does not appear, however, to have been deficient in ninety miles from Rome. Ovid came into the world ferred delivering those sort of persuasive harangues which have been termed Suasoriæ. (Senec., Controv., 2, 10.) After having assumed the Toga Virilis, and completed the usual course of rhetorical tuition at Rome, he proceeded to finish his education at Athens. It is not known whether he made much progress in philosophy during his stay in that city; but, from the tenour of many of his works, it appears probable that he had at least studied physics, and that in morals be had embraced the tenets of the Epicurean school. In company with Emilius Macer, he visited the most illustrious cities of Asia (Ep. e Ponto, 2, 10); and on his way back to Rome he passed with him into Sicily. He remained nearly a year at Syracuse, and thence made several agreeable excursions through different parts of the island. After his return to Rome, and on attaining the suitable age, Ovid held successively several of the lower judicial offices of the state, and also frequently acted as arbiter, highly to the satisfaction of litigants whose causes he decided. (Trist., 2, 93.) These avocations, however, were speedily relinquished. The father of Ovid had for some time restrained his son's inclination towards poetry; but the arguments he deduced against its cultivation, from the stale example of the poverty of Homer (Trist., 4, 10), were now receiving an almost practical refutation in the court favour and affluence of Virgil and Horace. The death, too, of his elder brother, by leaving Ovid sole heir to a fortune ample enough to satisfy his wants, finally induced him to abandon the profession to which he had been destined, and bid adieu at once to public affairs and the clamours of the Forum. Henceforth, accordingly, Ovid devoted himself to the service of the Muses; though he joined with their purer worship the enjoyment of all those pleasures o life which a capital, the centre of every folly and amusement, could afford. He possessed an agreeable OVIDIUS NASO, P., a celebrated poet, born at Sul- villa and extensive farm in the neighbourhood of Sulmo (now Sulmona), a town lying on the river Pes-mo, the place of his birth; but he resided chiefly at cara, in the territory of the Peligni, at the distance of his house on the Capitoline Hill (Trist., 1, 3), or his OTHRYS, a mountain-range of Thessaly, which, branching out of Tymphrestus, one of the highest points in the chain of Pindus, closed the great basin of Thessaly to the south, and served at the same time to divide the waters which flowed northward into the Peneus from those received by the Sperchius. This mountain is often celebrated by the poets of antiquity. (Eurip., Alcest., 583.-Theocr., Idyll., 3, 43.—Virg., En., 7,674.-Lucan, 6, 337.) At present it is known by the different names of Hellovo, Varibovo, and Goura. (Pouqueville, vol. 3, p. 394.- Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 412.) OTUS and EPHIALTES, sons of Neptune. (Vid. Aloïdæ.) of his prince, and fondly anticipating a tranquil old age. (Tristia, 4, 8, 29.) He now remained at Rome the last of the constellation of poets which had brightened the earlier age of Augustus. That prince had by this time lost his favourite ministers, Macenas and Agrippa: he was less prosperous than during former years in the external affairs of the empire, and less prudently advised in his domestic concerns: he was insidiously alienated from his own family, and was sinking in his old age under the sway of the imperious Livia and the dark-souled Tiberius. Ovid's friendships lay chiefly among those who supported the lineal descendants of Augustus, the unfortunate offspring of Julia and Agrippa. He thus became an object of suspicion to the party in power, and had lost many of those benefactors who might have shielded him from the storm which now unexpectedly burst on his head, and swept from him every hope and comfort for the remainder of his existence. It was in the year 762, and when Ovid had reached the age of 51, that Augustus suddenly banished him from Rome to a wild and distant corner of the empire. Ovid has de gardens, which lay a little beyond the city, at the junc- | with the smiles of fortune, honoured with the favour tion of the Clodian and Flaminian Ways, near the Pons Milvius, where he composed many of his verses. He was fond, indeed, of the rural pleasures of flowers and trees, but he chiefly delighted to sow and plant them in these suburban gardens. (Ep. e Ponto, 1, 8.) Far from hiding himself amid his groves, like the melancholy Tibullus, he courted society, and never was happier than amid the bustle of the capital. One day, when Augustus, in his capacity of censor, according to ancient custom, made the whole body of Roman knights pass before him in review, he presented our poet with a beautiful steed. (Tristia, 2, 89.) The gift was accounted a peculiar mark of favour, and shows that, at the time when it was bestowed, he had incurred no moral stain which merited the disapprobation of his prince. While frequenting the court of Augustus, Ovid was well received by the politest of the courtiers. The titles of many of the epistles written during his banishment, show that they were addressed to persons well known to us, even at this distance of time, as distinguished statesmen and imperial favourites. Messala, to whose house he much resorted, had early encouraged the rising genius, and direct-rived nearly as much celebrity from his misfortunes ed the studies of Ovid; and the friendship which the as his writings; and, having been solely occasioned father had extended to our poet was continued to him by the vengeance of Augustus, they have reflected by the sons. But his chief patron was Q. Fabius Max- some dishonour on a name which would otherwise imus, long the friend of Augustus, and, in the closing have descended to posterity as that of a generous and scenes of that prince's life, the chief confidant of his almost universal protector of learning and poetry. weaknesses and domestic sorrows. (Tacit., Ann., 1, The real cause of his exile is the great problem in the 5.) Nor was Ovid's acquaintance less with the cele- literary history of Rome, and has occasioned as much brated poets of his age than with its courtiers and sen- doubt and controversy as the imprisonment of Tasso ators. Virgil, indeed, he had merely seen, and pre- by Alphonso has created in modern Italy. The semature death cut off the society of Tibullus; but Hor- cret unquestionably was known to many persons in ace, Macer, and Propertius were long his familiar Rome at the time (Tristia, 4, 10.-Compare Ep. e friends, and often communicated to him their writings Ponto, 2, 6); but, as its discovery had deeply wounded previous to publication. While blessed with so many the feelings of Augustus (Tristia, 2, 209), no confriends, he seems to have been undisturbed, at least temporary author ventured to disclose it. Ovid himduring this period of his life, by the malice of a sin- self has only dared remotely to allude to it, and when gle foe neither the court favour he enjoyed nor his he does mention it, his hints and suggestions are poetical renown procured him enemies; and he was scarcely reconcilable with each other, sometimes never assailed by that spirit of envy and detraction by speaking of his offence as a mistake or chance, in which Horace had been persecuted. His poetry was which he was more unfortunate than blameable, and at universally popular (Tristia, 1, 1, 64): like the stanzas other times as if his life might have been forfeited of Tasso, it was often sung in the streets or at enter- without injustice. (Tristia, 5, 11.) No subsequent tainments; and his verses were frequently recited in the writer thought of revealing or investigating the mystheatre amid the applause of the multitude. Among tery till it was too late, and it seems to be now closed his other distinctions, Ovid was a favourite of the for ever within the tomb of the Cæsars. The most fair, with whom his engagements were numerous and ancient opinion (to which Sidonius Apollinaris refers) his intercourse unrestrained. (Am., 2, 4.- Tristia, is, that Ovid was banished for having presumed to 4, 10, 65.) He was extremely susceptible of love, love Julia, the daughter of Augustus, and for having and his love was ever changing. His first wife, whom celebrated her under the name of Corinna (Sidon. he married when almost a boy, was unworthy of his Apoll., Carm., 23, v. 158); and it was considered as affections, and possessed them but a short while. a confirmation of this opinion, that exile was the punThe second, who came from the country of the an-ishment inflicted on Sempronius, the most known and cient Falisci, led a blameless life, but was soon repu- best beloved of all her paramours. This notion was diated. After parting with her, Ovid was united to a adopted by Crinitus and Lylius Gyraldus; but it was third, who was of the Fabian family. In her youth refuted as early as the time of Aldus Manutius, who she had been the companion of Marcia, the wife of has shown from the writings of Ovid that he was enFabius Maximus, and a favourite of Marcia's mother, gaged in the amour with his pretended Corinna in his who was the maternal aunt of Augustus. She was a earliest youth; and it certainly is not probable that widow at the time of her marriage with Ovid, and had such an intrigue should have continued for about thirty a daughter by her former husband, who was married to years, and till Ovid had reached the age of fifty-one, Suillius, the friend of Germanicus. (Ep. e Ponto, 4, or that Augustus should have been so slow in discov8.) But these successive legitimate connexions did ering the intercourse which subsisted. Julia, too, was not prevent him from forming others of a different de- banished to Pandataria in the year 752, which was scription. Corinna, a wanton, enticing beauty, whose nine years before the exile of Ovid; and why should real name and family the commentators and biogra- his punishment have been delayed so long after the phers of our poet have ineffectually laboured to dis- discovery of his transgression? Besides, had he been cover, allured him in his early youth from the paths of guilty of such an offence, would he have dared in his rectitude. It is quite improbable that Corinna denoted Tristia, when soliciting his recall from banishment, to Julia, the daughter of Augustus, and impossible that justify his morals to the emperor, and to declare that she represented Julia, his granddaughter, who was he had committed an involuntary error? Or would he but an infant when Ovid recorded his amours with Co- have been befriended and supported in exile by the rinna. Ovid passed nearly thirty years in the volup- greatest men of Rome, some of whom were the fatuous enjoyment of the pleasures of the capital, blessed | vourites and counsellors of Augustus ?-Subsequently o the time of Manutius, various other theories have from Livia. A few months before his own death, Aubeen devised to account for the exile of Ovid. Dry-gustus, attended by Fabius Maximus alone, privately den, in the Preface to his translation of Ovid's Epis- visited Agrippa in his retirement of Planasia; and tles, thinks it probable that "he had stumbled by some the object of his journey from Rome having been disinadvertency on the privacies of Livia, and had seen covered by Livia, the death of this counsellor followed Jer in a bath; for the words sine veste Dianam,' he shortly after. It will be remarked, however, that this remarks, agree better with Livia, who had the fame voyage was undertaken in 666, four years subsequentof chastity, than with either of the Julias." It would ly to the exile of Ovid, and was disclosed through the no doubt appear that our poet had a practice of break-indiscretion of the wife of Fabius. (Tacit., Ann., 1, ing in unseasonably on such occasions (A. A., 3, 245). 5.) But the French author conjectures, that the But it is not probable that Augustus would have pun- scene to which Ovid alludes in his writings as having ished such an offence so severely, or that it would witnessed, had some close connexion with the ensuing have affected him so deeply. Livia, at the time of visit to Planasia, and gave a commencement to those Ovid's banishment, had reached the age of sixty-four, suspicions which terminated in the death of his friend. and was doubtless the only person in the empire who His chief objection to the theory of Tiraboschi is, that would consider such an intrusion as intentional.-Ti Augustus would not have banished Ovid for discoverraboschi has maintained, at great length, that he had ing or revealing the disgrace of Julia, when, by her been the involuntary and accidental witness of some exile, he had already proclaimed her licentiousness to moral turpitude committed by one of the imperial the whole Roman people. But, in fact, Ovid was not family, most probably Julia, the granddaughter of Au- banished for the sake of concealment. The discovery gustus, who had inherited the licentious disposition of which proved so fatal to himself was no secret at Rome; her mother, and was banished from Rome on account and, had secrecy been the emperor's object, banishof her misconduct, nearly at the same time that the ment was the very worst expedient to which he could sentence of exile was pronounced on Ovid. This have resorted. Ovid might better have been bribed to theory, on the whole, seems the most plausible, and silence; or, if sentence of death could have served the most consistent with the hints dropped by the poet purpose more effectually, the old triumvir would not himself. He repeatedly says, that the offence for have scrupled to pronounce it. The secret, however, which he had been banished was a folly, an error, an was already divulged, and was in the mouths of the imprudence rather than a crime: using the words citizens. Ovid was therefore exiled as a punishment stultitia and error in opposition to crimen and faci- for his temerity, as a precaution against farther disnus. (Tristia, 1, 2, 100, et passim.) He invariably coveries, and to remove from the imperial eye the talks of what he had seen as the cause of his misfor- sight of one whose presence must have reminded Autunes (Tristia, 2, 103, seqq.), and he admits that what gustus of his disgrace both as a sovereign and pahe had seen was a fault. But he farther signifies, that rent.-Whatever may have been the real cause of the the fault he had witnessed was of a description which exile of Ovid, the pretext for it was the licentious offended modesty, and which, therefore, ought to be verses he had written. (Ep. e Ponto, 2, 9.) Auguscovered with the veil of night. (Tristia, 3, 6.) It is tus affected a regard for public morals; and concealby no means improbable that he should have detected ing, on this occasion, the true motive by which he was the granddaughter of the emperor in some disgraceful actuated, he claimed a merit with the senate, and all intrigue. Neither of the Julias confined their amours who were zealous for a reformation of manners, in to the recesses of their palaces, so that the most dis- thus driving from the capital a poet who had reduced solute frequenter of the lowest scenes of debauchery licentiousness to a system, by furnishing precepts, demay have became the witness of her turpitude. Far- duced from his own practice, which might aid the inther, it is evident that it was something of a private experienced in the successful prosecution of lawless nature, and which wounded the most tender feelings love. He carefully excluded from the public libraries of Augustus, who, we know from history, was pecu- not merely the " Art of Love," but all the other wriliarly sensitive with regard to the honour of his family. tings of Ovid. (Tristia, 3, 1, 65.) It is evident, Lastly, it appears, that, after being a witness of the however, that this was all colour and pretext. Ovid shameful transgression of Julia, Ovid had fallen into himself ventures gently to hint, that Augustus was some indiscretion through timidity (Ep. e Ponto, 2, 2), not so strict a moralist that he would seriously have which might have been avoided, had he enjoyed the thought of punishing the composition of a few licenbenefit of good advice (Tristia, 3, 6, 13); and it tious verses with interminable exile. (Tristia, 2, seems extremely probable, that the imprudence he 524.) In point of expression, too, the lines of Ovid committed was in revealing to others the discovery he are delicate compared with those of Horace, whom had made, and concealing it from Augustus.-It is the emperor had always publicly favoured and supportnot likely that any better guess will now be formed on ed. Nor was his sentence of banishment passed until the subject. Another, however, has been recently at- many years after their composition; yet, though so tempted by M. Villenave, in a life of Ovid prefixed long an interval had elapsed, it was suddenly proto a French translation of the Metamorphoses. His nounced, as on the discovery of some recent crime, opinion, which has also been adopted by Schöll (Hist. and was most rapidly carried into execution. The. Lit. Rom., vol. 1, p. 240), is, that Ovid, from accident mandate for his exile arrived unexpectedly in the or indiscretion, had become possessed of some state evening. The night preceding his departure from secret concerning Agrippa Posthumus, the son of Rome was one of the utmost grief to his family, and Agrippa and Julia, and grandson of Augustus. The of consternation and dismay to himself. In a fit existence of the family of Julia long formed the great of despair, he burned the copy of the Metamorphoses obstacle to the ambition of Livia and her son Tiberius. which he was then employed in correcting, and some Agrippa Posthumus, the last surviver of the race, was others of his poems. He made no farther preparations banished from Rome to the island of Planasia, near for his journey, but passed the time in loud complaints, Corsica, in 758; but considerable apprehensions seem and in adjuration to the gods of the Capitol. His to have been entertained by Livia that he might one chief patron, Fabius Maximus, was absent at the day be recalled. Ovid, in a poetical epistle from Pon- time, and his only daughter was with her husband in tus, written in the fifth year of his exile, accuses him- Africa; but several of his friends came to his house, self as the cause of the death of his friend Fabius where they remained part of the night, and endeavMaximus; and this Fabius Maximus, it appears, was oured, though in vain, to console him. After much the chief confidant of the emperor in all that related irresolution, he at length departed on the approach to the affairs of Agrippa, which he wished concealed of dawn, his dress neglected and his hair dishevelled. His wife, who had wished to accompany him, but was stances wanting in his fate which might have connot permitted, fainted the moment he left the house. tributed to impart consolation. His third wife, to -After his departure from Rome, Ovid proceeded to whom he was tenderly attached, though not permitted Brundisium, where he had an interview with Fabius to accompany him on the voyage to Scythia, continued Maximus. He recommended his wife to the care of faithful to her husband during his long exile, and prohis friend, and received repeated assurances of his tected his property from the rapacity of his enemies. support. The destined spot of his perpetual exile was (Tristia, 1, 5.) Many of his friends remained unshaTomi, the modern Temiswar, on the shore of the Eux-ken by his misfortunes, and from time to time he reine, a few miles to the south of the spot where the ceived letters from them, giving him hopes of recall. most southern branch of the Danube unites with that The Gete, though they at length became displeased sea. (Vid. Tomi.) The place had been originally an with his incessant complaints of their country (Ep. e Athenian colony, and was still inhabited by a few Ponto, 4, 14), received him at first with kindness and remains of the Greeks, but it was chiefly filled with sympathy, and long paid him such distinguished honrude and savage barbarians, of whose manners and ours, that he almost appears to have realized the fahabits the poet draws a most vivid description. The bles of Orpheus and Amphion, in softening their native town was defended by but feeble ramparts from the ferocity by the magic of the Roman lyre. (Ep. e Ponincursions of the neighbouring Getæ, or still more to, 4, 9.-Ibid., 4, 14.)—Nothing, however, could formidable tribes to the north of the Danube. Alarms compensate for the deprivations he suffered; nor was from the foe were constant, and the poet himself had anything omitted on Ovid's part which he thought sometimes to grasp a sword and buckler, and place a might prevail on the emperor to recall him to Rome, helmet on his gray head, on a signal given by the sen- or assign him, at least, a place of milder exile; and tinel (Tristia, 4, 1, 73), when squadrons of barbarians Sicily was particularly pointed at as a suitable spot covered the desert which Tomi overlooked, or sur- for such a mitigation of punishment. (Tristia, 5, 2.) rounded the town in order to surprise and pillage it.- This is the object of all his epistles from Pontus, the Without books or society, Ovid often wished for a name of the district of Moesia in which Tomi was sitfield (Ep. e Ponto, 1, 8) to remind him of the garden uate, and not to be confounded with the Pontus of near the Flaminian Way, in which, in his happier Asia Minor. He flattered Augustus during his life days, he had breathed his love-sighs and composed his with an extravagance which bordered on idolatry (Ep. amorous verses. Some of the barbarian inhabitants e Ponto, 4, 6.-Tristia, 2); and the letters addresswere along with our poet in the small and inconvenient ed to his friends inculcate skilful lessons of choosing house which he inhabited (Tristia, 2, 200), and kept the most favourable opportunities for propitiating the him in a state of constant alarm by their ferocious ap- despot. It does not appear, however, that any one of pearance. They neither cut their beards nor hair, his numerous and powerful acquaintances ventured to which, hanging dishevelled over the face, gave a pecu- solicit his recall, or to entreat Augustus in his behalf. liar horror to their aspect. The whole race were Yet the poet seems to suppose that Augustus, preclothed in the shaggy skins of various animals (Tristia, vious to his decease, was beginning to feel more 3, 10), and each barbarian carried with him constantly favourably towards him. (Ep. e Ponto, 4, 6.) After bow, and a quiver containing poisoned arrows. the death of the emperor, with a view, doubtless, of (Tristia, 5, 7.) They daily filled the streets with tu- propitiating his successor, Ovid wrote a poem on his mult and uproar, and even the litigants sometimes de- Apotheosis, and consecrated to him, as a new deity, cided their cause before the tribunals by the sword. a temple, where he daily repaired to offer incense and (Tristia, 5, 10.) But if there was danger within the worship. (Ep. e Ponto, 4, 9.) Nor was he sparing walls of Tomi, destruction lay beyond them. Tribes, in his panegyrics on the new emperor (Ep. e Ponto, who foraged from a distance, carried off the flocks and 4, 13); but he found Tiberius equally inexorable with burned the cottages. From the insecurity of property Augustus -The health of Ovid had been early and and severity of climate, the fields were without grain, severely affected by his exile and confinement at Tomi. the hills without vines, the mountains without oaks, He was naturally of a feeble constitution, and, in the and the banks without willows. (Tristia, 3, 10, 71.) place of his banishment, every circumstance was comAbsinthium, or wormwood, alone grew up and covered bined which could wear out the mind and the body. the plains. (Ep. e Ponto, 4, 8.) Spring brought The rigour of the climate bore hard on one who had with it neither birds nor flowers. In summer the sun passed a delicate youth of pleasure and repose under rarely broke through the cloudy and foggy atmosphere. an Italian sky. In consequence, soon after his arrival The autumn shed no fruits; but, through every season at Tomi, he totally lost his strength and appetite (Ep. of the year, wintry winds blew with prodigious vio- e Ponto, 1, 10), and became thin, pale, and exhaustlence (Tristia, 3, 10, 17), and lashed the waves of the ed. From time to time he recovered and relapsed, boisterous Euxine on its desert shore. (Tristia, 4, till at length, at the age of 60, he sunk under the 4, 57.) The only animated object was the wild Sar- hardships to which he had been so long subjected. matian driving his car, yoked with oxen, across the His death happened in the year 771, in the ninth year snows, or the frozen depths of the Euxine (Tristia, 3, of his exile, and the fourth of the reign of Tiberius. 10, 32), clad in his fur cloak, his countenance alone Before his decease, he expressed a wish that his ashes uncovered, his beard glistening and sparkling with the might be carried to Rome; even this desire, however, hoar-frost and flakes of snow. (Tristia, 3, 10, 21.) was not complied with. His bones were buried in -Such was the spot for which Ovid was compelled the Scythian soil, and the Getæ erected to him a monto exchange the theatres, the baths, the porticoes, and ument near the spot of his earthly sojourn.-It would gardens of Rome, the court of Augustus, the banks of seem that Ovid had commenced his poetical career the Tiber, and the sun and soil of Italy.-While thus with some attempt at heroic subjects, particularly the driving him to the most remote and savage extremity Gigantomachia. But he soon directed his attention of his empire, Augustus softened the sentence he had from such topics to others which were more consonant pronounced on Ovid with some alleviating qualifica- to his disposition. Accordingly, the earliest writings He did not procure his condemnation by a de- of Ovid now extant are amatory elegies in the style eree of the senate, but issued his own mandate, in of Tibullus and Propertius. These elegies are styled which he employed the word "relegation" (relegatio), Amores, amounting in all to forty-nine, and were oriand not " banishment" (exsilium), leaving him, by this ginally divided by the poet into five books. There choice of terms, the enjoyment of his paternal fortune are now only three books in the printed editions of and some other privileges of a Roman citizen. (Tris- Ovid; but it has been doubted whether all the elegies tia, 5, 11, 21.--Ibid., 4, 9.) Nor were other circum- he wrote be still included in this division, or if two sions. this work, it may be safely concluded that the poem books have been suppressed. These elegies, with a | object the poet may have had in view when composing very few exceptions, are of an amatory description. As an elegiac writer, Ovid has more resemblance to Propertius than to Tibullus. His images and ideas are for the most part drawn from the real world. He dwells not amid the visionary scenes of Tibullus, he indulges not in his melancholy dreams, nor pours forth such tenderness of feeling as the lover of Delia. The Amores of Ovid have all the brilliancy and freshness of the period of life in which they were written. They are full of ingenious conceptions, graceful images, and agreeable details. These are the chief excellences of the elegies of Ovid. Their faults consist in an abuse of the facility of invention, a repetition of the same ideas, an occasional affectation and antithesis in the language of love, and (as in the elegies of Propertius) the too frequent, and sometimes not very happy or appropriate, allusion to mythological fables.-Before finishing the elegies styled Amores, Ovid had already commenced the composition of the Heroïdes (Am., 2, 18), which are likewise written in the elegiac measure. They are epistles supposed to be addressed chiefly from queens and princesses who figured in the heroic ages, to the objects of their vehement affections, and are in number not fewer than twenty-one; but there is some doubt with regard to the authenticity of six of them, namely, Paris to Helen, Helen to Paris; Leander to Hero, Hero to Leander; Acontius to Cydippe, Cydippe to Acontius. These six, though they appear in the most ancient MSS. under the name of Ovid, along with the others, are of doubtful authenticity, and have been generally ascribed by commentators to Aulus Sabinus, a friend of Ovid's, who was also the author of several answers to the epistles of our poet, as Ulysses to Penelope, and Æneas to Dido. The Heroides present us with some of the finest and most popular fictions of an amorous antiquity, resounding with the names of Helen, Ariadne, and Phædra. Julius Scaliger pronounces them to be the most polished of all the productions of Ovid. (Poet., 6, 7.) But there is a tiresome uniformity in the situations and characters of the heroines. The injudicious length to which each epistle is extended has occasioned a repetition in it of the same ideas; while the ceaseless tone of complaints uttered by these forsaken damsels has produced a monotony, which renders a perusal, at least of the whole series of epistles, insupportably fatiguing. There is also a neglect of a due observance of the manners and customs of the heroic ages: and in none of the works of Ovid is his indulgence in exuberance of fancy so remarkable to the reader, because many of the epistles, as those of Penelope, Briseïs, Medea, Ariadne, and Dido, lead us to a comparison of the Latin author with Homer, the Greek tragedians, Catullus, and Virgil, those poets of true simplicity and unaffected tenderness. The work of Ovid entitled De Arte Amandi, or, more properly, Artis Amatoria Liber, is written, like the Amores and Heroïdes, in the elegiac measure. There is nothing, however, elegiac in its subject, as it merely communicates, in a light and often sportive manner, those lessons in the Art of Love which were the fruits of the author's experience, and had been acquired in the course of the multifarious intrigues recorded in the Amores. This poem was not written earlier than The Metamorphoses, therefore- at least the twelve the year 752; for the author mentions in the first concluding books-should be read with some degree of book the representation of a sea-fight between the that indulgence which is given to the last six books of Greek and Persian fleets, which was exhibited at that the Eneid; though, from what we see in the perfectperiod in the Naumachia, under the direction of Au- ed works of Ovid, it can hardly be supposed that, even gustus. The whole work is divided into three books. if he had been permitted, he would have expunged This work is curious and useful, from the informa- conceits and retrenched redundancies with the pure tion it affords concerning Roman manners and an- taste and scrupulous judgment of the Mantuan bard. tiquities in their lighter departments; and, though not-In the composition of his Metamorphoses, Ovid can written in the tone or form of satire, it gives us nearly lay no claim to originality of invention. Not one of the same insight as professed satirical productions the immense number of transmutations which he has into the minor follies of the A gustan age. Whatever recorded, from the first separation of Chaos till the His saltem vestra detur in urbe locus. |