Some poems tend more to one extreme than the other. The eleventh poem, a letter of commiseration to Gallio on the death of his wife, is extensively indebted to the genre of the prose letter of consolation; this prose influence is evident in such passages as: finitumque tuum, si non ratione, dolorem ipsa iam pridem suspicor esse mora (13-14) At the opposite extreme is the final poem of the book, a defence of Ovid's poetry; as this was a traditional poetic subject, the level of diction throughout the poem is extremely high, particularly in the catalogue of poets that forms the main body of the poem. An interesting result of the mixture of styles is the presence in the poems of exile of words and expressions which belong essentially to prose, being otherwise rarely or never found in verse. Some instances from _Ex Ponto_ IV are _ad summam_ (i 15), _conuictor_ (iii 15), _abunde_ (viii 37), _ex toto_ (viii 72), _di faciant_ (ix 3), _secreto_ (ix 31), _respectu_ (ix 100), _quominus_ (xii 1), _praefrigidus_ (xii 35), and _tantummodo_ (xvi 49). Both in subject and style the sixteen poems of _Ex Ponto_ IV show a wide variety, worthy of the creator of the _Metamorphoses_. The following section examines the special characteristics of each of the poems. The letters to Sextus Pompeius Sextus Pompeius is the recipient of poems i, iv, v, and xv; only Cotta Maximus and Ovid's wife have more letters from exile addressed to them. It is clear from the opening of IV i that Pompeius had himself prohibited Ovid from addressing him; and Ovid is careful to present himself as a client rather than a friend; the tone is of almost abject humility, and he shows circumspection in his requests for assistance. In the opening of the first poem, Ovid describes how difficult it had been to prevent himself from naming Pompeius in his verse; in the climactic ten lines he declares that he is entirely Pompeius' creation. Only in the transition between the topics does he refer to future help from Pompeius, linking it with the assistance he is already providing: nunc quoque nil subitis clementia territa fatis auxilium uitae fertque feretque meae. (25-26)