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. This is a new translation of the five books of Tristia (Sorrows) which express his reaction to this savage and, as he clearly regarded it, unjust sentence. The title of the Tristia belies them: 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. Both directly and, as befitted the Roman Callimachus, allusively, Ovid repeatedly asserts, often with a wit and irony that borders on defiance, his conviction of the injustice of his sentence and of the pre-eminence of the eternal values of poetry over the ephemeral dictates of an earthly power. These elegies are informed throughout by Ovid's awareness of, and continuing pride in, his poetic identity and mission. In technical skill and inventiveness they rank with the Art of Love or the Fasti. This is poetry as accomplished as anything he wrote in happier days and which demands no less critical respect.
Reviews
'Melville has added another excellent translation of Ovid's poetry to his two earlier renditions ... He has used the same elegiac rhythm that he employed in the Love Poems and has rendered Ovid's elegiac couplets into graceful and flowing English. This 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.' B.N. Quinn, Mount Holyoke College, Choice, Apr '93
'I am happy to repeat my enthusiastic endorsement of the earlier translations.' Greece and Rome, October 1993
'The introduction is incisive and lucid and conveys the salient facts and mysteries - of Ovid's exile, his attitudes and his poetic technique in a very brief compass with exemplary skill.' John Godwin, Shrewsbury School, JACT Review
'an elegant analogue to Ovid's studied cadences ... The result is a sometimes stately, sometimes jauntily rendering that is good at conveying the emotional distance Ovid's art often contrives as well as its frequent touches of affecting simplicity. Extra touches, maps and a 'Glossary and Index to Names', help to make this volume an attractive introduction.' D.M. Hooley, University of Missouri-Columbia, The Classical Review, Volume XLIII, No. 2, 1993
This new translation is jaunty with a bouncing rhythm * Sunday Telegraph *
a sober and accurate translation of the Tristia in English rhymed verse, with notes calculated to help the general reader but not to confuse him...this work deserves popularity...the book is beautifully produced. * Gnomon 66(1994) *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198147923
Author Ovid
Format Hardback
Page Count 206
Imprint Clarendon Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Dimensions(mm) 224mm * 144mm * 18mm