Ibis is a curse poem by the Latin poet

Augustan literature (ancient Rome)

Augustan literature is the period of Latin literature written during the reign of Augustus , the first Roman emperor. In literary histories of the first part of the 20th century and earlier, Augustan literature was regarded along with that of the Late Republic as constituting the Golden Age of...

 Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

, written during his years in exile across the Black Sea

Black Sea

The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...

 for an offense against Augustus

Augustus

Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...

. It is "a stream of violent but extremely learned abuse," modeled on a poem of the same title by the Alexandrian

Alexandrian school

The Alexandrian school is a collective designation for certain tendencies in literature, philosophy, medicine, and the sciences that developed in the Hellenistic cultural center of Alexandria, Egypt during the Hellenistic and Roman periods....

 poet Callimachus

Callimachus

Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...

.

The object of this verbal assault is left unnamed except for the pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 Ibis, and no scholarly consensus exists as to whom the poet was directing his spleen. Titus Labienus

Titus Labienus (historian)

Titus Labienus was an orator and historian in the time of Augustus, nicknamed Rabienus for his vigorous style. He killed himself when the Senate had his books burned. Caligula later overrode the Senate and had the books restored.- Life :...

, Caninius Rebilus, and Ovid's erstwhile friend Sabinus

Sabinus (Ovid)

Sabinus was a Latin poet and friend of Ovid. He is known only from two passages of Ovid's works.At Amores 2.18.27—34, Ovid says that Sabinus has written responses to six of Ovid's Heroïdes, the collection of elegiac epistles each written in the person of a legendary woman to her absent male lover...

 have been proposed, but such a wildly exaggerated figure as "Ibis" may have been a composite.

The 644-line poem, like all Ovid's extant work except the Metamorphoses, is written in elegiac couplet

Elegiac couplet

The elegiac couplet is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Ovid, adopted the same form in Latin many years later...

s. It is thus an unusual, though not unique, example of invective

Invective

Invective , from Middle English "invectif", or Old French and Late Latin "invectus", is an abusive, reproachful or venomous language used to express blame or censure; also, a rude expression or discourse intended to offend or hurt. Vituperation, or deeply-seated ill will, vitriol...

 poetry in antiquity written in elegiac form rather than the more common iambics

Iambus (genre)

Iambus was a genre of ancient Greek poetry that included but was not restricted to the iambic meter and whose origins modern scholars have traced to the cults of Demeter and Dionysus. The genre featured insulting and obscene language...

 or hendecasyllabics. The incantatory nature of the curses in the Ibis has sometimes led to comparisons with curse tablets (defixiones), though Ovid's are elaborately literary in expression.

Drawing on the encyclopedic store of knowledge he demonstrated in the Metamorphoses and his other work — from memory, as he had few books with him in exile — Ovid threatens his enemy with a veritable catalogue of "gruesome and mutually incompatible fates" that befell various figures from myth and history, including a Thyestean banquet

Thyestes

In Greek mythology, Thyestes was the son of Pelops and Hippodamia, King of Olympia, and father of Pelopia and Aegisthus. Thyestes and his twin brother, Atreus, were exiled by their father for having murdered their half-brother, Chrysippus, in their desire for the throne of Olympia...

 of human flesh. He declares that even if he dies in exile, his ghost will rise and rend Ibis's flesh.

The Ibis attracted a large number of scholia, and was widely disseminated and referenced in Renaissance literature

Renaissance literature

Renaissance Literature refers to the period in European literature that began in Italy during the 14th century and spread around Europe through the 17th century...

. In his annotated translation (1577), Thomas Underdowne found in Ibis a reference guide to "all manner of vices punished, all offences corrected, and all misdeedes reuenged." An English translator noted that "a full reference to each of the allusion

Allusion

An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...

s to be found in this poem would suffice to fill a small volume."

Texts and translations

The editio princeps

Editio princeps

In classical scholarship, editio princeps is a term of art. It means, roughly, the first printed edition of a work that previously had existed only in manuscripts, which could be circulated only after being copied by hand....

of Ovid's complete works, including the Ibis, was published in Italy in 1471. Full-text versions of the following 19th-century Latin editions and English translations of the Ibis are available online.

Latin

• R. Ellis, P. Ovidii Nasonis Ibis, Oxford Classical Text, 1881.
• A. Riese, P. Ovidii Nasonis Carmina, vol. 3, 1899.

English translations

• Henry Thomas Riley, "The Invective Against the Ibis," prose, 1885.