descriptions of Tomis in particular. As Fitton-Brown himself remarks, concerning the incoherent account of Ovidâs trip from Italy to the Black Sea in the poems of the first book of Tristia, âthere were rhetorical and literary advantages in depicting the voyage as he doesâ (1985, 19). Indeed, J.-M. Claassen describes the plot of Tristia 1, composed in his first year of exile, purportedly on the journey from Rome to Tomis (December of 8â¯ce to the summer of 9â¯ce), as âan elegiac epic.â11 Ovidâs determinedly literary focus in Tristia 1 is conspicuously continued in the second work from exile, Tristia 2, composed in the fall/winter after his arrival in Tomis (9â10â¯ce), which offers an apologia not so much de vita sua as de carmine suo, with comparanda drawn from a wide range of Latin literary works. We should therefore approach the third book of Ovidâs exile poetry, Tristia 3âhis first book of poetry actually set in Tomis and ostensibly about his life in exile, composed in the spring and summer of 10â¯ceâwith similar expectations. For in this book too, I suggest, Ovidâs literary concerns are cast in highly rhetorical form.
2 Ovidâs Rhetorical Education
In order to substantiate my thesis of the rhetorical allegory at play in Tristia 3, it will be useful at this point to review Ovidâs education in some detail. Like all education in antiquity, our poetâs was primarily in rhetoric and we are remarkably well informed about it. Ovid himself tells us in the exile poetry that he was educated for a career in law and the Senate, i.e. in rhetoric, but that he abandoned public life at an early age to devote himself to poetry (Tr. 4.10.15â40). The elder Seneca supplements the evidence of this sketch, preserving the information that Ovid studied declamation with the rhetorician Arellius Fuscus and that he also admired Porcius Latro, Senecaâs great friend and fellow Spaniard (Contr. 2.2.8):
Hanc controversiam memini ab Ovidio Nasone declamari apud rhetorem Arellium Fuscum, cuius auditor fuit; nam Latronis admirator erat, cum diversum sequeretur dicendi genus. habebat ille comptum et decens et amabile ingenium. oratio eius iam tum nihil aliud poterat videri quam solutum carmen. adeo autem studiose Latronem audit ut multas illius sententias in versus suos transtulerit.
I remember that Ovidius Naso declaimed this case at the school of the rhetor Arellius Fuscus, whose student he was; he was also an admirer of Latro, though he followed a different style of speaking. He had a smooth, elegant, and engaging talent. His speech even then could seem like nothing other than loose verse. But he attended Latroâs lectures so zealously that he transferred many of his epigrams into his own verses.
According to Seneca, Ovid showed real talent for declamation (Contr. 2.2.9):
Tunc autem cum studeret habebatur bonus declamator. hanc certe controversiam ante Arellium Fuscum declamavit, ut mihi videbatur, longe ingeniosius, excepto eo quod sine certo ordine per locos discurrebat.
But at the time when he was a student, he was considered a good declaimer. He certainly declaimed this case before Arellius Fuscus very ably, as it seemed to me, except that he ran through the commonplaces without any order.
Ovid preferred, however, to declaim suasoriae, display pieces offering advice to a public figure in a critical situation, rather than controversiae, legal cases (Contr. 2.2.12):
Declamabat autem Naso raro controversias et non nisi ethicas; libentius dicebat suasorias: molesta illi erat omnis argumentatio. verbis minime licenter usus est nisi in carminibus, in quibus non ignoravit vitia sua sed amavit â¦. ex quo adparet summi ingenii viro non iudicium defuisse ad compescendam licentiam carminum suorum sed animum. Aiebat interim decentiorem faciem esse in qua aliquis naevos esset.
Naso, however, used to declaim legal cases infrequently and only ethical ones; he used to deliver persuasive speeches with more pleasure; all argument was tiresome to him. He used words with the least license, except in his poems, in which he was not unaware of his faults but indulged them â¦. From which it will be clear that a man of the greatest talent lacked not judgment but the will to restrain his license in his poetry. He occasionally used to say that a face was the more beautiful in which there was some blemish.
Seneca links Ovidâs preference for declaiming speeches of advice, rather than legal cases, to a certain linguistic self-indulgence in his poetry. In this connection, he recalls the declaimer Scaurusâ derogatory comparison of the orator Montanus to Ovid, because he found both orator and poet careless and self-indulgent (Contr. 9.5.17):
Habet hoc Montanus vitium: sententias suas repetendo corrumpit; dum non est contentus unam rem semel bene dicere, efficit ne bene dixerit. et propter hoc et propter alia quibus orator potest poetae similis videri solebat Scaurus Montanum inter oratores Ovidium vocare; nam et Ovidius nescit quod bene cessit relinquere.
Montanus had this fault: he ruined his epigrams by repetition; as he was not content to say a single thing well once, he effectively prevented himself from speaking well. And because of this and other issues which can make an orator seem like a poet, Scaurus used to call Montanus the Ovid among orators; for Ovid too does not know how to leave off what he has done well.
Of particular interest is Senecaâs notice that Ovid, although an admirer of Latro, was actually a pupil of Arellius Fuscus, for the latter is the only Latin declaimer whom Seneca explicitly labels âAsianistâ in his rhetorical technique (Contr. 9.6.16; cf. Contr. 9.1.12â13). Janet Fairweather has characterized the âchief peculiarityâ of Fuscusâ style as âhis habit of diversifying an otherwise dry declamatory manner with extraordinarily florid descriptive passages, unmanly in compositio [arrangement or rhythm] and outrageously bold in diction.â12 The elder Seneca complains of Fuscusâ excessive use of digressions and effusive license (Contr. 2 pr. 1):
Erat explicatio Fusci Arelli splendida quidem sed operosa et implicata, cultus nimis adquisitus, conpositio verborum mollior quam ut illam tam sanctis fortibusque praeceptis praeparans se animus pati posset; summa inaequalitas orationis, quae modo exilis erat, nimia licentia vaga et effusa: principia, argumenta, narrationes aride dicebantur, in descriptionibus extra legem omnibus verbis dummodo niterent permissa libertas; nihil acre, nihil solidum, nihil horridum; splendida oratio et magis lasciva quam laeta.
Arellius Fuscusâ development was certainly brilliant, but highly wrought and involved, his ornamentation too contrived, his arrangement of words more effeminate than a mind training itself for such hallowed and vigorous precepts could tolerate; his oratory was extremely uneven, now thin, now digressive and diffuse from excessive freedom: proems, arguments, narratives he declaimed dryly, while in descriptions license beyond the rule was offered to his every word, provided they sparkled; there was nothing sharp, nothing of substance, nothing shaggy; his oratory was brilliant, and more wanton than rich.
The final feature of the elder Senecaâs assessment of Fuscusâ rhetorical style finds a striking parallel in Quintilianâs assessment of Ovidâs achievement in epic: lascivus quidem in herois quoque Ovidius et nimium amator ingenii sui, laudandus tamen partibus. (âOvid is also wanton even in heroic measures, and too much in love with his own talent, though he is praiseworthy in places,â Inst. Or. 10.1.88) He lays a similar charge against Ovid when he writes elegy: elegia quoque Graecos provocamus, cuius mihi tersus atque elegans maxime videtur auctor Tibullus. sunt qui Propertium malint. Ovidius utroque lascivior. (âIn elegy too we challenge the Greeks, of whom the author Tibullus seems to me especially polished and elegant, but there are some who prefer Propertius. Ovid is more wanton than either of them,â 10.1.93)
The elder Senecaâs broader characterization of Arellius Fuscusâ style resonates still more broadly with Ciceroâs characterization in the Brutus and Orator of rhetorical Asianism a generation earlier. Cicero characterizes the Asiatic orator as amplus, copiosus, gravis, ornatus, acer, and ardens (Or. 97â99).13 The hallmark of the grand style to which the Asiatic orator aspired seems to have been a febrile emotionality that the speaker both exemplified and endeavored to incite in his hearers. Thus Asianism âpossesses vis [force], stirs the emotions (tractare animos, permovere), and changes opinions (inserit novas opiniones, evellit insitas).â14 But the orator who employs the genus vehemens runs the risk of himself appearing to be possessed by the very emotions he wishes to inspire in his audience, and if he fails to win over his audience he himself will seem âlike a madman or a drunkard among the sane and sober,â as Cicero puts it (Orat. 99).15 Quintilian reports that Cicero himself was attacked for precisely these failings by younger contemporaries, presumably Brutus and Calvus (cf. Inst. Or. 12.10.24), the proponents of the so-called Attic style (Quint. Inst. Or. 12.10.12, trans. Austin 1948):
at M. Tullium ⦠quem tamen et suorum homines temporum incessere audebant ut tumidiorem et Asianum et redundantem et in repetitionibus nimium et in salibus aliquando frigidum et in compositione fractum, exsultantem, ac paene, quod procul absit, viro molliorem.
And yet even his own contemporaries ventured to attack him on the ground that he was too bombastic, Asiatic, redundant, given to excessive repetition, frigid (i.e., flat) at times in his witticisms, mincing in his rhythmic structure, extravagant, and (heaven help us!) practically emasculate.16
To his Atticist opponents, Cicero (from whom most of our evidence derives) attributes a preference for the âhumbleâ style of oratory (genus humile, Or. 76â90), which alone among the three styles of oratory they endorsed as âAtticâ (Or. 75). He relates (Orat. 75â78) that contemporary Atticists imitated every-day speech (consuetudo) and claimed that their style exhibited good health, both physical and mental (valetudo, sanitas), a certain looseness that nonetheless did not degenerate into digression (solutum quiddam sit nec vagum tamen), and a studied carelessness (neglegentia diligens). Cicero also reports that the Atticists paid extremely close attention to Latinity, clarity, and propriety, which constituted the three chief goals of this style (Orat. 79). A fragment of the late-Republican polymath Varro supplements the evidence of Cicero in this regard (Varro fr. 41 Wilmann): Latinitas est incorrupte loquendi observatio secundum Romanam linguam. (âLatinity is the observance of speaking without corruption according to the Roman tongue.â) Mark Williams observes that, in this definition of Latinity, Varro âimplies an Atticist opposition between Latinitas [Latinity] and frigus [frigidity or flatness] founded upon a preference for purity and simplicity of diction against Asiatic bombast.â17 Immersed in this rhetorical culture, and privy to the debate between Atticists and Asianists that continued into his own day, as the elder Seneca demonstrates, Ovid exploits the techniques and technical terms of declamation throughout his poetry, in order to underscore the insalubrious effect of relegation to Tomis on his poetic technique.18
3 Asianist Rhetoric in Ovidâs Pontic Poetry
I turn now, therefore, to explore Ovidâs application of the terms of this rhetorical debate to the circumstances of his exile in Tristia 3. From the start of the book, we find the poet insisting that the unrelievedly gloomy tone and subject-matter of his poetry is appropriate to the circumstances of its composition in Pontus: inspice quid portem: nihil hic nisi triste videbis, / carmine temporibus conveniente suis (âLook at what I bring: you will see nothing here except sadness, with poetry suited to its circumstances,â 1.9â10). Ovid details his dismal situation in Pontus throughout the collection, summarizing his unhappy circumstances and their relation to his poetic production thus in the final poem: quod quicumque legetâsi quis legetâaestimet ante, / compositum quo sit tempore quoque loco. / aequus erit scriptis, quorum cognoverit esse / exilium tempus barbariamque locum (âBut whoever will read [my book]âif anyone will read itâlet him judge beforehand in what circumstances and place it was written. He will be fair to writings whose circumstances he recognizes to be exile and place a barbarian land,â 14.27â30) The Pontic provenance of the collection has several implications. Ovidâs assimilation of Pontus to Scythia in the exile poetry (e.g. 2.1â11, 4.46; cf. Tr. 4b.47â52, 10.7â8, 12.51â52, 14.47â50) has been frequently studied, and the extensive allusions to Vergilâs description of Scythia as the northern extreme of Roman imperium in Georgics 3 well discussed;19 this theme will be relevant to our discussion of Ovidâs emphasis on the extreme cold of the climate at Tomis. But we should bear in mind as well Horaceâs reference to Scythia as the eastern extreme of Roman rule: Quid bellicosus Cantaber et Scythes, / Hirpine Quincti, cogitet Hadria / divisus obiecto, remittas / quaerere nec trepides in usum / poscentis aevi pauca (âWhat the warlike Spaniard and Scythians plan, Quinctius my central Italian friend, separated as they are by the Adriatic sea, you should forbear to inquire, nor should you worry concerning the sustenance of a life-span that requires but little,â C. 2.11.1â5). Horace here balances the western threat of Cantabrian wars in Spain by the eastern threat of war in Scythia.20 The specifically eastern setting of Ovidâs exilic poetry emerges more clearly when read against the evidence of the Horatian passage and, indeed, our poet occasionally plays up the Asian setting of his exile in his use of near eastern mythological exempla in Tristia 3: the legendary feats of Achilles in the Trojan war (3.27â28, 5.37â38, 11.27â28); Phaethonâs interest in his descent from the Sun (3.29â30); Alexanderâs eastern conquests (5.39â40); the wealth of Croesus (7.42); the foundation of Tomis from Medeaâs murder of her brother Absyrtus as she fled the pursuing ships of the Colchians (3.9); Leanderâs death in a storm on the Bosphorus (10.41â42); and the poetâs self-characterization as an Aeneas among the barbarians.21 That these Asiatic exempla are the products of a deliberate rhetorical agenda seems clear from a comment the poet makes regarding the impropriety of including a Sicilian mythological exemplum (11.39â54) in the context of his newly Pontic poetry: quid mihi cum Siculis inter Cizigasque Getasque? (âWhat have I to do with Sicilians amid Cizigae and Getans?,â 11.55).
These hints of a new tendency towards Asianism in the exilic poetry are more fully developed in Ovidâs repeated complaint that he suffers so much from linguistic isolation in Tomis that he is in danger of forgetting his Latin altogether: dicere saepe aliquid conantiâturpe fateri!â/ verba mihi desunt dedidicique loqui. (âoften words fail me as I try to say somethingâshameful to confess!âand I have forgotten how to speak,â 14.49â50).22 In the first poem of the book, Ovid explicitly connects the impurity of his Latin with the barbarous land to which he has been relegated: siqua videbuntur casu non dicta Latine, / in qua scribebat, barbara terra fuit (âif, perchance, anything seems not to have been spoken in Latin, the land in which he was writing was foreign,â 1.17â18); and he offers self-conscious commentary on the barbarous names he admits to his verse at several points in the book (3.63â64, 4b.49â50, 9.1â2). A particularly telling passage occurs at the outset of Tristia 3.10 (verses 1â6):
siquis adhuc istic meminit Nasonis adempti,et superest sine me nomen in Vrbe meumsuppositum stellis numquam tangentibus aequorme sciat in media vivere barbaria.Sauromatae cingunt, fera gens, Bessique Getaeque,quam non ingenio nomina digna meo!
If anyone there still remembers banished Naso and my name survives without me in the City, let him know that I live in the midst of barbarian lands beneath the stars that never touch the sea. The Sauromatae, a fierce people, the Bessi and Getaeânames how unworthy of my talent!âsurround me.
Eugène Lozovan has shown that Ovidâs Latinity is, in fact, as refined as ever in the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto23 and, indeed, the metrical versatility of our poet is such that he can even admit the names of all those barbarian tribes to his limpid elegiacs (10.5â6); but it is the very admission of these barbarous words to his verse that constitutes the chief evidence of the âdecliningâ Latinity (in strict terms) of the exile poetry. Thus even the line we considered earlier (quid mihi cum Siculis inter Cizigasque Getasque, 11.55), does double duty in its elaboration of an Ovidian rhetoric of exile, as it testifies not only to the cultural distance but also to the linguistic distance from Rome of Tomis where the poet lives inter Cizigasque Getasque.
If the barbarous location of his exile has undermined the âpurityâ of Ovidâs Latinity, the frigid climate has weakened him and made him ill. The second poem in the book contrasts the rigors of life in âfrost-bound Pontusâ with the poetâs formerly soft and easy life in Rome (3.2.1â11):
ergo erat in fatis Scythiam quoque visere nostris,quaeque Lycaonio terra sub axe iacet,nec vos, Pierides, nec stirps Letoïa, vestrodocta sacerdoti turba tulistis opem.nec mihi, quod lusi vero sine crimine, prodest,quodque magis vita Musa iocata mea est,plurima sed pelago terraque pericula passumustus ab adsiduo frigore Pontus habet.quique fugax rerum securaque in otia natus,mollis et inpatiens ante laboris eram,ultima nunc patior.
And so it was fated for me to visit Scythia too, a land that lies beneath Lycaonâs pole; neither you, Pierian Muses, a learned crowd, nor Letoâs offspring, have brought your priest aid. Nor does it help me that I sported in my poetry without true crime, or that my Muse was more jocular than my life; but the Black Sea, wasted from constant cold, possesses me after I have suffered innumerable dangers by land and seaâI, who once fled worldly affairs, born for easy leisure, soft and unable to endure toil before, now suffer extremes.
The cold climate of Tomis is a recurrent theme of the book (4.47â52; 8.29â30; 12.1â2, 27â30; 13.11â12). It is also the subject of a celebrated poem, Tristia 3.10, in which Ovid contrasts the sterility of the frozen Pontic landscape with the fertility of Romeâs Mediterranean empire (3.10.70â78):
cessat iners rigido terra relicta situ.non hic pampinea dulcis latet uva sub umbra,nec cumulant altos fervida musta lacus.poma negat regio, nec haberet Acontius in quoscriberet hic dominae verba legenda suae.aspiceres nudos sine fronde, sine arbore, campos:heu loca felici non adeunda viro!ergo tam late pateat cum maximus orbis,haec est in poenam terra reperta meam!
The earth, left to stark neglect, lies unworked. Not here does the sweet grape lie concealed beneath the shade of the vines, nor do the frothing lees mount in the deep vats. The region denies fruit, nor would Acontius have anything on which to write words for his mistress to read here. You could see bare fields, without foliage, without a tree: places, alas, that should not be visited by a happy man! And so, though the greatest expanse of the world spreads so widely, this land has been discovered for my punishment!
In Ovidâs rhetorical hyperbole, the frigid climate of Tomis is such that winter lasts for two years at a time: nix iacet, et iactam ne sol pluviaeque resolvant, / indurat Boreas perpetuamque facit. / ergo ubi delicuit nondum prior, altera venit, / et solet in multis bima manere locis (âThe snow falls and neither sun nor rain melts it once fallen, but Boreas hardens it and makes it everlasting. And so when an earlier snowfall has not yet melted, another comes, and in many places usually stays for two years,â 13â16). Indeed the book as a whole testifies to the icy grip of winterâs cold on the poetâs verse, since it is only in the antepenultimate poem that we hear of spring coming to Tomis: frigora iam Zephyri minuunt, annoque peracto / longior antiquis vim moderatur hiems (âNow the west winds lessen the cold, and with the completion of the year a winter, longer than those of old, tempers its force,â 12.1â2) Even when describing the spring thaw, however, the poet charts not the renewal of warmth but the retreat of winter: at mihi sentitur nix verno sole soluta, / quaeque lacu durae non fodiantur aquae; / nec mare concrescit glacie, nec, ut ante, per Histrum / stridula Sauromates plaustra bubulcus agit (âBut I feel the snow melted by the spring sun, and waters which are not dug all hard from the lake; neither does the sea now grow hard from ice nor does the Sauromatian bullock, as before, draw creaking wagons across the Ister,â 12.27â30).
Unrelenting cold pervades the imagery of Tristia 3 elsewhere too, as Ovid depicts his copious tears on arrival in Tomis as analogous to snow in springtime (3.2.13â20):
suffecitque malis animus; nam corpus ab illoaccepit vires vixque ferenda tulit.dum tamen et terris dubius iactabar et undis,fallebat curas aegraque corda labor:ut via finita est et opus requievit eundi,et poenae tellus est mihi tacta meae,nil nisi flere libet, nec nostro parcior imberlumine de verna quam nive manat aqua.
And my spirit has risen to the challenge of my ills; for my body has taken on strength from it and has endured what could scarcely be borne. Yet while I was being buffeted by doubt on land and sea, toil beguiled my cares and sick heart: when the journey was over and the work of travel at rest, and I touched the land of my punishment, I could do nothing but weep, nor did the tears drip from my eyes more sparingly than the flood from spring snow.
This image recalls Ciceroâs characterization of the orator of the forceful style (genus vehemens) who sweep[s] his audience away âwith a flood of words and phrasesâ (nec flumine solum orationis, sed etiam exornato et faceto genere uerborum, Brut. 325).24 Indeed, âfullness of expression, elaboration, amplification, and redundancyâ25âall features of Ovidâs description of Pontic cold (frigus) in Tristia 3.10âare characteristic of the Asiatic oratorical style censured by the Atticists in the testimony of Cicero himself and related to the charge of rhetorical âfrigidityâ (frigus) or âflatnessâ that they lodged against him, as we saw in Quintilian (Inst. Or. 12.10.12, quoted above).
The technical term in Greek rhetoric for any stylistic fault in oratory was
á½ÏÏÎµÏ Î´á½² ÏαÏάκειÏαι Ïαῦλά Ïινα á¼ÏÏÎµá½·Î¿Î¹Ï ÏιÏίν ,οἷον θάÏÏει μὲν Ïὸ θÏá½±ÏÎ¿Ï ,ἡ δ᾽ αἰÏÏύνη Ïῠαἰδοῠ,Ïὸν αá½Ïὸν ÏÏá½¹Ïον καὶ Ïá¿Ï á¼ÏÎ¼Î·Î½Îµá½·Î±Ï Ïοá¿Ï ÏαÏακÏá¿ÏÏιν ÏαÏάκεινÏαι διημαÏÏημένοι ÏÎ¹Î½á½³Ï .ÏÏῶÏα δὲ ÏεÏὶ Ïοῦ γειÏνιῶνÏÎ¿Ï Ïá¿· μεγαλοÏÏεÏεῠλέξομεν .á½Î½Î¿Î¼Î± μὲν οá½Î½ αá½Ïá¿· ÏÏ ÏÏόν ,á½ÏίζεÏαι δὲ Ïὸ ÏÏ ÏÏὸν ÎεόÏÏαÏÏÎ¿Ï Î¿á½ÏÏÏ ,ÏÏ ÏÏόν á¼ÏÏι Ïὸ á½ÏεÏβάλλον Ïὴν οἰκείαν á¼Ïαγγελίαν â¦Î³á½·Î½ÎµÏαι μένÏοι καὶ Ïὸ ÏÏ ÏÏὸν á¼Î½ ÏÏιÏίν ,á½¥ÏÏÎµÏ ÎºÎ±á½¶ Ïὸ μεγαλοÏÏεÏá½³Ï â¦
Every attractive quality has as its neighbor a specific weakness: rashness is close to bravery, and shame is close to respect; similarly, successful styles have certain faulty styles lurking nearby. We shall deal first with the fault that borders on the grand style. We call it frigidity, and Theophrastus defines the frigid as that which overshoots its appropriate expression ⦠Frigidity, like grandeur, arises in three ways â¦
The currency of the charge in late-Republican Rome is illustrated by Catullusâ poem 44, which makes the orator Sestius the butt of a literary joke for having made a âfrigidâ speech (44.10â21):27
nam, Sestianus dum volo esse conviva,orationem in Antium petitoremplenam veneni et pestilentiae legi.hic me gravedo frigida et frequens tussisquassavit usque, dum in tuum sinum fugi,et me recuravi otioque et urtica.quare refectus maximas tibi gratesago, meum quod non es ulta peccatum.nec deprecor iam, si nefaria scriptaSesti recepso, quin gravedinem et tussimnon mi, sed ipsi Sestio ferat frigus,qui tunc vocat me, cum malum librum legi.
For, while I wanted to be Sestiusâ fellow-diner, I read his speech Against the candidate Antius, full of poison and plague. Hereupon a shivering cold and frequent cough shook me until I fled to your bosom and restored myself with leisure and stinging nettle. Thus refreshed, I thank you very much because you did not punish my lapse. And I freely consent, if I take up Sestiusâ noxious writings again, that their frigidity give a cold and cough not to me but to Sestius himself, who invites me when I have read his bad book.
Catullus literalizes the âfrigidityâ of Sestiusâ speech into the âchillâ reading it gives him; but the charge of frigidity could also be applied to poetry. Thus Aulus Gellius reports that an ignorant critic labeled Catullusâ own poem 92 frigidissimos versus because he misinterpreted a word as inappropriate and overblown (NA 7.16),28 and Alessandro Barchiesi has recently documented a similar charge of âfrigidityâ leveled against a line of Vergilâs Georgics.29 In the context of the rhetorical standards of âfrigidityâ to which Catullus, Vergilâs anonymous critic, and Aulus Gellius attest, Ovidâs repeated emphasis on the cold of Pontus can be seen to contribute to the ongoing characterization of his poetry from Pontus as Asiatic (i.e. overblown and redundant) in style.30
Although Ovid denies that the weight of his misfortunes has broken him (Tr. 3.2.13â14), this claim is belied almost immediately by his self-representation as sick at heart already on the voyage to Tomis (15â16). In the following poem, moreover, the first in the exilic collection set specifically in Tomis, the poet documents his illness on arrival in Pontus (3.3.1â14):31
haec mea si casu miraris epistula quarealterius digitis scripta sit, aeger eram.aeger in extremis ignoti partibus orbis,incertusque meae nempe salutis eram.quem mihi nunc animum dira regione iacentiinter Sauromatas esse Getasque putes?nec caelum patior, nec aquis adsuevimus istis,terraque nescio quo non placet ipsa modo.non domus apta satis, non hic cibus utilis aegro,nullus, Apollinea qui levet arte malum,non qui soletur, non qui labentia tardetempora narrando fallat, amicus adest.lassus in extremis iaceo populisque locisque,et subit adfecto nunc mihi, quicquid abest.
If perchance you wonder why this letter has been written by anotherâs hand, I was ill. Ill at the remotest part of the unknown globe, I was indeed unsure of my safety. What spirit do you think I now had lying in this dread land amid Sauromatians and Getans? Neither can I endure the heavens, nor could I accustom myself to these waters, and the land itself, I know not why, does not please me. There is not a house suitable enough for a sick man here, or edible food, no friend at hand to relieve my illness with Apolloâs skill, none to console, none to while away time as it slips slowly by with a story. At the ends of the world I lie faint and whatever is not here comes to my mind so afflicted.
Here Ovid explicitly attributes his ill health to the insalubrious settingâat the edge of the world, among barbarian hordes (Tr. 3.3.5â14). This picture is further developed in Tr. 3.8, where Ovid reports that he has been ill in both body and mind ever since arriving in Tomis (3.8.23â34):
nec caelum nec aquae faciunt nec terra nec aurae;ei mihi, perpetuus corpora languor habet!seu vitiant artus aegrae contagia mentis,sive mei causa est in regione mali,ut tetigi Pontum, vexant insomnia, vixqueossa tegit macies nec iuvat ora cibus;quique per autumnum percussis frigore primoest color in foliis, quae nova laesit hiems,is mea membra tenet, nec viribus adlevor ullis,et numquam queruli causa doloris abest.nec melius valeo, quam corpore, mente, sed aegra estutraque pars aeque binaque damna fero.
Neither climate nor water nor land nor air suit me; ah me, constant weakness grips my body. Whether the contagion of a sick mind enfeebles my limbs or the cause of my problem is in the region, since I reached Pontus, sleeplessness harries me, my wasting flesh scarcely covers my bones, and food does not please my lips. The pallor of leaves touched by the first frost of autumn and marred by the new winter grips my limbs, nor am I strengthened by any forces; reason for mournful grief is never absent. Nor am I stronger in mind than in body, but each part equally is sick and I suffer double harm.
We may relate the poetâs professed ill health to the rhetorical convention that ascribed good health to Atticist oratory (cf. integra valetudine, Cic. Orat. 76). By implication, the frigid Asiatic style is unhealthy as, indeed, in Catullus 44, where the poet claims to have contracted a cold and cough from reading Sestiusâ frosty rhetoric.
The foremost symptom of Ovidâs illness in Tomis is his failing voice: sit iam deficiens suppressaque lingua palato / vix instillato restituenda mero (âthough my tongue were already failing and, stuck to my palate, could scarcely be restored by a trickle of wine,â 3.21â22). Indeed Tr. 3.3 concludes with a reference to the poetâs broken voice, a metaphor for closure in this particular poem, but also for Ovidâs declining standards of poetic composition in the exile poetry more generally: scribere plura libet: sed vox mihi fessa loquendo / dictandi vires siccaque lingua negat. / accipe supremo dictum mihi forsitan ore, / quod, tibi qui mittit, non habet ipse, âvaleâ (âI would write more but my voice, tired out by speaking, and dry tongue deny the strength for dictation. Receive perhaps the last word from my mouth, which he who sends it to you does not himself have, âBe well!â,â 85â88).
Even when not claiming to be ill in Pontus, moreover, Ovid repeatedly refers to the new physical, spiritual, and literary weakness that afflicts him in exile. Thus, in assailing an unnamed enemy, he contrasts his enemyâs eloquence with his own shattered strength: et tamen est aliquis, qui vulnera cruda retractet, / solvat et in mores ora diserta meos. / in causa facili cuivis licet esse diserto, / et minimae vires frangere quassa valent (âAnd yet there is someone to renew my raw wounds, to release their eloquent lips against my character. In an easy case anyone at all can be eloquent and the least strength prevails to break what has been shattered,â 11.19â22). Moreover in the final poem of the book, to an unnamed friend, Ovid complains that his misfortunes have broken his talent altogether (3.14.27â36):
quod quicumque legetâsi quis legetâaestimet ante,compositum quo sit tempore quoque loco.aequus erit scriptis, quorum cognoverit esseexilium tempus barbariamque locum,inque tot adversis carmen mirabitur ullumducere me tristi sustinuisse manu.ingenium fregere meum mala, cuius et antefons infecundus parvaque vena fuit.sed quaecumque fuit, nullo exercente refugit,et longo periit arida facta situ.
But whoever will read [my book]âif anyone will read itâlet him judge beforehand in what circumstances and place it was written. He will be fair to writings whose circumstances he recognizes to be exile and whose place is a barbarian land, and in so many adversities he will wonder that I endured producing any poem with my sad hand. Misfortunes have broken my talent, whose source even before was not abundant, a small stream. But whatever it was, with none to train it, it has shrunk and perished, dried up by long neglect.
These references to the poetâs shattered tongue and talent recall the elder Senecaâs reference to the âeffeminate rhythmâ (fracta conpositio, literally âbroken arrangementâ), of Arellius Fuscusâ Asiatic oratory (Suas. 2.23):
Sed ne vos diutius infatuem, quia dixeram me Fusci Arelli explicationes subiecturum, hic finem suasoriae faciam. quarum nimius cultus et fracta conpositio poterit vos offendere cum ad meam aetatem veneritis; interim â¨nonâ© dubito quin nunc vos ipsa quae offensura sunt vitia delectent.
But in order not to drive you crazy any longer, I will make an end of the suasoria here, since I had said I would adduce Arellius Fuscusâ explanations. Their excessive decoration and effeminate rhythm will cause offence when you reach my age; in the meantime I do not doubt that you will now delight in the very faults that will come to offend you.
Quintilian later employs the same phrase in a discussion of faulty style (Inst. Or. 8.3.56â57):
cacozelon, â¨idâ© est mala adfectatio, per omne dicendi genus peccat; nam et tumida et pusilla et praedulcia et abundantia et arcessita et exultantia sub idem nomen cadunt. denique cacozelon vocatur quidquid est ultra virtutem, quotiens ingenium iudicio caret et specie boni fallitur, omnium in eloquentia vitiorum pessimum: nam cetera parum vitantur, hoc petitur. est autem totum in elocutione. nam rerum vitia sunt stultum commune contrarium supervacuum: corrupta oratio in verbis maxime inpropriis, redundantibus, compressione obscura, compositione fracta, vocum similium aut ambiguarum puerili captatione consistit.
Cacozelon, or perverse affectation, is a fault in every kind of style: for it includes all that is turgid, trivial, luscious, redundant, far-fetched or extravagant [i.e., all the faults of Asiatic style], while the same name is also applied to virtues carried to excess, when the mind loses its critical sense and is misled by the false appearance of beauty, the worst of all offences against style, since other faults are due to carelessness, but this is deliberate. This form of affectation, however, affects style alone. For the employment of arguments which might equally well be advanced by the other side, or are foolish, inconsistent or superfluous, are all faults of matter, whereas corruption of style is revealed in the employment of improper or redundant words, in obscurity of meaning, effeminacy of rhythm, or in the childish search for similar or ambiguous expressions.
This definition of the faulty style reads like a primer of Asiatic rhetorical excess; we may compare Quintilianâs report of the Atticistsâ criticisms of Cicero (Inst. Or. 12.10.12).32 Especially interesting is the close proximity of Quintilianâs charges of frigidity and choppy or broken rhythm (et in salibus aliquando frigidum et in compositione fractum), for Hellenistic writers censure composition as frigid when lacking either in good rhythm or in rhythm altogether ([Dem.] 117), and we have seen the close link Ovid effects between the coldness of the region to which he has been exiled and its shattering effect on his talent (ingenium fregere meum mala, âmisfortunes have broken my talent,â Tr. 3.14.33).
Ovidâs depiction of the landscape of Tomis and its crushing impact on his physical, emotional, and literary well-being is sketched throughout Tristia 3 by reference to contemporary Augustan debate about rhetorical style, so that the poetry from exile epitomizes the stylistic vices conventionally attributed to Asiatic rhetoric. Ovid repeatedly characterizes the quality of his poetry from Pontus as having suffered a drastic âdeclineâ because of the disastrous circumstances of his exile, and he documents this decline by dramatizing the infection of his poetry, appropriately enough, with all the flaws of Asiatic style. As critics such as Martin Helzle and Gareth Williams have recently argued, however, the very creativity of the poetâs literary response to the conditions of exile in Tomis suggest that we should be cautious about accepting Ovidâs assessment of the exile poetry at face value. While his manipulation of rhetorical terminology in this collection coheres with his ostensible rejection of the Callimachean aesthetic of elegance and stylistic restraint to which he adheres in his earlier poetry, his adaptation of such Callimachean topoi as the recusatio and the image of the elegiac speaker wasted by grief to his new circumstances in exile on the Black Sea reveal the continuing subtlety and sophistication of Ovidian poetry.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to the editors for the invitation to contribute to the original conference and to this volume. I am grateful to Brillâs reader and to Georgia Ferentinou for their careful reading of this chapter and comments on it. All remaining errors are my own.
Syme 1978; Podosinov 1981 and 1987.
Nagle 1980; Evans 1983; Helzle 1988; Claassen 1990; Williams 1994.
Cf. Cic. de Orat. 1.16.70, Orat. 97â99; Sen. Rhet. Contr. 2.2.8, 9.6.16. For the close links between rhetorical and poetic theory and practice, see Selden 1992; Keith 1999.
Tr. 3.1.9â10; 3.14.27â36.
Tr. 3.1.17â18; 3.3.46, 63â64; 3.4.49â50; 3.8.37â38; 3.9.1â2; 3.10.1â6; 3.11.7â10; 3.12.39â54; 3.14.29â52.
Tr. 3.2.1â8; 3.4.47â52; 3.8.29â30; 3.10.7â50; 3.12.1â4, 27â30; 3.13.11â12.
Tr. 3.2.; 3.3; 3.8; on the theme of the poetâs health, see chapter 5 by Fulkerson in this volume.
Tr. 3.14.
On the Asianist controversy, see Leeman 1963; van den Berg 2021. On the elegistsâ interest in Atticism, see Keith 1999.
In 1923, the Dutch scholar J.J. Hartman denied altogether that Ovid had been relegated. His skepticism was endorsed by F. Lenz (1934) and has been accepted by a long line of Dutch scholars. Fr. Dr. O. Janssen (1951) argued that Ovidâs exile was fiction rather than historical fact, while another Dutch scholar, Cornelis Verhoeven (1979), âdevoted a whole chapter (172â197) [of his book De schaduw van één haar (= The Shadow of One Hair)] to the poetry of Ovid, and strongly pleaded for a fictional reading of Ovidâs poems from exileâ (Hofmann 1987). J.C. Thibault in his exhaustive consideration of The Mystery of Ovidâs Exile hints at his acceptance of this theory (Hartman 1923a, 1923b; Lenz 1934. col. 1273; Thibault 1964, 142 n.) but the English scholar A.D. Fitton-Brown (1985) has put the case most fully, arguing that Ovidâs poetry betrays no actual first-hand knowledge of the historical Tomis and that ancient authors like Tacitus and Suetonius would have mentioned his relegation if it had really occurred. Fitton-Brown argues that Ovidâs account of the climate and geography of Tomis is glaringly incorrect (18â19); the poet gives no ârational accountâ (19) of his journey nor can we âconjecture a plausible reasonâ (20) for his exile; there is ânothing in the so-called exilic poems which suggests Ovidâs personal acquaintance with Tomis as opposed to an intelligent gathering of information available in Romeâ (21); and, indeed, it is far from unthinkable that a poet who would make up a fictional inamorata in his earliest poetry (Corinna in the Amores) âmight choose to indulge in a fantasy of exileâ in his last poetry.
Claassen 1990, 66: âThe first book of the Tristia is an âelegiac epicâ in miniature, replete with flashbacks and narration of a heart-rending parting, another fall of Troy (Tristia 1.3.25â¯f.): si licet exemplis in parvis grandibus uti, / haec facies Troiae, cum caperetur, erat (âIf one may use great illustrations for humble topics, Troy looked just like this when it was takenâ). The exileâs journey is presented in epic terms. The exile is an epic hero, a combined Odysseus-Aeneas hounded by the supreme god Augustus-Jupiter, who bestrides Olympus like a colossus, to the exclusion of the gods whose temples and cults Augustus had striven to restore.â
Fairweather 1981, 246.
Cf. Cic. Brut. 325â326.
Leeman 1963, 147; updated in van den Berg 2021.
Leeman 1963, 147.
The continuity of this grand âAsianâ style (and the criticism it engendered) is well illustrated by Petroniusâ characterization of Asiatic style a hundred years later (Petr. Sat. 2.8): nuper ventosa istaec et enormis loquacitas Athenas ex Asia commigravit animosque iuvenum ad magna surgentes veluti pestilenti quodam sidere afflavit, semelque corrupta eloquentiae regula stetit et obmutuit. (âRecently this windy and shapeless garrulity moved to Athens from Asia and infected the spirits of our youth rising to great things just like a plague-ridden star, and the rule of eloquence once corrupted stood changed.â)
Williams 1988, 130.
Kenney 1969; Keith 1999.
Claassen 1990; Williams 1994.
Nisbet and Hubbard 1978, 167, 169â170 ad loc.
Williams 1994, 22â23.
cf. Tr. 3.1.17â18, 3.63â64, 4b.49â50, 8.37â40, 9.1â2, 10.1â6, 11.7â9, 12.39â44, 14.39â50.
Lozovan 1959, 364; cf. Lozovan 1958.
Williams 1988, 130â131.
Williams 1988, 130.
On the Greek tradition, see Van Hook 1917; Gutzwiller 1969.
On the rhetorical joke, see Buchheit 1959, 313â315; Jones 1968, 379â383; de Angeli 1969, 354â356; and George 1991.
Cited by Williams 1988, 130 n. 10: eiusmodi quispiam, qui tumultuariis et inconditis linguae exercitationibus ad famam sese facundiae promiserat neque orationis Latinae usurpationes â¨rationesâ©ve ullas didicerat, cum in Lycio forte vespera ambularemus, ludo ibi et voluptati fuit. nam cum esset verbum âdeprecorâ doctiuscule positum in Catulli carmine, quia id ignorabat, frigidissimos versus esse dicebat omnium quidem iudicio venustissimos, quos subscripsi:
Lesbia mi dicit semper male nec tacet umquam
de me: Lesbia me dispeream nisi amat.
quo signo? quia sunt totidem mea: deprecor illam
assidue, verum dispeream nisi amo. [Cat. 92]
âDeprecorâ hoc in loco vir bonus ita esse dictum putabat, ut plerumque a vulgo dicitur, quod significat âvalde precorâ et âoroâ et âsupplico,â in quo âdeâ praepositio ad augendum et cumulandum valet. quod si ita esset, frigidi sane versus forent. nunc enim contra omnino est: nam âdeâ praepositio, quoniam est anceps, in uno eodemque verbo duplicem vim capit. sic enim âdeprecorâ a Catullo dictum est, quasi âdetestorâ vel âexsecrorâ vel âdepelloâ vel âabominor.â
(As we chanced to be strolling one evening in the Lyceum, we were furnished with sport and amusement by a certain man, of the kind that lays claim to a reputation for eloquence by a superficial and ill-regulated use of language, without having learned any of the usages and principles of the Latin tongue. For while Catullus in one of his poems had used the word deprecor rather cleverly, that fellow, unable to appreciate this, declared that the following verses I have quoted were very flat, although in the judgment of all men they are most charming:
Lesbia speaks ill of me all the time and is never silent: may I perish if Lesbia isnât in love with me. On what evidence? Since she talks about me all the time: I curse her constantly, but may I perish if Iâm not in love with her.
Our good man thought that deprecor in this passage was used in the sense that is commonly given the word by the vulgar; that is, âI pray earnestly,â âI beseech,â âI entreat,â where the preposition de is used intensively and emphatically. And if that were so, the verses would indeed be flat. But as a matter of fact the sense is exactly the opposite; for the preposition de, since it has a double force, contains two meanings in one and the same word. For deprecor is used by Catullus in the sense of âdenounce, execrate, drive away,â or âavert by prayers.â)
Barchiesi 2004.
Barchiesi 2004 collects other instances of the charge of âfrigidityâ among Latin critics, including Plin. Ep. 6.15 and Sen. Ep. 122.10â13, and discusses them in connection with the contemporary reception of Vergil, Geo. 1.299.
On what follows see Fulkerson, chapter 5 in this volume.
On the faulty style, see further Jocelyn 1979.
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