The Year Ovid went into Exile; the Astronomical Importance of Tristia 1.3
The Year Ovid went into Exile; the Astronomical Importance of Tristia 1.3

Summary/Abstract: We adopt the premise that Ovid left Rome to travel to Tomis late in the year 9 CE, This dating runs counter to the general consensus which sees Ovid being exiled in 8 CE. By assuming that all Ovid’s references to the night sky in Tristia 1.3 are intended to be taken literally rather than as decorative flourishes we use the online planetarium, Stellarium, to help us plot the timing of the events that led to Ovid’s departure from Rome in the early morning of 7 December 9 CE. We verify our findings by reference to Ovid’s date of birth and by an astrological investigation of the night sky as it manifests itself on that date. We conclude that it is difficult to argue that Ovid arrived in Romania earlier or later than December 9 CE. This article also has three further agendas, namely to attract attention to (a) the ragged state of our literary texts which are more corrupt than we realise (b) the need to encourage anyone competent in handling the elegiac metre to feel they have a role to play in emending these texts (c) the need to pay more than mere lip-service to the notion of the ’doctus poeta’.

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