Sorros of an Exile Tristia [Hardcover]

In AD 8 Ovid's brilliant career was abruptly blasted when the Emperor Augustus banished him, for reasons never satisfactorily explained, to Tomis (Constanta) on the Black Sea. The five books ofTristia(Sorrows) express his reaction to this savage and, as he clearly regarded it, unjust sentence. Though their ostensible theme is the misery and loneliness of exile, their real message, if they are read with the care they deserve, is one of affirmation. Ovid repeatedly asserts, often with a wit and irony that borders on defiance, his conviction of the injustice of his sentence and of the preeminence of the eternal values of poetry over the ephemeral dictates of an earthly power. These elegies are throughout informed by Ovid's awareness of and continuing pride in his poetic identity and mission. In technical skill and inventiveness they rank with theArt of Loveor theFasti. This is poetry as accomplished as anything he had written in happier days and demands no less critical respect.

Melville has added another excellent translation of Ovid's poetry to his two earlier renditions--of theMetamorphosesandLove Poems....He has given the reader of whatever background a real taste of the Ovid who has delighted generations of readers....The translation is an unqualified desideratum for anyone who wants to enjoy Ovid's poetry and his frame of mind in his last unhappy years of exile. --Choice