The Poems of Exile

Tristia and the Black Sea Letters

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by Ovid,

Translated by Peter Green

University of California Press

Due/Published February 2005, 528 pages, paper

ISBN 0520242602

In the year A.D. 8, Emperor Augustus sentenced the elegant, brilliant, and sophisticated Roman poet Ovid to exile - permanently, as it turned out - at Tomis, modern Constanta, on the Romanian coast of the Black Sea. Two millennia later, the agonized, witty, vivid, nostalgic, and often slyly malicious poems Ovid wrote at Tomis remain as fresh as the day they were written, a testament for exiles everywhere and in all ages.

Peter Green's informative introduction describes Ovid's literary and personal circumstances against the backdrop of Roman culture and the politics of the day. His translation, explanatory notes, and glossary will bring these poems to a wide audience of students and general readers. "This is no small achievement. For the language-lover the translation provides elegant, flowing English verse, for the classicist it conveys close approximation to the Latin meaning coupled with a sense of the movement and rhythmic variety of Ovid's language"--Geraldine Herbert-Brown, editor of "Ovid's Fasti: Historical Readings at its Bimillennium

"This book fills a gap. There is no similar annotated English translation of Ovid's exile poetry. Thoroughly grounded in Ovidian scholarship, Green's introduction and notes are helpful and informative. The translation is accurate, idiomatic, and lively, closely imitating the Latin elegiac couplet and capturing Ovid's changing moods."--Karl Galinsky, author of "Ovid's Metamorphoses: An Introduction to the Basic Aspects