Night Falls on Ovid

by Julie O'Rourke

Editor’s note: The poet Ovid was forced into exile from Rome on the order of Emperor Augustus. The year was 8CE, and Ovid was 68 years old. He made his way to the  city of Tomis on the Black Sea at the very edge of the empire. Ovid repeatedly asked for clemency, but was never allowed to return. Ovid's offense, described in his own words as “worse than murder and more harmful than poetry,”  was never disclosed.  

Julie's translation/interpretation is from a Latin document that some scholars believe was written by Seneca, Ovid’s younger contemporary.

In the weeks leading up to his arrest and sentencing, rumours circulated about the City: the old man was fuming, he was after blood, someone would atone for his embarrassment. Even the poet heard stories he shouldn’t have.

When the sentence was delivered, he was given eight hours to attend to his affairs, pack his bags, say his farewells and depart. Those hours passed in frenetic activity; things were hurled into crates, loans called in, patrons and clients summarily dismissed. Like all men in crisis, part of his mind stood aloof, waiting for the joke to be revealed, waiting for time to slow down to its quotidian pace...for the reprieve. Another part of his mind argued with the disbelieving part and harried the panic: the part that preserves skin at any cost.

The hot afternoon closed, taking the swollen sun to deserving rest, washing the cares of the day from its radiance in the soothing waters of the river of dreams, of sleep and renewal: Tethys.

Ovid had one minute to note the brilliant moon arching into the sky like the back of a snowy sacrificial bull, rising to join the gamboling lambs who drink the nectar of the milky night. Time frozen in starlight.

For years after he remembered that teetering moment between banishment and home, day and night, citizen and exile.