Tuticanus and his Secret: Hypothetical Considerations (Ovid, Ex Ponto IV 12, IV 14, and IV 16)

Abstract

This article attempts to examine the multilayered character representation of the addressee of two closing elegies (IV 12 and IV 14) of Ovid’s Epistulae ex Ponto, Tuticanus, who is also alluded to in the final poem of this collection (IV 16). I seek to trace the elements of word-play in the name of Ovid’s mysterious friend, as well as in the poet’s efforts to draw the reader’s attention to the impossibility of fitting this name into the metre of the elegiac distich. What is also notable here are the close parallels between the lives of the formal addressee and the poet, including their keen interest in poetry. The fact that Tuticanus figures in elegies 12 and 14, and periphrastically in 16 of Book IV suggests that a special role has been assigned to him, namely that maybe he seems to epitomise the Amores, the first collection of poetry composed by Ovid. It is also argued that as an example of Ovid’s late poetic works, the three elegies discussed in this article also mark the endpoint of the poet’s oeuvre, the tone and mood of which no longer accords with the poems of the early period.