Pedro Schmidt, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

“The flowless river: the Danube in Ovid’s Tristia“

In Ovid’s Tristia (c. 9 – 12 CE), the river Danube occurs in seven poems (2; 3.10; 3.12; 4.10; 5.1; 5.7; 5.10). Throughout the collection, the river is repeatedly described as a frozen and inert watercourse, and this representation enacts an opposition not only to other rivers referred to in the Tristia, such as the Nile, the Tiber and the Rhine, but also with the concept of the natural flux of rivers. In addition, the Ovidian Danube is unable to function as a clear frontier between Roman lands and the “barbaric” tribes (the Getae and the Sarmatians), since its frozen surface allows hostile invaders to cross it by foot. Thus, by not flowing and by not functioning as frontier, the Danube seems an anti-river, in the same way Tomis and the Pontic region are an anti-Rome in the perspective of the exiled elegiac persona. Furthermore, the image of the frozen river also conveys, in a metaphorical way, the condition of the poetic persona and his new phase, and thus supports the general affection or pose of a decadent poet. The use of intertextual and metapoetic markers in these passages also points to the various levels of meaning of the representation of the Danube, evoking a river which not only express the margins of the Roman empire and culture, but also functions as a literary channel between Ovid and his poetic predecessors.

Short Bibliography

Braund, D. 1996. River frontiers in the environmental psychology of the Roman world. In: D. Kennedy (ed.), The Roman army in the east. Ann Arbor.

Campbell, B. 2012. Rivers and the Power of Ancient Rome. Chapel Hill.

Jones, P. 2005. Reading Rivers in Latin Literature and Culture. Lanham.

Östenberg, I. 1999. Demonstrating the conquest of the world: the procession of peoples and rivers on the shield of Aeneas and the triple triumph of Octavian in 29 B.C. (Aen. 8,722-728). Opuscula Romana 24: 155-62.

Purcell, N. 2012. Rivers and the geography of power. Pallas 90: 373-87.