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).