Rome brings Ovid in from the cold after 2,000 years

MORE than 2,000 years after he was banished to the edge of the empire, the city of Rome has formally revoked the exile of Ovid, the poet.

A prolific writer renowned for his Metamorphoses and The Art of Love, Ovid was exiled by the Augustus to a remote town on the coast of the Black Sea, in what is today Romania, in AD8. He remained there until his death, never seeing Italy again.

He found life there uncouth and uncomfortable, sending endless pleas to the emperor asking to be allowed to return to Rome.

The reasons for his banishment are one of the great mysteries of ancient literature – the poet himself attributed it to “carmen et error” (“a poem and a mistake”). No one has confirmed what he meant, but scholars have speculated that his indiscretion was linked to the adultery of the emperor’s granddaughter, banished at the same time.

A motion to officially revoke the exile order was approved by Rome city council on Thursday. It was put forward to mark the 2,000th anniversary of the poet’s death, in AD17, by politicians from the Five Star Movement, the anti-establishment party that has shaken up Italy’s political landscape in the last five years.

They said they wanted to “repair the serious wrong suffered by Ovid by revoking the order with which the emperor sent him into exile in Tomis” (modern-day Constanta).

It is not the first time that contemporary Italians have issued a pardon or apology for a famous historical figure.

Last year, the hilltop town of Gubbio in Umbria asked forgiveness for playing a part in the persecution and exile in 1302 of Dante, Italy’s most celebrated poet and the author of The Divine Comedy.

Gubbio’s apology followed a similar gesture by Florence, which in 2008 declared it was sorry for exiling the poet.