The Epistula ex Ponto III 1 composed by Ovid to his wife in the 2nd period of his relegatio
is the summary of the leitmotives of his exile poetry and lacks a recent accurate analysis.
This linguistic-philological commentary the most updated and comprehensive available since the
1965 Staffhorst's one reveals dense intertextual connections with the author's other writings
with the previous Latin love poetry and the ways of the Ciceronian and Horatian decorum by
underlining an articulated literary dialogue that in the recovery of the original mournful
connotation of ancient elegy employs also typically tragic contents and styles. The request to
the wife to intercede with Livia is modelled according to the structural and conceptual modules
of the suasoria around the main theme of conjugal fides and includes the consideration of
historic and sociological themes (such as the wife's figure and her play in the imperial
society the relationships of the intellectual person with power towards the end of the
Augustan principality and the increasing importance of the role of the empress during the last
years of the princeps' life).
