Ovid's continuous renegotiation of his relationship with his poetic corpus, and of the relationships between the works of which it is constituted, has been the subject of considerable scholarly attention in recent years. From the earliest parts of his literary output, it is clear that Ovid's works are in a state of flux, and that he revisits and edits his works when they might have been deemed complete.Footnote 1 We may, for example, consider the poet's amatory works. The epigram which heads the three books of the Amores as they now stand tells us that there were once five. That the editing of this work, moreover, involved the drafting of new poems and rearrangement of others is suggested by Amores 2.18, in which Ovid claims to have started writing a tragedy,Footnote 2 though such an undertaking is prospective in Amores 3.1, which 2.18—despite appearing in a previous book—thus seems to postdate. Consider also that the third book of the Ars amatoria is presented as an afterthought in the light of the closing sequence of Ars amatoria Book 2: finis adest operi: palmam date, grata iuuentus, | sertaque odoratae myrtea ferte comae (2.733–4).Footnote 3 Furthermore, the relationship between parts of the poet's amatory verse—amongst which I include the single Heroides—is characterized by shared themes, images and language which complicate attempts at establishing the primacy of one of these works over another: there is every reason to suppose that a number of the Amores (of which 2.18 must be one) postdate some of the single Heroides, and that the reworking of the five books of the Amores into three will have been affected by the intervening composition of (a number of) the heroines’ epistles.Footnote 4 Moreover, Ovid indicates that he was composing the Metamorphoses and the Fasti simultaneously for some time before his relegation (see the discussions of Tristia 1.7 and 2 below). The readings achieved by setting passages of these two poems, which share themes and stories, beside one another suggest a process of composition that would have consisted of the frequent editing and re-articulation of a given episode in one of the works in the light of developments in the other.Footnote 5
The poet's preoccupation with his relationship to his poetic corpus, and the relationship between its constituent parts, becomes more conspicuous after his relegation. It has been plausibly argued that the closing verses of the Metamorphoses are a product of exile,Footnote 6 and has even been suggested that the poem's four-verse proem belongs to this period too.Footnote 7 Tristia 1.7 famously provides a mournful preface for the Metamorphoses in a poem in which Ovid complains of his hexameter-poem's incomplete state, and in part realizes his desire, expressed in Tristia 1.1, for space to be made for his transmogrified appearance amongst the stories of his ter quinque uolumina. This first poem of his exilic œuvre—through its description of the contents of the scrinia curua that Ovid tells his first book of Tristia it will encounter in Rome—thematizes the relationship between the poet and his poetry (particularly the Ars amatoria and the Metamorphoses) and the treatment of the pre-exilic works that is to follow in the Tristia and in the Pontic epistles;Footnote 8 more will be said on this passage later. The status of the Heroides is recast by the poet in Tristia 1.6 when he adds his wife to their number,Footnote 9 and our appreciation of these poems is altered by the eventual penning of the double epistles.Footnote 10 Ovid also frequently casts himself as one of his own literary heroines in the course of his exile, inevitably resulting in a rereading of the single Heroides in a changed light.Footnote 11 Given that the Ars amatoria constitutes the carmen that the poet claims caused his relegation, his treatment of his amatory corpus is—unsurprisingly—extensive, as he attempts, at times playfully and at others apparently less so, to vindicate his writing of erotodidactic works (notably in Tristia Book 2), while also defiantly asserting his desire to be remembered as a poet of love, a tenerorum lusor amorum (Tr. 3.3.73, 4.10.1). As to the Fasti, it is perhaps surprising that few traces of its treatment by the poet in his Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto have been discerned, given that it is the only pre-relegation work of Ovid's that we know for certain he revised in exile.Footnote 12 It is my contention that Ovid evokes his calendrical work far more frequently than has hitherto been recognized in his exilic corpus, and that, in doing so, he outlines his changing attitudes toward the Fasti through the course of his relegation. In what follows, I shall discuss a number of these passages, though I make no claim to exhaustiveness.
TRISTIA BOOK 2
The only explicit reference to Ovid's composition of his calendrical poem in his exilic poetry is made toward the end of Tristia Book 2, where he claims ‘to have written twelve books of a work dedicated to Augustus’, and to imply that they will be published once his punishment has been lessened and he has been allowed to move nearer to Rome:Footnote 13
Only six books survive. When Ovid first started writing the Metamorphoses and the Fasti, there seems no reason to doubt that he intended to see both works through to completion. His relegation interrupted both, though ‘the Metamorphoses were more finished, and the Fasti less [so]’.Footnote 14 In Tristia Book 2, indeed, Ovid tells his reader that work on the Fasti was halted by a change in his circumstances (sors mea rupit opus, 2.552); in doing so, he recalls the diction with which he had described the interruption to his Metamorphoses at Tr. 1.7.13–14 (carmina mutatas hominum dicentia formas, | infelix domini quod fuga rupit opus).Footnote 15 One may reasonably suppose, I think, that Ovid had drafted an initial version of the twelve-book Fasti early on prior to his relegation in a.d. 8 or 9;Footnote 16 the references to the second half of the work within the extant books may lend credence to the idea that such a draft existed.Footnote 17 Though entirely speculative, it also seems plausible to assume that, in the course of his penning an initial draft of his calendrical work, Ovid would have circulated parts of it within his circle, and might have recited sections too. Such a notion would allow contemporary readers of his Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto to recognize some of the gestures to the Fasti for which I shall argue in what follows, even if one accepts the probable view that several moments in the extant calendar-poem may also refer back to Ovid's other exilic verse.Footnote 18 The idea that sections of Ovid's Fasti were reasonably advanced at the time of his relegation is lent weight by the mutual influence which parts of it enjoy with his Metamorphoses.
That Fasti Books 1–6 was recast as an incomplete fragment by Ovid at some point after his relegation is more than likely. As we have it—in its post-relegation state—the concluding sequence of Fasti Book 6 is dense with closural markers (more even than one might expect at the end of a hexad),Footnote 19 and Ovid seems to present his own narrative authority as in decline;Footnote 20 it is as if he cannot go on writing. The decision, moreover, to stop the progression of his calendar before July and Augustus, two months renamed to honour the imperial house and replete with dates significant to the domus Augusta,Footnote 21 is fittingly marked for a poet who has fallen foul of imperial censorship of some sort. Ovid's reshaping of his work, indeed, is signalled through the probable recasting of parts of the original pre-relegation proem of the Fasti and their integration into the opening of the extant Fasti Book 2: it is striking that, as the poet opens his second book, he claims that his elegies treat maiora for the first time (nunc primum, 2.3). The similarities between the proem to Fasti Book 2 and the passage treating the calendrical poem at Tr. 2.547–52 (cited above) suggest that contemporary readers of Ovid's letter to Augustus would have been expected to recognize allusions to the opening of the first book of the pre-relegation Fasti, as well as to the closing pentameter of that same book.Footnote 22 As has been noted, it seems likely that a version of the Fasti previous to the one familiar to us was known in Rome by the time Ovid was sent to Tomi.
The poet's relegation may well have made him less inclined to complete a work consecrated (sacratum, Tr. 2.552) to the Caesar responsible for this fate; and yet the almost paradoxical assertion that he has drafted a work (scripsi, Tr. 2.549) which nevertheless remains incomplete (rupit opus, Tr. 2.552) hints at the notion that his poem could be worked up were the hindrance to that process, viz. his distance from Rome, removed. As his poetic epistle to Augustus draws to a close Ovid hopes that the arguments advanced in his open letter will move the emperor to show clemency and to invite the poet to move nearer to Rome, if not back altogether. One implicit corollary of this, Ovid seems to promise, is that he will release his calendrical work—a work which will appeal to Augustus—in a polished-up form:Footnote 23
Ovid implicitly hopes that the promise of publication of the Fasti will, along with the Metamorphoses, sway the numina of the emperor: he has, he claims, written of Augustus with warmth—with fauor animi (2.562)—and has not sought to harm another with his verses (2.565–6).Footnote 24 Note too that Tr. 2.574 (o pater, o patriae cura salusque tuae) may point to the fulsome treatment given to Augustus as pater patriae at Fast. 2.119–44, thereby lending plausibility to the poet's implied promise. The princeps is said to be unto humankind what Jupiter is to the gods (Fast. 2.131–2) and comes, then, in a sense, to have a numen to which Ovid's poetry may be dedicated and on which it may work (tua numina flecti, Tr. 2.573).
In the course of Tristia Book 1, Ovid makes it clear that he wants his Metamorphoses to come to serve as his literary memorial: if Tristia 1.7 is to be believed, his hexameter-poem was in circulation in Rome; he wished for it to be read (Tr. 1.7.25–6) and to serve as his maior imago (Tr. 1.7.11). The Metamorphoses also appears as the fifteen-book work with which readers are expected to be familiar at Tr. 1.1.117–18. It has not hitherto been recognized, however, that Ovid also treats his incomplete calendrical poem on a number of occasions in the first book of the Tristia, juxtaposing it with mention of the Metamorphoses. As I will argue later on, Ovid comments on the unfinished state of the Fasti in Tristia 1.1, before setting it aside as an inapposite poetic monument in Tristia 1.7. In Tristia Book 2, however, Ovid employs his calendrical poem as a bargaining-chip with the emperor, and, while encouraging Augustus to read the Metamorphoses (Tr. 2.557–60), countenances working on the completion of the Fasti after an amelioration of his circumstances has been vouchsafed. The poet continues to revisit his calendrical poem in this vein throughout his Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. Before considering Tristia Book 1 in any detail, however, let us turn our attention to a later poem in order to set out some of the ways in which Ovid gestures to his Fasti in his post-relegation works.
TRISTIA 5.3
The hope that Augustus Caesar's numen might be moved to alleviate the relegated poet's suffering in the closing verses of Tristia Book 2 (possint tua numina flecti, 573) is recalled later in the Tristia in another poem that looks to the Fasti (and to which aspects of the calendrical poem as we now have it may look). In Tristia 5.3, Ovid reminds Bacchus that he—the poet—had once been accustomed to fête him on the appropriate day, and claims, in the light of this, that the god ought to have supported him (15–16), and should now come to his aid. Since there is intercourse between the gods, Ovid asks that Bacchus exert his influence on Augustus, and that he seek to move (flectere) the Caesareum numen (45–6):Footnote 25
He claims (1–6) that he was once amongst the number of those poets who used to gird their festive brows (tempora, 3) with garlands and utter the praises of Bacchus amid wine-drinking. The specificity of the day on which such lauding used to occur—illa dies haec est—is important to Ovid. The collocation illa dies is commonplace in the Fasti,Footnote 26 and, when it is read in conjunction with the verb celebrare, which occurs frequently in the calendrical work,Footnote 27 it seems likely that Ovid is pointing his reader in the direction of a poem with which familiarity may be assumed through the circulation of, or recitation from, a pre-relegation version; compare the earlier discussion of Tristia Book 2. The poet claims that he bases his knowledge of which dies it is on the tempora: si modo non fallunt tempora (2).Footnote 28 The first instance of tempora in the poem refers, prima facie, to ‘time’, but this is surely not all that is referred to here. Ovid is speaking of his calendrical poem which opens with, and will thus have been known as, Tempora cum causis:Footnote 29
That Ovid himself thus used tempora to refer to his calendrical poem is clear from his near repetition of this opening distich in the proem of Fasti Book 4, in which Venus, whose month occupies this book, blesses Ovid's brow (tempora) with a myrtle garland, apt for a poet of love, and thus also endows his Tempora, the Fasti, with the benediction suitable for a work about to speak of her month:
This pun on tempora is also recalled by Ovid in Tr. 5.3.2–3 and, aided by the Alexandrian footnote, memini (5.3.5), points the reader to a particular moment in the Fasti in which Bacchus is associated with garlanded tempora,Footnote 30 as Ariadne complains that she has been abandoned a second time—first by Theseus, now by Bacchus—and that the latter is more leuis (3.481) than the garlands with which he girded her brow:
The deity is chastised by Ariadne for interfering in her lot (sors, 477), then forgetting about her, and taking up, she supposes, with some paelex (483). This is not dissimilar to the way in which Ovid reproaches Bacchus in Tristia 5.3.Footnote 31 The god ought (debueras, 16) to have sustained one of his cultores by the power of his numen (perhaps, even, owed it to him to do so), and not to have forsaken Ovid in his adversity;Footnote 32 Bacchus, the reader is told at Tr. 5.3.44, should be mindful (memor) of the relegated poet, and count him amongst his entourage (unum de numero … tuo). He should now use what influence his numen has in seeking to change Augustus’ mind about Ovid's situation (46).
It is no coincidence that, in Tristia 5.3, the aretalogy and the petition to Bacchus (19–44) culminate in the mention of the conspicuous radiance of Ariadne's corona amongst the stars of the firmament (41–2). Bacchus remembered and honoured his beloved by changing her name (from Ariadne to Libera) so that it was more like his, and with the katasterism of her corona (Fast. 3.509–16);Footnote 33 she had believed herself bereft of the god's love and promises (illa ego sum cui tu solitus promittere caelum. | ei mihi, pro caelo qualia dona fero, 3.505–6), but they end up finding fulfilment. So too, runs Ovid's logic, Bacchus will remember the poet who had been accustomed to sing his praises but now thinks himself abandoned by the god, and will attempt to bring about an amelioration of the circumstances of the relegated poet by prevailing upon Caesar. This is not the first time that Ovid has cast himself as one of his abandoned heroines in the course of the Tristia, but it is marked in this poem by the presence of memini at Tr. 5.3.5. As the poet recalls that he used often to sing of Bacchus, he remembers a particular moment—the story of Ariadne's plaint—in Fasti Book 3, in which his heroine also remembers that she has been abandoned before: dicebam, memini, ‘periure et perfide Theseu!’ (473). In Ovid's calendrical poem, memini points to an earlier poetic moment too. Ariadne, now believing herself abandoned by Bacchus, remembers the words that she uttered in Catullus 64 when Theseus left her:
This poetic recollection is mirrored by Ovid as he recalls, at Tr. 5.3.5–6, a time when he was favoured by Bacchus as a non inuisa … pars of his band of poets.Footnote 34 Ovid hopes that he may regain such a position (43–4) by reminding the deity of the attentions he had often received from the poet in the past, with the implication, perhaps, that, through an amelioration of circumstances, the poet may once again be able to look to his Tempora.
The familiarity of a reader of Tristia 5.3 with an earlier version of the Fasti than with the exilic text known to us has been assumed in the discussion thus far. It is likely, however, that Ovid, in eventually revisiting the Fasti, would have had an eye on his exilic works too. The possibility, for example, that sollicitare torum (Fast. 3.484) may recall Ovid's tongue-in-cheek insistence on his own virtue at Tr. 2.345–6Footnote 35 and Pont. 3.3.49–50Footnote 36 casts Bacchus in an even more negative light than would be the case were this moment in the Fasti read in isolation.Footnote 37 Such a reading would also further align Ariadne's characterization with Ovid's as innocent. One may even wonder whether tam bene compositum … torum (Fast. 3.484) nods to the accounts of Ariadne's and Bacchus’ love written by Ovid (and others) that she accuses the deity of disturbing here.Footnote 38 It is possible, moreover, reading forward or backward, that Ariadne's remark on her past at Fast. 3.505–6 (cited above) relates her more closely still to Ovid, who opens his autobiographical poem thus: Ille ego qui fuerim, tenerorum lusor amorum, | quem legis, ut noris, accipe posteritas (Tr. 4.10.1–2).Footnote 39
TRISTIA 1.7
The idea that Ovid represents his calendrical poem as a work concerned with Bacchus will gain further support from an allusion to the poet's Fasti earlier in the Tristia. The salient point of Tristia 1.7 is rightly held to be the poet's re-articulation of his relationship with the Metamorphoses through the provision of a new preface, which builds on Ovid's desire in Tristia 1.1 that his hexameter-poem come to include the uultus of his changed fortuna (Tr. 1.1.119–20).Footnote 40 The poet explains that his metamorphic work—interrupted as it was by his relegation—is, nevertheless, a greater representation of him (a maior imago, 1.7.11) than any mimetic image that a friend may possess, and asks that the three distichs given at 1.7.35–40 be appended to its start so that readers may forgive its imperfect state:
It seems to me, however, that there are also implications for our understanding of Ovid's view of his ‘less finished’ Fasti in the opening couplets of this selfsame poem:
Ivy garlands are to be removed from a bust of the poet, as such a corona, such Bacchica serta, are poorly suited to the tempora of a poet who is not laetus,Footnote 41 nor, for that matter, are they fitting for his drafted calendrical poem which touches on themes perhaps no longer to Ovid's taste after his relegation. The Fasti, it seems possible to suggest, are to be set to one side. Ovid had once been one of the sacri cultores hederae (cf. Tr. 5.3.15), but he no longer views himself as such at this juncture.Footnote 42 It has been suggested by Hinds that the tempora at stake here represent the Metamorphoses, owing to the collocation mea … tempora in the proem of Ovid's epic (Met. 1.4 ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen), and the ‘sustained and explicit revaluation of the Metamorphoses in the wake of exile’ that follows in the rest of Tristia 1.7.Footnote 43 While that may well be the case, mention of signa at Tr. 1.7.3 in such close proximity to temporibus (1.7.4) seems more pointedly, I would suggest, to direct readers to the Fasti,Footnote 44 a poem concerned not only with tempora but also with signa (‘stars’ as opposed to the ‘signs’ or ‘symbols’ of Tristia 1.7):
The semantic polyvalence of signa, like that of tempora, is demonstrated by the poet with another pun in the proem of Fasti Book 4, where Ovid says to Venus that he has never left her standards (signa),Footnote 45 and implies that, by singing of the rising and setting of signa (‘stars’), he remains loyal to her ensigns in the course of his aetiological and astronomical poem:
The Fasti, Ovid seems to imply in Tristia 1.7, are not worthy of the trappings (signa) of happy and successful poets; his calendrical poem is not worthy of the Bacchica serta, of that corona which we see in Tristia 5.3 shining brightly and outdoing the constellations that surround it:
Ovid's Fasti should, he suggests, be set aside by his reader; it is not (yet) in a fit state for wider circulation. The poet is clear, however, that the Metamorphoses can serve as a maior imago of him in his transmogrified state (Tr. 1.7.11; cf. Tr. 1.1.119–22), even if he would have preferred for it not to have been published in its present state (Tr. 1.7.37), afflicted as it is by occasional infelicities (quidquid … uitii, 1.7.40).
TRISTIA 1.1
The disjunction between the poet's stance regarding the ‘more finished’ Metamorphoses and the ‘less finished’ Fasti in Tristia 1.7 is adumbrated in Tristia 1.1. In his first poem from exile, Ovid explicitly and programmatically thematizes the encounter between his exilic poetry and his earlier works, and their interaction, as he has his paruus liber visit the scrinia in which his Ars amatoria and Metamorphoses are to be found. The poet tells his first book of Tristia that it will see its poetic siblings on the shelves (aspicies illic positos ex ordine fratres, Tr. 1.1.107), and, in doing so, provides us—his readers—with a focalizing lens through which to view his earlier corpus: we are made to see, and thus encouraged to read, his pre-relegation works through the eyes of his personified first book of exilic poetry; Ovid's editorial hand is at work without his having to change a single word of his earlier works.
In the course of his liber's journey to Ovid's domus, the poet suggests that it may encounter a reader or critic, a iudex, whose responsibility it is to consider not only the work at hand (res) but also the circumstances of that work (tempora rerum):
Hinds has suggested that the tempora nostra in line 40 refers not only to the poet's circumstances but also to the mea … tempora which Ovid promises that his epic will reach in the proem to the Metamorphoses (1.4). He also remarks that the poet may be hinting at ‘that other, unfinished carmen, the Fasti’ too.Footnote 47 I am inclined to agree that tempora here evokes the Fasti, the writing of which came to a sudden halt with the gloomy change in the poet's situation, but am less convinced that Ovid meant to refer his reader to his Metamorphoses. Later in Tristia 1.1, it is clear that the completed fifteen-volume Metamorphoses already exists (and is known), though it now needs revising in the light of the poet's changed circumstances (cf. Tristia 1.7):
It seems to me, indeed, that Ovid refers to his epic in Tr. 1.1.39, rather than in the pentameter that follows it. He explains that it is from a clear and calm mind (animo … sereno) that deducta carmina proceed. These finely spun carmina look to the Metamorphoses: in the proem of his epic, Ovid asserts that his animus is undertaking a new task and invokes the inspiration of the gods, asking that they spin out (deducite) a perpetuum carmen.Footnote 48 Following a sudden turn of events (subitis … malis, 1.1.40), however, and since he is now buffeted by the elements (1.1.42), his circumstances have taken on a gloomy air (nubila, 1.1.40) and his mind lacks the quietude needed to write (1.1.41): his finishing of the ‘less complete’ Fasti—his Tempora—has, on account of this, been impeded.Footnote 49 The absence of his calendrical work from the scrinia curua of Tr. 1.1.105–18 is thus marked: Ovid's poem is incomplete as a result of his relegation.Footnote 50
EPISTVLAE EX PONTO 2.1
The place afforded to the Fasti in the Epistulae ex Ponto is not dissimilar to that noted in Tristia Book 2 and Tristia 5.3, where the poet hints that he may be entertaining a return to his calendar poem: the hope is that the promise of his work's completion will result in the mitigation of his punishment. Ovid's aetiological and, perhaps more pertinently, astronomical poem is apt for such an approach to the Caesars, as Germanicus, who was enjoying greater influence in the later years of Ovid's exilic career, was himself an astronomical poet.Footnote 51 The idea that Ovid might rededicate the Fasti to Germanicus is aired by the poet in Epistulae ex Ponto 2.1.
In this poem, Ovid describes the Pannonian triumph celebrated by Tiberius and, in the concluding lines of the poem, turns his attention to Germanicus, to whom—in Pont. 2.1.49–52—the conquest of a number of oppida is attributed:
The poet asks that the gods grant the young Caesar long life (anni), asserting that he will achieve all else himself, were tempora longa afforded to his uirtus (53–4). The collocation tibi dent annos with the gods as the subject of the verb (53) also occurs in a passage of the Fasti, where it refers to Augustus as a builder and restorer of temples, and comments on the hoped-for reciprocity of the latter's relationship with the gods:
By addressing the words di tibi dent annos to Germanicus and glancing to this passage of Fasti Book 2, Ovid implies that the young Caesar ought to benefit from a mutually felicitous relationship with the gods, and that he should, thanks to this, enjoy long life—tempora longa—like Augustus. The deity on whom the poet had called, indeed, has answered favourably, giving prospera signa (Pont. 2.1.56). These signa are fittingly providential for the scion of the Caesars who wrote of stars, that is, signa, in his Aratea, and the times—the tempora—will be his too. I do not believe that it is going too far to suggest that Ovid, evoking the opening of his calendrical and astronomical poem that speaks of tempora and signa, is considering the rededication of his Fasti to Germanicus. The poet hopes, perhaps, that Tiberius’ and Germanicus’ clemency, like that shown to their conquered enemies, may affect their treatment of him too: cur ego posse negem minui mihi numinis iram, | cum uideam mitis hostibus esse deos? (Pont. 2.1.47–8).
In the subsequent verses, Ovid speaks of the poetic celebration and monumentalization of Germanicus. The image is one of triumph, as Ovid looks forward to a time when the young Caesar will climb the Capitoline.Footnote 52 The language used to describe the location (Tarpeias … arces, 2.1.57) recalls a collocation used on a number of significant occasions with reference to the divine and imperial associations of the Tarpeian arces (notably at the end of the Metamorphoses), and to the rituals surrounding consular accession, as in Fasti Book 1 and Epistulae ex Ponto 4.9:Footnote 53
The thought that there may be some metapoetic comment at play in the address to Germanicus in Epistulae ex Ponto 2.1 is encouraged by Ovid's use of the verb scandere (57). In the context of climbing to the Tarpeian arces, it is not easy to dissociate this word from Horace's sphragis-ode, where, in a poem in which triumphal imagery is readily discernible and is used to suggest literary success, the lyric bard explains that he will be praised for as long as the pontifex continues to climb the Capitol (usque ego postera | crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium | scandet cum tacita uirgine pontifex, Carm. 3.30.7–9).Footnote 54 Moreover, that Germanicus’ putative military triumph (Pont. 2.1.63–4) may also be a poetic one—both for himself and for Ovid—is not implausible in the light of the triumphal imagery used in a metapoetic vein both by Virgil in the proem to Georgics 3, where that poet styles himself a uictor (9, 17), and by Propertius in 3.1, from where the garlanded horses of Pont. 2.1.58 derive.Footnote 55 We may add to this that the collocation tempora longa is elsewhere used by Ovid to comment on the renown secured for him by his poetry, conspicuously in Tristia 3.3. After he has provided himself with an epitaph (3.3.73–6), Ovid explains that a literary monument is more enduring, and notes that, although some of his poems have precipitated his relegation (quamuis nocuere, 3.3.79), he nevertheless remains sure that they will provide him with lengthy post mortem renown (3.3.80):
Is it, perhaps, such renown that he hopes to be able to provide for himself, and for Germanicus, not only through writing of the putative triumph of the young Caesar but also through the rededication of the Fasti to him?Footnote 56
Where previously at the close of Tristia Book 2 Ovid had implied that, were his situation ameliorated, he would consider a return to the Fasti, a work dedicated (sacratum, Tr. 2.552) to Augustus, he explains to Germanicus in Epistulae ex Ponto 2.1 that he will sing the praises of the latter's triumph if only his own life proves equal in length to the magnitude of the evils he has endured (63–4). The collocation modo uita underscores the idea that Ovid hopes to praise a Caesar, as it recalls the proem of Georgics 3 and Virgil's claim that he would achieve literary triumph through a poem in which a Caesar took centre stage, were his life long enough to do so (G. 3.9–10 primus ego in patriam mecum, modo uita supersit, | Aonio rediens deducam uertice Musas). The idea of replacing Augustus as dedicatee of the Fasti with Germanicus—perhaps a more malleable Caesar from Ovid's point of view in the light of their shared interest in star-filled poetry—seems to have been entertained when the poet penned Epistulae ex Ponto 2.1. Ovid returns to the notion of celebrating Germanicus in a poem in Epistulae ex Ponto 4.8.
EPISTVLAE EX PONTO 4.8
In the final book of his Pontic epistles, considerable emphasis is given to the idea of officium, the duty which Ovid needs to discharge to those who have supported him.Footnote 57 In Epistulae ex Ponto 4.8, he explains that the bounden duty of poets (officium) is rendered through song, and, in this poem, the central panel of which is addressed to Germanicus, he asserts that nothing is more suitable for the benefit of principes than the discharge of this office:
As he explains why this is the case in the following lines, Ovid juxtaposes the completed Metamorphoses with a promised work which we may read as the Fasti.Footnote 58 After making reference to the Iliad and the cyclic Thebaid as examples of the power of literature to memorialize mortals (4.8.51–4),Footnote 59 he asserts that it is even the case that gods come into being as a result of the verses sung by poets: di quoque carminibus (si fas est dicere) fiunt, | tantaque maiestas ore canentis eget (4.8.55–6).Footnote 60 In the subsequent couplets, the poet goes on to provide a very compressed overview of the Metamorphoses which, after touching on moments in the first book (57–60), focusses on figures who achieved immortality in part through their deeds:Footnote 61
Through Ovid's hexameter-poem we know of the separation (digestum) of Chaos from the shapeless moles,Footnote 63 of the Gigantomachy,Footnote 64 of Bacchus’ conquest of India,Footnote 65 and of Hercules’ capture of Oechalia.Footnote 66 It is also through this poem, Ovid implies, that the now-deified Augustus has been (proleptically) celebrated; the cause for the late emperor's apotheosis was even advanced, it is suggested, by Ovid's carmina. As is clear from the verses following this summary of the completed Metamorphoses, moreover, at the time of the writing of Epistulae ex Ponto 4.8, it is Germanicus’ turn to benefit from Ovid's talent (Pont. 4.8.65–6, cited below).Footnote 67
Ovid notes that he will devote whatever remains of his ingenium to serving Germanicus (65–6), as one poet is not able to spurn the officium, the dutiful service, of another (67):Footnote 68
The young Caesar would have been the summa gloria Pieridum (70) had he not been called to loftier things (ad maiora, 69), but, since he is for the most part otherwise engaged, poets—in whose number Ovid counts himself (nobis)—will sing of his pursuits in his stead (71). It is through engaging in their communia sacra (81)—a collocation used elsewhere in the Pontic epistles in appeals to fellow poets for support—through his writing verse, the poet claims, that he hopes to achieve a change in his situation (81–4).Footnote 71 Should he find himself nearer to Rome, Ovid asserts that he would be able to proclaim Germanicus’ praises and relate his mighty deeds in a timelier manner (85–8; cf. the promised treatment of Germanicus’ putative triumph in Epistulae ex Ponto 2.1). Ovid's offering, however, is not to be akin to the metaliterary templum of epic proportion promised by Virgil to Octavian in the proem to Georgics 3:Footnote 72
The poet's work is to be rather more understated; it is to be, I would suppose, an elegiac calendar.Footnote 76
There is good reason to suppose that Ovid was thinking his way back into his Fasti and civic tempora whilst he was writing the final book of his Epistulae ex Ponto (see below), and so it is unsurprising that one is able to discern traces of his calendrical work in the programmatic poem in which he promises to celebrate Germanicus.Footnote 77 The proem of Fasti Book 1 as we now have it shares with Epistulae ex Ponto 4.8 a number of aspects of diction and theme:Footnote 78
In his epistle, Ovid seeks to mollify the young Caesar's godhead (tua numina placa, Pont. 4.8.23), and in the Fasti it is with a pacific mien (pacato … uoltu, Fast. 1.3; cf. placidum, 1.17) that Germanicus is asked to receive Ovid's opus and to direct the path of his poetic boat (derige nauis iter, Fast. 1.4).Footnote 79 The poet's work is described as an officium on a number of occasions in Epistulae ex Ponto 4.8 (43, 67), and likewise at Fasti 1.5. Others are to sing of the arma Caesaris, Ovid declares in the proem to the Fasti (1.13–14), whilst he is to concern himself with arae and dies, and at Pont. 4.8.24 emphasis is put on Germanicus’ altar at which Suillius must offer preces, and from which the poet hopes the amelioration of his circumstances will come. Whether Ovid is working on the Fasti simultaneously with his fourth book of Pontic epistles, or is looking back to a version of the proem to the Fasti drafted some time before (perhaps around the time at which the poet wrote Epistulae ex Ponto 2.1?), it seems more than likely that Ovid has his calendrical work in mind.
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The thematization of time coming to halt for the relegated Ovid has been acutely discussed by Hinds, in terms of both its seemingly static nature in the inhospitable climate of Tomi and the relative insignificance of civic time for one so far from the City. In his treatment of Tristia 5.10, Hinds suggests that we may also be able to discern ‘an arch reference to the compositional standstill of Ovid's actual unfinished tempora-poem itself, its feet halting between the completed Fasti 6 and the unwritten Fasti 7’: adeo procedunt tempora tarde (Tr. 5.10.5).Footnote 80 These words could also refer to the stagnated process of editing and redrafting the Fasti through the course of the poet's relegation.Footnote 81
Hinds goes on to touch on a ‘new Tomitan connectedness with Roman time’ in the Epistulae ex Ponto, and notably in the fourth book. He convincingly suggests that the three poems concerned with consular accession and the start of a new year (Epistulae ex Ponto 4.4, 4.5 and 4.9) demonstrate Ovid's attempts at ‘thinking himself back into Book 1 of his own Fasti’.Footnote 82 This is assuredly the case. In Epistulae ex Ponto 4.4, in particular, Ovid not only engages with the description of the celebrations on the Kalends of January found in his own calendrical poem,Footnote 83 thus again marking civic time, but also acknowledges the onward movement of time in his own Tomitan life—proximus annus erit (4.4.18)—and even goes as far as to assert, rather uncharacteristically, that the horrors of the Pontic climate which he has had to endure (4.4.1–4) are not so bad as to destroy any chance of pleasure: nil adeo fortuna grauis miserabile fecit, | ut minuant nulla gaudia parte malum (4.4.5–6).Footnote 84
This conspicuous re-engagement of the poet with his Tempora and with those of Roman civic life in his fourth book of Pontic epistles seems partly to be a result of the increasing influence of Germanicus after Augustus’ death, and the poet's apparent belief in his shared bond with this scion of the imperial family as another uates. Ovid points in this direction in Epistulae ex Ponto 4.8, a poem which, taken alongside Epistulae ex Ponto 4.9, occupies the central—and a programmatic—position in its book. It may be the case that Ovid is finding his way back into his calendrical poem, but the three poetic attempts at beginning the year in Epistulae ex Ponto 4.4, 4.5 and 4.9 are also suggestive of an inability to move beyond the month of January: Ovid seems to be stuck on loop at the start of his Fasti. The implication is that, were he recalled, he would have the chance to polish up and publish the work to which he has once again turned in earnest; since a return to Rome is not permitted, however, and he is not to be allowed to move closer, his work will remain unfinished.
Ovid speaks of the Fasti more frequently than has hitherto been recognized in the exile poetry; this is, in part, prompted by his apparent desire—conspicuous in his later works—to guide the reading and reception of his poetry, and to effect his own canonicity. Of the works completed or undertaken before his relegation, his calendrical poem is perhaps the one about which his attitude is the most changeable. This is, I have suggested, because of its unfinished state, and his realization that it could be construed within his works (if not actually used) as a means of bartering for the mitigation of his punishment. As a merely drafted poem addressed to Augustus, Ovid chooses to set it aside in Tristia 1.1 and 1.7; in Tristia Book 2, and thereafter, the Fasti resurfaces from time to time: the possibility of its publication—plausibly desired by members of the domus Augusta—is cast as a means of influencing the powers that be (cf. Tristia 5.3). Its eventual rededication to Germanicus—hinted at in Epistulae ex Ponto 2.1 and alluded to in Epistulae ex Ponto 4.8—is the acme of Ovid's attempted exploitation of the Tempora as leverage in his exilic verse.
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