I have known Rob Morrow for twenty-one years, and he has touched every aspect of my life. The study of Latin poetry is a field of endeavour far removed from his usual interests: but even here he has made an important contribution in the work he did in scanning the original typescript, and in his continuing encouragement and support during the months I worked on creating this digital edition. It is to him, with deep affection and gratitude, that I dedicate this edition. INTRODUCTION In AD 8, when he was fifty years of age, Ovid was abruptly banished from Rome to Tomis, an exile from which he never returned. In his poetry from exile, he gives two reasons for the banishment: the publication of the _Ars Amatoria_, and an unnamed error (_Tr_ II 207; _EP_ III iii 71-72)[1]. The _Ars Amatoria_ had been published some years previously, being generally dated on the basis of _AA_ I 171-72 to 2 BC or shortly thereafter; compare _Tr_ II 545-46. The error was clearly the real cause of the banishment; what precisely this _error_ was Ovid does not reveal, but it appears from _Tr_ II 103-4 and _Tr_ III v 49-50 to have been the witnessing of some action that was embarrassing to the imperial family. Beyond this nothing is known, for Ovid was careful to avoid compounding his original mistake by mentioning what it consisted of. [Footnote 1: The evidence for Ovid's _error_ and the many theories advanced to explain it are gathered and fully discussed in J. C. Thibault's _The Mystery of Ovid's Exile_ (Berkeley: 1964).] The catastrophe which befell Ovid did not put an end to his poetic activity; from the eight or nine years of his exile we possess a corpus of elegiac verse that substantially exceeds in bulk the combined production of Tibullus and Propertius. The first work produced by Ovid was book I of the _Tristia_. Although it is perhaps not literally true that Ovid wrote much of the poetry on shipboard (_Tr_ I xi 3-10), all of the poems are directly related to the circumstances of his downfall and his journey to exile; and it is reasonable to suppose that the book was published shortly after Ovid's arrival in Tomis. In his first poems from exile, Ovid had attempted to engage the sympathy of the public on his behalf; his next production was a direct appeal to Augustus in the 578-line elegiac poem that comprises the second book of the _Tristia_. The poem is written with Ovid's usual clarity and elegance, but its failure to secure his recall is not surprising. The poem deals only with the publication of the _Ars Amatoria_, which was not the true cause of the exile; and rather than admitting his guilt and appealing to Augustus' clemency, Ovid tactlessly argues that Augustus had been wrong to exile him.