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217 pages

English

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This intelligent, intriguing historical novel weaves together both fact and fiction, bringing the world of the controversial Latin poet Ovid to vivid life. A great book for everybody, including students in Roman history.It is the year 14 CE. Emperor Augustus dies without pardoning Ovid, Rome's darling, whom he banished to the border of the Roman Empire for reasons comprehensible but never named. Ovid is now deserted by his protecting innocence, forced to question life, the absurdity of success and the horror of failure. He must reinvent himself and change more profoundly than the characters of his acclaimed Metamorphoses, if he and his poems are to survive.Ovid's journey out of exile, be it along the edge of the known world where he enters places alien even to his imagination, or in Rome where he can no longer recognise the people he used to know, transforms him into a man who is no more obsessed with his own mortality, but accepts the consequences of his own choices. He refuses to be anyone's scapegoat, confronts friends and enemies, and finally decides to write for posterity rather than glory. Carefully researched, this novel is based on fact blended with unconventional theories about the strange and mythical places of this ancient world, including the western shore of the Black Sea and the Lower Danube. Michael Solomon travelled through the places described on Ovid's journey, including Ovid's birthplace, Sulmona, the city surrounded by the impressive Abruzzi Mountains, seeking these landscapes that might be the same today as they have been two thousand years ago and which inspired the man and ultimately this book.

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Historical fiction

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 avril 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783068029
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0100€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Ovid, the Augustan Scapegoat
Michael Solomon
Copyright 2013 Michael Solomon The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador 9 Priory Business Park Kibworth Beauchamp Leicestershire LE8 0RX, UK Tel: ( 44) 116 279 2299 Fax: ( 44) 116 279 2277 Email: books@troubador.co.uk Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
ISBN 9781783068029
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
Contents
Prologue
Part One: The Gate
1. Expecting the unknown
2. Orange powder for everything
3. High treason: the price for freedom
4. Keep Ovid alive
5. Same poison in different quantities
6. The unimaginable life without patron
7. Nowhere people are what they seem to be
8. Knowing doesn t mean understanding
9. Scapegoat by choice
10. When no one can win
11. Escape an unpleasant reality
12. Learning to let go
13. Rehearsing luck
14. Missing to test eternity
15. A veil of justice
16. Family support
17. You will die many times
18. Freedom in lust
19. Writing as vehicle
20. Facing fears
21. Which grove?
22. Farewell to a son
23. Wine, the reliable friend
24. An offer one can only refuse
25. Provincial politics
26. Re-casting the battle of the gods
27. When darkness falls
28. Age meets youth
29. The way princesses love
30. A spiritual Sisyphus
31. Jealousy
32. The soldier, the poet and the boys
33. The messenger of death
34. Unwanted help
35. Ovid s first poem in Gaetic
36. Banished from exile
Part Two: Okeanos, the Great River of the North
1. At the border of the known world
2. Experiencing freedom
3. The crossroad
4. Two obols
5. Preparing for Halloween
6. The crossing
7. An outpost of Hyperborea
8. Preparing a scapegoat
9. Ibis, the bird
10. The council
11. The Eleusian smoke
12. The sacred shed
13. The end of the old self
14. Fire follows water
15. The ship Argos
16. The missed flight
17. About learning
18. Under the deck
19. The power of denial
20. The king of Dacia
21. The shortcut over the mountain
22. The Iron Gates
23. The Herculaneum
24. The fugitive
25. Vestalis
26. Prisoners
27. The stairs to Rome
Part Three: Home, finally
1. The spymaster
2. The outlaw
3. Sejanus
4. Condemned to life
5. Friend Cotta
6. Discovering Rome
7. In search of continuity
8. The publisher
9. Io Saturnalia
10. A place to know all things
11. The Triple Mother Goddess
12. The women of his life
13. The plots
14. Roman fog
15. The way home
16. Saving the Julians
17. Knowing more than a priest
18. The other son of Ibis
19. Corinna
20. The mirror
21. The art of freedom
Instead of Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Prologue
The Palatine Hill, Rome, September, AD 8
Ovid s entire attention, as he climbed the Hill towards Augustus palace, was directed to the pigeons as they took flight. If he didn t believe that taking the auspices was a fraud, he would have tried to read in the pigeons behaviour and their low-pitched screams whether or not his meeting with the Emperor would be a total disaster.
How could these birds be allowed to excrete their filth any and everywhere unobstructed? They might be permitted to shit on the golden Civic Crown over the Imperial gateway, but not on his toga. That had to remain as immaculate as his reputation.
He gave his name to the guards and was invited to pass in front of the morning queue of hopeless petitioners who waited outside Augustus palace.
One lictor in front, another too close behind, took him through a sequence of obscure corridors to a hall with staring statues of frowning old men lined up along the walls - Augustus reception room.
You wait the lictors said in unison, as if Ovid had a choice.
The discomfort was not produced by the lifeless glorious men of Rome, with whom he shared their apparent dislike of being there, but by intermittent waves of rosewood fragrance, the distinctive mark of Augustus spymaster, Ovid s personal enemy, the one he referred to in his poems as Ibis.
Instead of a lictor announcing Augustus, a soft-footed servant made his presence known. Ovid was awaited in the study. This was bad news. Few had been asked there and, afterwards, nobody spoke of it - as though having visited the Elysian Mysteries.
He entered the room and all thought was interrupted by the most unexpected sight: a laurel tree, full grown and enormous, for which the ceiling above had been removed so the branches grew freely through the upper floor and reached just below the roof.
He felt a painful feeling in his chest, which shortened his breath. He recalled when he had entered for the first time Livia s underground garden room in her villa in Prima Porta. How similar and yet different these two bastards were Both needed to be in the middle of nature and, because, not being able to control it, they feared it, they either falsified it - Livia - or encaged it - Augustus.
Spare your greetings and don t bother second guessing the symbols of that tree. Let s get down to business.
Reclined on a couch in front of it, the most powerful man of Rome had not missed any of his guest s reactions to the tree.
The introduction sounded lethal, as were most private businesses with the Emperor, who continued. I shall not ask you to betray any of your friends to lessen your sentence. They have already confessed more than I wanted to hear. You should have nothing of interest to offer. Or do you?
Ovid raised timidly the scroll he carried. My latest poem. To you.
The last time I was really interested in your poems was when I forbade them. Augustus made a sound that Ovid could have been foolhardy enough to think was laughter.
You have three choices. Augustus seemed like a judge deliberating within himself between the inconvenience of perpetual imprisonment and the value of the death sentence.
First choice is obvious. You can kill yourself and since you don t believe in afterlife, there is nothing to fear. In Rome, your dignity and your books are saved. You ll have a grand funeral.
This I don t need to consider , decided Ovid.
The second involves a public trial. You will be found guilty of conspiring against Rome s morality and exiled somewhere on a Greek island. Your properties will be confiscated and you will lose everything but your life.
That option was not so bad. Nobody could take away his estate, which had been guaranteed by Caesar to his great-grandfather after they fought together against Pompey; and exile had never been forever, with the exception of the few unlucky ones who were poisoned or died from ill health.
Where in Greece?
Forget Greece You d better choose suicide. Can you imagine yourself without means, without your citizen s rights, your books forbidden? Here is the third option.
Writing a stupid ode again , thought Ovid, but tempered the impulse to display his foresight.
At the Black Sea. The only thing you will miss is Rome.
Ovid felt he was suspended over a bottomless ravine, neither falling nor being able to fly away. Where at the Black Sea? His voice was too weak to carry.
Augustus took a long breath, as if absorbing pleasant memories. Tomis. The port in front of the island where Achilles was buried. There is no other better place on Earth for any human to get transformed. You should feel not worried but blessed.
You chase me outside the Empire? Ovid asked.
Wasn t crossing boundaries one of your many talents and obsessions?
Ovid wished he had heard scorn in Augustus voice so he could challenge him. Should my exile be a voyage to learn the meaning of life?
You may leave the gods alone and write your own metamorphosis. Augustus began to dust the leaves with the sleeve of his tunic.
The foliage caught unexpected sun rays and a sensation of a green-gold shower dropping from the ceiling overwhelmed Ovid. The symbol of the tree he believed he had understood earlier had vanished. It was no more a love tree. Nothing remained of the transformed maiden Daphne after her refusal to be raped by Apollo - Augustus god patron; it no longer stood for chastity, though perhaps still explained Augustus unyielding stance to any form of promiscuity - except his own.
Now the laurel resembled Augustus - encaged and fake.
How long do I need to stay there? The question was as good as any to keep the conversation going. Did the Emperor say seven years?
I ll have a branch of this tree dipped in gold for the temple on the island of Leuke. Give the high priest my regards. T h e laurel shivered, as if warning Ovid that being cynical could cost more than his life. He deliberately performed a show of sniffing the presence of his enemy s perfume in the room.
What false charge against me has Ibis provided again?
Ignore the fragrance. Augustus became impatient, a sure sign that the audience was coming to an end and Ovid was lost.
Where is the parrot? He forgot all prudence.
Augustus did not seem either surprised or offended by the allusion to the pet of the one woman he, Ibis and Ovid had in common - Corinna. He said, You finally got it. By the calends of the month, my guards will come to fetch you. He glanced at Ovid. Obviously, if you haven t cut your vein by then.
Ovid had to ask, Will I continue to be published in Rome?
Without you around, Rome will change for the better. Gods willing.
And if