concept
Envy
also: Livor
Personified malice (Livor, 'the gnawing one') that disparages the poet's vocation; it feeds on the living and lets the dead alone.
Reading notes
- The Loves §1.15 Envy
Personified malice (Livor) that scorns poetry as idleness; the poem answers it with a roll-call of immortal poets.
- Letters from the Black Sea §4.16 So cease, Envy
Livor (Envy/Malice), personified; Ovid bids it stop savaging a poet already exiled and as good as dead, since he keeps his place among the great names of his age.