On the Lasting Power of Art

Ovid, Tristia III.7.45-52 See – although I lack my fatherland, and you, And my home, and what could be taken from me’s been stolen, Nevertheless I keep company with my genius, I enjoy it – Caesar could have no power over this. Let whoever wishes end this life of mine With savage sword – though I’m dead, my fame will survive, And while Mars’ Rome, victorious, shall look on the whole world, Conquered, from its hills, I shall be read.

En ego, cum caream patria uobisque domoque,      raptaque sint, adimi quae potuere mihi, ingenio tamen ipse meo comitorque fruorque:      Caesar in hoc potuit iuris habere nihil. Quilibet hanc saeuo uitam mihi finiat ense,      me tamen extincto fama superstes erit, dumque suis uictrix omnem de montibus orbem      prospiciet domitum Martia Roma, legar.

Ovid among the Scythians, Eugène Delacroix, 1859

Only 2 months of Ovid's Fasti remain!

The next set of emails will likely start in mid-July, and the run time will depend on the length of the work.

Thank you for voting!

You are the bearing beam that props my ruins; If I'm still something, you have all my thanks; It's you who've seen that I'm not stripped and plundered By those who from my wreckage seek the planks.

Ovid, To His Wife

osip mandelstam, from Tristia. trans. bruce mcclelland

having lot of thoughts and feelings about the role elision and spondee have in tripping up and slowing down the reader of Tristia I.3 just like Ovid is tripping up and slowing down in an effort to delay his inevitable exile but I am unable to articulate them beyond just...internal screaming.

So if you also feel like internally screaming today, I highly recommend reading Tristia I.3 aloud and feeling just a lot of emotions about Ovid and the vital role of sound in poetry.

Ooh I forgot to say yesterday I finished ovids Tristia my review is that it was really interesting like I couldn’t imagine just being like exiled and the way he talks about his loneliness and pain is very striking and he also talks about his legacy as a poet which is interesting because I’m the one reading his work like thousands of years later. Also what’s interesting is the way he talks about Cesar as almost god-like. He’s like “oh I pray to the gods and Cesar that I do not die on this boat” HES THE ONE WHO EXILED YOU I DOBT THINK HE CARES anyways

I have just listened to a conference about Ovid and this guy just drops at the end of it the possibility of the exile mentioned in the Tristia being made up...

My brain has just kind of gone off, because this man said that if there was any writer in the whole ancient world who was capable of doing this, of making experts 2000 years after his death believe that Augustus sent him to exile was him...

Can you imagine him being so utterly and complete amused at this?? Laughing his ass off at the ones who pitied him for this... I need to lay down

Remaster de este clásico del 2002 | TRISTIA: LEGACY

“a noble spirit is capable of kindly impulses”

(faciles motus mens generosa capit)

— Ovid, Tristia, III.V, 32 in Tristia. Ex Ponto, LCL. Vol. 151, transl. A.L. Wheeler.

the meme made itself

roman empire is for males this . woman version of roman empires that . what about the secret, more complex third thing, huh?

Evenings with Ovid

"Evenings with Ovid" is an 11-part podcast spanning the first book of Ovid's "Tristia." It will air every Friday at 12 PM EST, from September 2 to November 11. Ovid Daily editor Margrethe and special guest Ovid, brought to life by Lu, host each episode. Each installment contains the original Latin text read in poetic meter, followed by A.L. Wheeler's 1924 English translation. "Tristia" recounts Ovid's exile from Rome in 8 CE, and his winter-time journey to the Black Sea. It is somber, heartbreaking, and at times, rather irreverent, but always beautifully composed. "Tristia" is everything you love about Ovid, but with an autobiographical slant, and a reluctantly adventurous spirit.

Join Ovid Daily for our NEW PODCAST, coming to you THIS FRIDAY, September 2, at 12 PM EST/ 6 PM CET.

[ALT: cover art for "Evenings with Ovid" showing a windswept, teary-cheeked Ovid surrounded by waves. The background is a blue-gray gradient, the text at the top reads: "Evenings with Ovid," the text at the bottom reads: "Tristia" and "Liber I". /end ALT]

shoutout to [redacted] whom i had forgot i had lent my copy of the tristia to for the incredible commentary: ‘he is having a bad time’

in ancient roman poetry you get on a boat to travel east and eventually arrive in the country known as Death