Exulis uox : Epistolography, fiction and exile in Ovid’s Ex Ponto

Abstract

This paper provides a fresh examination of the politics of the epistolary form in Ovid’s Epistulae ex Ponto . The rhetorical tradition of fictional letters in the persona of historical and mythical characters forms an important horizon of expectations for Ovid’s collection. After reviewing the anti-despotic rhetoric of the Greek epistolary corpus and of the narratives of exile in extant letters attributed to Aeschines, Themistocles, Demosthenes and Diogenes, the paper focuses on the relationship between Cicero and Ovid through the perspective of biofiction. In constructing his own exile through a self-edited epistolary medium, Ovid hints at the process through which letter collections — historical and fictional — monumentalise exemplary lives. By writing, collecting and editing his own exilic letters, Ovid invites his readers to construct his persona as possessing the status of Greek and Roman statesmen under the names of whom letters circulated in antiquity. The epistolary framework thus sets up the Ex Ponto as a form of posthumous writing by a living author, highlighting the metaphorical death that is exile.