L'epifania mancata. L'inno alla Pontica tellus in Ovid. Pont. 3, 1

Prayer and hymn play a significant role in Ovid’s self-portrait as an exul immeritus. By personating the epic-tragic suppliant Ovid draws attention to his figure of living dead, isolated in an alien environment. In addition, Ovid manipulates prayer and hymnic features to praise Augustus as deus praesens. Though in adulatory-apologetic terms, he contributes to the process of deification of the emperor, celebrated as both supreme god and iudex iustus. This paper examines the hymn to the Pontica tellus in Pont. 3.1. 9-28. It demonstrates that Ovid constructs his hymn as a reversed aretalogy, that is, as both a negative eulogy of the natural characteristics of the place of exile and a condemnation of the inhumanity of the infernal place. Significantly, by deconstructing the topoi of traditional theophany, Ovid focuses on the absence of a ‘divined’ nature in the locus horribilis. This deprecatio of the Pontus is also essential to understanding the role of Fabia, Ovid’s wife, in the elegy. By analogy with the place of exile, Fabia is reproached for being insensible to her husband’s destiny. As much as the god refuses to show up his benevolent face to the exile in the Pontus, Fabia has not yet appeared as the long-desired goddess to her husband’s eyes.