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Return to Sender: The Rhetoric of Nomina in Ovid's Tristia

1997; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 26; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0048671x00001995

2202-932X

Ellen Oliensis,

Historical and Linguistic Studies

As Betty Rose Nagle has remarked, Ovid's exile poetry deploys proper names within a kind of economy: ‘Ovid immortalises his own name by publicising it and exhorting his friends and readers to keep it alive, and he rewards his friends for actively remembering him by immortalising them, i.e. by putting their names in his poetry.’ What interests me here is the shortcircuiting of this system of exchange within the Tristia . For one of the most striking features of Ovid's first run of exilic elegies is precisely the omission of the names of Ovid's addressees. As Ovid will claim in the poem that opens the Epistulae ex Ponto , it is this omission (along with a change of title) that differentiates the Tristia poems from their successors: inuenies, quamuis non est miserabilis index, non minus hoc illo triste, quod ante dedi. rebus idem, titulo differt; et epistula cui sit non occultato nomine missa docet. ( Ex Pont . 1.1.15-18)