Poetic Justice

Tomis, AD 9. The poet Ovid has been banished by Augustus to a remote Black Sea town on the empire’s Danube frontier. He despises the climate, the local wine and the loss of Roman society, but his exile acquires a new urgency when animals are killed in parodies of religious ritual. Marcus Avitius, adviser to the provincial governor, reluctantly accepts Ovid’s help after the violence escalates from animals to human victims.

The sequence of crimes appears to follow Ovid’s own poetry, making the poet both interpreter and possible target. Hostility between Roman officials and the local population obstructs witnesses, while a secret visit from the Praetorian Guard reveals that the imperial court has not forgotten the exile. Ovid and Avitius must identify the killer without giving Augustus or Sejanus another reason to silence the poet. The mystery turns literary knowledge into forensic evidence and establishes Tomis as a frontier community governed by fear of distant Rome.