“fida manet, trepidae duxque comesque fugae,
perque tot eventus et iniquis concita ventis
aequora Palladio numine tuta fuit.”
“It stays faithful to me, the guide and companion of my anxious flight, and through so many changes of fortune, so many seas swirled up by unfriendly winds, it has been my safe haven under Minerva’s divine protection.”
Ovid – The ship of my banishment – Tristia I.X.10-12 (AD 8)
(This beautifully sentimental passage from the poet Ovid’s Tristia – “Lamentations” – refers to the boat that took him to his exile from Rome into the Black Sea. He had been banished by the emperor Augustus and settled in Tomis – present day Constanta in Romania. He died there without ever seeing Rome, or his wife, again.)
