In Tristia 1.2, Ovid prays to the gods of the sea and the sky to restrain the storm that hinders him on his journey to Tomi, his place of relegation. His exile, he claims, is punishment enough and he need not be battered by tempestuous weather too; Augustus, indeed, intended Ovid’s punishment to be one of exile, and the poet needs to be able to reach Tomi for the emperor’s will to be carried out (1.2.59–68, 87–94). The complex programmatic relationship of the representation of the storm in Ovid’s poem to the storms of epic poetry—notably, in Aeneid Books 1, 3 and 5, and in Odyssey Book 5, as well as in Metamorphoses Book 11—has been discussed at length by scholars, who demonstrate how Ovid casts himself both as a figure worthy of comparison with the heroes of epic and as a poet who continues to be unfazed by the idea of introducing generically weightier material into elegiac verse (cf. Fast. 2.3–4).Footnote ¹ The use, throughout Tristia Book 1, of seafaring and the storm as a means of articulating the supposed effects of Ovid’s relegation on his poetic talent and the apparent triumph of his ingenium has also been treated.Footnote ²

Here, consideration will be given to a passage in which Ovid explains that his reasons for undertaking his voyage are not those that belong to ‘a normal journey of the type any Roman might make’:Footnote ³ however implausible it may seem, he is heading for exile in Sarmatian lands and is obliged to make it to the wild shores of Pontus (Tr. 1.2.73–84):

Ovid observes that, though the weather may settle through the favour of the sea- and sky-gods and he may not perish in the storm (1.2.74 ut mihi parcatis), he will none the less be an exile, as the emperor has wished. He is not travelling in pursuit of wealth (1.2.75–6), nor visiting various places—some of which he had seen before—for touristic purposes (1.2.77–8), nor pursuing (erotic) pleasures in Alexandria (1.2.79–80): he is, in fact, doing what he has been told and is heading to Tomi; he is thus justified, he implies, in complaining (1.2.84 queror) that his journey into exile is making progress too slowly (1.2.84 tam fuga tarda) in the light of the inclement weather.

In the three couplets introduced by negatives (1.2.75 non, 1.2.77 nec, 1.2.79 non), Ovid offers a priamel that not only emphasizes his actual reason for travelling abroad but also introduces a number of elegiac elements that allow him to make a broader point about the nature of his exilic elegy in relation to his earlier amatory verse. In her discussion of these verses, Jennifer Ingleheart has shown that the couplet on the pursuit of wealth (1.2.75–6) looks to a passage from Amores 2.10 (33–8):Footnote ⁴

She notes that the image of a greedy man (Tr. 1.2.75 auidus; Am. 2.10.33 auarus) coupled with the idea of ploughing the sea (Tr. 1.2.76 aro; Am. 2.10.33 arando) is shared between these two elegies and plausibly proposes that Ovid may have had this love-poem in mind when writing his first book of the Tristia. She suggests that, in Tristia 1.2, the poet may be implying that he still rejects the life—and death—of an avaricious merchant and prefers a life of love in which he may hope to die while making love (cf. Am. 2.10.35–8).

Ingleheart further notes that Tr. 1.2.77–8, mentioning Athens and Asia Minor, also look to an important elegiac precursor in the form of Propertius 1.6, in which Tullus is told that, for a lover, it is not worth travelling by sea so as to acquaint oneself with learned Athens or the sites of Asia Minor, given the way in which one’s beloved would react (Prop. 1.6.13–16):

Besides the coincidence of places, Ingleheart notes, the epithet studiosus (Tr. 1.2.77) may evoke the description of Athens by Propertius as learned (1.6.13 doctas), and cernere (1.6.14) is recalled in the sightseeing suggested at Tr. 1.2.77–8. She remarks that Ovid’s allusion to Propertius is intended to point to similarities and differences between their circumstances, as Ovid was travelling eastwards thanks to some of his love-poetry (the Ars amatoria that was an alleged cause of his exile), while Propertius, on account of his beloved, refused to travel to those eastern locations with Tullus.Footnote ⁵

There is no doubt that these allusive gestures toward earlier amatory texts are present in these verses of Tristia 1.2, but there seems to be rather more at play as Ovid invokes a wider nexus of elegiac and amatory predecessors in Tr. 1.2.75–80 than has hitherto been noted. In the first instance, while the verses on the auidus merchant (1.2.75–6) do appear to look to Ovid’s own earlier poem, they also borrow their opening words (1.2.75 non ego diuitias) from Tibullus’ first poem, in which he programmatically eschews ancestral wealth, favouring the simple life of a rural secessus instead (Tib. 1.1.41–4):

To this we might add that Tibullus’ own use of diuitias at 1.1.41 echoes the opening of the selfsame poem (1.1.1 Diuitias alius fuluo sibi congerat auro …). Ovid, moreover, seems to recall this incipit in the collocation diuitias auidus (Tr. 1.2.75), where mention of the auidus may provide an explanatory gloss on the metrically equivalent ‘other’ (alius) whom Tibullus permits to pursue wealth, while he contents himself with his paupertas (1.1.5). It may be instructive to note here that Propertius also uses the word diuitias at 1.6.14: Ovid seems to be splicing together, in one couplet, moments from several programmatic poems—Propertius 1.6, Tibullus 1.1, Amores 2.10—that speak to similar concerns voiced by these amatory texts and their poets regarding the eschewal of wealth by lovers.Footnote ⁶ In all three of these elegiac precursors of Tr. 1.2.75–6, indeed, the poets claim, as we have already seen in Amores 2.10 above, that they would rather die as lovers than travel abroad away from their beloveds. Tibullus writes that no amount of gold or of emeralds is of such value that he could bear the thought of any girl weeping at his voyaging (1.1.49–52), and goes on to note that he would have Delia at his side when he dies and is carried out (1.1.59–62). Propertius, meanwhile, remarks that he would rather be buried among lovers (1.6.27–8) than accompany Tullus on his travels abroad in Ionia and Lydia, where the gold-bearing Pactolus flows (1.6.31–2).Footnote ⁷

It seems, then, that Tibullus and Propertius are the primary points of reference in Tr. 1.2.75–6 and 77–8 respectively, though Ovid’s own Amores are present too. There is a greater difficulty, however, in pinning down a principal referent in the final couplet of the priamel (1.2.79–80). Elements of theme and diction appear to be shared with Catullus’ announcement of his departure from Bithynia,Footnote ⁸ when he says that he would haste in flight to the bright cities of Asia Minor (Catull. 46.1–6):

The descriptor of the clarae urbes for which Asia Minor was famousFootnote ⁹ is transferred to the peerless city of Alexandria by Ovid in Tr. 1.2.79, while Asia Minor is named in 1.2.78, with a nod to Propertius 1.6, as noted above. Catullus’ hendecasyllables speak of good weather, of travel during a happy time in one’s life, and of friends, in contrast to Ovid’s stormy journey away from his friends and from every source of happiness in Rome: Catullus’ is not the sort of voyage that the relegated Ovid is to take.Footnote ¹⁰

That being said, in the light of the specificity provided by the mention of Alexandria and the Nile in Tr. 1.2.79–80, I have wondered whether we ought to discern a glance to Gallus, who was, after all, the first praefectus of Egypt, the principal city of which was Alexandria. (Were more of his poetry to survive, I suspect that there may be echoes of it in these verses.) Alongside Tibullus and Propertius, indeed, Gallus had been invoked by Ovid—from early in his career—as one from among the elegiac cadre to which the poet of the Amores also belongs;Footnote ¹¹ the collocation of the four elegists occurs in the exile poetry too.Footnote ¹² In Tristia 5.1, for example, we see Ovid, through his wish that he not be numbered among the love-poets, distance himself from the amatory themes that he suggests are partially responsible for his relegation (5.1.15–20):

Ovid here names Gallus, Tibullus and Propertius, and claims, tongue-in-cheek, that he now wants to be removed from the canon of elegists at the culmination of which he had proudly placed himself in the final poem of his preceding book (Tr. 4.10.51–4 nec auara Tibullo | tempus amicitiae fata dedere meae. | successor fuit hic tibi, Galle, Propertius illi; | quartus ab his serie temporis ipse fui).Footnote ¹³ In Tr. 1.2.75–80, it may be that we should look for that fourth evasive elegist, Gallus, in the final couplet of the priamel too.

The allusions to Ovid’s elegiac predecessors, as well as to Catullus, alongside his glance to Amores 2.10, could be thought of as indicating ‘the enormous effect’ that exile has had on Ovid’s elegies: ‘once [he] had lamented his erotic circumstances, but now he must mourn his own death’ as an exile.Footnote ¹⁴ There is, however, greater nuance to Ovid’s plaint (1.2.84 queror). As we have seen, in Amores 2.10, Tibullus 1.1 and Propertius 1.6, each of the poets asserts that he would rather die at home with his beloved than abroad as a result of travel for financial or careerist reasons. In Ovid’s recollection of these poems at Tr. 1.2.75–8, he notes that—like the elegists of the amatory texts cited—he himself does not voyage for such mercenary reasons: the elegiac decorum with regard to travel (sc. the poet–lover does not) is thus on the face of it maintained by Ovid. Yet, in emphatically negating each of these allusions to amatory texts, Ovid also seems to be turning his back on the very materia—the language and imagery—of his own earlier verse and on that of his amatory predecessors. He undertakes a similar rhetorical move to that made in Tr. 5.1.15–20, where he purports to wish no longer to be counted among lovers and love-poets, but, in doing so, reinforces his own status as a poeta–amator, or, more precisely perhaps, as an elegist tout court. His poetry from exile, he implies in Tristia 1.2, is not going to be like the amatory elegy that he and his forebears had previously written, is not to be concerned with the themes proper to love-poetry, but he is to remain an elegist and one who defiantly upholds his credentials as a sometime tenerorum lusor amorum.Footnote ¹⁵ When he remarks, indeed, that his reason for making a journey is that he is heading for the Sarmatian lands, he asks rhetorically, quis credere possit? (Tr. 1.2.81): who could believe that this is the direction in which Ovid is travelling, and who could believe that his poetry would take such a course? This brief question can usefully be compared to an earlier moment in Ovid’s career when his elegy took an unexpected turn and he found himself writing of aetiological matters in the Fasti. In the proem to the second book of his calendar, Ovid notes that he is no longer a poet of love and wonders who would have believed that this would be the path his work would take (Fast. 2.5–8):Footnote ¹⁶

Though he speaks of his love-poetry as something of the past (2.5–6), it is well known that the amatory is never very far from the surface of the Fasti, and the reader of Ovid’s exile poetry—as Tr. 1.2.75–80 suggests—ought likewise to be unsurprised when on occasion the poeta–amator is once again at his exercise.