Tristia 2 is a strange poem. Standing apart from Ovid's other exile poetry, this is the only book of his exilic epistles to comprise a single continuous elegy, and the only poem in the Tristia or Epistulae ex Ponto addressed explicitly to Augustus, author of Ovid's exile. It is seriously and self-consciously concerned with issues of reading and reception, criticism and interpretation, problematizing through its own ‘commentary’ upon Ovid's poetic corpus the very notion and value of interpretation and commentary. Tristia 2, then, presents a unique challenge to any critic who would attempt her own commentary upon it. But Jennifer Ingleheart's new work is suitably outstanding in its own right and admirably squares up to that challenge. Building upon the recent studies of Tristia 2 by Gareth Williams (1994), Bruce Gibson (1999), and, above all, Alessandro Barchiesi (1993, 1994, 1997), I. presents her commentary as a close reading, an interpretation of the poem as a whole, which is no less consciously engaged in the interests and concerns of its contemporary audience than her Ovidian text. Her aim is ‘to contribute to a diachronic dialogue about Tristia 2’ and ‘to provide a useful tool by engaging with the dominant concerns of contemporary Ovidian, classical, and more broadly literary scholarship, and thereby to contribute to (re-)assessments of the importance and value of Ovid's text’ (1–2). This she achieves through careful reference to other views, other interpretations, and other conjectures and criticisms, throughout each section of her comprehensive, lucid and detailed commentary.

The work opens with a concise introduction, ostensibly too brief to offer much more than a brisk survey of the ‘Background to composition’, ‘Tristia 2's place within the exile poetry’, ‘Models’, ‘Literary past’, ‘History’, ‘Influence’, ‘Manuscript tradition’, and ‘Metre’. Across these short sections, however, I. manages not only to cover all the key material necessary to contextualize the poem, but also to introduce a number of original arguments and conjectures. So, concluding a succinct discussion of the contentious details of Ovid's ‘carmen et error’, she speculates that ‘since the [lex Iulia] punished not only adulterers but also those who encouraged adultery, the Ars’ teaching may have been considered equivalent to lenocinium' (4). And indeed, since Ovid's relegation to Tomis corresponds with the proscribed penalty for lenocinium, I. suggests that it is specifically this offence with which Ovid may have been charged.

In her analysis of Ovid's models for Tristia 2 (Horace's Epistles 2.1, Horace's Epode 17, Cicero's pro Ligario, and Ovid's own Heroides 21), I. first makes a persuasive case for noticing the emphatically didactic character of Tristia 2 — provocative indeed in a poem supposedly defending the didactic Ars against the princeps' misreading of its precepts. She then develops the significance of another Horatian intertext for our reading of Tristia 2, arguing convincingly that its allusions to Epode 17 create the impression that Tristia 2 may be read as ‘a palinode of the Ars’ (11) — an ingenious possibility which further complicates contemporary debates about the ‘sincerity’ of Ovid's renunciation and defence of the Ars in Tristia 2. I. goes on to show that the surprising literary precedents for Ovid's ‘self-defence’ in Tristia 2 include Cicero's pro Ligario, highlighting the pervasive use of legal rhetoric and forensic vocabulary in the poem and detailing its correspondences with Cicero's defence of the exile Ligarius ‘addressed to a Caesar who holds sole power in Rome and who is also (at least in part) the party injured by the defendant’ (13). Emphasis upon this legal intertext then allows I. to outline and summarize the rhetorical structure of Tristia 2 as comprising an exordium (lines 1–26), propositio (lines 27–8), and forensic tractatio (lines 29–578) — further subdivided into probatio (lines 29–154), peroratio (lines 155–206), refutatio or confutatio (lines 207–572), and epilogue (lines 573–8).

Here, as throughout her analysis, I. is mindful of the thorny question of the degree to which Tristia 2 should — or could — be read as either ‘pro-’ or ‘anti-’ Augustan, declaring (with Elaine Fantham) not only that the reader's neutrality on this issue is impossible but further, that, since ‘Tristia 2 forces its readers to take a position on its political stance … neutrality is not even desirable in this case’ (26). Whether or not I.'s view of Ovid as an ‘outraged loyalist’ (26) successfully addresses that question — or avoids that neutrality — is for her own readers to decide.

This comprehensive volume, complete with I.'s own text of the poem (adapted from Hall's 1995 edition) and facing translation, includes an extremely useful index of Greek and Latin terms and an index locorum (as well as general index and bibliography). An essential reference work for any Ovidian, it would make an ideal set text for an undergraduate class were it not for the prohibitive expense of the hardcover — my only reservation in recommending this outstanding study of a singular poem.