(7) Poems Written in Exile.
(i) Tristia, in elegiac verse in five Books: letters to Augustus, to Ovid’s wife (for whom he had a deep affection) and to friends, praying for pardon or for a place of exile nearer Rome.
(ii) Epistulae ex Ponto: similar to the Tristia.
‘These poems are a melancholy record of flagging vitality and failing powers.’—Mackail.
3. Style.
The real importance of Ovid in literature and his gift to posterity lay in the new and vivid life which he imparted to the fables of Greek mythology. ‘No other classical poet has furnished more ideas than Ovid to the Italian poets and painters of the Renaissance, and to our own poets—from Chaucer to Pope, who, like Ovid,
‘“Lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.”’
AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS, 34-62 A.D.
1. Life.
PERSIUS.