“I Attack Not Him”: The Rhetorical Treatment and Political Issue of (Not) Naming the Enemy in Ovid’s Last Works

Abstract:The texts written on the shores of the Black Sea reveal to us in a crucial way the challenge represented by the free speech of which Ovid himself claims to have made excessive use. Ovid grapples with this issue in his treatment of an enemy’s name in the works of relegatio, where he affirms the primacy of language over the political meaning. But the force of poetry multiplies the political impact, for what is then boldly expressed is the invincible independence of a work that stands up—first to one princeps and then to another.