In Epistulae ex Ponto 4.8, one of the last poems written from exile (dated to 15 or 16 c.e.),Footnote 1 Ovid expresses his increasing hopes for Germanicus' assistance in effecting his recall to Rome. Though ostensibly addressed to his stepdaughter's father-in-law, P. Suillius Rufus,Footnote 2 the poem contains a petition to Germanicus (27–88), as a poet to a poet, which promises future commemoration in Ovid's poetry if he is removed from Tomis:
and if my country is closed against me in my misery, may I be placed in any place less distant from the Ausonian city, whence I might celebrate your praises while they are recent and relate your great deeds with the least delay.
In this paper I look at how in Pont. 4.8 Ovid's offer of future praise in his poetry (laudes) serves to alert Germanicus to the fulfilment of these promises in the revisions to the opening of the Fasti. Linguistic similarities between Pont. 4.8 and the new proem of Fasti 1 have long been noted, but the associations between the two passages have not been explored fully and merit further consideration.Footnote 3 Ovid's renewed assertions of the value of the commemorative power of his poetry in Pont. 4.8 announce his fresh attempt at gaining imperial favour from Germanicus.Footnote 4
The chronological relationship between the two passages cannot be determined precisely. At Pont. 2.1.55–68 (13 c.e.) Ovid prophesies a triumph for Germanicus for his campaigns in Germany, a triumph which in due course was eventually voted by the Senate on 1 January 15 (Tac. Ann. 1.55.1), but not celebrated until 26 May 17 (Tac. Ann. 2.41.2). Mention of a triumph in Fasti 1.285–6 probably refers to the decree (which Ovid could probably not have heard about until mid-15 c.e.) and is the latest datable event of Ovid's calendar and poetic corpus,Footnote 5 while Pont. 4.8 does not mention this. It seems likely that the two passages are closely contemporary, as Fantham has argued,Footnote 6 and that Pont. 4.8 announces the revisions of the Fasti and, in an unusual recusatio, explains that Ovid's praise will continue to be in elegiacs.
Pont. 4.8 occupies, with 4.9, the centre of book 4 and these poems are further distinguished by being the longest in the book.Footnote 7 At the opening of 4.8 Ovid compliments Germanicus through a request to Suillius that he supplicate the gods, specifically Germanicus (di tibi sunt Caesar iuuenis, ‘your gods are the young Caesar’, 23), on his behalf: nostris hinc pete rebus opem (‘seek from this help for my affairs’, 26).Footnote 8 Ovid himself promises future worship if he is recalled (29–30). In the well-known analogy of worship and sacrifice with the writing of poetry, these promises of future supplication merge with his pledges of new poetry.Footnote 9 While Pont. 4.8 itself constitutes both a prayer and an offering to Germanicus (see hoc uotum, 89), I would suggest that Ovid's claim at Pont. 4.8.27–8 (quamlibet exigua si nos ea iuuerit aura, | obruta de mediis cumba resurget aquis, ‘if that [altar] aids me with a breeze, however slight, my skiff, though now overwhelmed, will arise once more from the midst of the waters’) more specifically seems to be directing attention to his forthcoming revisions (resurget) of the elegiac and aetiological Fasti.
These lines gesture towards the use of poetic nautical imagery at the opening of Fasti 1 (1.4: timidae derige nauis iter, ‘steer the passage of my timid ship’)Footnote 10 and, even more closely, echo the generic qualifications of Fasti 2.3–4: nunc primum uelis, elegi, maioribus itis: | exiguum, memini, nuper eratis opus (‘now for the first time, my elegies, you proceed with sails more amply spread, you were just recently, I recall, a work of smaller scale’). Both exiguus and cumba suggest elegy.Footnote 11 In his earlier poem to Augustus, Tristia 2, Ovid had ‘apologized’ in the conventional recusatio format for not having written panegyrical epic for Augustus (2.326 tua facta) in similar generic terms: non ideo debet pelago se credere, siqua | audet in exiguo ludere cumba lacu (‘if some skiff dares to play around in a small lake, not for that reason ought it to entrust itself to the sea’, 329–30). Ovid's use of resurget, on the other hand, gestures towards the grander poetic ambitions of the Fasti. In Amores 1.1 Cupid had hampered the epic rising of Ovid's verse (Am. 1.1.17–18, 27: surgat … residat), and in Pont. 3.3.31–2 Ovid again reproaches the god for limiting his ability to rise (consurgere) to the task of panegyrical verse (dicere magnorum … acta ducum).Footnote 12 Now the revised Fasti, elevated elegy (uelis … maioribus), will serve as his vehicle for new praise.
The vocabulary of religious sacrifice and recusatio continues in Pont. 4.8, where at lines 31–2 Ovid apologizes for not dedicating a temple to Germanicus: nec tibi de Pario statuam, Germanice, templum | marmore: carpsit opes illa ruina meas (‘I shall not establish for you, Germanicus, a temple of Parian marble: that disaster has consumed my wealth’). This denial contrasts his future elegiac project with Virgil's promises of a future epic poem celebrating Octavian's victories in Georgics 3.13, 16: uiridi in campo templum de marmore ponam … in medio mihi Caesar erit templumque tenebit (‘on a green plain I shall set up a temple of marble … in the middle I will have Caesar and he will occupy the temple’).Footnote 13 Ovid hereby evokes the importance of the Virgilian model of eulogistic poetry, while distinguishing his generic choice of elegy. His claim of artistic poverty is also conventional in the recusal of panegyrical epic: compare, for example, Tr. 2.335–6: diuitis ingenii est immania Caesaris acta | condere (‘it is the mark of a rich talent to record Caesar's great deeds’).Footnote 14 Ovid's sacrificial offerings to Germanicus are represented instead as parva … munera (‘small gifts’, 35), an image which clearly is meant to recall Callimachus' use of sacrificial metaphor to define his own poetics in Aet. fr. 1.23–4: ‘poet, feed the sacrificial animal so that it becomes as fat as possible (ὅττι πάχιστον), but, my dear fellow, keep the Muse slender (τὴ]ν Μοῦσαν … λεπταλέην)’.Footnote 15
Both Horace (Carm. 1.31.2–3) and Propertius (4.6.1–2) had adopted the pose of a ritual celebrant in order to offer panegyric to Augustus in poems that celebrated the dedication of Apollo's new temple on the Palatine.Footnote 16 Propertius provides an especially important model in poem 2.10, where he uses sacrificial imagery in his apology for not writing encomiastic poetry on Augustus' military exploits: sic nos nunc, inopes laudis conscendere carmen, | pauperibus sacris uilia tura damus (‘thus I now, since I am powerless to ascend the summit of praise, offer cheap incense in a poor man's sacrifice’, 23–4).Footnote 17 As in Pont. 4.8, in these poems the ‘sacrifice is a poetic offering as well’.Footnote 18 The Callimachean associations of Ovid's humble offering are underlined in the following lines contrasting the offerings (tura) from the large platter (grandi … lance, 40) and those from the small box of the pauper (de parua pauper … acerra, 39). The contrast in lines 41–2 between the agna … lactens (‘nursling lamb’) and the gramine pasta Falisco | uictima (‘victim fed on Faliscian grass’) especially recalls the imagery of Tityrus' humble sacrifice at Virgil Ecl. 1.7–8: illius aram | saepe tener … imbuet agnus (‘a slender lamb often stains his altar’), as well as Virgil's close translation of his Callimachean model at Ecl. 6.4–5: pinguis | pascere oportet ouis (‘it is fitting to feed the sheep until fat’).Footnote 19 Elsewhere in his exile poetry Ovid similarly uses the image of a humble sacrifice to represent his elegiac poetry, as at Tr. 2.75–6, where a large animal sacrifice (taurorum … centum) is contrasted with a small offering of incense (minimo turis honore) in a recusatio of lofty panegyrical epic.Footnote 20 Ovid's sacrificial pose both offers tribute to the divinity of the imperial house and defines his future panegyric as continuing to be Callimachean and elegiac in nature, as befits the Fasti, as well as the exile poetry.
In his exile poetry and in the Fasti, Ovid celebrates Germanicus both as heir to the house of Caesar and as a fellow writer.Footnote 21 At the opening of Fasti 1, as in Pont. 4.8.23, Germanicus is evoked as a deity (Fast. 1.6: numine) and equated with Apollo, the god of poetry, in a request for poetic inspiration: ut Clario missa legenda deo (‘as if sent to be read by the Clarian god’, 1.20).Footnote 22 At Pont. 4.8.75–6 the direct comparison of Germanicus with Apollo (utque … Apollo) specifically anticipates his proemic function at the opening of Fasti 1. In Fasti 1 Ovid declares his topic to be the religious calendar and rites and closely associates these, as in Pont. 4.8, with the cult of the imperial household (Fast. 1.7: sacra; 1.13: Caesaris aras; 1.9: festa domestica uobis; 1.15: laudes … tuorum; cf. Pont. 4.8.24: ara; 4.8.45: laudum; 4.8.87: laudes). Germanicus is similarly urged to accept Ovid's poetry and praise as a small offering (Fast. 1.5: leuem … honorem).Footnote 23
Germanicus' oratorical and poetic skills are foregrounded in both poems, as Ovid seeks to gain his support by appealing to their shared literary pursuits:Footnote 24
As a poet you cannot disregard tribute from a poet: for that has a value in your judgement.
So you lack neither the skills of the scholar nor the leader, but in your mind the Muse and Jupiter have been joined.
my page, about to be submitted to the judgement of a learned prince, is moved, as if sent to be read by the Clarian god.
if it is right and lawful, guide as a poet the reins of a poet.
At Pont. 4.8.81–2 Ovid draws further attention to his shared poetic concerns with Germanicus (prosit opemque ferat communia sacra tueri, | atque isdem studiis inposuisse manum, ‘may it profit and aid me that we maintain shared rites, and that I have set my hand to the same pursuits as you’) and he also seems to echo the proem of Germanicus' Phaenomena,Footnote 27 where Augustus was similarly invoked by Germanicus for poetic inspiration: carminis at nobis, genitor, tu maximus auctor, | te ueneror tibi sacra fero doctique laboris | primitias (‘you, father, are the greatest inspirer of song for me. You are the one I venerate; to you I bring sacred gifts and the first fruits of my learned labour’, Arat. 3–4).Footnote 28 The two passages also share the image of poetry as sacrificial offering. Ovid's isdem studiis (82) may be taken further as a self-reflexive acknowledgement both of their shared panegyrical poetic strategiesFootnote 29 and of the fact that Ovid, too, translated Aratus' poem and returned to this astronomical material in the Fasti.Footnote 30
The centre of Pont. 4.8 (lines 43–64) contain a strong statement of the importance of poetic praise for political leaders: nec tamen officio uatum per carmina facto | principibus res est aptior ulla uiris (‘yet, nevertheless, nothing more befits the leaders of men than the tribute of poets offered through verse’, 43–4). In the following lines, however, it is epic that Ovid lists to support his claim of poetry's power to bestow immortality, citing the heroes of the Trojan and Theban cycles (51–4),Footnote 31 and recalling his own Metamorphoses through verbal echoing of its opening cosmogony:
thus [from poetry] we know that Chaos, separated from that mass of prior nature, has its proper divisions, by this that the Giants aiming at heavenly rule were hurled to the Styx by the cloud-bearing fire of the avenger.
The evocation of the cosmogonic temporal sequence of the Metamorphoses continues in the mention of the apotheoses of Liber, Hercules, and Augustus in the following lines:
thus Liber won praise as victor over the conquered Indies, Alcides from the capture of Oechalia, and recently, O Caesar, your grandfather, whose virtue added him to the stars, poems in some measure made divine.
Gigantomachy, Bacchus, and Hercules are stock figures of Imperial panegyric.Footnote 34 These lines recall the series of apotheoses in the Metamorphoses, which leads up to that of Caesar and Augustus at the end of the epic (Bacchus at Met. 4.605–6: quem debellata colebat | India; Hercules at 9.242–72 and 9.136: uictor ab Oechalia; Caesar and Augustus at 15.746–85).Footnote 35 Ovid reminds Germanicus that he has indeed created gods before: di quoque carminibus (si fas est dicere) fiunt (‘even gods, if it is permissible to say this, are created by poetry’, Pont. 4.8.55).Footnote 36
Elsewhere in the exile poetry Ovid is at pains to associate his epic with praise of Augustus, as at Tr. 2.65: inuenies uestri praeconia numinis illic (‘you will find therein proclamations of your divinity’;Footnote 37 cf. 557–62). He claims in a number of poems in Ex Ponto 4 to have composed poetry on Augustus' apotheosis (Pont. 4.6.17–18, 4.9.131–2, 4.13.23–4, the last in Getic!). His lines on Augustus at Pont. 4.8.63–4 may also recall the original passage on Augustus' catasterism by Capricorn that Germanicus added to his own poem at Arat. 558–60 (hic, Auguste, tuum … numen … in caelum tulit et maternis redditit astris, ‘this [sign], Augustus, carried your divinity to the heavens and returned it to your maternal stars’).
Imperial themes traditionally demand the epic metre, so, for example, in Pont. 3.4 Ovid worries about his choice of elegy for panegyric on Tiberius' Pannonian triumph: quo pede nunc utar, dubia est sententia nobis (‘I am unsure what metre I am now to employ’, 87).Footnote 38 In exile, however, the poet is incapable of epic; weakened as he is by his sufferings, he is compelled to write in elegiac couplets (see Tr. 5.1.5–6, Pont. 3.9.35: cano tristia tristis).Footnote 39 Ovid's mention of the Hippocrene at Pont. 4.8.79–80: quae quoniam nec nos unda summouit ab illa, | ungula Gorgonei quam caua fecit equi (‘and since the Muse has not removed me from that spring which the hollow hoof of the Gorgonian horse made’), underlines the Aratean allusions shared with Germanicus and also, perhaps, further defines the limits of his exilic talents. The origin of the spring is first related by Aratus (218–23),Footnote 40 and the passage was translated by Germanicus (Arat. 218–22). Ovid alludes to the etymology on a number of occasions with significant variations:
which the hard hoof of the Medusaean flyer made burst forth
when his light hoof struck out the Aonian waters
you who hold the springs of Aganippian Hippocrene, pleasing signs of the Medusaean horse
Stephen Hinds has shown how the different adjectives dura, leuis, and caua all carry programmatic import for their respective poetic projects.Footnote 41 While dura and leuis serve to represent the genre of Ovid's epic and elegiac poems, Hinds suggests that ungula … caua at Pont. 4.8.80 is a ‘wry postscript’ on the earlier passages and that the use of cauus is meant to characterize the exile poetry as the product of an ‘eroded’ talent'.Footnote 42 If Germanicus' passage on the Hippocrene was in fact indebted to Ovid's earlier translation of Aratus,Footnote 43 then Ovid is not only recalling his own earlier poetryFootnote 44 but also associating himself again with Germanicus' literary pursuits.
One of the major themes of Ovid's later exile poetry is the commemorative power of his poetry, which offers to his addressees the promise of future fame in his poetic compositions (Pont. 4.8.47: carmine fit uiuax uirtus, ‘through poetry virtue becomes enduring’).Footnote 45 While in Tr. 2 it is other poets who will celebrate Augustus (73–4: te celebrant alii quanto decet ore, tuasque | ingenio laudes uberiore canunt, ‘others celebrate you in the great style that is befitting, and sing your praises with richer talent’), in the later exilic poems Ovid increasingly offers the promise of encomium, laudes. See Tr. 5.11.23–4: iure igitur laudes, Caesar, pro parte uirili | carmina nostra tuas qualiacumque canunt (‘rightly then, Caesar, do my verses, such as they are, sing to the best of their ability your praises’); Pont. 1.1.27–8: Caesareo … non caret e nostris ullus honore liber (‘no book of mine lacks tribute to Caesar’); Pont. 4.13.23: materiam quaeris? laudes: de Caesare dixi (‘You ask my subject? You would praise it: I spoke of Caesar’).
Horace and Propertius, especially in their fourth books, both offered important examples of non-epic encomiastic poetry. Allusions in Pont. 4.8 to Horace's famous claims for the immortality of poetry in Carm. 3.30.1–7Footnote 46 and for poetry's power to confer everlasting fame, as expressed in Carm. 4.8–9 especially,Footnote 47 serve also to recall to Germanicus Horace's career as a ‘paradigmatically successful and imperially favored poet’.Footnote 48 At Tristia 5.1.42, Ovid promises carmina laetitiae … plena (‘poems full of joy’) if he is recalled from exile, poetry very different from his earlier love poetry (43–4), of which Caesar himself will approve (quod probet ipse, 45).Footnote 49 Ovid is promising praise poetry, on such themes as Augustus' deification (see above), the military triumphs of Tiberius and Germanicus (Tr. 4.2; Pont. 2.1, 2.5.27–32, 4.6.17–8, 4.9.131–2), and accessions to the consulship (Pont. 4.4 and 4.9). In Pont. 3.4, Ovid speaks of a poem which he has composed celebrating Tiberius' Pannonian triumph of 12 c.e., and comments on the difficulty of this change from lament to eulogy (45–6): adde quod assidue domini meditata querelas | ad laetum carmen uix mea †uersa lyra est† (‘add too that my lyre, which constantly has been working over the complaints of its master, scarcely could turn to a happy song’). In Pont. 4.8, the poet requests his recall so that he can sing of Germanicus' laudes … recentes (87),Footnote 50 and promises praeconia laudum (45, cf. 61: laudem). Ovid predicts a future triumph for Germanicus in Pont. 2.1.49–68 and offers his services in advance: hunc quoque carminibus referam fortasse triumphum (‘this triumph also perhaps I shall relate in poetry’, 63). In Pont. 4, as Syme observed, ‘the poet's aim is now directed more and more towards the entourage of Germanicus’.Footnote 51
As Hinds has suggested, these later compositions, engaged as they are with current Roman civic events and time, show ‘a calendar poet back on message, ready to resume his interrupted work’.Footnote 52 The officium promised in Pont. 4.8.43 and 4.8.67 is fulfilled in Fasti 1: officioque, … en tibi deuoto numine dexter ades (‘may you be present in divine spirit propitious to the homage I vowed to you’, 5–6).Footnote 53 When Ovid turned to revising the Fasti he still harboured hopes of Germanicus' assistance and at 1.15 declares it his task to proceed per laudes … tuorum. As is well known, despite his continued strong assertions of the power of poetry in Pont. 4.8, his cultivation of Germanicus was unsuccessful (Pont. 4.13.41: carmina nil prosunt, ‘my poems are of no avail’). Revisions to the Fasti are few and largely confined largely to Book 1.Footnote 54 In the end, as Andrew Wallace Hadrill has observed, ‘Ovid's downfall was his failure to win over Tiberius, not Augustus’.Footnote 55
