A CRITICAL APPRECIATION OF HEROIDES 1.47-90 AND TRISTIA 2.353-80.

The Heroides and Tristia may be compared in the context of exile. The heroines have been abandoned by their heroes. They are in effect exiled from the preferable state of marriage just as Ovid is exiled from Rome. These passages find a further convergence in their Homeric references and the destabilizations of them. I shall go on to explore these in my close reading of the texts. Ladies first. Ovid begins his Heroides with a missive from one of the most famous women in Greek mythology. Penelope has long been heralded a ‘paragon of wifely devotion’, often counterpoised with Clytemnestra and Helen, the infamous husband killer and adulterous respectively. Ovid’s choice to have her at the forefront of his disgruntled heroines suggests that Penelope did not bare the twenty-year absence of her husband as stoically as the Homeric legend suggests.

There are brief moments in the Odyssey where Homer shows Penelope struggling with her ordeal (XXI). But there it is all weeping and little resentment. Ovidian Penelope’s letter opens with the retributive phrase ‘tardy Ulysses’ (1) and talks of ‘the price she has paid for victory’ (5). The reader is immediately aware of a reproachful tone that was lacking from Ovid’s ‘source text’. To turn to the passage in question we see that the first ten lines are dedicated to a retelling of Iliad X. Penelope is careful to emphasize Ulysses’ isolation. The fact that he accomplished his mission ‘with only one man to help’ (53), and the repeated use of the singular ‘you’ and its derivatives enhances our awareness of Ulysses as a man alone.

This is juxtaposed with Penelope’s reference to herself and Telemachus as ‘your own’ (49) as if his family is, or should be, a physical part of the hero. She then employs sarcasm with, ‘you were careful, I’m sure, always to think first of me’ (53-54). The significance of these lines can be found in her use of the word ‘careful’, which Ulysses clearly hasn’t been in this episode, attacking so many with little support was a gamble. The ‘I’m sure’ aside reads as cynical and betrays rather a belief that she was not thought of. She then emphasizes that a man’s wife should be his ‘first’ thought and yet Penelope feels that cannot be the case with Ulysses because he has stayed away for so long when the other heroes have returned (31ff). Ovid has taken a grand Homeric episode and undermined its glory by highlighting the effect it has had on an indirect victim of heroic pursuits. Epic leaves lovers in the wake of its quest for a glorious end.

Many of the single Heroides tell the same story, women abandoned and neglected because the hero no longer requires their help to achieve kleos. By transferring Penelope from an epic text to an elegiac one Ovid creates new scope for expression, giving voice to feelings that were irrelevant in their previous context. This destabilization of the epic version of the story continues with Penelope’s declaration that Troy was ‘defeated for other women,/for me it still thrives’ (62-63).

This emphasizes the selfishness of the hero in his pursuit of personal glory; he does not care about the cost to others. The Iliad epitomizes this with Achilles refusing to fight despite the massive Greek losses; he is not at Troy for the Greeks, but for his own glory. Penelope implies the Trojan defeat was pointless and so dismisses one of Ulysses’s greatest achievements. This is not the Homeric Penelope, an exemplary wife, but perhaps the Ovidian Penelope is a more realistic woman.

By telling a story of war from a lover’s point of view one could argue that Ovid is commenting on soldiering as a pursuit. Having rejected a life of public duty himself in favor of ‘decadence and devotion’, a topos of Roman elegy, Ovid could be saying that a life of war is not conducive with love and marriage. Augustus was keen to encourage marriage yet he also wanted soldiers to expand and maintain his empire. By pointing out a contradiction between marriage and war Ovid subtly signals a floor in Augustus’s regime. There is a glaring deviation from the Homeric text when Penelope claims that she ‘sent word to Nestor’ (75).

Homer tells us that Telemachus planned his trip without his mother’s knowledge. Ovid shifts the onus of the journey from Telemachus’s quest for manhood to Penelope’s desperation for news of her husband. Here Ovid illustrates a contention between the strong woman commanding the situation and the helpless rejected wife. Mary H. T. Davisson points out that in some cases ‘our own knowledge of tradition invites us to reject an example offered by a speaker’. Our knowledge of Homer causes us to immediately disbelieve Penelope’s claim and shatter her illusion of control. There is a certain element of pathos if one reads this as a self-delusion on her part that the reader is guilty of crushing.

Sara H. Lindheim points out that Penelope’s letter may ‘create the illusion of communicating with [Ulysses]’. But her epistolary form is unfulfilled because a letter only forms one half of a dialogue, and since she does not receive a reply, her communication is ineffective. While Penelope has the power to manipulate the telling of events in her written communiqué Lindheim also points out that, ‘the men in Heroides 1 all communicate orally and are, in sharp contrast to Penelope, successful in conveying information’. She ‘sends’ Telemachus to gather information from Pylos and Sparta and he is successful. But the only way Penelope can come to know this news is by Telemachus telling her. This contrasts with her active attempt at communication that consists of giving strangers ‘letters meant for [Ulysses]’ (74) on the off chance that they may meet him on their travels. This is of course fruitless and so her letters are futile.

Ovid creates the illusion of empowering his heroines by giving them a voice that is often absent from epic. Howard Jacobson sees Heroides 1 ‘as a conscious attempt to free the character of Penelope from the shackles which constrained it’. But Lindheim has argued that Penelope remains as close to ‘the textual margins’ here as in Homer’s epic. As the addressee, Ulysses is central to Penelope’s discourse. Ten lines are dedicated to one of his Trojan exploits, the rest of the passage berates him for ‘loitering in some foreign place’ (71) and talks of the effects he has had on his wife. Penelope is a woman subject to the actions of her husband, reacting to him rather than forging her own path. She is at the mercy of Ulysses, who has technically exiled her from him by remaining absent, just as Ovid is at the mercy of Augustus in his own exile. This passage of Tristia 2 begins with ‘my morals, believe me, are quite distinct from my verses’. As if this were not adequately transparent the relagatus reiterates his point: ‘A book is no index of character’ (357). It seems that Ovid is expecting his addressee, Augustus, not to grasp his meaning without much elaboration.

It is also interesting to note that while claiming the Ars ‘is no index of character’ Ovid is attempting to exonerate himself through this book. He expects people to judge his character from the Tristia instead. Why does Ovid contradict himself here? Perhaps he is playing with Augustus, indirectly saying that his apology is as false as the poetry. The relagatus goes on to mention poets of other genres and somewhat ridiculously suggest that if he is to be accused of adultery because he writes amatory elegy then ‘all war-poets must be firebrands’ (360). This is laughable and makes the exile of a poet on the grounds of immoral poetry seem ludicrous. Ovid goes on to emphasize the ‘fictive’ (355) nature of his amatory poetry, as if this had not hitherto been clear, a reality that an intelligent reader would have discerned immediately. Ovid is doubly cheeky at this point. In proclaiming his innocence of adultery he has just claimed, ‘never/has a breath of scandal touched my name’ (349-50).

This may be viewed as a jibe at Augustus, whom had Livia divorce her first husband when she was pregnant and marry him, and his family, Julia’s exploits were well known. So in a poem addressed to the emperor Ovid has, in a short space, damned both his morality and his intelligence. As a plea for leniency this poem poses problems. ‘Augustus’s literary sensibility is also held up to almost open ridicule when’ Ovid launches into a list of his raunchy predecessors. Sappho was considered the leading female writer yet she taught ‘passion’ (365) and ‘remained unscathed’ (366).

Callimachus was the forefather of Roman elegy; note that Ovid mentions his ‘frequent affairs’ (367, my italicisation) that ‘did you no harm at all’ (368). If these other poets are not offending Augustus then why has he punished Ovid? Menander wrote bawdy plays that are taught ‘in schools’ (370); a point brought home by the relagatus saying ‘boys and girls alike’, signaling an innocent and potentially corruptible audience. Yet Augustus condones the work of these poets. An astute reader cannot help but question whether we can believe that the Ars Amatoria would constitute a plausible reason for exile. We know that this was only half the reason for Ovid’s expulsion from Rome; there was also an error that is only mentioned briefly and never explicitly disclosed.

One may wonder if perhaps the carmen offence was a factor because Ovid so deliberately undermined Augustus in his Ars, flying in the face of the emperors family reforms of 18BC. Or, perhaps more shrewdly, was it simply fabricated to detract attention from the ‘real’ reason for Ovid’s exile? These are questions that cannot be answered as the error remains a mystery, but Ovid seems to encourage us to wonder. It must be noted that this is not the only point in Tristia 2 that Ovid compares his own poetry and subsequent treatment with that of other poets. 2.427-67 sees a long discussion of the other Roman elegists, ‘you’ll find identical instructions/in seductive Propertius: yet no hint of disgrace/ever touched him’ (465-67). Ovid does not halt the comparison with other amatory poets; Homer and Virgil are in constant reference throughout the Tristia.

 The former is the most respected poet of all time and Virgil is referred to as ‘the fortunate author of your own Aeneid’ (533), clearly favored by the emperor. Yet the latter composed a ‘union of illicit love’ (536) within his commissioned epic and Homer apparently bases his whole corpus on adultery. Yet both are revered. The relagatus reduces the Iliad to a story of ‘an adulteress, battled over/by husband and lover’ (371-72); one cannot help but see similarities with the Amores here. Not only does he trivialize this epic plot but he also recalls the Ars, the poem that caused offence, in which the preceptor absolves Helen of guilt and rather blames Menelaus for leaving her with Paris (1.361-372). Rather than justifying himself Ovid almost seems to be compounding his offence. Yet this is in the midst of his list of authors of similarly salacious works so why should he not emphasize a point that has not been considered inappropriate when written by other pens? Achilles’s menis is the focal point of the Iliad yet Ovid rather centralises ‘Briseïs’s seizure’ (373).

While this was the catalyst, Achilles’s real problem was Menelaus’s lack of respect. The relagatus then turns to the Odyssey and highlights what may have been viewed by many as a subplot, the suitors’ striving for Penelope’s hand, as the driving force of the epic. There is a case to be made for this point, it is Ulysses’s love for his wife that drives him home and it is by killing her suitors that he re-establishes his powers on Ithaca. Perhaps Ovid is attempting to justify his amatory works by aligning it with the Odyssey, and its pervasive respect.

As in Heroides 1 Ovid poses a refocusing of Homer’s text that brings the Greek’s epic matter into the sphere of elegy. This may be viewed either as a reduction of epic scale or an elevation of elegy. Epic was the only really accepted poetic pursuit in Ovid’s Rome, other forms were simply considered frivolous. Yet the relagatus highlights that epic has its roots in the same subject matter as elegy. The question here is why should Ovid be condemned while Homer is admired? Augustus respects epic, even though the Iliad is based on the theft of a woman, and adultery that he has tried to discourage.

In fact, one may see that Rome is also mythically founded on the theft of women in the case of the Sabines. Ovid reveals inconsistencies in Augustus’s morals and regime. The relagatus’s next example is that of Venus and Mars’s affair. Through the Aeneid Augustus attempts to trace his family line back to Venus. Mars was also the father of Romulus and Remus. The emperor must be proud of his adulterous heritage, yet he condemns Ovid for extolling adultery in his ‘fictive’ poetry. These repeated snide comments on Augustus’s behavior seem out of place in a poem addressed to the emperor himself.

Gareth Williams argues that the Tristia is ‘a form of commentary on the ‘real’ nature and limitations of Augustan rule; each plea to the emperor is a test of his legend’. Both Penelope and the relagatus undermine the reputations of the men who have exiled them. She elucidates the cost of Ulysses’s selfish pursuit of kleos, while he highlights the contradictions in Augustus’s morals and actions. These are the somewhat vindictive reactions of the helpless exile that cannot communicate orally because of their distance from the addressee. The pen is the only instrument of power they have access to. But as Penelope’s letters never reaches Ulysses and the relagatus is never reprieved the power is an illusion and the writing futile.

Word count: 2733 Bibliography Davisson, Mary H. T., ‘‘Quid Moror Exemplis’?: Mythological ‘Exempla’ in Ovid’s Pre-Exilic Poems and the Elegies from Exile’ in Pheonix, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Autumn, 1993) Hardie, Philip (ed.)The Cambridge Companion to Ovid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) Homer, The Iliad, tr. Lattimore (Chicago University Press 1951) Homer, The Odyssey, tr. Shewring (Oxford University Press 1980) Jacobson, Howard, Ovid’s Heroides (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1974) Lindheim, Sara H., Mail and Female: Epistolary Narrative and Desire in Ovid’s Heroides (Madison, Wisconsin; London: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2003) Ovid, Heroides and Amores, tr. Grant Showerman (London: Heinemann, 1914) Ovid, Sorrows of an Exile 2.353, tr. A. D. Melville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) Ovid, The Love Poems, tr. Melville A. D. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) Virgil, The Aeneid, tr. Jackson Knight, W. F. (London: 1958)