In modern times, classicists have questioned whether the exile was merely a farce, a misrepresentation by Ovid, or a rhetorical and literary device. It was also a central point of reference for mediaeval imaginings of exile, as it was for Romantic portrayals of misunderstood genius. his work continued to serve as a literary influence on Latin writers who also experienced exile, from Seneca to Boethius. Ovid’s poems in exile have been seen as of fundamental importance for the study of Roman aristocracy under Augustus and Tiberius, furnishing “precious pieces of information about events and persons”. These works consist of letters to friends and enemies, and also depict the poet’s treatment by the Scythians – particularly the Getae, a nomadic people related to the Dacians or Thracians. In exile, the poet continued producing works that survive today: Ibis, Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto, and possibly several other, minor poems. The latter two works were left, respectively, without a final revision and only half finished.

Ovid was one of the most prolific poets of his time, and before being banished had already composed his most famous poems – Heroides, Amores, Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris, Medicamina Faciei Femineae, his lost tragedy Medea, the ambitious Metamorphoses and the Fasti. The council of the city of Rome revoked his exile in December 2017, so he would be able to freely return. Ovid wrote that the cause of his exile was carmen et error: “a poem and an error”, probably the Ars Amatoria and a personal indiscretion or mistake. According to Ovid, none of its citizens spoke Latin, which as an educated Roman he found trying. At the time, Tomis was a remote town on the edge of the civilised world it was loosely under the authority of the Kingdom of Thrace (a satellite state of Rome), and was superficially Hellenized. Ovid’s exile is related by the poet himself, and also in brief references to the event by Pliny the Elder and Statius. The reasons for his banishment are uncertain. Ovid, the Latin poet of the Roman Empire, was banished in 8 AD from Rome to Tomis (now Constanţa, Romania) by decree of the emperor Augustus.

Ovid’s poems in exile have been seen as of fundamental importance for the study of Roman aristocracy under Augustus and Tiberius. Eugène Delacroix, Ovid among the Scythians, 1862, Oil on wood, Metropolitan Museum of Art / Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wikimedia Commons

Heroides by Ovid