This book is presented as an (anonymous) translation of the author’s 1998 Romanian-language Ovidiu la Pontul Euxin (Constanţa, Ex Ponto Publishers). It is unclear whether it is a reprint of the 2002 translation by Laura Treptow (Iaşi, Oxford, Palm Beach and Portland, Center for Romanian Studies), or a new version. Footnotes in the two versions seem to differ in both numbering and content.
Radulescu, as a notable archaeologist and researcher in Romanian prehistory, provides fascinating details about the early history of his home town, modern Constanţa, the former Tomis, locus of the poet Ovid’s banishment. The Preface (pp.7-9) offers a two-pronged rationale for the work: ‘to reconstitute for the reader the small universe of Ovid… [as an] introduction for visitors who come to Constanţa each year’ (p.8). These readers are in for an exciting and rather rough ride. The learned professor’s prose reads like the breathless enthusiasm of guidebooks written in English by authors for whom English is a foreign language. The flowery nature of this handbook may, however, stem from the archaeologist’s own highly enthusiastic Romanian idiolect being faithfully rendered with the aid of a dictionary by another non-native English speaker, and should be discounted as such, in favour of a focus on content.
Seven chapters deal in turn with ‘Tomis and the Black Sea Coast’ (I, pp.11-20), ‘Ovid in Italy’ (II, pp.21-62), ‘Banishment from Rome’ (III, pp.63-75), ‘Voyage from Rome to Tomis’ (IV, pp.77-90, with a map on 76), ‘The Getae and Tomis’ (V, pp.91-139), ‘Post-Ovidian Tomis’ (VI, pp.141-150), and, finally, ‘Ovid and Posterity’ (VII, pp.151-166). A ‘Selected (sic) Bibliography’ (pp.167-173) and an Index of eleven pages (pp.175-86) follow.
Chapter I sketches the geographical and historical background of modern Constanţa, starting with a quasi-lyrical excursus on Ovid the poet as ‘the bard who… sang to the austere souls of the Geto-Dacians’ (p.11). For Radulescu, the exiled Ovid was the first great Romanian poet, inspired by his unique Romanian ambience. The author invites us to ‘look at the heart of Dobrogea, contemporary Constanţa… both to admire its most hidden historical vestiges, but also to listen to the lament of the crystalline echoes rising out of the undulating sea, in their joining with the verses created and spoken by Ovid along its shore.’
The next three chapters treat adequately of the various well-known stages of Ovid’s career, liberally illustrated with extensive quotations. Passages from Ovid are always quoted in both English and Latin, mostly from Loeb. A lack of indentation suppresses the elegiac format of the original Latin verse. Copious quotations from the poet’s own words are presented as factual, as in Radulescu’s interpretation of Tristia 1.1 as straight narrative ‘in a simple style, without any literary ornaments’ (p.117). His further comment on this poem is baffling: ‘Even in this epistolary composition he is exigent with himself’ (p.119). Some of Radulescu’s ‘facts’ are patently erroneous: ‘Ovid also wrote a poem in Greek, entitled Halieutica’ (p.137). This, for Radulescu, proves the thoroughness of Ovid’s education: ‘the poet from Sulmo had acquired a solid education during his studies in Rome, thanks to which he knew how to master the iambuses, the trochees, and the dactyls, but also the elements necessary for scientific study. Halieutica also shows Ovid as a connoisseur of Homer’s language, since he ventured to write a poem in it’ (pp.119-29).
Other literary-critical insights do not offer much that is new, other than the critic’s negative attitude toward the subject matter of Ovid’s love poetry and the ‘frivolity’ of the themes of his venture into epic. Assumptions smacking of the literary-critical no-no of intentionalism abound, such as: ‘These themes confirm the purpose of his work, but they do not annihilate its lyricism, because… this meticulous manual for the use of young people—as Ovid intended it—was written by a poet’ (p.42) and ‘[h]e went on writing mundane poetry, of gallantry, often followed by frivolity, addressed to the aristocratic youth, who would be overcome with joy’ (p.43), or ‘[This was his] effort to make love a common possession of the entire Roman youth, whom he understood profoundly and loved dearly’ (p.37). Radulescu queries and then justifies Ovid’s choice of subject-matter: ‘[I]f today we wonder how it was possible for these opuses (sic) in total disagreement with the interests of the great poet to appear… it was in perfect harmony with the views of the Roman nobility’ (p.46).
The influence of various ancient authors is traceable in Radulescu’s approach to Roman history. Like Suetonius, Radulescu seems to approve whole-heartedly of Augustus’ public approach to morality in his introduction of various marriage laws: ‘Augustus was determined to improve the morals of imperial Rome, especially of the boisterous nobility, beginning with the eradication of decadent behaviour within his own family’ (p.64) and, earlier: ‘In Rome, the aristocracy could no longer recover the virtues of their ancestors’ (p.23). The shadow of Tacitus looms over the author’s startling simplification of reasons for our poet’s continued banishment beyond the death of Augustus, and his sweeping collapse of the years of Tiberius’ reign: ‘[It was the fault of] Livia, who was doing everything in her power to prevent the aging emperor from allowing himself to be overcome by compassion. Although Augustus died, followed by his plotting wife, her son Tiberius came to power, himself also filled with hatred for the exile’ (p.124).
Oversimplification of Roman history prevails throughout, as in ‘Brutus and Cassius were the last fanatical defenders of the decaying senatorial republic’ (p.22); Agrippa was ‘one of the main generals of Augustus’ (p.24, n.12); and ‘aspirants to supreme power… gained nothing but vain glory’ (p.78). Sweeping assumptions often bolster Radulescu’s interpretation of complex issues, such as his comment on the edict banning our poet from Rome without a trial: ‘The edict, seemingly lenient … could only have been conceived of by Livia, the stern wife of the emperor’ (p.66).
Elsewhere, a more nuanced account of the various hypotheses regarding the reasons for Ovid’s banishment occurs, boiling down to three: the publication of the love poetry, complicity in a plot supporting the claims of Agrippa Postumus against those of Tiberius to succeed Augustus, and Ovid’s participation in secret rites connected to the worship of Isis. The dates of the theorists cited in footnotes 81-92 (pp.64-5) range indiscriminately from 1788 to 1947, omitting mention of Thibault’s 1994 compendium of theories listed in the Bibliography.
Other critics’ carefully hedged conjectures are frequently presented as facts. The complex issue of Ovid’s banishment is simplified to ascribing it to ‘the preference of Octavian Augustus for his nephew (sic) Agrippa Postumus, [which] was known to Fabia, Ovid’s wife, who in her turn had learned this secret from her brother, Fabius Maximus” (p.70). Radulescu’s freedom of interpretation of the names and identities of those around Augustus may possibly be ascribed to his acceptance of suggestions by some critics about the relationship of Ovid’s wife to the house of Fabius Maximus. Consistent use of ‘nephew’ and ‘niece’ for Augustus’ grandchildren may perhaps be ascribed to differences in the etymological derivations of Latin nepos in Romanian and English. English ‘nephew’ and ‘niece’ are the children of one’s siblings, whereas, in Romanian, nepot and nepoată may indicate either grandchildren or nephews and nieces. So, invariably, both Juliae, Maior and Minor, are termed Augustus’ ‘nieces’ (pp.70, 71 et passim). The reputed paramour of the latter Julia is given as ‘Julius Silanus’ ‘[whom she] was known to meet at the poet’s house’. In this context, Radulescu mentions and rejects the theory, stated as fact, that Ovid was accused in this instance of pandering. For him the first Romanian poet was too honourable, ‘could not have degraded himself through such a dishonorable practice’ (p.70).
Archaeological and historical matters reappear in the last three chapters, intermingled with aspects of Romanian political history. The author’s Romanian patriotism speaks from statements such as ‘[Ovid would] spend the last eight years of his life amidst a people that he would get to know closely and whose virtues he would glorify through his Latin genius: the Geto-Dacians’ (p.90) and (excusing Ovid’s negative portrayal of the ‘barbarians’ surrounding him) ‘…as the poet was trying to impress and not inform his reader, he limited himself to simple, superficial sketches’ (p.131). This would have served as ‘confirmation of the ethnic continuity of the Romanian people…’ This statement is tempered, however, with the emphatic rider: ‘We repeat, some of Ovid’s information concerning the Getae is not true.’ Non-Romanian literary critics have long since come to the same conclusion.
More satisfactory is, in Radulescu’s fifth and sixth chapters, his extensive overview of the political, military and cultural history of the area, from ancient times through early modern history, to the story of modern Constanţa. This includes Tomitan prehistory as read from archaeological remains (pp.103-9) and the patriotic interest shown by citizens in the Tomitan archaeology of historical and early modern times, including the archaeological confirmation of the identity of Constanţa with ancient Tomis. Detailed discussion of the ethnic makeup of the population of the Dobrogea through the ages includes a good discussion of archaeological finds and theories regarding the etymological origins of the name of Tomis and the traditional names of the indigenous tribes of the area, with an unusual description of later Roman settlers: ‘much later, the Roman tribe joined them’ (p.109). Hence the reader is brought to understand, without explicit comment from the author, that this accounts for the Latin origins of the Romanian language, spelled out more distinctly later: ‘…his name represents the glory of the entire Latin race, and therefore, of the Romanian people as well’ (p.139).
The sixth chapter also covers matters such as the restoration of various monuments, the excitement roused by the discovery of an ornate tomb, taken at first to have been Ovid’s, later discounted (as being from the second of third centuries of the Common Era). Romanian Independence Day (9 May 1877) apparently led to a new awareness of the ethnic continuity of citizens in the area, celebrated by the erection, in the town centre, between 1883 and 1887, of the modern statue of our poet by Ettore Ferrari. The same mould was in 1925 used for the twin ‘Ovid’ in the central square of modern Sulmona in Italy, the poet’s birthplace (p. 166, with illustrations on pages 16 and 165).
Radulescu’s brief Bibliography clearly dates from his 1995 original Romanian work, with sources in Romanian, Italian and French predominant, mostly reflecting mid-twentieth century scholarship, with various excursions into the nineteenth and even eighteenth centuries. The footnotes in this edition of Radulescu’s work vary in content and style. Quotations from Ovid’s Latin in the body of the text are referenced within the text with the normal indication of work, book, poem and verses. The Loeb English translations which precede each excerpt are indicated in footnotes, with ‘Ovid (sic, as author), the name of the work, “translated by…” Harvard University Press, second edition, 1989 p…’ or, if a second citation follows immediately after this, ‘Ibidem, pp…’ Modern commentaries or classical dictionaries written in Romanian are the most common sources of footnoted information, but, frustratingly, these do not all occur in the Bibliography, such as one of Radulescu’s most frequent sources of information, cited for the first time in footnote 46 (p.40), as ‘Anca Balaci, op. cit.’ In some cases such a reference is elaborated by inclusion of the name of a mythological character, such as Medea. In contrast, footnotes identifying various ancient cities or authors or mediaeval ruling dynasties (nn.223-35) are clear and concise, as are most of the various footnotes of Radulescu’s two last chapters.
Readers looking for new critical insights into Ovid’s exilic poetry will be disappointed, but the information Radulescu provides about all aspects of the area to which the unfortunate poet was relegated, is interesting.