{"product_id":"the-poems-of-exile-tristia-and-the-black-sea-letters-9780520242609","title":"The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters","description":"In the year A.D. 8, Emperor Augustus sentenced the elegant, brilliant, and sophisticated Roman poet Ovid to exile--permanently, as it turned out--at Tomis, modern Constantza, on the Romanian coast of the Black Sea. The real reason for the emperor's action has never come to light, and all of Ovid's subsequent efforts to secure either a reprieve or, at the very least, a transfer to a less dangerous place of exile failed. Two millennia later, the agonized, witty, vivid, nostalgic, and often slyly malicious poems he wrote at Tomis remain as fresh as the day they were written, a testament for exiles everywhere, in all ages. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe two books of the \u003ci\u003ePoems of Exile, \u003c\/i\u003ethe \u003ci\u003eLamentations (Tristia) \u003c\/i\u003eand the \u003ci\u003eBlack Sea Letters (Epistulae ex Ponto), \u003c\/i\u003echronicle Ovid's impressions of Tomis--its appalling winters, bleak terrain, and sporadic raids by barbarous nomads--as well as his aching memories and ongoing appeals to his friends and his patient wife to intercede on his behalf. While pretending to have lost his old literary skills and even to be forgetting his Latin, in the \u003ci\u003ePoems of Exile \u003c\/i\u003eOvid in fact displays all his virtuoso poetic talent, now concentrated on one objective: ending the exile. But his rhetorical message falls on obdurately deaf ears, and his appeals slowly lose hope. A superb literary artist to the end, Ovid offers an authentic, unforgettable panorama of the death-in-life he endured at Tomis.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePeter Green\u003c\/b\u003e is Dougherty Centennial Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin and Adjunct Professor of Classics at the University of Iowa.He is the author of many books, including \u003ci\u003eAlexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography \u003c\/i\u003e(California, 1991) and \u003ci\u003eAlexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age\u003c\/i\u003e (California, 1990).His translations include \u003ci\u003eJuvenal: The Sixteen Satires\u003c\/i\u003e (third edition, 1998) and \u003ci\u003eApollonios Rhodios: The Argonautika \u003c\/i\u003e(California, 1997).\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University of California Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51648743538962,"sku":"9780520242609","price":38.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_4475dd42-0e0d-4ab0-a1bf-44ee5ddc8008.jpg?v=1759833010","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-poems-of-exile-tristia-and-the-black-sea-letters-9780520242609","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}