Ovid's Triumphs in Exile

Exile provides a situation of extreme separation between author and reader, poet, and addressee. Ovid returns to the semiotic issues he explored in the Heroides in his exile poetry. The triumph in particular is a locus for him to examine the extent to which presence is necessary to performative felicity. He concludes that his imagination is such that he neither needs to witness such a performance nor that it even needs to take place for him to be able to offer an accurate description. His own situation uncannily resembles that of Augustus, whose runs the empire through delegation: both can be present where they are not through representation. Writing and absence have advantages that compensate for his misfortune.

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