If this is your first encounter with Tristia Tresunus, please go to the Prima Porta VRomana so you can meet him properly before starting on his journey through Rome.
Liberty also did not allow me to touch her halls, the first which were opened to learned books. The ill-fortune of our poor father spills over unto his offspring, and we children suffer the banishment that he himself has endured. Perhaps one day Caesar, won over by the long passage of time, will be less harsh to us and to him.
O gods, I pray ... or rather (for why should I invoke a mob of deities?) ... O Caesar, greatest god, answer my prayer!
Meanwhile, since a public residence is closed to me, may I be allowed to hide away in some private place.
You also, hands of the common people, if it is lawful, take in and welcome my poem, bewildered by the shame of rejection.
If you want to console Tristia for all these rejections by reading the actual poem, enter the Library here, where Ovid's poem has at last found a home.