The Pleiades, Blue Print of the Seven Hills of Rome and Other Sacred Cities

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The Pleiades by Elihu Vedder (1885) Metropolitan Museum of Art (Public Domain)

The Pleiades, Blue Print of the Seven Hills of Rome and Other Sacred Cities

Two thousand years after the death of Ovid – the Roman poet who was banished by Augustus from Rome to the remote town of Tomis on the Black Sea in 8 AD – the reason for his exile remains a mystery. Could it refer to the secret name of Rome and was it linked to a pre-historic stellar cult that built their cities on seven hills using the Pleiades – the Seven Sisters as a blue print?

Ancient Italy - Ovid Banished from Rome by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1838) (Public Domain)

Ancient Italy - Ovid Banished from Rome by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1838) (Public Domain)

Ovid’s Treason

When Ovid was condemned, he was working on the Fasti (the Festivals), a poem pertaining to the Roman calendar, explaining the origins and customs of important Roman festivals, digressing on mythical stories, and providing astronomical and agricultural information appropriate to the seasons. It was to be divided into 12 books, one for every month of the year. But when the poet was halfway through the work, he was suddenly and inexplicably condemned to exile to Tomis, (modern-day Constanța, Romania) halting his work. As he laments in the Tristia (‘Sorrows’) a collection of letters written in elegiac couplets during his exile: “I wrote it recently Caesar, under your name, but my fate interrupted this work dedicated to you”. (Tristia II, 551-552).


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