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Ancient Classics for English Readers
EDITED BY THE
REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A.
**
*
(SUPPLEMENTARY SERIES.)
O W I D
* ,
conte NTS OF THE SERIES.
HOMER: THE ILIAD, . . . . . . By the Editor.
HOMER : THE ODYSSEY, p > 0 By THE SAME.
HERODOTUS, e 9 º By GEORGE C. Swayne, M.A.
CAESAR, . . . . . . . . . BY ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
VIRGIL, . . . . . . . By the Borror.
HORACE, sº e © e . . . BY THEODORE MARTIN.
AESCHYI,US, BY THE RIGHT REv. THE BISHOP OF COLOMBO.
XENOPHON, º . BY SIR ALEX. GRANT, BART., LL.D.
CICERO, g © & g e e . BY THE EDITOR.
SOPHOCLES, . . Q . By CLIFTON W. Collins, M.A.
PLINY, By A. CHURCH, M.A., AND W. J. BRODRIBB, M.A.
EU RIPIDES. . . . BY WILLIAM BODHAM DONNE.
JUVENAL., . . . . . . . BY EDWARD WALFORD, M.A.
ARISTOPHANES, . . . . . . . . By the Editor.
HESIOD AND THEOGNIS, BY THE REv. JAMES DAVIES, M.A.
PLAUTUS AND TERENCE, . . . . By the EDITOR.
TACITUS, . & g º By william Bodham Donne.
LUCIAN, . . . . . . . BY THE EDITOR.
PLATO, . g º o . o BY CLIFTON W. COLLINS.
THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY, . © • BY LORD NEAves.
LIVY, . e e • . & e . BY THE EDITOR.
OVID, . e o g . BY THE REv. A. CHURCH, M.A.
CATULLUS, TIBULLUS, & PROPERTIUS, By J. DAVIES, M.A.
DEMOSTHENES, . . By THE REv. W. J. BRODRIBB, M.A.
ARISTOTLE, . . . . By SIR ALEX. GRANT, BART., LL.D.
THUCYDIDES, . © o © º o BY THE EDITOR.
LUCRETIUS, . . . . By W. H. MALLOCK, M.A.
PINDAR, . . e By the Rev. F. D. MoRICE, M.A.
O W I D
BY THE
REV. ALFRED CHURCH, M.A.

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THE extracts from the ‘Metamorphoses’ are, with one
exception (marked “C.”), taken from Mr Henry King's
admirable version of that poem (Blackwood & Sons,
1871). The translations in Chapter II. marked “D.,”
are from a volume to which Dryden and others con-
tributed. A passage from the Epistle of Laodamia to
Protesilaus, and also the Elegy on the death of Tibul-
lus, both in the same chapter, are taken—the former,
from a little collection of Translations and Poems by
Miss E. Garland (Liverpool, 1842); the latter (a
translation by Professor Nichol) from Mr James
Cranstoun's ‘Elegies of Tibullus.” For the other
translations, except where an obligation is specially
acknowledged, I am myself responsible.
As regards the banishment of the Poet, I have to
express my obligations to an article by Dr Dyer, pub-
lished in the ‘Classical Museum.’
A. C.
CHAP.
I.
II
III.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
C O N T E N T S.
PAG :
EARLY LIFE—THE AUGUSTAN AGE OF ROMAN
LOVE-POETRY, . p iº & tº iº 1
THE LOVE-POEMS, e O © tº . 20
DOMESTIC III'E—BANISHMENT, e. fe . 41
THE METAMORPHOSES, on TRANSFORMA-
TIONS, tº * te . & . . . 53
THE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALENDAR, . . 82
DEPARTURE FROM ROME—THE SPLACE OF
EXILE, . e Q. wº • . ... 102
THE POEMS OF EXILE : THE Tristia, OR,
THE ‘sor Rows,’ * e • te is
THE POEMS OF EXILE: THE LETTERS FROM
THE PONTU.S.—DEATH OF OVID, * . 129
FRAGMENTs—LOST POEMs—GENERAL obser-
VATIoss, . . . . . . . 147
O W I D.
C H A P T E R I.
EARLY LIFE—THE AUGUSTAN AGE OF ROMAN
IOWE-POETRY.
OVID, like Horace, is his own biographer. In some
respects he is even more communicative than his
fellow-poet. Horace, for instance, is reticent, as a
rule, about his own compositions. The writer of the
Odes might, for all we know, be a different man from
the author of the Satires or the author of the Epistles.
Ovid, on the contrary, takes good care that his readers
should be well acquainted with the list of his works.
Then, again, there is something very shadowy and
unreal about the beauties to whom Horace pours forth
his passion or his reproaches. Lydia, Chloe, Barine,
Lalage, Glycera — there is scarcely one of them all
whom we may venture to pronounce anything more
than a creation of the poet's fancy. But Ovid's
Corinna, the one mistress to whom he dedicates his
song, is only too real. Who she was, of what rank
A.C.S.S., vol. ii. A.
2 O VII).
and character, the learned have disputed ; but that
she was a real personage no one doubts. And then
he gives us the most copious and exact information
about his birthplace, his family, his education, his
marriage, his fortunes in general. Yet, for all this,
the personality of the man himself seems to elude us.
Some one has said that we should recognise Horace
were we to meet him in the street. Short and corpu-
lent, the sunny and cheerful youthfulness of his face
belying his white hair, llis gay figure seems familiar
to us. We are acquainted with all his tastes and
habits ; he confesses his faults; his virtues show
themselves. Ovid does not give us such confidences.
The most exact statement that he ever makes about
his own character—that though his verse was loose
his life was pure—we must be permitted to disbelieve.
The real Ovid is almost as unknown to us as is the
real Virgil. Nevertheless, there is more to be said of
him than can be contained within the limits of this
volume. And here it may be said, once for all, that
much will have to be omitted, not only for want of
space, but for yet more imperative reasons of morality
and good taste.
JPUBLIUs OvIDIUS NASO was born at Sulmo, a town
in Peligni, a district of Northern Italy which took its
name from one of the Samnite tribes. The Samnites,
IRome's stoutest antagonist in her early struggles for
the supremacy of Italy, nearly overthrew her empire
when it had been extended over all the shores of the
Mediterranean. It was with the Marsi, the neigh-
bours of the Peligni on the west, that the war of the
EA R.L. Y. LIFE. 3
Italian allies against Rome, commonly called by his-
torians the Social War, began. Ovid recounts, with
a pride which may seem strange in a loyal Roman,
the part which his own countrymen had taken in
the struggle—
“Whom freedom's voice to noble warfare led,
When their own allies were the Romans’ dread.”
But in truth the poet was not venturing on any
dangerous ground in thus writing. The cause of the
allies had been closely connected with the cause of the
democracy. And the Roman empire, like another
empire of our own times, had inherited the democratic
traditions. “Their cause,” says Welleius Paterculus,
a younger contemporary of Ovid, and conspicuous
for his flattery of Augustus and Tiberius, “was as
righteous as their fate was terrible, for they sought
to be citizens of the state whose sway they defended
with their swords.” The emperors would find no
offence in sympathy with the opponents of that aris-
tocracy on the ruins of whose power their own throne
was founded. The poet speaks more than once of
the fertility and healthfulness of his native district.
These blessings it chiefly owed to its copious and un-
failing streams. Its pastures never dried up, even
under the scorching suns of an Italian summer. Its
water-meadows are specially mentioned. It produced
wheat in abundance; and its light fine soil was even
better adapted for the vine and the olive. The town
of Sulmo boasted a high antiquity. A fanciful etymo-
logy found in the word the name of a companion of
4 O VI D.
AEneas, sprung from the Phrygian Solymi,” to whom
that chieftain had given one of his daughters in mar-
riage. It took the side of the vanquished party in
the struggle between Marius and Sulla, and suffered
cruelly in consequence. More fortunate in the next
civil war, it opened its gates to Julius Caesar. Ovid
(he always called himself Naso t) belonged to one of
the oldest families in this town. It was of equestrian
or knightly rank, and had possessed this distinction
for many generations. “In my family,” he says,
“you will find knights up through an endless line of
ancestry;” and he looks down, just as among ourselves
a baronet looks down on a knight, on men who had
won that honour for themselves.
“I never climbed, not I, from step to step.”
And he complains loudly to the faithless Corinna—
“Some knight, with wealth by wounds but newly earned,
Eull-fed on slaughter, is preferred to me !”
The poet was born on March the 20th, 43 B.C. He
marks the year by speaking of it as that
“In which both consuls met an equal fate.”
These consuls were Hirtius and Pansa, both of whom
perished at the siege of Mutina, fighting against Mark
Antony. The Roman Republic virtually perished with
* The same origin was assigned, on equally good grounds, to
Jerusalem. “Hierosolyma” was, of course, the sacred (hieros)
city of the Solymi ! -
+ Most of the writers who mention him follow the same
practice, but Tacitus and the Younger Seneca speak of him as
Ovidius. -
J. A. R. L. Y. L.I.F.E. - 5
them, though we may be sure that had they lived they
could not have prolonged its existence. Ovid’s birth
coincides appropriately enough with the beginning
of the imperial system. The day is noted as being
the second of the five days’ festival to Minerva
(March 19-23). Minerva was the patroness of learn-
ing; and Juvenal tells us that ambitious young Schol-
ars were wont at this time to address to images of
the goddess which cost them a penny of their pocket-
money their prayers for success and fame. He had a
brother who was his elder by exactly a year—
“A double birthday-offering kept the day.”
The brothers were carefully educated, and were sent
at an early age to the best teachers in Rome. Their
father intended that both should follow the profession
of an advocate. The intention suited the inclinations
of the elder ; the heart of the youngest was otherwise
inclined. He wrote verses “by stealth,” just as
Trank Osbaldistone wrote them in the counting-house
at Bordeaux. And Ovid's father was just as con-
temptuous as the elder. Osbaldistone of the unprofit-
able pursuit. The poet says that he was moved by
the paternal admonitions,—admonitions which indeed
there were obvious ways of enforcing. He applied
himself seriously to the business of learning his pro-
fession. The best known of those who have been
mentioned as his teachers were Porcius Latro, by
birth a Spaniard, who had migrated to Rome under
the patronage of Augustus, and Arellius Fuscus, a
rival professor of the rhetorical art. It was Latro's
6 : - O VI D.
practice to teach his pupils by declaiming before
them ; Fuscus, with what we may conjecture to have
been a more effective method, made the youths them-
selves declaim. The Elder Seneca" speaks of having
heard Ovid perform such an exercise before Fuscus.
“His speech,” he says, “could not then be called
anything else than poetry out of metre.” But he adds
that the poet had while a student a high reputation
as a declaimer; and he speaks strongly in praise of
the particular discourse which he had himself hap-
pened to hear, describing it as one of marked ability,
though somewhat wanting in order. The poetical
character of the young student's oratory—a character
quite out of keeping, it should be remarked, with the
genius of Latin eloquence—exactly suits what Ovid
says of himself—
“Whate’er I sought to say was still in verse;”
which may be paraphrased by Pope's famous line—
“I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.”
Seneca further tells us that he had a special fondness
for dealing with moral themes, and he gives some in-
teresting instances of expressions in the poems which
were borrowed from the declamations of his master,
Latro. The brothers assumed, in due time, the toga,
or distinguishing dress of manhood.t This robe, as
sons of a knight of ancient family, and aspirants, it was
* He was the father of the Younger Seneca, Nero's tutor,
and of Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia (Acts xviii.), and grand-
father of the poet Lucan.
+ This was commonly done on completing the sixteenth year.
Jº A. R. L. Y. LIFE. -y 7
presumed, to public life, they were permitted to wear
with the broad edge of purple which distinguished the
senator. The elder brother died immediately after
completing his twentieth year, and this event removed
the objection which the father had made to the indul-
gence of Ovid's poetical tastes. The family property,
which was not of more than moderate extent, would
not have to be divided, and there was no longer any.
necessity why the only son should follow a lucrative
profession.
About this time we may place Ovid's visit to Athens. .
A single line contains all the mention that he makes of
it, but this informs us that he went there for purposes
of study. What particular study he followed we doº
not know. It could scarcely have been moral philoso-
phy, which Horace tells us had been his own favourite
subject there; rhetoric he had probably, by this time,
resolved to abandon. But Athens, which may be de-
scribed as the university of the Roman world, doubt-
less contained professors of the belles lettres, as well as
of severer studies; and we may feel sure that the poet.
took this opportunity of perfecting his knowledge of
the Greek literature and language. Possibly his stay
at Athens was followed or interrupted by a tour which
he made in company with the poet Macer, the younger
of that name, whose friendship he retained until the
end of his life. This tour included the famous Greek:
cities of western Asia Minor. As Macer found the sub-
ject of his verse in the Trojan war, the friends proba-
bly visited the site of the famous city. Ovid, we know,
was once there; and, in these days of Trojan dis-
8 ** O VII).
coveries, it may be interesting to remember that he
speaks of himself as having seen the temple of Pallas.
From Asia Minor they passed to Sicily, where they
spent the greater part of a year;-a happy time, to
which Ovid, addressing his old companions, in one of
the letters of his exile, turns with pathetic regret.
Returning to the capital, he did not at once give up
the prospect of a public career. On the contrary, he
sought some of the minor offices in which the aspirant
for promotion commonly began his course. We find
him filling a post which seems singularly incongruous
with his tastes and pursuits. He was made one of the
Triumviri Capitales, officials who combined, to a certain
degree, the duties of our police magistrates and under-
sheriffs. They took the preliminary examination in
cases of serious crimes, exercised a summary jurisdic-
tion, both civil and criminal, in causes where slaves, or
other persons not citizens, were concerned, inspected
prisons, and superintended the execution of criminals.
There were other Triumviri, however, who had duties
connected with the coining of money, and Ovid's words.
are so vague as to leave it uncertain which of the two
offices he filled. He also afterwards became a mem-
ber of the “Court of the Hundred,” which had an ex-
tensive and important jurisdiction in both civil and
criminal matters. In this he was promoted to be one
of the ten superintendents (decemviri) who formed the
council of the presiding judge. He seems also to have
occasionally acted as an arbitrator or referee. The pro-
fession of an advocate he never followed. An expres-
sion that has been sometimes taken to mean that he did
EA R L Y LIFE. 9
º
so, really refers to his position in the Court of the
Hundred. “The fate of men accused,” he says, seek-
ing to prove to Augustus that he had been a man of
integrity, “was intrusted to me without damage.” He
was now one of the “Twenty’ who were regarded as
candidates for the higher offices in the state, and for
seats in the senate,” and who enjoyed the distinction
of sitting among senators in the orchestra seats of the
circus and the amphitheatre. The time soon came
when he had definitely to choose whether he would fol-
low public life, or rather that shadow of it which was left
to Roman citizens under the Empire. Members of the
“Twenty,” on attaining their twenty-fourth year, be-
came eligible for the quaestorship, an office connected
with the revenue—the lowest in grade of the magis-
tracies, properly so called, but giving a seat in the
Senate. Ovid declined to become a candidate for the
office. He exchanged the broad purple stripe which
he had worn as a possible senator, for the narrower
stripe which belonged to his hereditary rank as a
knight. We must now regard him as a private gentle-
man of Rome, well-born, and of respectable but not
ample means. His parents were still living, and he
hints in one place that he had to content himself
with a moderate allowance.
Very early in life, when, as he says himself, he was
“almost a boy,” Ovid was married to a wife probably
* The “Twenty” were made up in this way: three Commis-
sioners of Police (the Triumviri Capitales, mentioned before),
three Commissioners of the Mint, four Commissioners of Roads,
and ten Superintendents of the Court of the Hundred. e
10 O VII).
chosen for him by his father. The match, he gives us
to understand, brought him neither honour nor profit.
Probably her conduct was not without reproach, and
her fortune did not answer his expectations. She was
speedily divorced. Another wife was soon found by
him or for him. All that we know of her is, that she
was a native of the Etrurian town of Falisci. He con-
fesses that he had no fault to find with her; but the
second marriage was, nevertheless, of as short duration
as the first. It is easy to gather the cause from the
poet's own confessions about himself.
The literary society of which the young poet now
found himself a recognised member, was perhaps the
most brilliant which has ever been collected in one
place. The Athens of Pericles in one point surpassed
it in the magnitude of individual genius. But in ex-
tent, in variety of literary power, the Rome of Augustus
stands pre-eminent in the history of letters. That
pre-eminence, indeed, has been recorded in the name
which it has bequeathed to following times. .
“Augustan” is the epithet that has been applied in
more than one instance to the age in which a national
literature has attained its greatest development. In our
own history it signifies the period of which Pope was
in poetry the most brilliant representative. Used of
Roman literature, it may be taken to denote, speaking
somewhat loosely, the former half of the reign of Au-
gustus. Virgil, Livy, Horace, Sallust, the greatest of
the names which adorned it, had grown to manhood
while the Republic still stood; Ovid, who may be said
to close the period, was, as we have seen, born on the
AUGUSTAN AGE OF LOVE-POETRY. 11
last day of Roman freedom. But, indeed, the best
days of the Augustan age had almost passed when
Ovid became a member of the literary society of the
capital. The man who was, in one sense, its ruling
spirit, no longer possessed the power which he had
used so generously and wisely for the encouragement
of genius. For in this case, as in so many others, the
ruler has usurped the honour which belongs to the
minister. It was Maecenas, not Augustus, who made
the imperial court the abode of letters. The emperor
deserves only the credit of possessing culture sufficient
to appreciate the genius which his minister had discov-
ered. But the power of Maecenas did not last beyond
the first ten years of Augustus's reign. Though not
ostensibly disgraced, he no longer shared, or indeed
could have desired to share—so bitter was the wrong
which he had suffered from his master—the emperor's
friendship. Though still nominally a Councillor of
State, he had actually retired into private life. Re-
taining, if we may judge from what we know of
Horace, the private friendship of those whom he had
assisted, he no longer bestowed his patronage on rising
genius. We find, accordingly, that Ovid never men-
tions his name. Nor was the young poet ever admit-
ted to the intimacy of Augustus, whose court probably
somewhat changed its tone after the retirement of the
great literary minister.
For the older poets, whom he was privileged to see
or know, Ovid describes himself as having felt an
unbounded veneration —
“In every bard I saw a form divine.”
12 O VI D.
“Virgil I did but see" (a phrase which has become
almost proverbial”), he says, in his interesting account
of his poetical acquaintances and friends. Virgil cer-
tainly visited Rome some time between the years B.G.
23, when Marcellus died,t and B.C. 20, the date of his
own death, for he recited before the imperial family
the magnificent eulogy on the young prince which
adorns the sixth book of the AEneid. Very likely it
was on this occasion that Ovid saw him. His habits
—for he loved the country as truly as did Horace—
and the feebleness of his health, seem to have made
him a stranger at Rome during the latter years of his
life. .
Another great contemporary Ovid mentions in these
words— -
“The tuneful Horace held our ears enchained.”
“Tuneful,” indeed, is a word which but feebly ex-
presses the original epithet (numerosus). “That mas-
ter of melody” is a more adequate rendering, and it is
fit praise for one who had no predecessor or successor
among his countrymen in his power of versification.
There is nothing to indicate the existence of any friend-
ship between the two poets. Horace was by more
than twenty years the elder, and was beginning to
weary of the life of pleasure upon which the younger
man was just entering. - -
Not a single line has been preserved of three other
* “Virgilium tantum widi.”
+ Marcellus was the nephew of Augustus.
A UGUSTAN AGE OF LOVE-POETRY. 13
of the poets whom Ovid regarded with such reverence.
PONTICUS—
“For epic song renowned ”—
wrote a poem in heroic—i.e., hexameter—verse on the
war of the “Seven against Thebes.” Time has been pe-
culiarly cruel to the world in not suffering it to survive,
if we are to trust Propertius, who affirms, “as he hopes
to be happy,” that Ponticus was a match for Homer
himself. Of BASSUs we absolutely know nothing but
what Ovid tells us, that he was famous for his dramatic
verse. AEMILIUS MACER, of Verona, a fellow-countryman,
and, as Ovid expressly mentions that he was much his
own junior, probably a contemporary of Catullus, wrote
poems, doubtless modelled after Greek originals, on
birds, and noxious serpents, and the healing qualities
of herbs. Another MACER, who has been mentioned
already as Ovid's companion in travel, wrote about the
Trojan war. Of DOMITIUS MARSUs, an elegiac poet,
time has spared a beautiful epigram commemorat-
ing the death of Tibullus. It would be easy to pro-
long the list. In the last of his “Letters from the
Pontus,” Ovid names, each with a phrase descriptive
of his genius or his work, the poets contemporary with
himself. There are about thirty of them. Of some
we do not know even the names, the poet having
thought it sufficient to mention or allude to their prin-
cipal works. Many of these who are named we do not
find mentioned elsewhere, and Ovid's brief phrase is all
that is left of them. The works of all have either per-
ished altogether or survive in insignificant fragments.”
* The reader will be glad to see a noble utterance that has
14 - O VI D.
Burmann, the most learned of Ovid's editors, says
of Maximus Cotta, the last on the list,-‘‘ Him and
Capella and others oblivion has overwhelmed with
inexorable night. , Would that these poets, or, at
least, the best part of them, had come down to us, and
other foolish and useless books had remained sunk in
eternal darkness l’” -
Happily for us, a kinder fate has spared the works of
two out of the three poets whom Ovid has named as
his predecessors and teachers in his own peculiar art of
amatory verse. “He,” says the poet, speaking of the
untimely death of Tibullus, “was thy successor, Gallus;
Propertius was his ; I was myself the fourth in the
order of time.” The same collocation of names is re-
peated more than once, and never without expressions
that indicate the pride which Ovid felt in being asso-
ciated with men of such genius. This judgment has
been ratified by modern taste. Some critics have not
hesitated to prefer the happiest efforts of Tibullus and
Propertius (the poems of Gallus have been entirely lost)
to anything of the same kind that came from the pen of
Ovid. The plan of this series includes, for obvious
reasons of convenience, the works of Tibullus and Pro-
pertius in the volume which will give an account of
Catullus. They may be dismissed, for the present,
with the briefest notice. Fate, says Ovid of Tibullus,
refused the time which might have made us friends.
The very elegant memorial which he dedicated to his
been preserved of one of their number: “All that I once have
given still is mine” (Hoc habeo quodcunque dedi). -
AUGUSTAN AGE OF LOVE-POETRY. 15.
memory º is scarcely expressive of a personal sorrow.
With Propertius he was on terms of intimacy:—
“To me by terms of closest friendship bound.”
“Friendship” indeed hardly expresses the term
(sodalitium) which the poet uses, and which implies
a certain formal tie. Readers will remember that in
the ancient world, where there was seldom anything
ennobling in the relation of the sexes, friendship as-
sumed a dignity and importance which it scarcely pos-
sesses in the social or moral systems of modern life.
Of Gallus, the founder of the school, a longer account
may be given. - -
CAIUS CoRNELIUS GALLUS, born at Forum Iulii (now
Fréjus, in the Riviera), was, like Horace, of low birth,
but received, like him, an education superior to his
station. He studied under one of the best teachers of
the age, and had Virgil for one of his schoolfellows.
After the murder of Julius Cæsar, he joined, the party
of Octavianus (better known by his later title of
Augustus), and was appointed by him one of the three
commissioners charged with the distribution of the
confiscated lands of the North Italian colonies among
the discharged veterans. In this capacity he had the
opportunity of serving his old friend. Mantua, though
* Graceful and elegant as it is, it cannot be classed with the
finest works of its kind. The “Lycidas” of Milton, the “Ad-
onais” of Shelley, and Mr Matthew Arnold’s “Thyrsis,” are all
incomparably superior to it. It is entirely a work of art.
There is little or nothing of personal feeling in it. '.
16 O VII).
guiltless of any offence against the victorious party,
was included in the confiscation; and the estate of
Virgil, which was situated in one of the neighbouring
villages, was seized. Gallus exerted himself to get it
restored to its owner. The poet repaid him by most
graceful praise of the poetical powers which Gallus
probably valued more than his reputation as a soldier.
In one of his pastorals he makes the god Silenus
SIng—
“How Gallus, wandering by Permessian streams,
Some Muse conducted to th’ Aonian hills,
And how the tuneful choir of Phoebus rose
To greet their mortal guest, while Linus spake,
Old Linus, shepherd of the deathless song,
His hair with flowers and bitter parsley crowned—
‘Take thou these pipes, the Muses' gift to thee,
As erst their gift to Ascra's aged bard;
With them he knew to draw from down the cliff
The sturdy mountain-ash trees. Sing on these
IHow Grynia's grove was planted, till there stand
No forest dearer to Apollo's heart.’”
Another of the pastorals, the tenth and last, has the
name of “Gallus” for its title, and celebrates in
exquisite verse the unhappy passion of the soldier-
poet for the faithless Lycoris. It has been thought,
on the strength of a somewhat obscure passage in
Ovid's elegy on the death of Tibullus, that Gallus
behaved in a less friendly manner to that poet.
The departed bard, we are told, would meet his
fellow-singers Catullus and Calvus in the Elysian
fields—,
A UGUSTAN AGE OF LOVE-POETRY”. 17
“And thou too, Gallus, if they did thee wrong, -
Who spake of friendship shamed, wilt join the throng.”
Tibullus certainly lost, and apparently failed to re-
cover, a great part of his property; and it has been
conjectured that the influence of Gallus was used to
obstruct restitution. Perhaps a more plausible ex- .
planation may be found in the circumstances that
brought his career to an end. He had rendered great
services in that final struggle with Mark Antony
which put the undivided empire into the hands of
Augustus, and was appointed in reward to the gov-
ernment of Egypt, then for the first time a Roman
province. This elevation turned, or was said to
have turned, his head. Accused of having used in-
sulting words about Augustus, he was recalled. Other
charges were brought against him, and were investi-
gated by the senate, with the result that his property
was confiscated, and that he was sent into exile.
TJnable to bear the disgrace, he fell upon his sword,
He was in his fortieth year. We can judge of his
poetical merit only by the statements of his contem-
poraries; but if these are to be trusted, they were of
the very highest order.” His amatory poems consisted
of four books of elegies addressed to Lycoris. -
“Gallus to east and west is known, and fame
With Gallus joins his own Lycoris' name.”
One reflection strikes us forcibly as we compare
* Quintilian, however, says of his poetry that it was “some-
what harsh.” -
A.G.S.S., vol. ii. - B
18 º O VID.
Ovid with his predecessors and contemporaries—a re-
flection which, whatever the qualities in which they
may be allowed to have excelled him, explains and
justifies the higher rank which he has received in the
judgment of posterity. He was cast, so to speak, in
a larger mould, and made of stronger stuff. Nothing
is more significant of this than the very superiority of
his physical constitution. They almost without ex-
ception (we are not speakin g now of Horace and Virgil)
passed away in the very prime of their youth. Ca-
tullus died, when we do not know, but certainly before
the age which opened to a Roman citizen the highest
offices of state. He comes to meet Tibullus in the
Elysian fields, “his youthful brows with ivy crowned.”
Calvus, his closest friend, died at thirty-six; Gallus,
Tibullus, Propertius, were not older when they passed
away. The fiery passion which shines through their verse,
and which often gives it a more genuine ring than we
find in Ovid's smoother song, consumed them. Ovid
was more master of himself. Nor was his intellectual
life limited to the expression of passion. His mind
was braced by the severe studies that produced the
“Transmutations’ and the ‘Roman Calendar.” With
this stronger, more practical, more varied intellect
went along the more enduring physical frame. He
had nearly reached his sixtieth year before he suc-
cumbed to the miseries and privations of a protracted
exile. And sixty years of Roman life correspond, it
must be remembered, to at least seventy among those
who, like ourselves, date the beginning of manhood
not from sixteen, but only nominally even from
A UGUSTA W A GE OF LOVE-POETRY. 19
twenty-one. We may perhaps find a parallel, at
least partially appropriate, in the contrast between
Shakespeare and his more sturdy and healthful soul
and frame, and his short-lived predecessors in the
dramatic art, Marlowe and Greene, men of genius both,
but consumed, as it were, by the fire with which he
was inspired.
CHAPTER II.
THE LOW E-POEMS.
TNDER this title are included four productions which
—to speak of those works alone which have come down
to us—formed the literary occupation of Ovid from
his twentieth to his forty-second year. These four are
‘The Epistles of the Heroines,’ ‘The Loves,’ ‘The Art
of Love,’ and “Remedies for Love.’ It is in the second
of these, doubtless, that we have the earliest of the
poet's productions that survive. He tells us that he'
recited his juvenile poems to a public audience, for
the first time, when his beard had been twice or thrice
shaved. Shaving the beard seems to have been a fixed
epoch in a young Roman's life, occurring somewhere
about his twenty-first or twenty-second year. He also
tells us that of these poems Corinna had been the in-
spiring subject, and Corinna, we know, is celebrated in
‘The Loves. As this book, however, in the form in
which we now have it, is a second edition, and as it
makes express mention of ‘The Epistles of the Heroines’
as a work already published, it will be convenient to
speak first of the latter poem. It consists of twenty-
THE LOVE-POEMS. w 21
one” letters, supposed to have been written by women
famous in legend, to absent husbands or lovers. Ovid
claims the idea as original, and we must therefore Sup-
pose that the one example of the kind which we find
in Propertius was imitated from him—a supposition
which gives as a probable date for the publication of the
Letters, the poet's twenty-fifth year (B.C. 18). Pene-
lope, the faithful wife, whom the twenty years' absence
of her lord has not been able to estrange, writes to the
wandering Ulysses; Phyllis, daughter of the Thracian
king Sithon, complains of the long delay of her Athe-
nian lover, Demophoon, in the land whither he had
gone to prepare, as he said, for their marriage; the de-
serted Ariadne sends her reproaches after Theseus;
Medea, with mingled threats and entreaties, seeks to
turn Jason from the new marriage which he is contem-
plating; and Dido,f a figure which Ovid has borrowed
from the beautiful episode of the ‘AEneid, alternately
appeals to the pity and denounces the perfidy of her
Trojan lover. These are some of the subjects which the
poet has chosen. The idea of the book, it must be con-
fessed, is not a peculiarly happy one. Sometimes it
has an almost ludicrous air. There is an absurdity, as
Payle suggests, in the notion of the post reaching to
* The authenticity of some of this number is doubted, or,
we might say, more than doubted. But the question is beside
our present purpose. • 4 *.
+ It may be as well to remind the reader that though the
legend of Dido is much older than the ‘AEneid,’ the introduction
of AEneas into it is Virgil's own idea—a gross anachronism, by .
the way, with which, however, no reader of the fourth book
of the ‘AEmeid’ will reproach him.
22 * O VI D.
Naxos, the desolate island from whose shore Ariadne
has seen the departing sails of the treacherous Theseus.
Nor is there even an attempt at giving any colouring
appropriate to the time and place to which the several
letters are supposed to belong. Penelope, Dido, Ari-
adne are all alike refined and well-educated persons,
just like the great Roman ladies whom the poet used
to meet in daily life. This artificial writing, abso-
lutely without all that is called realism, was character-
istic of Ovid's age, and we cannot make it a special
charge against him. But it has certainly a wearying
effect, which is increased by the sameness and mono-
tony of the subject-matter of the Epistles. The names
are different, the circumstances are changed according
as the several stories demand, but the theme is ever the
same—love, now angry and full of reproaches, now ten-
der and condescending to entreaty. Nor is that love
the “maiden passion " which has supplied in mod-
ern times the theme of poems and romances without
number. It is the fierce emotion, guilty or wrathful,
though sometimes, it must be allowed, melting into
genuine pathos and tenderness, of betrayed maidens
and outraged wives. Dut, on the other hand, though
the theme is the same, the variety of expression is end-
less. The skill with which Ovid continues, again and
again, to say the same thing without repeating him-
self, is astonishing. In this respect no poet has ever
shown himself more thoroughly a master of his art.
Reeling, too, real though not elevated, often makes it-
self felt in the midst of the artificial sentiment; if the
style is disfigured with conceits, it is always exquisitely
THE LOVE-POEMS. 23
polished; the language is universally easy and trans-
parent, and the verse an unbroken flow of exquisite
melody.
Of all the Epistles, the one which for purity and ten-
derness most commends itself to our taste, is that ad-
dressed by the Thessalian princess Laodamia to her
husband Protesilaus. He had joined the expedition
of the Greeks against Troy, and was the destined
victim of the prophecy which foretold the death of the
Greek chieftain who should be the first to leap from
the ships on to the Trojan shore. Readers of Words-
worth will remember the beautiful poem in which he
has treated that part of the legend which relates how
Jove granted to the prayers of the widowed queen
that her hero should for a brief space of time revisit
the earth. Laodamia had heard that her husband and
his companions were detained at Aulis by contrary
winds. ‘Why had not the winds been contrary when
he left his home They had been too favourable—
favourable for the sailor, not for the lover. As long
as she could see, she had watched the departing sails.
When they vanished, she had seemed to pass from life,
and could wish that she never had been recalled—for
her, life was sorrow. How could she wear her. royal
robes while her husband was enduring the toil and
wretchedness of war? Accursed beauty of Paris that
had wrought such woe Accursed vengeance of Mene-
laus that would be fatal to so many How foolish the
enterprise of the Greeks Surely the man who had
dared to carry off the daughter of Tyndarus would be
able to keep her. And there was some dreadful
24 O VI D.
Hector of whom she had heard; let Protesilaus be-
ware of him. Let him always fight as one who re-
membered that there was a wife waiting for him at
home. It was Menelaus who had been wronged; let
it be Menelaus who should exact vengeance. A rumour
liad reached her that the first chief to touch Trojan
soil must fall. Let Protesilaus be careful not to be
he. Rather let his be the last of the thousand ships
—the last in going, but the first to return. Now she
mourned for him night and day. The dreams in
which she hoped to meet her husband did but bring
back his pale image. This made her pray to the gods
and burn incense on every altar in Thessaly. When
would he return and tell the tale of his deeds'. But
the hope suggested the dreadful thought of Troy and
the dangers of the sea. The sea, indeed, seemed to
forbid their journey. If it was so, what madness to
go ! The delay was not an accident ; it was an inti-
mation from heaven. Let them return while they
could. But no l She will recall the wish. She will
pray for favourable winds. If only it was not so far
away !’ And then she contrasts the sorrows of her own
loneliness with what she cannot but think the happier
lot of those who were shut up in the walls of Troy:-
“Ah Trojan women (happier far than we),
Fain in your lot would I partaker be
If ye must mourn o'er some dead hero's bier,
And all the dangers of the war are near,
With you at least the fair and youthful bride
May arm her husband, in becoming pride ;
Lift the fierce helmet to his gallant brow,
And, with a trembling hand, his sword bestow ;
THE LOVE-POEMS. 25
With fingers all unused the weapon brace,
And gaze with fondest love upon his face
How sweet to both this office she will make—
How many a kiss receive—how many take
When all equipped she leads him from the door,
Her fond commands how oft repeating o'er —
* Return victorious, and thine arms enshrine
Return, beloved, to these arms of mine !’
Nor shall these fond commands be all in vain,
Her hero-husband will return again.
Amid the battle's din and clashing swords
He still will listen to her parting words;
And, if more prudent, still, ah not less brave,
One thought for her and for his home will save.”
The letter of Sappho, the famous poetess of Lesbos,
to Phaon, a beautiful youth who had betrayed her love,
is founded on a less pleasing story—a story, too, which
has no foundation either in the remains—miserably
scanty, alas ! but full of beauty—of the great singer,
or in any authentic records of her life. It might well
have been passed over had it not been illustrated by
the genius of Pope. Pope never attempted the part
of a faithful translator; but his verse has a freedom
and a glow which leave the faithful translator in
despair. And his polished antithetical style is as
suitable, it should be said, to the artificial and rhetori-
cal verse of Ovid, as it is incongruous with the simple
grandeur of Homer. It is thus that he renders the
passage in which Sappho announces her intention to
try the famous remedy for hopeless love, the leap from
the Leucadian rock:-
“A spring there is, where silver waters show,
Clear as a glass, the shining Sands below ;
26
O VI D.
A flowery lotus spreads its arms above,
Shades all the banks, and seems itself a grove :
Eternal greens the mossy margin grace,
Watched by the sylvan genius of the place.
*Here as I lay, and swelled with tears the flood,
Before my sight a watery virgin stood :
She stood and cried, ‘Oh, you that love in vain,
Fly hence, and seek the fair Leucadian main
There stands a rock, from whose impending steep
Apollo's fane surveys the rolling deep ;
There injured lovers, leaping from above,
Their flames extinguish and forget to love.
Deucalion once with hopeless fury burned,
In vain he loved, relentless Pyrrha scorned :
But when from hence he plunged into the main,
Deucalion scorned and Pyrrha loved in vain.
Hence, Sappho, haste from high Leucadia throw
Thy wretched weight, nor dread the deeps below.’
She spoke, and vanished with the voice—I rise,
And silent tears fall trickling from my eyes.
I go, ye nymphs, those rocks and seas to prove:
And much I fear; but ah how much I love 1
I go, ye nymphs, where furious love inspires;
Let female fears Submit to female fires.
To rocks and seas I fly from Phaon's hate,
And hope from seas and rocks a milder fate.
Ye gentle gales, below my body blow,
And softly lay me on the waves below !
And then, kind Love, my sinking limbs sustain,
Spread thy soft wings, and waft me o'er the main,
Nor let a lover's death the guiltless flood profane !
On Phoebus' shrine my harp l’ll then bestow,
And this inscription shall be placed below—
‘Here she who sung to him that did inspire,
Sappho to Phoebus consecrates her lyre;
What suits with Sappho, Phoebus, suits with thee—
The gift, the giver, and the god agree.’”
|
THE LOVE-POEMS. 27
We have ‘The Loves,’ as has been said, in a second
edition. “Five books,” says the poet in his prefatory
quatrain, “have been reduced to three.” “Though you
find no pleasure in reading us,” the volumes are made
to say to the reader, “we shall at least, when thus
diminished by two, vex you less.” A question imme-
diately presents itself, Who was the Corinna, whom he
celebrates in these poems? It has often been argued,
and that by critics of no small authority, that she was
no less famous a personage than Julia, daughter of the
Emperor Augustus by his first wife Seiibonia. This
indeed is expressly stated as a fact by Sidonius Apol-
linaris, a poet of the fifth century, and a somewhat
distinguished personage, first as a politidim, and after-
wards as the bishop of Clermont in Auvergne. Of
Julia the briefest account will be the best. She was
wife successively of Marcus Marcelluſ 3, nephew to
Augustus; of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa; and of
Tiberius, afterwards emperor. This lºast union was
most unhappy. Tiberius had bee compelled to
divorce a wife whom he dearly love! l, and he found
himself bound to a woman whose protºligacy was con-
spicuous even in a profligate age. After , a short union
he retired into a voluntary exile; and Aug rustus then
became aware of what all Rome had long kn own, that
his daughter was an abandoned woman. He banished
her from Italy, and kept her in a rigorous # mprison-
ment, which was never relaxed till her deat # 1. There
is nothing, therefore, in the character of Julia that is
inconsistent with her being the Corinna o É Ovid's
poems. We can even find some confirmation of , he



28 - O VII).
theory. Corinna, it is evident, did not belong to that
class of freed-women which included the Delia of
Tibullus and the Cynthia of Propertius. Sometimes
we are led to believe that she was a lady of high
social position. Her apartments were guarded by a
eunuch—not a common circumstance in Rome, and
obviously the mark of a wealthy household. That
she was married the poet expressly states. And a
curious coincidence has been pointed out which,
though it does not go very far, may be allowed to
make for the identification with Julia. This princess
had lost much of her hair through the unsparing use
of dyes.” And we find Ovid remonstrating with
Corinna on jºr folly in producing in the same way
figurement —
“No weeds destroyed them with their fatal juice,
Nor canst #hou witches' magic charms accuse,
a # *
Nor º nor dire enchantments blame,
the same dis
Nor envy's blasting tongue, nor fever's flame;
The mischie, by thy own fair hands was,wrought,
Nor dost thou i suffer for another's fault.
How oft I baſide thee, but in vain, beware
The venomedº, essence that destroyed thy hair
Now with pºiew arts thou shalt thy friends amuse,
And curls's, of German captives borrowed, use.
Drusus *co Rome their vanquished nation sends,
And ſhe fair slave to thee her tresses lends.”—D.
But there is a good deal to be said on the other side.
ºught, it would seem, to change the dark tresses
aſſure had given her into the blond locks which
southern tº ations so admire, injured them in the effort, and
had to reºplace them by purchase. The vagaries of fashion
*
tiºnually repeat themselves.
CO





THE LOVE POEMs 29
The testimony of Sidonius Apollinaris, after an interval
of nearly five centuries, is worth very little. We
have no hint of any contemporary authorities on which
he founded it; and tradition, when it has to pass through
so many generations—generations, too, that suffered so
much disturbance and change—stands for next to no-
thing. If some passages, again, favour the notion that
Corinna was Julia, there are others which tell against it.
Ovid could never have ventured to use—would not even
have dreamt of expressing in words—to Agrippa or
Tiberius, the insolent threats which he vents against the
husband of Corinna. Noris it possible to imagine that
Julia, however profligate, could ever have been even
tempted to the avarice with which 6)vid reproaches his
mistress, when he remonstrates against the preference
that she had shown for some wealthy soldier just re-
turned from the wars. Then, again, the poems were
read in public ;-an absolutely impossible audacity, if
there had been the faintest suspicion that they referred
to so exalted a personage as the emperor's daughter.
The writer of the verse himself tells us that it was not
known who was the theme of his song, and he speaks
of some woman who was going about boasting that
she was Ovid's Corinna.
Of the subject-matter of ‘The Loves’ there is little to
be said. The passion which inspires the verse is coarser
and more brutal than that of his rival poets, even when
this shows itself in its worst phases. It has nothing
of the fervour of Propertius, the tenderness of Tibullus. \
It does not spring from any depth of feeling. It is real,
but its reality is of the basest, most literal sort. That f
30 - - O VI D.
he describes an actual amour is only too manifest, but
that this was in any true sense of the words “an
affair of the heart” may well be doubted. But then,
again, he shows an incomparable skill in expression;
he invests even the lowest things with a certain grace.
His wit and fancy “sparkle on the stye.” If he lets
us get away for a moment from the mire—if, with the
delicate fancy that never fails him, he tells us some
legend that “boys and virgins” need not blush to read
—he is charming. There never was a more subtle and
ingenious master of language, and it is a grievous pity
that he should so often have used it so ill. Our speci-
men of his ‘Loves’ must be taken from the episodes
rather than from the ordinary course of the poems.
The following, however, will not offend. The poet re-
nounces the vain struggle which he has been waging
against love —
“I yield, great Love my former crimes forgive,
Eorget my rebel thoughts, and let me live :
No need of force: I willingly obey,
And now, unarmed, shall prove no glorious prey.
So take thy mother's doves, thy myrtle crown,
And for thy chariot Mars will lend his own ; -
There shalt thou sit in thy triumphal pride,
And whilst glad shouts resound on every side. !
Thy gentle hands thy mother's doves shall guide.
And then, to make thy glorious pomp and state,
A train of sighing youths and maids shall wait, |
Yet none complain of an unhappy fate.
Then Modesty, with veils thrown o'er her face,
Now doubly blushing at her own disgrace;
Then sober thoughts, and whatsoe'er disdaims
Love's power, shall feel his power, and wear his chains.
i
THE LOVE POEMS. 31
Then all shall fear, all bow, yet all rejoice—
‘Io triumphe l’ is the public voice.
Thy constant guards, soft fancy, hope, and fear,
Anger, and soft caresses shall be there :
By these strong guards are gods and men o'erthrown,
These conquer for thee, Love, and these alone:
Thy mother, from the sky, thy pomp shall grace,
And scatter sweetest roses in thy face.
Then glorious Love shall ride, profusely dressed
With all the richest jewels of the East,
Rich gems thy quiver, and thy wheels infold,
And hide the poorness of the baser gold.”—D.
In the following the poet claims a purity and fidelity
for his affection with which it is impossible to credit
him —
“Take, dear, a servant bound for ever; take
A heart whose troth no falsehood e'er shall break.
'Tis true but simple knightly birth is mine ;
I claim no splendid names to grace my line;
My fields no countless tribe of oxen ploughs,
And scant the means a frugal home allows.
Now Phoebus aid me, and the Muses nine—
Bacchus, and Love, sweet Lord, who makes me thine,
Faith unsurpassed, and life exempt from blame,
And simple Modesty, and blushing Shame ;
No trifler I; my heart no rivals share :
Thee will I make, be sure, my lifelong care;
With thee will spend what years the Fates shall give,
And when thou first shalt suffer, cease to live.”
Another little poem has been elegantly paraphrased and
adapted to modern manners by Mr A. A. Brodribb.”
* Lays from Latin Lyrics. By F. W. Hummel and A. A.
Brodribb. Longmans: 1876. - .
32 O VII).
It will remind the reader of a pretty passage in Mr
Tennyson’s “Miller's Daughter:”— g
THE RING.
“Sign of my too presumptuous flame,
To fairest Celia haste, nor linger,
And may shé gladly breathe my name,
And gaily put thee on her finger
Suit her as I myself, that she
May fondle thee with murmured blessing;
Caressed by Celia | Who could be
|Unenvious of such sweet caressing
Had I Medea's magic art, *
Or Proteus' power of transformation,
Then would I blithely play thy part,
The happiest trinket in creation 1
Oh I on her bosom I would fall,
Her finger guiding all too lightly;
Or else be magically small,
Fearing to be discarded nightly.
And I her ruby lips would kiss
(What mortal's fortune could be better?)
As oft allowed to seal my bliss
As she desires to seal a letter.
Now go, these are delusions bright
Of idle Fancy's idlest scheming;
Tell her to read the token right—
Tell her how sweet is true love's dreaming.”
Dut, the chief ornaments of the book are two elegies,
THE LOVE-POEMS. 33
properly so called,—one of a sportive, the other of
a serious character. Catullus, a predecessor in the
poetic art, of whom Ovid speaks with respect, had
lamented, in an exquisite little poem which must
always remain a model for such compositions, the
death of the sparrow which Lesbia, his lady-love,
“loved more than her own eyes.” In a poem which,
though not so graceful as that of the older writer, and
scarcely even pretending to pathos, has many merits,
Ovid commemorates the death of his own Corinna's
parrot :— -
“Our parrot, sent from India's farthest shore,
Our parrot, prince of mimics, is no more.
Throng to his burial, pious tribes of air,
With rigid claw your tender faces tear !
Your ruffled plumes, like mourners' tresses, rend,
And all your notes, like funeral trumpets, blend
Mourn all that cleave the liquid skies, but chief
Beloved turtle, lead the general grief,
Through long harmonious days the parrot's friend,
In mutual faith still loyal to the end -
What boots that faith ? those splendid hues and strange 2
That voice so skilled its various notes to change
What to have won my gentle lady's grace
Thou diest, hapless glory of thy race.
Red joined with Saffron in thy beak was seen,
And green thy wings beyond the emerald's sheen;
Nor ever lived on earth a wiser bird,
With lisping voice to answer all he heard.
'Twas envy slew thee; all averse to strife,
One love of chatter filled thy peaceful life:
For ever satisfied with scantiest fare,
Small time for food that busy tongue could spare.
A. C.S.S., vol. ii. O.
&
34 O VI D.
Walnuts and sleep-producing poppies gave
Thy simple diet, and thy drink the wave. ſº
Long lives the hovering vulture, long the kite
Pursues through air the circles of his flight;
Many the years the noisy jackdaws know,
Prophets of rainfall; and the boding crow
Waits, still unscathed by armed Minerva’s hate,
Three ages three times told, a tardy fate.
But he, our prattler from earth's farthest shore,
Our human tongue's sweet image, is no more.
Thus still the ravening fates our best devour,
And spare the mean till life's extremest hour.
Why tell the prayers my lady prayed in vain,
Borne by the stormy south wind o'er the main }
The seventh dawn had come, the last for thee,
With empty distaff stood the fatal Three.
Yet still from failing throat thy accents rung,
Farewell, Corinna cried thy dying tongue.
There stands a grove with dark-green ilex crowned
Beneath the Elysian lill, and all around |
With turf undying shines the verdant ground.
There dwells, if true the tale, the pious race—
All evil birds are banished from the place;
There harmless Swans unbounded pasture find ;
There dwells the phoenix, single of his kind;
The peacock spreads his splendid plumes in air,
The kissing doves sit close, an amorous pair;
There in their woodland home a guest allowed,
Our parrot charms the pious listening crowd.
Beneath a mound, of justly measured size,
Small tombstone, briefest epitaph, he lies,
“His mistress' darling’—that this stone may show—
The prince of feathered speakers lies below.”
| The other elegy has for its subject the death of the
poet Tibullus —
THE LOVE-POEMS. - 35
“If bright Aurora mourned for Memnon's fate,
Or the fair Thetis wept Achilles slain,
And the Sad sorrows that on mortals wait
Can ever move celestial hearts with pain—
Come, doleful Elegy too just a name !
Unbind thy tresses fair, in loose attire,
For he, thy bard, the herald of thy fame,
TIBULLUS, burns on the funereal pyre.
Ah, lifeless corse ! Lo! Venus' boy draws near
With upturned quiver and with shattered bow,
His torch extinguished, see him toward the bier
With drooping wings disconsolately go.
He smites his heaving breast with cruel blow,
Those straggling locks, his neck all streaming round,
Receive the tears that fastly trickling flow,
While sobs convulsive from his lips resound.
In guise like this, Tulus, when of yore
His dear AEneas died, he sorrowing went ;
Now Venus wails as when the raging boar
The tender thigh of her Adonis rent.
We bards are named the gods' peculiar care;
Nay, some declare that poets are divine ;
Yet forward death no holy thing can spare,
'Round all his dismal arms he dares entwine.
Did Orpheus' mother aid, or Linus’ sire?
That one subdued fierce lions by his song
Availed not ; and, they say, with plaintive lyre
The god mourned Linus, woods and glades among.
Maeonides, from whose perennial lay
Flow the rich fonts of the Pierian wave
36 O VII).
To wet the lips of bards, one dismal day
Sent down to Orcus and the gloomy grave—
Him, too, Avernus holds in drear employ ;
Only his songs escape the greedy pile ;
His work remains—the mighty wars of Troy,
And the slow web, unwove by nightly guile.
Live a pure life;—yet death remains thy doom :
Be pious;–ere from sacred shrines you rise,
Death drags you heedless to the hollow tomb 1
Confide in song—lo ! there Tibullus lies.
Scarce of so great a soul, thus lowly laid,
Enough remains to fill this little urn ;
O holy bard I were not the flames afraid
That hallowed corse thus ruthlessly to burn ?
These might devour the heavenly halls that shine
With gold—they dare a villany so deep :
SHE turned who holds the Erycinian shrine,
And there are some who say she turned to weep.
Yet did the base soil of a stranger land
Not hold him nameless; as the spirit fled
His mother closed his eyes with gentle hand,
And paid the last Sad tribute to the dead.
Here, with thy wretched mother's woe to wait,
: Thy sister came with loose dishevelled hair;
Nemesis kisses thee, and thy earlier mate—
They watched the pyre when all had left it bare.
Oeparting, Delia faltered, ‘Thou wert true,
The Fates were cheerful them, when I was thine : *
The other, “Say, what hast thou here to do t”
Dying, he clasped his failing hand in mine.
THE LOVE-POEMS. 37
Ah, yet, if any part of us remains
But name and shadow, Albius is not dead;
And thou, Catullus, in Elysian plains,
With Calvus see the ivy crown his head.
Thou, Gallus, prodigal of life and blood,
If false the charge of amity betrayed,
And aught remains across the Stygian flood,
Shalt meet him yonder with thy happy shade.
Refined Tibullus ! thou art joined to those
Living in calm communion with the blest ;
In peaceful urn thy quiet bones repose—
May earth lie lightly where thy ashes rest l”
Of the “Art of Love’ the less, perhaps, that is said
the better. The poet himself warns respectable per-
sons to have nothing to do with his pages, and the
warning is amply justified by their contents. It has,
however, some of the brilliant episodes which Ovid
introduces with such effect. His own taste, and the
taste, we may hope, of his readers, demanded that the
base level of sensuality should sometimes be left for a
higher flight of fancy. The description of Ariadne in
Naxos is as brilliant as Titian's picture ; equally vivid
is the story of the flight of Daedalus and his son Icarus
on the wings which the matchless craftsman had made,
and of the fate which followed the over-daring flight of
the youth through regions too near to the sun. Then,
again, we find ever and anon pictures of Roman man-
ners which may amuse without offence. Among such
are Ovid's instructions to his fair readers how they
may most becomingly take their part. in the games of
38 - O VI D.
chance and skill which were popular in the polite
circles of Rome. Among these games he mentions
the cubical dice, called tesserae, resembling our own
in shape, and similarly marked. Three of these were
used together; and it was customary to throw them
from cups of a conical shape. The luckiest throw was
“treble sixes,” and was honoured by the name of
Aphrodite or Venus. The worst was “treble aces:”
this was stigmatised as “the dog.” There were other
dice made out of the knuckle-bones of animals. They
were called tali. (Our own popular name for them is
“dibs..”) These were used either in the same way as
the cubical dice, though they were not numbered in
the same way, or in a game of manual skill which still
survives among us, where the player throws them
and catches them again, or performs other feats of
dexterity with them. Besides these there was the
game of the “Robbers” (Ludus Latrunculorum),
played with pieces made of glass or ivory, which has
been compared with chess, but was probably not so
complicated, and more nearly resembling our games
of “Fox and Geese" and “Military Tactics.” The
game of the “Fifteen Lines” must have been very
like our “Backgammon,” as the moves of the men were
determined by previous throws. of dice. Ovid, after
recommending his readers to practise a graceful play-
ing at the games, wisely warns them that it is still
more important that they should learn to keep their
temper. The suitor he advises to allow his fair an-
tagonist to win, a counsel doubtless often followed by
those who have never had the advantage—or, we should
THE LOVE-POEMS. 39
rather say, the disadvantage—of studying Ovid's pre-
cepts. Equally familiar will be the device of a present
of fruit brought by a slave-boy in a rustic basket,
which the lover will declare has been conveyed from
a country garden, though he will probably have bought
it in the neighbouring street. A certain sagacity must
be allowed to the counsel that the lover, when his lady
is sick, must not take upon himself the odious office of
forbidding her a favourite dish ; and will, if possible,
hand over to a rival the office, equally odious, of ad-
ministering a nauseous medicine. The recommenda-
tion not to be too particular in inquiring about age is
equally sagacious. It is curious to observe that Lord
Byron's expressed aversion to seeing women eat was
not unknown to the Roman youth. Ovid, who, to do
him justice, never praises wine, hints that drinking
was not equally distasteful.
The “Remedies of Love' may be dismissed with
à still briefer notice. Like the “Art of Love,’ it
is relieved by some beautiful digressions. When it
keeps close to its subject, it is, to say the least, not
edifying. The “Temedies,” indeed, are for the most
part as bad as the disease, though we must except that
most respectable maxim that “idleness is the parent
of love,” with the poet's practical application of it.
One specimen of these two books shall suffice. It is
of the episodical kind, - a brilliant panegyric on
the young Caesar, Caius, son of Augustus's daughter
Julia, who was then preparing to take the command
of an expedition against the Parthians. Gross as is
the flattery, it is perhaps less offensive than usual.
40 O VII). .
The young Caius died before his abilities could be
proved; but the precocious genius of the family was
a fact. Caius was then of the very same age at which
his grandfather had first commanded an army.
“Once more our Prince prepares to make us glad,
And the remaining East to Rome will add.
Rejoice, ye Roman soldiers, in your urn ;
Your ensigns from the Parthians shall return ; }
And the slain Crassi shall no longer mourn
A youth is sent those trophies to demand,
And bears his father's thunder in his hand:
Doubt not th’ imperial boy in wars unseen ;
In childhood all of Caesar's race are men.
Celestial seeds shoot out before their day,
Prevent their years, and brook no dull delay.
Thus infant Hercules the Snakes did press,
And in his cradle did his sire confess.
Bacchus, a boy, yet like a hero fought,
And early spoils from conquered India brought.
Thus you your father's troops shall lead to fight,
And thus shall vanquish in your father's sight.
These rudiments you to your lineage owe ;
Born to increase your titles as you grow.
Brethren you lead, avenge your brethren slain;
You have a father, and his right maintain.
Armed by your country's parent and your own,
Redeem your country and restore his throne.”—D.
The date of the poem is fixed by this passage for the
year B.o. 1, as that of the “Remedies of Love' is
settled for A.D. 1 by an allusion to the actual war in
Parthia, which was at its height in that year, and was
finished by a peace in the year following.
CHAPTER III.'
DOMESTIC LIFE—BANISIHMENT.
ABOUT Ovid's private life between his twentieth and
fiftieth years there is little to be recorded. Two mar-
riages have already been spoken of. He had pro-
bably reached middle life when he married for the
third time. The probability, indeed, consists in the
difficulty we have in believing that the husband of a
wife whom he really respected and loved should have
published so disreputable a book as the “Art of Love,’
for even to the lax judgment of Roman society it
seemed disreputable. A feeling, perhaps a hint from
high quarters, that he had gone too far — a con-
sciousness, we may hope, that he was capable of better
things—had made him turn to work of a more elevated
kind. A good marriage may have been part of his
plan for restoring himself to a reputable place in
society. It is even possible to imagine that a genuine
and worthy affection may have been one of the causes
that operated in bringing about a change. A much
earlier date, indeed, must be fixed, if we suppose that
the daughter of whom Ovid speaks in the brief sketch
of his life was a child of this marriage. This daughter
42 O VI D.
had been twice married at the time of his banishment,
when he was in his fifty-second year, and had borne a
child to each husband. Toman women married early,
and changed their husbands quickly ; but, in any case,
it is not likely that the young lady could have been
less than twenty. It seems, however, more probable
that she was the offspring of the second marriage. In
the many affectionate letters which Ovid addressed to
his wife after his banishment, no mention is made of
a child and grandchildren in whom both had a com-
mon interest. It is impossible to suppose that a
husband who anxiously appeals to every motive in a
wife which could help to keep their mutual affection
unimpaired by absence, should have neglected to make
use of what was obviously the most powerful of all.
There is, it is true, a letter addressed to one Perilla,
written by Ovid in exile. Dr Dyer, the learned
author of the article “Ovidius” in the ‘Dictionary of
Biography and Mythology,’ takes it for granted that
this Perilla was Ovid's daughter by his third wife.
The letter does not bear out the supposition. It will
be found described in its place. Meanwhile it is
sufficient to say, that while the writer enlarges on the
fact that he had instructed Perilla in the art of poetry,
he does not say a word which indicates a closer rela-
tionship than that of master and pupil. Had the
poetess been his daughter, we may say with confidence
that Ovid would have expressed in at least a dozen
ways that he was the source at once of her life and of
her song. The poet's wife was a lady of good position
at Rome. In early years she had been what may be
I)OMESTIC LIFE—BA WISHMENT. 43
called a lady-in-waiting to the aunt of Augustus, and
at the same time an intimate friend of Marcia, a
lady belonging to that branch of the Marcian house
which bore the surname of Philippus. On Marcia's
marriage with Fabius Maximus, representative of the
great patrician family of the Fabii, one of the few
ancient houses which had survived to the days of the
empire, this friend accompanied her to her new home.
From there Ovid married her. The union lasted till
his death, with much mutual affection. When it has
been added that Ovid's town mansion was close to the
Capitol, and that he had a suburban residence, where
he amused himself with the pleasures of gardening,
nothing remains to be told about this portion of his
life.
Some time after his third marriage, and not long
before the great catastrophe which we are about to
relate, Ovid's father died. He had completed his
ninetieth year. His mother died shortly afterwards.
“Ah ! happy they and timely passed away
Iºre on their offspring came that fatal day !
Ah happy I amidst my grief to know
That they are all unconscious of my woeſ".
It is the catastrophe which he here mentions that has
now to be discussed. The cause of the banishment
of Ovid, like the personality of the Man in the Iron
Mask and the authorship of “Junius,’ is one of the
unsolved problems of history. The facts absolutely
known are very soon related. Ovid was in his fifty-
second year. His fame as a poet was at its height.
44 O VI D.
Any scandal that may have arisen from some of his
publications had gradually passed away. Suddenly
there fell on him “a bolt from the blue.” A rescript
in the emperor's hand was delivered to him, ordering
him to leave Rome within a certain time, and to
repair to Tomi, a desolate settlement on the western
shore of the Black Sea, near the very outskirts of
the empire. No decree of the Senate had been passed
to authorise the infliction of the banishment. It was
simply an act of arbitrary power on the part of the
emperor. The cause alleged was the publication of
works corrupting to public morals, and the “Art of
Love' was specified. The punishment was not of the
severest kind. The place of exile, hateful as it was
to the banished man, was at least preferable to that
which many offenders had to endure—some desolate
rock in the AEgean, where the victim was kept from
starvation only by the charity of his friends. Ovid
was also permitted to retain and enjoy his property.
That the cause alleged was not the actual cause
of the banishment may be considered certain. It
is sufficient to say that the guilty work had been
published at least ten years before. The offence was
such as to afford a pretext of the barest kind to an
absolute ruler who felt the force of public opinion
just enough to make him shrink from a wholly arbi-
trary, act, but was not careful to make any complete
justification. But it did not, we may be sure, wholly
sway his mind. We know, indeed, that there was
another cause. To such a cause Ovid frequently al-
ludes. And it is in this lies the mystery of the event.
DOMESTIC LIFE—BANISHMENT. 45
At the same time, we must not suppose that the
alleged motive had not some real influence on the
emperor's action. His own life had not been by any
means free from reproach. Even if we discredit much
of what that great scandalmonger, Suetonius, tells us
about him, there remains enough to convict him of
shameful disregard of morality. But he was now an
old man. And he had had some of those tremendous
lessons which teach even the most profligate, if the
light of intelligence be not wholly quenched in them,
that moral laws cannot be disregarded with impunity.
Men in their own lives quite regardless of purity feel
a genuine shock of disgust and horror when they find
unchastity in the women of their own family. And
Augustus had felt the unutterable shame of discover-
ing that his own daughter was the most profligate
woman in Rome. Nor was he, we may believe, with-
out some genuine feeling of concern for the future of
his country. The establishment of absolute power
may have been a necessity for the State, all writers
seem to agree in saying so. It had certainly aggran-
dised himself. But he could not fail to perceive, and
to perceive more and more clearly as he came nearer
to the end of his long reign, that it was ruining the
old Roman character, the traditionary virtues of his
country. An aristocracy, whose vast wealth furnished
them with all the means of procuring enjoyment, but
who were shut out from anything like the career of
public life, would inevitably become corrupt. Augustus
was not a man who would deny himself in order to set
a practical example to others; but he was a man cap-
46 O VII).
able of doing everything, short of such self-denial, to
stop the evil of which, both from public and private
causes, he was so acutely conscious. He had recourse
to severe legislation against immorality. The more
he saw, as he must have seen, how ineffectual was this
method of reforming society, the greater must have
been his disgust with other agencies which he sup-
posed to be at work. Ovid's poems may well have
been a symptom rather than a cause of general immor-
ality; but it was quite possible that Augustus, his own
habits and tastes changed by advancing years, may
have sincerely regarded them as the author of mischief,
and deserving, accordingly, of the severest punishment.
To arrive, however, at the truth, we must examine
closely another side of the emperor's life. His home
was divided between two conflicting interests—the
interest of his own descendants and the interest of the
step-children whom his wife Livia had brought into
his family. Livia, one of the ablest women of whom
history speaks, had steadfastly set her heart on secur-
ing for her son Tiberius the succession to the throne.
To gain this end she had to clear away from his path
the rivals who might be found among the blood-rela-
tions of her husband. How far the course of events
helped her in her undertaking, how far she assisted
the course of events by her own arts, will never be
known. The fate of Julia, the daughter of Augustus,
has been already related. She had borne to her second
husband Agrippa five children, three of them sons.
The eldest son Caius has been mentioned before.” He
* Page 39. w -- :
DOMESTIC LIFE—BANISHMENT. 47
was wounded, it was said by treachery, before the
town of Artagera, in Armenia, and died, some months
afterwards, at Limyra, on the south-western coast of
Asia Minor, whither he had gone to recruit his health
in a climate less inclement than that of Armenia.
The second son Lucius had died eighteen months be-
fore at Marseilles. The third, Agrippa Postumus, was
a youth whose irreclaimably Savage temper bordered on
insanity. He had been adopted by Augustus at the
same time with Tiberius, but as his character revealed
itself, the hopes that the emperor might once have
entertained of finding a successor in a descendant of
his own died away. Livia had no difficulty in per-
suading him that if Agrippa was not to sit, on the
throne, it would be better that he should be removed
from its neighbourhood. Though guiltless of any
crime, he was banished to Planasia, on the coast of
Corsica, and the emperor obtained a decree from the
senate which made this banishment life-long. But
the contest was not yet decided. The family of Julia,
whose beauty, wit, and varied accomplishments were
hot forgotten, was greatly popular at Rome ; whilst the
ambition of Livia, who was strongly suspected of hav-
ing hastened the death of the young Caesars, and the
craft and dissimulation of Tiberius, were objects of
dread. It was under these circumstances that she
discovered the younger Julia to be in her power. This
unhappy woman had inherited the vicious propensities
of her mother. One of many lovers was Decius Julius
Silanus, member of a family which had been distin-
guished in Rome since the second Punic war. The
48 - - O VII).
intrigue was too notorious to escape observation, and
Livia had the opportunity which she desired. Julia
was banished; her paramour went into voluntary
exile.
So far we are on firm historical ground. It may
be added also, that the same year which saw the dis-
grace of Julia, witnessed also the banishment of Ovid.
Were the two events in any way connected? We must
get our answer from considering the circumstances of
the political situation which has been described, from
the coincidence, and from the hints, which are indeed
sufficiently numerous, which Ovid himself gives us.
The fact that these hints do occur negative one sup-
position, which has found some favour—namely, that
Ovid had become involuntarily acquainted with some
dark secret disgraceful to the character of Augustus
himself. Had there been such a secret, we can hardly
suppose that the poet would have alluded to it. Again
and again he makes his piteous supplications for the ter-
mination, or at least the mitigation, of his banishment.
But every mention of such a fact would have been an
additional offence, Indeed it is difficult to imagine
that the possessor of such dangerous knowledge should
have been suffered to live. Not a prolonged banish-
ment with unlimited opportunities for communication
with his friends, but the sword of the centurion, would
have been his doom. We may be nearly sure that
the secret, as far at least as it concerned Augustus,
must have been known already. Ovid was not ban-
ished for the purpose of keeping something concealed.
That purpose could have been far more easily and effec-
I)OMESTIC LIFE—BA WISHMENT. 49
tually secured, and Roman emperors were not accus-
tomed to be scrupulous about means. Let us see, then,
what Ovid actually says on the subject:-
“Why did I see something? why did I make my eyes
guilty why did I become, all unknowingly, acquainted
with guilt 7” -
“Two faults overthrew me—my verses and my wrong-
doing ; but about the guilt of one of them I must keep
Silence.” & -
“I am not worth so much as to renew thy wound, O
Caesar; it is far too much that you should once have felt
the pang.” .
“You [Augustus] avenged on me, as is right, a quarrel of
your own.”
“Because my eyes unknowingly beheld a crime, I am
punished. To have had the power of sight—this is my
sin.”
He protests that his fault had been an error rather
than a crime :—
“If mortal deeds never escape the knowledge of gods,
you know that there was no guilt in my fault. So it is—
you know it; it was my mistake that led me astray; my
purpose was foolish, but not wicked.”
“You would say that this fault which ruined me was not
a crime, did you know how things followed one another in
this great trouble. It was either cowardice or fault of judg-
ment, but fault of judgment first of all, that damaged me.”
“Had not my part of the guilt admitted excuse, banish-
ment would have been a trifling punishment.”
* Masson appropriately quotes the words used by Tiberius
in allowing Silanus to return from exile: “I myself still feel
against him as strongly as ever the quarrel of my father
Augustus.”
A.O.S.S., vol. ii. D
50 O VII).
That he became acquainted with some crime which
touched nearly the honour of Augustus; that he con-
cealed it; that in some sense he made himself an
accomplice in it; that this crime was not an isolated
act, but a line of conduct pursued for some time; that
Ovid was afraid or thought it better not to reveal his
knowledge of it, are, it seems, inferences that may
fairly be drawn from the language which he uses.
They harmonise with the supposition that Ovid be-
came involuntarily acquainted with the intrigue of the
younger Julia with Silanus, that he helped to conceal
it, possibly assisted in its being carried on. It is pro-
bable, at the same time, that he was one of the party
which supported that side of the imperial house. It
is not difficult to imagine that the result should have
been such as we know to have happened. The em-
peror, for a second time, is struck to the heart by the
discovery of the darkest profligacy in one very near to
himself. In his capacity as ruler he is terrified by the
corruption which his laws are powerless to stay. The
poems which the severer moralists of his court had
possibly criticised—and Livia really felt, while Tiberius
at least affected, such severity—comes to his recollec-
tion, and he finds that the author has actually abetted
the guilty intrigues of his granddaughter. Livia and
Tiberius, anxious to get out of the way a partisan of
, opposite interests who might possibly be dangerous,
encourage the impulse, and the poet is banished.
Another part of the story remains to be related. If
the tale which Tacitus tells be true, all the art and
persistency of Livia had not succeeded in wholly
DOMESTIC LIFE—BANISHMENT. 51
alienating the affections of Augustus from his own
descendants. Even up to the last months of the old
man's life the interests of her son had to be jealously
defended. Tacitus gives (Annals, i. 5), without say-
ing whether he himself believed or disbelieved it, a
report which was current shortly after the death of
Augustus. “A rumour had gone abroad that a few
months before, he [Augustus] had sailed to Planasia
on a visit to Agrippa, with the knowledge of some
chosen friends, and with one companion, Fabius
Maximus; that many tears were shed on both sides,
with expressions of affection, and that thus there was
a hope of the young man being restored to the home
of his grandfather. This, it was said, Maximus had
divulged to his wife Marcia, she again to Livia. All
was known to Caesar; and when Maximus soon after-
wards died, by a death some thought to be self-
inflicted, there were heard at his funeral wailings from
Marcia, in which she reproached herself for having
been the cause of her husband's destruction.””
To this Maximus Ovid addresses six of his ‘Letters
from the Pontus.’ He evidently looked to him as
one who might exercise a powerful influence on his
behalf. He appeals to him again and again to exer-
* Plutarch has added to this narrative an interesting anec-
dote to the effect that Fabius (he calls him Fulvius by mistake),
when paying his respects as usual to the emperor in the morn-
ing, had his salutation returned with the ominous “Farewell,
Fulvius.” “But he, comprehending the matter, forthwith
retired to his house, and, summoning his wife, said, ‘Caesar
has learnt that I have not been silent about his secrets . I
have therefore resolved to die.’”
52 O VII).
cise it. And at one time he seems to have hoped
that it would not be exercised in vain. “Augustus
had begun,” he writes in the sixth year of his exile,
“to grow more lenient to my fault of ignorance, and
lo 1 he leaves my hopes and all the world desolate at
once.” It is in the same letter that he significantly
deplores the death of Maximus. “I think, Maximus,
that I must have been the cause of your death.”
This may have been a commonplace,—the fear lest the
cause of so unlucky a man might be fatal to any who
undertook it. Viewed in connection with the whole
story, it assumes a different aspect. That Maximus
had perished in an attempt to befriend Ovid may
have been so far true that his death followed an un-
successful effort to restore to the favour of Augustus
and to the succession the family in whose fall the poet
himself had fallen.
CHAPTER IV.
THE METAMORPHOSES OR TRANSFORMATIONS.
OvID tells us that before he was banished he had
written, but not corrected, the fifteen books of the
‘Metamorphoses,’ and had also composed twelve books
(only six have been preserved) of the ‘Fasti’ or Roman
Calendar. These are his chief surviving poems, and
it will be convenient to describe them in this and the
following chapter.
In the ‘Metamorphoses’ we have the largest and
most important of Ovid’s works ; and, if we view
it as a whole, the greatest monument of his poetical
genius. The plan of the book is to collect together,
out of the vast mass of Greek mythology and legend,
the various stories which turn on the change of
men and women from the human form into animals,
plants, or inanimate objects. Nor are the tales merely
collected. Such a collection would have been inevi-
tably monotonous and tiresome. With consummate
skill the poet arranges and connects them together.
The thread of connection is often indeed slight ; some-
times it is broken altogether. But it is sufficiently
continuous to keep alive the reader's interest ; which
54 O VI D.
is, indeed, often excited by the remarkable ingenuity
of the transition from one tale to another. But it did
not escape the author's perception, that to repeat over
and over again the story of a marvel which must have
been as incredible to his own contemporaries as it is
to us, would have been to insure failure. Hence the
metamorphoses themselves occupy but a small part
of the book, which finds its real charm and beauty in
the brilliant episodes, for the introduction of which
they supply the occasion. 4
How far the idea was Ovid's own it is impossible to
say. Two Greek poets are known to have written on
the same subject. One of them was Nicander, of Colo-
phon, in Asia Minor, an author of the second century
B.C., attached, it would seem, to the court of Per-
gamus, which, under the dynasty of the Attali, was a
famous centre of literary activity. Of his work, the
‘Changes' (for so we may translate its Greek title),
only a few fragments are preserved, quite insufficient
to give us any idea of its merits or methods. Parthe-
nius, a native of the Bithynian Nicaea, so famous in
ecclesiastical history, may be credited with having
given some hints to the Roman poet, — to whom,
indeed, as a contemporary,” and connected with
the great literary circle of Rome, he was probably
known. Parthenius, we know on good authority,
taught the Greek language to Virgil, who conde-
scended to borrow at least one line from his pre-
ceptor. His ‘ Metamorphoses’ have entirely perished.
* Parthenius died at an advanced age, about the beginning
of the reign of Tiberius. -
THE METAMORPHOSES. 55
We have only the probability of the case to warrant
us in supposing that Ovid was under obligations to
him. Of these obligations, indeed, no ancient au-
thority speaks; and it is safe, probably, to conjecture
that they were inconsiderable — nothing, certainly,
like what Virgil owed to Homer, Hesiod, and
Theocritus.
It would weary the reader, not to mention the space
which the execution of such a task would require, to
conduct him along the whole course of the metamor-
phoses—from the description of Chaos, with which the
poet begins, to the transformation of the murdered
Caesar into a comet, with which, not following the
'customary adulation to the successor of the great
Dictator, he concludes. Specimens must suffice ; and
the book is one which, better than any other great
poem that can be mentioned, specimens may ade-
quately represent. -
The first book begins, as has been said, with a de-
scription of Chaos. “Nothing,” says Bayle, in his
satirical fashion, “could be clearer and more intel-
ligible than this description, if we consider only the
poetical phrases; but if we examine its philosophy,
we find it confused and contradictory—a chaos, in fact,
more hideous than that which he has described.” Bayle,
however, looked for what the poet never pretended to
give. His cosmogony is, at least, as intelligible as
any other; and it is expressed with marvellous force
of language, culminating in one of the noblest of the
poet’s efforts, the description of the creation of man,
the crown and masterpiece of the newly-made world.
56 O VI D.
“Something yet lacked—some holier being—dowered
With lofty soul, and capable of rule
And governance o'er all besides, and Man
At last had birth :—whether from seed divine
Of Him, the artificer of things, and cause
Of the amended world,—or whether Earth
Yet new, and late from AEther separate, still
Retained some lingering germs of kindred Heaven,
Which wise Prometheus, with the plastic aid
Of water borrowed from the neighbouring stream,
Formed in the likeness of the all-ordering Gods;
And, while all other creatures sought the ground
With downward aspect grovelling, gave to man
His port sublime, and bade him scan, erect,
The heavens, and front with upward gaze the stars.
And thus earth's substance, rude and shapeless erst,
Transmuted took the novel form of Man.” #
The four ages of the world thus created are de-
scribed ; and to the horrors of the last of these, the
Age of Iron, succeeds the tale of its crowning wicked-
ness—the attempt of the giants to scale the heights
of heaven. Jupiter Smites down the assailants, and
the earth brings forth from their blood
“A race, of Gods
Contemptuous, prone to violence and lust
Of strife, and bloody-minded, born from blood.”
Jupiter calls his fellow-gods to council, and they pass
to his hall along the way—
“Sublime of milky whiteness, whence its name.”
* Two lines of Dryden’s version are here worth quoting:—
“Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Belmolds his own hereditary skies.”
THE METAMORPHOSES. 57
He inveighs against the enormities of man, recounting
what he had himself witnessed when he had—
“Putting off the God,
Disguised in human semblance walked the world.”
Many shameful sights he had witnessed, but the
worst horror had met him in the hall of Lycaon, the
Arcadian king, who, after attempting to murder his
guest, had served up to him a feast of human flesh.
Lycaon, indeed, had paid the penalty of his crime:—
“Terror-struck he fled,
And through the silence of the distant plains
Wild howling, vainly strove for human voice.
His maddened soul his form infects:—his arms
To legs are changed, his robes to shaggy hide ;-
Glutting on helpless flocks his ancient lust
Of blood, a wolf he prowls, retaining still
Some traces of his earlier self-the same
Grey fell of hair—the red fierce glare of eye
And Savage mouth, alike in beast and man l’”
But a wider vengeance was needed. The whole race
of man must be swept away. Thus we come to a
description of the deluge. Of all mankind, two only
are left, Deucalion, son of Prometheus, and Pyrrha,
daughter of the brother Titan Epimetheus—
“Than he no better, juster man had lived;
Than she no woman holier.”
Seeking to know how the earth may be replenished
with the race of man, they receive the mysterious com-
mand—
“Behind you fling your mighty Mother's bones I’’
58 O VI D.
Deucalion, as becomes the son of so sagacious a father,
discovers its meaning. The “mighty mother” is earth,
the stones are her bones.
“They descend
The mount, and, with veiled head and vest ungirt,
Behind them, as commanded, fling the stones.
And lo!—a tale past credence, did not all
Antiquity attest it true, the stones
Their natural rigour lose, by slow degrees
Softening and softening into form ; and grow,
And swell with milder nature, and assume
Rude semblance of a human shape, not yet
Distinct, but like some statue new-conceived
And half expressed in marble. What they had
Of moist or earthy in their substance, turns
To flesh:—what solid and inflexible
Forms into bones:—their veins as veins remain :-
Till, in brief time, and by the Immortals' grace,
The man-tossed pebbles live and stand up men,
And women from the woman's cast revive.
So sprang our hard enduring race, which speaks
Its origin—fit fruit of such a stock.”
But while man was thus created—
“All other life in various shapes the Earth
Spontaneous bare, soon as the Sun had kissed
Her bosom yet undried, and mud and marsh
Stirred with ferment.”
Among these creatures, equivalents of the monstrous
saurians of modern geological Science, springs
“ Huge Python, serpent-prodigy, the dread
Of the new world, o'er half the mountain's side
Enormous coiled. But him the Archer-God,
With all his quiver's store of shafts, untried
THE METAMORPHOSES. 59
Till now on aught save deer or nimble goat,
Smote to the death, and from a thousand wounds
Drained the black torrent of his poisonous gore :— . .
And, that the memory of the deed might live
Through after-time, his famous festival
And Pythian contest, from the monster's name
So called, ordained.”
Flushed with his victory over the monster, Apollo
meets Cupid, and asks him what right he has to such
a manly weapon as the bow. Cupid retaliates by a
shaft which sets the Sun-God's heart on fire with a
passion for Daphne, daughter of Peneus, fairest and
chastest of nymphs. She flies from his pursuit, and,
when flight is ineffectual, is changed at her own
prayer into a laurel. The god makes the best of his
defeat :— -
“‘And if he cries,
“Thou canst not now my consort be, at least
My tree thou shalt be Still thy leaves shall crown
My locks, my lyre, my quiver. Thine the brows
Of Latium’s lords to wreathe, what time the voice
Of Rome salutes the triumph, and the pomp
Of long procession scales the Capitol.
Before the gates Augustan shalt thou stand
Their hallowed guardian, high amid thy boughs
Bearing the crown to civic merit due —
And, as my front with locks that know no steel
Is ever youthful, ever be thine own
Thus verdant, with the changing year unchanged l’”
The news of the strange event spreads far and wide,
and to Peneus -
* . * $6 Throng
The brother-Powers of all the neighbour-floods,
60 O VII).
Doubtful or to congratulate or coud sie
The parent's hap.”
One only was absent, Inachus,
“Whom grief
Held absent, in his cave's recess, with tears
His flood augmenting.”
(One of the frigid conceits with which Ovid often
betrays a faulty taste.) His grief was for his daughter
Io, whom he has lost, changed by Juno into a heifer.
The feelings of the transformed maiden are told with
some pathos.
“By the loved banks she strays
Of Inachus, her childhood's happy haunt,
And in the stream strange horns reflected views,
Dack-shuddering at the sight. The Naiads see
And know her not :—nor Inachus himself
Can recognise his child,—though close her sire
She follows—close her sister-band,-and courts
Their praise, and joys to feel their fondling hands.
Some gathered herbs her father proffers—mute,
She licks and wets with tears his honoured palm,
And longs for words to ask his aid, and tell
Her name, her Sorrows.”
She contrives to tell her tale in letters scraped by
her hoof. Then Argus, the hundred-eyed herdsman,
to whom Juno has committed her, drives her to
other pastures. Then Mercury finds him, charms
him to slumber with the song of Syrinx, transformed
into a reed to escape the love of Pan, and then slays
him.
THE METAMORPHOSES. 61
“So waned at Once
The light which filled so many eyes; one night
Closed all the hundred. But Saturnia's care
Later renewed their fires, and bade them shine,
Gem-like, amid the peacock's radiant plumes.”
In Egypt, Io gives birth to her son Epaphus, and
Epaphus, growing up, has among his companions one
E’haëton,
“Apollo's child, whom once, with boastful tongue,
Vaunting his birth divine, and claiming rank
Superior, the Inachian checked”
with the taunt that his divine parentage was all a fable.
The furious youth seeks his mother, and demands
whether the story is true. It is, she says; and she bids
him seek the Sun-God himself, and hear the truth from
his lips. The famous description of the Sun-God's
palace follows:–
“Sublime on lofty columns, bright with gold
And fiery carbuncle, its roof inlaid
With ivory, rose the Palace of the Sun,
Approached by folding gates with silver sheen
Radiant ; material priceless, yet less prized
Tor its own worth than what the cunning head
Of Mulciber thereon had wrought, the globe
Of Earth, the Seas that wash it round,-the Skies
That overhang it. "Mid the waters played
Their Gods caprulean. Triton with his horn
Was there, and Proteus of the shifting shape,
And old AEgeon, curbing with firm hand
The monsters of the deep. Her Nereids there
Round Doris sported, seeming, some to swim,
Some on the rocks their tresses green to dry,
G2 O VID.
Some dolphin-borne to ride; nor all in face
The same, nor different ;-so should sisters be.
Earth showed her men, and towns, and woods, and beasts,
And streams, and nymphs, and rural deities:
And over all the mimic Heaven was bright
With the twelve Zodiac signs, on either valve
Of the great portal figured,—six on each.”
Phaëton begs his father to confirm his word by grant-
ing any boon that he may ask; and, the god consent-
ing, asks that he may drive his chariot for a day.
I’haëton is the stock example of “fiery ambition o'er-
vaulting itself;” and the story of his fall may be passed
over, though it abounds with passages of splendid de-
scription. Eridanus or Po receives the fallen char-
ioteer. His weeping sisters are transformed into
poplars on its banks.
“But yet they weep :—and, in the Sun, their tears
To amber harden, by the clear stream caught
And borne, the gaud and grace of Latian maids.”
We have reached the middle of the second out of
fifteen books. We will try their quality at another
place.
Perseus, son of Jupiter, is on his travels, mounted
on the winged steed Pegasus, and armed with the
head of the Gorgon Medusa. He comes to the house
of Atlas, “hugest of the human race”—
“To whom the bounds
Of Earth and Sea were subject, where the Sun
T)ownward to Ocean guides his panting steeds
And in the waves his glowing axle cools.”
THE METAMORPIIOSES. 63
He asks shelter and hospitality ; but the Titan, mind-
ful of how Theseus had told him how a son of Jupiter
should one day rob him of his orchard's golden fruit,
refuses the boon. The indignant hero cries—
“‘Then take
Trom me this gift at parting !’ and his look
Askance he turned, and from his left arm flashed
Full upon Atlas’ face the Gorgon-Head,
With all its horrors:–and the Giant-King
A Giant mountain stood l His beard, his hair
Were forests:–into crags his shoulders spread
And arms :-his head the crowning summit towered :—
His bones were granite. So the Fates fulfilled
Their hest ;-and all his huge proportions swelled
To vaster bulk, and ample to support
The incumbent weight of Heaven and all its Stars.”
Perseus pursues his journey, and reaches the Lybian
shore, where the beautiful Andromeda is chained to a
rock, to expiate by becoming the sea-monster's prey
her mother's foolish boast of beauty.
“Bound by her white arms to the rugged rocks
The Maid he saw :—and were’t not for the breeze
That gave her tresses motion, and the tears
That trickled down her pallid cheeks,—had sure
Some marble statue deemed.”
The reader may like to see how a modern poet has
treated the same subject. It is Perseus who speaks:–
“From afar, unknowing, I marked thee,
Shining, a Snow-white cross on the dark-green walls of
the sea-cliff;
Carven in marble I deemed thee, a perfect work of the
craftsman,
64 - O VI D.
Likeness of Amphitrite, or far-famed Queen Cytherea.
Curious I came, till I saw how thy tresses streamed in the
sea-wind,
Glistening, black as the night, and thy lips moved slow in
thy wailing.”
Mr Kingsley's hero delivers the maiden, trusting to
her for his reward. Ovid's Perseus, less chivalrous,
perhaps, but more in accordance with ancient modes
of thought, bargains with her father and mother that
he shall have her for his wife, before he begins the
conflict with the destroyer. On the other hand, it may
be placed to his credit that he slays the beast with
his falchion, without recourse to the terrible power of
the Gorgon head. Ovid's taste seems a little in fault
in the next passage. Perseus wraps up his dangerous
weapon in sea-weed, which freezes, and stiffens at its
touch into stony leaf and stalk. The sea-nymphs, in
delight, repeat the experiment, sow “the novel seeds”
about their realm, and so produce the coral. To us it
seems a puerile conceit, diminishing the beauty of a
noble legend. Ovid, probably, thought only of com-
pleting his work, by introducing every fable of trans-
formation he could find. *
After victory comes due Sacrifice to the gods, and
then Cepheus makes the marriage-feast for his daughter.
To the assembled guests Perseus tells the story of how
he had won the Gorgon's head. In the midst of their
talk comes a sudden interruption of no friendly kind.
IPhineus, brother of Cepheus, bursts with an armed
throng into the hall, and demands Andromeda, who
had been promised to him in marriage. A fierce bat-
THE METAMORPHOSES. 65
tle ensues; and Ovid, in describing it, seems to chal-
lenge comparison with the great masters of epic. The
young hero, true to his principles, defends himself with.
mortal weapons, and works prodigies of valour. It is
only when he finds his friends crushed by overpowering
numbers that he bares the dreadful Head, and turns
it on the assailants;–first as they press forward one by
one, then on the crowd, and last on the leader himself.
- “He flashed
Full on the cowering wretch the Gorgon-Head.
Vainly he strove to shun it ! Into stone -
The writhing neck was stiffened:—white the eyes
Froze in their sockets:—and the statue still,
With hands beseeching spread, and guilty fear
Writ in its face, for mercy seemed to pray.”
Perseus then bore his bride to Argos, where the Head
recovers from the usurping Proetus his grandfather's
kingdom, and turns to stone the incredulous Poly-
dectes, tyrant of Seriphus.
IIere we leave Perseus; and Pallas, who has been
his helper throughout his toils, goes to Helicon, there
to inquire of the Muses about the strange fountain
which she hears has sprung from the hoof-dint of the
winged Pegasus. Urania, speaking for the sisterhood,
tells her that the tale is true ; and when the goddess
speaks of the beauty and peace of their retreat, nar-
rates the story of how they had escaped from the
tyrant Pyreneus by help of their wings, and how he,
seeking to follow them, had been dashed in pieces.
As she speaks, a -
“Whirr of wings
Carne rustling overhead, and from the boughs
A.C.S.S., vol. ii. lº
66 O VII).
Voices that bade them “Hail!’—so human-clear
That upward Pallas turned her wondering gaze
To see who spoke. She saw but Birds:—a row
Thrice three, of Pies, at imitative sounds
Deftest of winged things, that, on a branch
Perched clamorous, seemed as though some woeful fate
They wailed and strove to tell.”
Trania explains the marvel. They had been nine
sisters, daughters of Pierus, “Lord of Pella's field,”
and proud of their skill in music and song; and, deem-
ing that there lay some magic in their mystic number,
had challenged the sister Muses to contend. The
challenge had been accepted, and the Nymphs swore
by all their river-gods to judge fairly between the
two. One of the daughters of Pierus had sung, and
her song had been treason to the gods, for it told
how, in fear of the Titan onset of the sons of earth,
the lords of heaven had fled, disguised in all strange
shapes. Then the Muses had replied ; but Pallas
thinks Urania will not care to hear their song. Not
so, replies the goddess ; so the tale is told. Calliope
had been their chosen champion, and her theme had
been how Pluto had carried off Proserpina, daughter of
Ceres, to share his gloomy throne in Hades, and how
the mourning mother sought her child in every region
of the earth. A touch of the ludicrous comes in, the
fate of the mocking Stellio:-
“Weary and travel-worn,-her lips unwet
With water, at a straw-thatched cottage door -
The Wanderer knocked. An ancient crone came forth
And saw her need, and hospitable brought
THE METAMORPHOSES. 67.
Her bowl of barley-broth, and bade her drink.
Thankful she raised it:-but a graceless boy
And impudent stood by, and, ere the half
Was drained, ‘Ha! haſ see how the glutton Swills l’
With insolent jeer he cried. The Goddess' ire
Was roused, and, as he spoke, what liquor yet
The bowl retained full in his face she dashed.
His cheeks broke out in blotches:–what were arms
Turned legs, and from the shortened trunk a tail
Tapered behind. Small mischief evermore
Might that small body work :-the lizard's self
Was larger now than he. With terror shrieked
The crone, and weeping stooped her altered child
To raise;—the little monster fled her grasp
And wriggled into hiding. Still his name
His nature tells, and, from the star-like spots
That mark him, known as Stellio crawls the Newt.”
At last, after a fruitless quest, she wanders back to
Sicily, the land where the lost one had last been seen.
And then the secret is half revealed. Cyane, chief of
Sicilian nymphs, had tried to bar the passage of Pluto
as he was descending with his captive, and had been
dissolved into water by the wrath of the god. But
she tells what she can, and shows, floating on her
waves, the Zone which Proserpina had dropped.
Then the mother knew her loss, and in her wrath
banned with barrenness the ungrateful earth. Ibut
who was the robber? That she finds another nymph
to tell her. Arethusa had seen her :-
“All the depths
Of earth I traverse :-where her caverns lie
Darkest and nethermost I pass, and here
Uprising, look once more upon the Stars. .
68 - O WID.
And in my course I saw her | yea, these eyes,
As past the Stygian realm my waters rolled,
Proserpina beheld ! Still sad she seemed,
And still her cheek some trace of terror wore,
But all a Queen, and, in that dismal world,
Greatest in place and majesty, the wife
Of that tremendous God who rules in Hell.”
The wretched mother flies to the throne of Jupiter.
She must have back her child. She does not take
account of the great throne which she shares. And
Jove grants the request, but only—for so the Fates
have willed it—on this condition, that no food should
have passed her lips in the realms below. Alas ! the
condition cannot be fulfilled. She had plucked a
pomegranate in the garden of the Shades, and had
eaten seven of its grains. Ascalaphus, son of the
gloomy deities Woe and Darkness, had seen her, and
he told the tale. The mother takes her revenge:–
“With water snatched from Phlegethon
His brow she sprinkled. Instant, beak and plumes
And larger eyes were his, and tawny wings
His altered form uplifted, and his head
Swelled disproportioned to his size: his nails
Curved crooked into claws, and heavily
His pinions beat the air. A bird accursed,
Augur of coming sorrow, still to Man
Ill-ominous and hateful flits the Owl.”
But Jove reconciles her to her grim son-in-law.
Proserpina was to spend six months in hell and six
on earth, and the satisfied mother has leisure to seek
Arethusa, and find how she had learned the Secret.
THE META MORPHOSES. 69
She hears in reply how she had fled from the pursuit
of Alpheus from her native home in Achaia, and had
passed through all the depths of earth till she rose
again to the light in Sicily. The story told, Ceres
hastens to Athens, and there teaches the youth Tripto-
lemus the secrets of husbandry, and bids him journey
in her dragon-car over the world to spread the new
knowledge. At the court of the Scythian Lyncus he
is treacherously assailed by his host, but Ceres stays the
murderer's hand, and changes him into a lynx. Here,
after digressions which strongly remind us of the
‘Arabian Nights,' we come to the end of Calliope's
song. Then Urania tells how the Nymphs, with one
voice, accorded victory to the Muses; and how the
Pierian sisters—whose name, by the way, their suc-
cessful rivals seem to have appropriated—rebelled
against the judgment, and found the penalty in trans-
formation into Pies. The story then passes on to the
revenge which Pallas herself has had on a mortal
rival. The poet—with true tact, does not make
her tell the tale herself, for she seems to have con-
quered by power, not by skill. Arachne, a Lydian
maid, brought all the world to look at her wondrous
spinning. They swear that Pallas herself had taught
her, but she disdains such praise;—her art was all her
own. Let Pallas come to compare her skill. And
Pallas came, but at first in shape of an ancient dame,
who counsels the bold maiden to be content with
victory over mortal competitors, but to avoid dan-
gerous challenge to the gods. The advice is given
in vain. Arachne rushes upon her fate. The goddess
70 O VI D.
reveals herself, and the contest is begun. An admir-
able piece of word-painting follows:— .
• “The looms were set, the webs
Were hung: beneath their fingers nimbly plied
The subtle fabrics grew, and warp and woof,
Transverse, with shuttle and with slay compact
Were pressed in order fair. And either girt
Her mantle close, and eager wrought ; the toil
Itself was pleasure to the skilful hands
That knew so well their task. With Tyrian hue
Of purple blushed the texture, and all shades
Of colour, blending imperceptibly
IEach into each. So, when the wondrous bow—
What time some passing shower hath dashed the Sun—
Spans with its mighty arch the vault of Heaven,
A thousand colours deckit, different all,
Yet all so subtly interfused that each -
Seems one with that which joins it, and the eye
. But by the contrast of the extremes perceives
The intermediate change.—And last, with thread
Of gold embroidery pictured, on the web
Lifelike expressed, some antique fable glowed.”
Pallas pictures the Hill of Mars at Athens, where
the gods had sat in judgment in the strife between
herself and Neptune as to who should be the patron
deity of that fair city. -
“There stood the God
Of Seas, and with his trident seemed to Smite
The rugged rock, and from the cleft out-sprang
The Steed that for its author claimed the town.
Herself, with shield and spear of keenest barb
And helm, she painted;—on her bosom gleamed
The AEgis:–with her lance's point she struck
THE METAMORPHOSES. 71.
The earth, and from its breast the Olive bloomed,
Pale, with its berried fruit:-and all the gods
Admiring gazed, adjudging in that strife
The victory hers.”
Arachne, disloyal, as the daughters of Pierus had
been, to the Lords of Heaven, pictures them in the
base disguises to which love for mortal women had
driven them. But her work is so perfect that—
“Not Pallas, nay, not Envy's self, could fault
In all the work detect.”
The furious goddess Smites her rival twelve times on
the forehead:—
“The high-souled Maid
Such insult not endured, and round her neck
Indignant twined the suicidal noose, -
And so had died. But, as she hung, some ruth
Stirred in Minerva's breast:-the pendent form
She raised, and ‘Live!’ she said—“but hang thou still
For ever, wretch and through all future time
Even to thy latest race bequeath thy doom l’
And, as she parted, sprinkled her with juice
Of aconite. With venom of that drug
Infected dropped her tresses, nose and ear
Were lost;-her form to smallest bulk compressed
A head minutest crowned ;-to-slenderest legs
Jointed on either side her fingers changed:
Her body but a bag, whence still she draws
Her filmy threads, and, with her ancient art,
Weaves the fine meshes of her Spider's web.”
Leaving the goddess in the enjoyment of this doubt-
ful victory, the story passes on to the tale of Niobe.
72. O VII).
What has been given occupies in the original a space
about equivalent to a book and a half.
Sometimes Ovid gives us an opportunity of com-
paring him with a great master of his own art. A
notable instance of the kind is the story of how Orpheus
went down to the lower world in search of his lost
Eurydice; how he won her by the charms of his song
from the unpitying Gods of Death, and lost her again
on the very borders of life.
“So sang he, and, accordant to his plaint,
As wailed the strings, the bloodless Ghosts were moved
To weeping. By the lips of Tantalus
Unheeded slipped the wave;—Ixion's wheel
Forgot to whirl;-the Vulture's bloody feast
Was stayed;—awhile the Belides forbore
Their leaky urns to dip ;-and Sisyphus
Sate listening on his stone. Then first, they say,+
The iron cheeks of the Eumenides
Were wet with pity. Of the nether realm
Nor King nor Queen had heart to say him nay.
Forth from a host of new-descended Shades
Eurydice was called ; and, halting yet
Slow with her recent wound she came—alive,
On one condition to her spouse restored,
That, till Avernus’ vale is passed and earth
Regained, he look not backward, or the boon
Is null and forfeit. Through the silent realm
Upward against the steep and fronting hill
Dark with obscurest gloom, the way he led:
And now the upper air was all but won,
When, fearful lest the toil o'er-task her strength,
And yearning to behold the form he loved,
An instant back he looked, and back the Shade
That instant fled ! . The arms that wildly strove
THE METAMORPHOSES. 73
To clasp and stay her clasped but yielding airl
No word of plaint even in that second Death
Against her Lord she uttered, how could Love
Too anxious be upbraided ?—but one last
And sad “Farewell !’ scarce audible, she sighed,
And vanished to the Ghosts that late she left.”
Here is Virgil, though he has not the advantage
of being presented by so skilful a translator as Mr
Ring:—
“Stirred by his song, from lowest depths of hell
Came the thin spectres of the sightless dead,
Crowding as crowd the birds among the leaves
Whom darkness or a storm of wintry rain
Drives from the mountains. Mothers came, and sires,
Great-hearted heroes, who had lived their lives,
And boys, and maidens never wed, and men
Whom in their prime, before their parents' eyes,
The funeral flames had eaten. All around
With border of black mud and hideous reed,
Cocytus, pool unlovely, hems them in,
And Styx imprisons with his nine-fold stream.
Nay, and his song the very home of death
Entranced and nethermost abyss of hell,
And those Dread Three whose tresses are entwined
With livid Snakes; while Cerberus stood agape,
Nor moved the triple horror of his jaw;
And in charmed air Ixion's wheel was stayed.
And now with step retreating he had shunned
All peril; and the lost one, given back,
Was nearing the sweet breath of upper air,
Following behind—such terms the gods imposed—
When some wild frenzy seized the lover's heart
Tnheeding, well, were pardon known in hell,
Well to be pardoned. Still he stood, and saw,
Ah me ! forgetful, mastered all by love,
74 O VII).
Saw, at the very border of the day,
His own Eurydice. O wasted toil
O broken compact of the ruthless god
Then through Avernus rolled the crash of doom,
And she-‘What miserable madness this,
Ah l wretched that I am which ruins me
And thee, my Orpheus! Lo! the cruel Fates
Call me again ; sleep seals my swimming eyes;
Farewell for boundless darkness wraps me round
And carries me away, still stretching forth
Dark hands to thee, who am no longer thine.’”
No reader will doubt with which poet the general
superiority lies; yet it must be allowed that Ovid is
strong in what may be called his own peculiar line.
There is a noble tenderness and a genuine pathos in
the parting of the two lovers, which is characteristic of
the poet's genius. *-
One of the longest as well as the most striking
episodes in the whole book is the contest between
Ajax and Ulysses for the arms of the dead Achilles;
and it has the additional interest of recalling the de-
clamatory studies of the poet's youth. It is through-
out a magnificent piece of rhetoric. The blunt energy
of Ajax, and the craft and persuasiveness of Ulysses,
are admirably given. The elder Seneca, in the pas-
sage already quoted, mentions that the poet was in-
debted for some of his materials and language to his
teacher, Porcius Latro, one of whose declamations on
“The Contest for the Arms” Seneca had either heard
or read. One phrase is specified as having been bor-
rowed from this source. It is the fiery challenge
with which Ajax clenches his argument :—
THE METAMORPHOSES. 75
“Enough of idle words let hands, not tongues,
Show what we are : Fling 'mid yon hostile ranks
Our hero's armour:—bid us fetch it thence:—
And be it his who first shall bring it back l’
The piece is too long to be given (it fills more than
half of the thirteenth book), and its effect would be
lost in extracts. A few lines, however, from the be-
ginning IIIay beauoted ; and indeed nothing through-
out is more finely put. It may be as well to mention
that the ships spoken of had been in imminent danger
of destruction at the hand of Hector, and that Ajax
had at least some claim to be called their preserver:-
“On high the chieftains sat: the common throng
Stood in dense ring around ; then Ajax rose,
Lord of the seven-fold shield; and backward glanced, sº
Scowling, for anger mastered all his soul,
Where on Sigaeum's shore the fleet was ranged,
And with stretched hand: ‘Before the ships we plead
Our cause, great heaven l and Ulysses dares
Defore the ships to match himself with me !’”—C.
It may be noticed, as a proof that Ovid went out of his
way, in introducing this episode, to make use of material
to which he attached a special value, that the narrative
is not really connected with any transformation. Ajax,
*~. -
defeated by the act which gives the arms to his rival,
falls upon his sword ; and the turf, wet with his blood,
“Blossomed with the self-same flower
That erst had birth from Hyacinthus' wound,
And in its graven cup memorial bears
Of either fate, the characters that shape
Apollo's wailing cry, and Ajax' name.”
76 - O VII).
What these characters were we learn from the end
of the story here alluded to, of how the beautiful
Hyacinthus was killed by a quoit from the hand of
Apollo, and how - -
“The blood
That with its dripping crimson dyed the turf
Was blood no more : and sudden sprang to life
A flower that wore the lily’s shape, but not
The lily’s silver livery, purple-hued
And brighter than all tinct of Tyrian shells:
Nor with that boon of beauty satisfied,
TJpon the petals of its cup the God
Stamped legible his sorrow's wailing cry,
And ‘Ai Ai l’ ever seems the flower to say.”
Two more specimens must conclude this chapter.
Pygmalion's statue changing into flesh and blood at
the sculptor's passionate prayer is a subject after
Ovid's own heart, and he treats it with consummate
delicacy and skill — -- &
“The Sculptor sought
His home, and, bending o'er the couch that bore
His Maiden's lifelike image, to her lips
Fond pressed his own, and lo! her lips seemed warm,
And warmer, kissed again —and now his hand-
Her bosom seeks, and dimpling to his touch
The ivory seems to yield,—as in the Sun
The waxen labour of Hymettus' bees,
By plastic fingers wrought, to various shape
And use by use is fashioned. Wonder-spelled,
Scarce daring to believe his bliss, in dread
Lest sense deluded mock him, on the form
He loves again and yet again his hand
Lays trembling touch, and to his touch a pulse
2.
THE METAMORPHOSES. 77
Within throbs answering palpable :-'twas flesh
'Twas very Life —Then forth in eloquent flood
His grateful heart its thanks to Venus poured I
The lips he kissed were living lips that felt
His passionate pressure ;-o'er the virgin cheeks
Stole deepening crimson ;-and the unclosing eyes
At once on Heaven and on their Lover looked l’
The fifteenth or last book of the ‘Metamorphoses’
eontains an eloquent exposition of the Pythagorean
philosophy. Pythagoras, a Greek by birth, had made
Italy, the southern coasts of which were indeed thickly
studded with the colonies of his nation, the land of his
adoption, and the traditions of his teaching and of his
life had a special interest for the people to which had
descended the greatness of all the races—Oscan, Etrus-
can, Greek—which had inhabited the beautiful penin-
sula. A legend, careless, as such legends commonly are,
of chronology, made him the preceptor of Numa, the
wise king to whom Rome owed so much of its worship
and its law. The doctrine most commonly connected
with his name was that of the metempsychosis, or
transmigration of souls from one body to another,
whether of man or of the lower animals, though it
probably did not occupy a very prominent part in his
philosophy. It was an old belief of the Aryan race,
and it had a practical aspect which commended it to
the Roman mind, always more inclined to ethical than
to metaphysical speculations. Virgil, in that vision
of the lower world which occupies the sixth book of
his great epic, employs it—partly, indeed, as a poetical
artifice for introducing his magnificent roll of Roman
78 O VID.
Wortllies, but also in a more serious aspect, as sug-
gesting the method of those purifying influences which
were to educate the human soul for higher destinies.
Ovid sees in it the philosophical explanation of the mar-
vels which he has been relating, and, as it were, their
vindication from the possible charge of being childish
fables, vacant of any real meaning, and unworthy of
a serious pen. The passage which follows refers
to a practical rule in which we may see a natural,
inference from the philosophical dogma. If man is so
closely allied to the lower animals—if their forms are
made, equally with his, the receptacles of the one
divine animating spirit—then there is a certain impiety.
in his slaughtering them to satisfy his wants. Strangely
enough, the progress or revolution of human thought
has brought science again to the doctrine of man's,
kindred with the animals, though it seems altogether
averse to the merciful conclusion which Pythagoras,
drew from it.
“What had ye done, ye flocks, ye peaceful race
Created for Man's blessing, that provide - .
To slake his thirst your udder's nectarous draught,
That with your fleece wrap warm his shivering limbs,
And serve him better with your life than death — *
What fault was in the Ox, a creature mild
And harmless, docile, born with patient toil
To lighten half the labour of the fields?—
Ungrateful he, and little worth to reap
The crop he sowed, that, from the crooked share
TJntraced, his ploughinan slew, and to the axe
Condemned the neck that, worn beneath his yoke,
For many a spring his furrows traced, and home .
THE METAMORPHOSES. . 79.
With many a harvest dragged his Autumn-wain
Nor this is all:—but Man must of his guilt
Make Heaven itself accomplice, and believe
The Gods with slaughter of their creatures pleased
Lo at the altar, fairest of his kind,- -
And by that very fairness marked for doom, -
The guiltless victim stands,--bedecked for death
With wreath and garland 1–Ignorant he hears
The muttering Priest, feels ignorant his brows
White with the sprinkling of the salted meal
To his own labour owed,—and ignorant
Wonders, perchance, to see the lustral urn
Flash back the glimmer of the lifted knife
Too soon to dim its brightness with his blood
And Priests are found to teach, and men to deem
That in the entrails, from the tortured frame
Yet reeking torn, they read the hest of Heaven —
O race of mortal men what lust, what vice -
Of appetite unhallowed, makes ye bold
To gorge your greed on Being like your own 7
Be wiselier warned : —forbear the barbarous feast,
Nor in each bloody morsel that ye chew
The willing labourer of your fields devour !
All changes:—nothing perishes —Now here,
Now there, the vagrant spirit roves at will,
The shifting tenant of a thousand homes:–
Now, elevate, ascends from beast to man,—
. Now, retrograde, descends from man to beast;-
But never dies 1–Upon the tablet's page
Erased, and written fresh, the characters
Take various shape, the wax remains the same:—
So is it with the Soul that, migrating
Through all the forms of breathing life, retains
Unchanged its essence. Oh, be wise, and hear
Heaven's warning from my prophet-lips, nor dare
80 . O VII),
With impious slaughter, for your glutton-greed,
The kindly bond of Nature violate,
Nor from its home expel the Soul, perchance
Akin to yours, to nourish blood with blood "
It has been handed down to us on good authority
that Virgil, in his last illness, desired his friends to
commit his ‘AEneid’ to the flames. It had not re-
ceived his final corrections, and he was unwilling that
it should go down to posterity less perfect than he
could have made it. Evidences of this incomplete-
ness are to be found, especially in the occasional in-
consistencies of the narrative. Critics have busied
themselves in discovering or imagining other faults
which might have been corrected in revision. The
desire, though it doubtless came from a mind en-
feebled by morbid conditions of the body, was pro-
bably sincere. We can hardly believe as much of
what Ovid tells us of his own intentions about the
* Metamorphoses:’ “As for the verses which told
of the changed forms—an unlucky work, which its
author's banishment interrupted—these in the hour of
my departure I put, sorrowing, as I put many other
of my good things, into the flames with my own
hands.” Doubtless he did so ; nothing could have
more naturally displayed his vexation. But he could
hardly have been ignorant that in destroying his
manuscript he was not destroying his work. “As
they did not perish altogether,” he adds, “but still
exist, I suppose that there were several copies of
them.” But it is scarcely conceivable that a poem
containing as nearly as possible twelve thousand lines
THE METAMORPITOSES. 81
should have existed in several copies by chance, or
without the knowledge of the author. When he Says
that the work never received his final corrections,
we may believe him, though we do not perceive any
signs of imperfection. It is even possible that he
employed some of his time during his banishment in
giving some last touches to his verse.
However this may be, the work has been accepted
by posterity as second in rank—second only to Virgil's
epic—among the great monuments of Roman genius.
. It has been translated into every language of modern
IEurope that possesses a literature. Its astonishing
ingenuity, the unfailing variety of its colours, the
flexibility with which its style deals alike with the
sublime and the familiar, and with equal facility is
gay and pathetic, tender and terrible, have well en-
titled it to the honour, and justify the boast with
which the poet concludes:—
“So crown I here a work that dares defy
The wrath of Jove, the fire, the sword, the tooth
Of all-devouring Time !—Come when it will
The day that ends my life's uncertain term,
That on this corporal frame alone hath power
To work extinction,-high above the Stars
My nobler part shall soar, my Name remain
Immortal,—wheresoe'er the might of Rome
O'erawes the subject Earth my Verse survive
Familiar in the mouths of men —and, if
A Bard may prophesy, while Time shall last
Endure, and die but with the dying World !”
A.C.S.S., vol. ii. F.
CHAPTER W.
THE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALENDAR.
IN a rich and leisurely society the antiquarian has
usually little difficulty in gaining a hearing. So it
was at Rome, in the Augustan age. The study of the
national antiquities seems to have been a particularly
fashionable pursuit. Augustus, indeed, himself did
his best to encourage it. It was the dream of his life
to reawaken the old Roman patriotism, and to kindle
in the men of his own day something like the senti-
ments of the past. The age might be frivolous and
luxurious ; but he knew well that the Roman mind
was profoundly religious. There was all the machin-
ery of an elaborate ecclesiastical ritual, and it still
commanded respect. Augustus not only swayed the
armies of Rome—he was also supreme pontiff; and
no doubt any arrangement in which such a title had
been omitted, would have been felt to be imperfect.
. In this capacity he could satisfy the vague and widely-
diffused popular notion which connected Rome's great-
ness with her religion. The gods had been neglected,
and their temples had fallen into decay during the
civil wars; and we may well believe that Horace ex-
THE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALENDAR. 83
pressed what was in the minds of many when he pro-
phesied dire judgments on the State unless the sacred
buildings were restored.* To this work the emperor
assiduously applied himself. He built temple after
temple, established priesthoods, and revived old reli-
gious ceremonials. Everywhere in the capital were
now to be seen the outward signs of piety and devo-
tion. Religion, in fact—its history, its ritual, all its
ancient associations—became subjects of popular inter-
est; and, as might be expected, a fashionable poet
could not do otherwise than recognise in his verses the
growth of this new taste among his countrymen. Nor
would he find any difficulty in doing so. A Roman
could seldom be original, but, on the other hand, there
was scarcely anything for which a model could not be
found in Greek literature. Alexandria had long been
a famous literary centre, and its scholars and authors
had handled every conceivable subject, human and
divine. There, in the third century B.C., in the reigns
of Ptolemy Philadelphus and Ptolemy Euergetes, had
flourished Callimachus, specially distinguished by his
attainments as a grammarian and critic. He was at
the head, as he no doubt well deserved to be, of the
great library of Alexandria. Unfortunately, of his
more learned works, which were on a vast scale, noth-
ing but the titles and a few meagre fragments have
come down to us. He was, however, a poet as well
as a scholar, and some of his poems, hymns, and epi-
grams have survived. It appears that they were
singularly popular, though, it must be admitted, they
* Odes, iii. 6.
84 .. O VI D.
remind us of the familiar proverb, “A poet is born, not
made.” However, it is certain that the Roman poets
of the Augustan age liked them, and thought it worth
their while to imitate them. Catullus has done this in
his famous poem on the “Hair of Berenice.” Propertius
even made it his aim to be a Roman Callimachus, and
sometimes became intolerably obscure and affected in
the attempt. It need not surprise us that Ovid fol-
lowed in the wake of two such eminent men. He knew
the public for whom he was writing; he knew, too,
what sort of poems would be approved by the emperor
and the court. A learned poem, dwelling on the old
worship of his country, and commemorating the glories
of its great families, would appeal successfully to a
wide circle of readers. For such a work he had a
model ready to his hand in an epic of Callimachus,
which appears to have given in detail a multitude of
myths and legends, with some account of old customs
and religious rites. This poem, which has not come
down to us, was entitled “Causes,” and was, it may
be supposed, a learned poetical dissertation on the
cause or origin of the various beliefs current among
mankind, and of the outward forms in which they had
embodied themselves. It was this elaborate work
which Ovid undertook to imitate, and perhaps to
popularise. The result is the poem commonly known
as the ‘Fasti.’
We may describe this work as a sort of handbook
of the Roman Calendar, or as a poetical almanac, or as
a ritual in verse. It gives, as Dean Merivale says,
“the seasons and reasons” of every special religious
THE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALENDAR. 85.
worship and ceremonial. The mythology of old Rome
and the legends of her heroes are worked, and worked
with wonderful success, into the texture of the
poem. What in the hands of a mere Dryasdust
would have been intolerably wearisome and dull, be-
comes under Ovid's treatment the lightest and pleas-
antest of reading. The marvellous ease and dexterity
with which he turns his not always very plastic
materials, into the Smoothest and most graceful verse,
perpetually strikes a scholar with amazement. He
takes a story or a legend from some old annalist, and
tells it with a neatness and a finish which, in its
own way, has never been rivalled. This was a charm
which a Roman must have appreciated better than we
can, but there were many other things which tended
to make the ‘Fasti’ a thoroughly popular poem. It
must have been pleasant to an ordinary reader to
have picked up a good deal of antiquarian lore in a
few hours of easy and delightful reading. The book
would continually have been in the hands of the
fashionable lady, who would think that it became her
position to know something about the meaning and
rationale of her religious observances. And we may
take for granted it would please Augustus. Anything
which familiarised the people with old beliefs and
traditions would be certain to have his hearty sym-
pathies. The poet too, of course, took care to extol
and magnify the great family of the Julii, and to hint
every now and then that Roman grandeur was provi-
dentially connected with their supremacy. g
Such is the general idea and purpose of the poem.
86 O VID.
That it was begun, and in a great measure completed,
while the poet was still living at Rome, is beyond a
doubt. His misfortune (he is speaking of his banish-
ment) had, he says, interrupted his work. Like the
* Metamorphoses,’ it was in an unfinished condition
when he was driven into exile, and it is probable that
he found employment and consolation in giving the
finishing touches to both works. Some portions were
certainly added during the last year of his life. In
one passage he deplores the remoteness of his Scythian
abode from his native Sulmo. In another, he speaks
of the triumph which had been granted to Caesar Ger-
manicus for his victories over the Cherusci, Chatti, and
Angrivarii—a triumph voted in A. D. 15, but not actu-
ally celebrated till two years afterwards. And a third
passage seems to allude to a great work of temple res-
toration which the Emperor Tiberius brought to an
end in the latter year.
The poem, as we have it, is in six books; originally
(of this there can hardly be a doubt) it consisted of
twelve, each month of the Roman calendar having a
book devoted to it. The calendar, like our own week,
had a religious basis. Some of the months took their
names from Roman divinities. March had been the
first month in the old calendar, according to which the
year was divided into ten months. The first Caesar,
who laid his reforming hand on everything, brought
his universal knowledge to bear on this intricate sub-
ject, and introduced a new arrangement by which the
year was henceforth to be made up of twelve months,
January being the first. Ovid represents the god Janus
THE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALENDAR. 87.
as visibly appearing to him, and explaining his origin
and attributes. A key is in his left hand, as a symbol
of his august office as the Beginner and Opener of all
things. He addresses Ovid as the “laborious poet of
the Days,” and then unfolds his various mysterious
functions, and the meaning of the two faces which
were regarded as his appropriate representation.
The poet describes himself as encouraged to con-
tinue the dialogue. He wants to know why the year
should begin with cold, rather than what might seem
a more appropriate commencement, the warmth of
spring. He is told that it follows the sun, which now,
gathering strength and lengthening its course, begins
a new existence. “Why should not New-year's day
be a holiday ?” “We must not begin by setting an
example of idleness.” Then, after other questions,
“What is the meaning of the customary gift of palm,
and dried figs, and honey in the white comb?” “It is
well that the year, if it is to be sweet, should begin
with sweets.” “But why presents of money?”—
“He smiled. ‘Strange fancies of your time you hold,
To think that honey is as sweet as gold -
Scarce one I knew in Saturn's golden reign,
Whose master-passion was not love of gain.
And still with time it grew, and rules to-day
So widely, nothing can extend its sway.
Not thus were riches prized in days of yore,
When Rome was new, and scant its people's store.
Then Mars’ great son, a cottage o'er his head,
Of river-sedges made his narrow bed.
So small his temple, Jove could scarcely stand
Upright, his earthen thunder in his hand
88 º O VI D.
Undecked the shrines which now with jewels blaze;
Each lord of council led his sheep to graze :
And felt no shame that sleep should lap his head
With hay for pillow and with straw for bed.
Fresh from the plough the consul ruled the state,
And fined the owner of a pound * of plate.’”
And so the god goes on inveighing against the univer-
sal greed of gain, though he owns himself in the end
not averse to the more sumptuous manners of modern
days :—
“Bronze once they gave ; now bronze gives place to gold,
And the new money Supersedes the old.
We too—we praise the past, yet love a shrine
Of gold;—gold suits the majesty divine.”
Janus then explains the significance of the emblems
on the coins that were given on his festival. The double
head on one side was his own likeness; the ship on
the reverse was the memorial of that which in old
time had borne Saturn, expelled from the throne of
heaven, to his kingdom in Italy. A description of his
happy reign follows, and then an antiquarian explan-
ation of the situation of his temple, opening, as it did,
on the two market-places of Rome—the cattle-market
and the Forum properly so called. The last question º
which the curiosity of the poet suggests refers to the
well-known custom which kept the temple open when
the State was at war, and shut it on the rare occa-
sions (three only are recorded as having occurred dur-
* The real quantity allowed was jive pounds; but the trans.
lation fairly represents the exaggeration of the original.
IHE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALEAVD.A.R. 89
ing the time of the Commonwealth) when it was at
peace:– r &
“‘In war, all bolts drawn back, my portals stand,
Open for hosts that seek their native land;
In peace, fast closed, they bar the outward way,
And still shall bar it under Caesar's sway.”
He spake : before, behind, his double gaze
All that the world contained at once surveys;
And all was peace ; for now with conquered wave,
The Rhine, Germanicus, thy triumph gave.
Peace and the friends of peace immortal make,
Nor let the lord of earth his work forsake l’”
Under the same day, the first of January, is recorded the
dedication of the temples of Jupiter and AEsculapius.
Under the fifth is noted the setting of the constellation
of Cancer—information which the poet tells us he
means to give whenever occasion demands. Five other
days of the month are similarly distinguished. On
the eleventh of January occurs the festival of the
Agonalia, and Ovid takes the opportunity to display
his etymological learning in accounting for the name.
Was it given because the priest, as he stood ready
to smite the victim, said, “Shall I strike?” (Agone?)
or because the beasts do not come of their own
accord, but are driven (aguntur) to the sacrifice? Or
is the word Agnalia (the sacrifice of lambs) with the
“o” inserted? or does it come from the agony with
which the victim sees the shadow of the sacrificial
knife in the water? or is it derived from the Greek
word for the games (agones) which formed part of
the festival in old times? Ovid's own view is that
90 O VI D.
agonia was an old word for the animals which it was
customary to sacrifice. With characteristic ingenuity,
he digresses into an elegant history of the growth of
sacrifice. Meal and salt sufficed for the simple offer-
ings of early days. No spices then had come from
across the sea. Savin and the crackling bay-leaf gave
perfume enough ; and it was only the wealthy who
could add violets to the garlands of wild flowers.
The earliest victim was the pig, which was sacrificed
to Ceres, in punishment for the injury that he did to
the crops under her protection. Warned by his fate,
the goat should have spared the vine-shoots; but he
offended, and fell a victim to the wrath of Bacchus.
The pig and the goat were guilty. But how had the
ox and the sheep offended ! The ox first suffered
at the bidding of Proteus, from whom the shepherd
Aristaeus, disconsolate at the loss of his bees, learnt
that a carcass buried in the ground would furnish him
with a new supply.” The sheep was guilty, it would
seem, of eating the Sacred herb vervain. What animal
could hope to escape, when the ox and the sheep
perished? The Sun-god demanded the horse, swiftest
of animals; Diana, the hind, which once had been
made the substitute for the maiden Iphigenia.t “I
* This notion that the corruption of animal matter would
produce bees seems to have been a serious belief among the
ancients. Virgil, who writes about bees as if he really knew
something of the subject, recommends the process with ap-
parent seriousness, though it is possible that he used it as a
convenient introduction for the legend of Aristaeus, with its
beautiful episode of Orpheus and Eurydice.
+ The feeling of later times revolted against the legend which
THE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALEN DAR. 91
myself,” says Ovid, “have seen the wild tribes who
dwell near the snow of Haemus sacrifice the dog to
Hecate.” Even the ass falls a victim to Silenus, who
could never forgive him for an untimely bray. Birds
suffer, because they reveal the counsels of the gods by
the indications of the future which soothsayers detect
in their movements and their cries. The goose is
not protected by the service which he did to Rome
in wakening the defenders of the Capitol. And the
cock, who summons the day, is made an offering to
the Goddess of Night. -
The thirteenth of the month introduces the story of
Iºvander, one of the graceful narrations with which
Ovid relieves the antiquarian details of the ‘Fasti.’
Evander is indeed a conspicuous personage in Italian
legend. An Arcadian prince, banished in early youth
from his native land, but not for any fault of his own,
he had settled in Italy many years before the Trojan
war. He was in extreme old age when Æneas, carry-
ing with him the fortunes of the future Rome, landed
on the Latian shore; and he gave to the struggle the
support of his first alliance. Virgil in his great epic
has made a copious use of the story. The voyage of
the Trojan chief up the unknown stream of Tiber to
the homely court of the Arcadian king, his hospitable
reception, the valour and untimely death of the young
Pallas, who leads his father's troops to fight by the
represented Iphigenia as really sacrificed to appease the powers
which hindered her father's enterprise. Just so we find the
story of Jephthah's vow softened down to something less bar-
barous. - -
92. O VI D.
side of the destined heirs of Italy, furnish some of the
most striking scenes in the ‘AEneid.' Ovid, in describ-
ing Evander's arrival in Italy, puts into his mouth a
prophecy of the future greatness of Rome, which with
characteristic dexterity he turns into elaborate flattery
of Tiberius and Livia, the emperor's mother. This
passage, which, it is evident, was written after the
death of Augustus, is one of the many proofs that
the Fasti were kept under revision until close upon the
end of the poet's life. To the legend of Evander is
attached the story of Hercules and Cacus. Roman
writers were anxious to make their own country the
scene of some of the wondrous exploits of the great
“knight-errant” of antiquity. The tale ran as fol-
lows:– -
Somewhere near the strait which joins the Atlantic
to the Inner Sea dwelt Geryones, a hideous monster
with triple body, master of a herd of oxen of fabulous
beauty. Him the wandering Hercules slew, and driv-
ing the cattle homewards to Argos, found himself—
having, it would seem, somewhat lost his way—near
Evander's city, on the banks of Tiber. He was hos-
pitably entertained by the Arcadian ; and his cattle
meanwhile wandered at their will over the fields.
Next morning he missed two of the bulls. It seemed
in vain to search for them. They had been stolen,
indeed, but the robber had dragged them tail-foremost
into his cave, and the device was sufficient to puzzle
the simple-minded hero. The robber was Cacus, the
terror of the Aventine forest, a son of Vulcan, huge of
frame, and strong as he was huge, whose dwelling was
THE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALENDAR. 93
in a cave, which even the wild beasts could hardly
find, its entrance hideous with limbs and heads of
men, and its floor white with human bones. Hercules
was about to depart, when the bellowing of the im-
prisoned oxen reached him. Guided by the sound,
he found the cave. Cacus had blocked the entrance
with a large mass of rock, which even five yoke of
oxen could scarcely have stirred. But the shoulders
that had supported the heavens were equal to the
task. The rock gave way, and the robber had to fight
for his prey and his life. First with fists, then with
stones and sticks he fought, and finding himself worst-
ed, had recourse to his father's aid, and vomited forth
fire in the face of the foe. All was in vain; the
knotted club descended, and the monster fell dying
on the ground. The victor sacrificed one of the cattle
to Jupiter, and left a memorial of himself in the ox-
market, the name of which was traced, not to the
commonplace explanation of its use, but to the anima.
which the victorious son of Jupiter had there sacrificed
to his sire.
What remains in the book may be passed over with
brief notice. The thirteenth of the month was dis-
tinguished as the day on which Augustus had amused
the Roman people, and gratified his own passion for
veiling despotism under republican forms, by restoring
to the senate the control of the provinces in which
peace had been restored. On the eighteenth was com-
memorated the dedication of the Temple of Concord,
first made when Camillus had reconciled contending
orders in the State, and renewed by Tiberius after
94 o VID.
completing his German conquests. A memorable holi-
day, that of the “sowing day,” was fixed at the dis-
cretion of the pontiff, near the end of the month. The
thirtieth commemorated the dedication of the altar
to Peace, and afforded the poet yet another oppor-
tunity of offering his bomage to the house of Au-
gustus — • * *
“Her tresses bound with Actium’s” crown of bay,
Peace comes; in all the world, sweet goddess, stay !
Her altar flames, ye priests, with incense feed, -
Bid 'neath the axe the snow-white victim bleed
Pray willing heaven, that Caesar's house may stand,
Long as the peace it gives a wearied land l’
It would weary the reader, even did space per-
mit, to go in like detail through the poet's account
of each month. He begins each with an attempt
to determine the etymology of its name. That of
February, he tells us, was to be found in the word
februa, a name given by the Romans of old to certain
offerings of a purifying and expiatory nature used at
this time. The purification of the flocks and herds,
as well as of human beings, was a very important
element in the religious life of Rome; and the words -
lustrum and lustratio, which denote certain forms of
purification, are well known to every student of
Roman history. February is therefore the “purifying”
* At the battle of Actium (fought B.o. 31) the civil wars
which had raged at intervals for more than sixty years were
brought to a final close by the victory of Octavius Caesar over
his rival Antony. - . . . . . . .*
THE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALENDA.R. 95
month; and its name thus testifies to a widespread
belief in the need of cleansing and expiation. March,
of course, takes its name from the god Mars, the
father of Rome's legendary founder. For April the
poet gives a fanciful etymology. “Spring,” he says,
“opens” (aperit) “all things;” and so, he adds, “April,
according to tradition, means the ‘open’ time” (aper-
tum tempus). It is the time of love; and Venus dur-
ing this month is in the ascendant, “the goddess who
is all-powerful in earth, in heaven, in Sea.” For the
next month, May, Ovid confesses that he has no
satisfactory theory to offer as to its name. He sug-
gests that it is formed from the root of major and
majestas. “May,” he says, “is the month for old
men; and its special function is to teach the young
reverence for age. “Majestas,” indeed, was regarded,
after Roman fashion—which delighted in real personi-
fications—as a divinity, whom Romulus and Numa
worshipped as the upholder of filial reverence and
obedience, and also as the rightful disposer of the
offices and honours of the State in their due order.
With this divinity the month of May was associated.
June is Juno's month, though Ovid admits that the
explanation is doubtful. He represents the goddess
as appearing to him in a secluded grove when he was
pondering within himself on the origin of the name.
She tells him that, as he has undertaken to celebrate
in his verse the religious festivals of Rome, he has
thereby won for himself the privilege of beholding
the divine essence. As she was both the wife and
sister of Jupiter, her month would speak to the public
96 . . . . O VI D.
of Rome of the marriage-tie and of family-bonds.
With the sixth book the Fasti, as we have them,
come to an end. -
The name having been thus accounted for, astro-
nomical occurrences, religious ceremonies, matters of
ritual, the anniversaries of the dedications of temples
and altars, and the like, are duly recorded, the poet
availing himself of every opportunity to introduce
Some historical or mythological legend. They are the
most attractive part of the work, for Ovid is always
happy in narrative. Among the most noticeable of
the historical class is the tale of the three hundred and
six Fabii who fell on the plains of Veii, in the battle
of the Cremera; fighting with an heroic courage, in
which Roman patriotism found a match for the great
deed of Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans at:
Thermopylae. Indeed, though it would be rash to
deny altogether the genuineness of the narrative, there
is something suspicious about the Roman legend. The
historians of Rome had indeed a singular power of
embellishment and invention, and it is not doing
them any injustice to suppose that the original story,
whatever it may have been, grew somewhat beneath
their hands. The legend, to which the reader may
give such credence as he pleases, runs thus:— .
In the early days of the Commonwealth, Rome was
troubled much by dissension at home, and by the
attacks of her Etruscan neighbours on the north. The
great house of the Fabii had fallen into disfavour
with their countrymen. What could they do better
than at once rid the city of a presence which was no
TILE FASTI OR, ROMAN CAL ENDA.R. 97
longer welcome, while they served their country by
attacking its enemies abroad! So they go forth, a little
band, wholly composed of men of the Fabian race.
“One house,” says the poet, “had taken on itself
the whole might and burden of Rome: any one of
them was worthy to be a commander.” They cross
the Cremera, one of the tributaries of the Tiber, a
little stream then swollen by the melting of the snows
of winter. The enemy fly before them ; they pene-
trate into a wooded plain well fitted for the treacher-
ous ambuscade. “Whither do ye rush, O noble
house! to your peril do you trust the foe. Simple-
hearted nobility, beware of the weapons of treachery!”
All in a moment the enemy issue from the woods, and
escape is utterly cut off. “What can a few brave
heroes do against so many thousands? What resource
is left them in so dire a crisis?” But the Fabii did
not die unavenged: “as the boar in the forests of
Laurentum, when at last brought to bay, deals havoc
among the hounds,” so these intrepid warriors fall
amid a multitude of slain foes. “Thus,” as the poet
says, “a single day sent forth all the Fabii to the
war; a single day destroyed them all.” But one of
the family was left, a stripling, who could not as yet
bear arms. This was a special providence. The gods
took care that the house descended from Hercules
should not be utterly extinguished. It had a great
destiny before it. “The stripling was preserved,” the
poet says, “that he who was surnamed Maximus, as
Hannibal's formidable antagonist, might hereafter be
born,” the man who, by his policy of delay (cuneiando,
A.C.S.S., vol. ii. G
98 O VI D.
whence his surname of Cunctator), was to restore the
fortunes of Rome,
Another well-told legend is that of the translation *
and deification of Romulus. “When his father,
mighty in arms, saw the new walls of the city com-
pleted, and many a war ended by his son's prowess,
he uttered this prayer to Jupiter: ‘Itome's power now
is firmly planted; she needs not my child's help.
Restore the son to the father; though one has per-
ished, I shall still have one left me in his own stead
and in the stead of Remus. There will be one for
thee to raise to the azure vault of heaven: thou hast
spoken the word ; Jove's word must be fulfilled.’”
The prayer was at once granted, and, amid parting
clouds, the king, while he was in the act of adminis-
tering justice to his people, was carried up with peals
of thunder and lightning-flashes into the heavens, on
his father's steeds. The grief of Rome was solaced
by a vision of the departed hero, who appeared to one
of the Julii as he was on his way from Alba Ilonga.
“Suddenly, with a crash, the clouds on his left hand
parted asunder ; he drew back, and his hair stood on
end. Romulus seemed to stand before him—a grand
and more than human figure, adorned with the robe
of state. He seemed to say, Forbid Rome's citizens
to mourn; their tears must not insult my divinity.
Let them offer incense and worship a new god, Quiri-
nus, and pursue their country's arts and the soldier's
work.”
* Book ii. 481.
THE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALENDAR. 99.
Sometimes the poet takes his readers into the ob-
scurer bypaths of the old Italian mythology. These
portions of the ‘Fasti’ have an interest for scholars,
though it would appear that Ovid had by no means a
profound or philosophical acquaintance with the reli-
gion of his ancestors. We meet with the names of
divinities which, to the ordinary reader, are altogether
unfamiliar. Such a name is that of Anna Perenna, a
deified sister of the Phoenician Dido, according to the
accounts both of Virgil and Ovid. She was a river-
nymph, and to this her name Perenna (everlasting)
was meant to point. Her story “ is related at great
length by Ovid. Her yearly festival, it appears, was
celebrated on the Ides of March, and was a somewhat
grotesque ceremony. The populace had a sort of pic-
nic on the grassy banks of the Tiber, and indulged
themselves very freely. Indeed there was a distinct
motive to drink without stint, as it was the custom to
pray for as many years of life as they had drunk cups
of wine. The connection between the two is not to
us very obvious; but, if we may trust Ovid, there
were those who would drink out the years of the long-
lived Nestor in the hope of attaining that worthy's
age. Some, too, to judge from the number of their
cups, deserved to rival the Sibyl in longevity. There
they sang all the songs they had heard at the theatre,
and having drunk and sung to their heart's content,
they had a merry dance. One is not surprised to hear
that many of them cut Sorry figures on their return
+ Book iii. 523.
100 - o VID.
home. “I lately met them,” says our poet; “a
drunken old woman was dragging along a drunken
old man.” Let us hope their prayer for a long life
was answered. He ends his account of this Anna
Perenna with an amusing little story about her.
When she had been made a goddess, Mars paid her a
visit, and had some private conversation with her.
“You are worshipped,” he said, “in my month; I
have great hopes from your kind assistance. I am on
fire with love of Minerva ; we both of us bear arms,
and long have I been cherishing my passion. Contrive
that, as we follow the same pursuit, we may be united.
The part well becomes you, O good-natured old
woman " Anna professed her willingness to help
the god of war, and undertook the delicate business of
arranging a meeting. However, for a time she put
him off with promises; but at last the ardent lover
was, as he thought, to be gratified. So the god hur-
ried off to meet the object of his affections; but when
in his impatience he raised her veil, and was about to
snatch a kiss, he found that Anna had played him a
trick, and had dressed herself up as Minerva. He was
naturally angry and ashamed of himself, all the more so
as the new goddess laughed him to scorn, and as his
old flame Venus thoroughly enjoyed the joke. It ap-
pears that this legendary hoax, which Ovid tells in
his best way, gave occasion to a number of sly and
humorous sayings among the merry people on the
banks of the Tiber. It was, no doubt, great fun for
them to think of the august deity to whom their city
THE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALENDAR. 101
wed its founder and first king, having been “sold "
in such a fashion.
It will be seen from this instance that Ovid knew
how to relieve what might seem a dry subject with a
few light touches. His ‘Fasti’ have many amusing as
well as beautiful passages, and strikingly illustrate his
consummate skill in versified narrative.
CHAPTER WI.
DEPARTURE FROM ROME—THE PLACE OF EXILE.
A WELL-KNOWN paragraph of Gibbon's great work de-
scribes the hopeless condition of any one who sought
to fly from the anger of the man who ruled the Roman
world, and to whom, in right of that rule, all human civ-
ilisation belonged. The fugitive could not hide himself
within its limits; and to seek escape among the Savage
and hostile tribes which lay beyond them was an idea
too horrible, if it had not been too preposterous, to
entertain. The historian illustrates his remarks by
the example of Ovid. “He received an order to leave
Rome in so many days, and to transport himself to
Tomi. Guards and jailers were unnecessary.” Dut a
culprit visited with the severer forms of the punish-
ment of exile would have been more carefully watched.
Such persons were commonly escorted to the selected
spot by a centurion whom, in more than one instance,
we find privately instructed to inflict the capital pen-
alty which the name of exile had only veiled. But
the concession which, in the case of the milder sen-
tence, mitigated the harshness of the punishment,
rendered such custody needless. The banished person
THE EXILE FROM ROME. 103
was then permitted to retain the income of his pro-
perty, and the permission was an effectual tie to the
place in which alone that income would be paid to
him.
Another proof of what has been urged in a pre-
vious chapter, that Ovid had no dangerous secrets in
his keeping, may be found in the prolonged period
which was allowed him to prepare for his banishment.
So prolonged was it, he tells us in his own account of
his final departure from his home, that he had suffered
himself to forget the inevitable end, and was at last
taken by surprise. The whole account is eminently
graphic and not a little pathetic, and it shall be given
as nearly as possible in the poet's own words:–
“When there starts up before me the sad, sad picture of
that night which was the last of my life in Rome, when
I remember the night on which I left so many of my treas-
ures, even now the tear falls from my eyes. The day had
almost come on which Caesar had bid me pass beyond the
farthest limits of Italy. But I had not had the thought of
preparation. Nay, the very time had been against me : so
long the delay, that my heart had grown slothful at the
thought of it. I had taken no pains to select my slaves,
or to choose a companion, or to procure the clothing or
the money that a banished man required. I was as dazed
as one who, struck by the bolts of Jupiter, lives, but is all
unconscious of his life. But when my very grief had
cleared away the mist from my soul, and I was at last my-
self again, I addressed for the last time ere my departure
my sorrowing friends,--there were but one or two out of
all the crowd. My loving wife clasped me close; bitter my
tears, still bitterer hers, as they ever poured down her inno-
cent cheeks. My daughter was far away on African shores,
104 O VID.
and could not have heard of her father's fate. Took where -
you would, there was wailing and groaning, and all the
semblance of a funeral, clamorous in its grief. My fune-
ral it was ; husband and wife and the very slaves were
mourners; every corner of my house was full of tears.
Such—if one may use a great example for a little matter—
such was the aspect of Troy in its hour of capture. And
now the voices of men and dogs were growing still, and the
moon was guiding high in heaven the steeds of night. As
I regarded it, and saw in its light the two summits of the
Capitol, the Capitol that adjoined but did not protect my
home, ‘Powers, I cried, ‘who dwell in these neighbouring
shrines, and temples that my eyes may never look upon
again, and ye gods, dwelling in the lofty city of Romulus,
gods whom now I must leave, take my farewell for ever !
Too late, indeed, and already wounded, I Snatch up the
shield; yet acquit, I pray, my banishment of an odious
crime; and tell the human denizen of heaven? what was
the error that deceived me, lest he think it a crime rather
than a mistake ; tell it that the author of my punishment
may see the truth which you know. My god once propi-
tiated, I shall be wretched no longer.’ These were the
prayers that I addressed to heaven; my wife, with sobs that
stopped her words half-way, spoke many more. She, too,
before our home-gods threw herself with dishevelled hair,
and touched with trembling lips our extinguished hearth.
Many a prayer she poured out in vain to their hostile deity,
words that might avail naught for the husband whom she
mourned. And now night, hurrying down the steep, for-
bade further delay, and the Bear of Arcady had traversed
half the sky. What could I do? Tender love for my
country held me fast; but that night was the last before
my doom of banishment. Ah! how often would I say,
when some one would bid me haste, ‘Why hurry me !
think whither you would hasten my steps, and whither I
* Augustus.
TIIE EXILE FROM ROME. 105
must go!’ Ah how often did I pretend to have settled on
some certain hour which would suit my purposed voyage 1
Thrice I touched the threshold,” thrice I was called back ;
my very feet, as if to indulge my heart, lingered on their
way. Often, farewell once spoken, I said many a word;
often, as if I was really departing, I bestowed my last kisses.
Often I gave the same commands; I cheated my own
self, as I looked on the pledges so dear to my eyes. And
then, ‘Why do I hasten? It is Scythia to which I am
being sent ; it is Rome which I have to leave ; both jus-
tify delay. My wife is refused to me for ever, and yet
we both live; my family and the dear member of that
faithful family; yes, and you, my companions, whom
I loved with a brother's love, hearts joined to mine
with the loyalty of a Theseus ! while I may, I embrace
you ; perchance I may never do so again ; the hour that
is allowed me is so much gain.” It is the end : I leave
my words unfinished, while I embrace in heart all that
is dearest to me. While I speak, and we all weep, bright
shining in the height of heaven, Lucifer, fatal star to us,
had risen ; I am rent in twain, as much as if I were
leaving my limbs behind; one part of my very frame
seemed to be torn from the other. Such was the agony of
Mettus when he found the avengers of his treachery in the
steeds driven opposite ways. Then rose on high the cries
and the groanings of my household, then the hands of
mourners beat uncovered breasts, and then my wife, cling-
ing to my shoulder as I turned away, mingled with her
tears these mournful words: ‘You cannot be torn from
me; together, ah! together will we go. I will follow you;
an exile myself, I will be an exile's wife. For me too is
the journey settled; me too that distant land shall receive;
'tis but a small burden that will be added to the exile's bark.
'Tis the wrath of Caesar that bids thee leave thy country—
* To touch the threshold with the foot in crossing it was
considered unlucky.
100 O VID,
'tis love that bids me; love shall be in Caesar's place.”
Such was her endeavour, such had been her endeavour
before ; scarcely would she surrender, overpowered by ex-
pediency. I go forth ; it was rather being carried forth
without the funeral pomp ; I go all haggard, with hair
drooping over unshaven face; and she, they tell me, as in
her grief for me the mist rose all before her, fell fainting
in the midst of the dwelling; and when, her hair all
Smirched with the unseemly dust, she rose again, lifting
her limbs from the cold ground, she bewailed now herself, .
now her deserted hearth, and called again and again the
name of her lost husband, and groaned, not less than had
she seen the high-built funeral pile claim her daughter's
body or mine. Gladly would she have died, and lost all
feeling in death; and yet she lost it not, out of thought for
me. Long may she live; live, and ever help with her aid
her absent—so the Fates will have it—her, absent hus
band.”—The “Sorrows, i. 3.
It was in the month of December that the poet left
Rome. One faithful friend, the Fabius Maximus of
whom we have heard before, accompanied him. Fol-
lowing the Appian road to Brundusium, then, as after
many centuries it has become again, the usual route of
western travellers bound eastward, he crossed the
Adriatic. A fearful storm, not unusual at this season,
encountered him on his way; and the indefatigable.
poet describes it in his most elegant verse—too elegant,
indeed, to allow us to suppose that it was written, as
it claims to be, in the very midst of the peril. One
god was hostile to him. He does not forget his flat-
tery, and asks might not another (he means Augustus)
help him? So Minerva had helped Ulysses, while
Neptune sought to destroy him. But it seems vain
THE EXILE FROM ROME. 107
to pray; the winds will not allow the prayers to reach
the gods to whom they are sent. IIow dreadful is
the sight !—these waves that now reach the heavens,
now seem about to sink to hell. He can only be
thankful that his wife is not with him, and does not
know of his peril:— gº
“An exile's fate her pious tears deplore,
This is the woe she mourns, and knows no more ;
Knows not her spouse the angry waters' prey,
Tossed by wild winds, and near his latest day.
Kind Heaven, I thank thee, that she is not here,
Else death had chilled me with a double fear.
Now though I perish, this the Fates will give—
Still in my spirit's better half to live.”
His terror did not prevent him from observing or ima-
gining that each tenth wave was especially formidable
—a fact which he states in an ingenious phrase that,
if it was really invented in the midst of the storm,
does special credit to its author:-
“The ninth it follows, the eleventh precedes.”
The tempest abated, and the poet reached his destina-
tion, Lechaeum, the eastern harbour of “Corinth on
the two seas.” Traversing the isthmus to the western
port, Cenchrea, he embarked again. This time he tells
us the name of his ship. The passage is notable as
one of the many instances in which our poet's felicitous
minuteness of description increases our knowledge of
antiquity. Nowhere else is the distinction drawn so
clearly between the union of the tutelary deity under
whose protection the ship was supposed to be, and the
108 - O VI D.
\Z
representation of the object from which it got its
name. In this instance the vessel was called The
Helmet, and bore on its deck an image of “Minerva
of the Yellow Locks.” It took him, he tells us,
straight to the Troad, or north-western corner of Asia
Minor. Thence it sailed to Imbros, and from this
island again to Samothrace. It seems to have con-
tinued its voyage to the place of the poet's destination,
and to have conveyed thither his effects. Ovid him-
self took passage in a coasting vessel to the neighbour-
ing shore of Thrace, and made the rest of his journey
overland. -
Tomi, or, as Ovid himself calls it, Tomis, was a
city of Greek origin (it was a colony of Miletus),
situated on the western coast of the Black Sea, about
two hundred miles to the north of Byzantium. The
name may be rendered in English by The Cuts. Pos-
sibly it was derived from a canal or fosse cut to the
nearest point of the Danube, which here approaches,
just before making its last bend to the north, within
the distance of fifty miles. The so-called Trajan Wall
may be the remains of such a work, which probably
was intended for purposes of defence rather than of
commerce, though the project of a ship canal between
the two points has been mooted more than once.
The lively fancy of the poet found in the legend of
Medea a more romantic origin. The wicked princess,
who embodied the poet's conception of the wild un-
scrupulous passion of the oriental character, had re-
sorted, when closely pursued in her flight, to a terrible
expedient. She slew her young brother Absyrtus, the
THE EXILE FROM ROME. 109
darling of the angry father who was following her.
His head she fixed on a prominent rock where it could
not escape the notice of the pursuers. His limbs she
scattered about the fields. She hoped, and not in
vain, that the parent's heart would bid him delay his
voyage till he had collected the human remains. It
was said that Tomi was the place where the deed was
done, and that its name preserved the tradition of its
horrible details.
The town is now called Kostendje, a corruption of
Constantina, a name which it received for the same
reason which changed Byzantium into Constanti-
nople. It was situated in the province of Lower
Moesia. Though not exactly on the frontier, which
was here, nominally at least, the Danube, it was practi-
cally an outpost of the empire. The plain between it
and that river, a district now known by the name of
Dobrudscha, was open to the incursions of the unsub-
dued tribes from the further side of the Danube, who,
when they had contrived to effect the passage of the
river, found nothing to hinder them till they came
to the walls of Tomi. .
Ovid describes the place of his exile in the gloomi-
est language. Such language, indeed, was natural in
the mouth of a Roman. To him no charm of climate,
no beauty of scenery, no interest of historical asso-
ciation, could make a place endurable, while Rome,
the one place in the world which was worth dwelling
in, was forbidden to him. It might have been sup-
posed that travel in Greece would have been attractive
to Cicero, profoundly versed as he was in its philo-
110 O VII).
sophy and literature; but he found it no consolation
for his banishment from Italy. And the younger
Seneca, whom we may almost call a professional philo-
sopher, found nothing to compensate him for enforced
absence from the capital in the exquisite scenery and
climate of Corsica. But Tomi, if its unfortunate in-
habitant is to be believed, combined in itself every
horror. It was in the near neighbourhood of savage
and barbarous tribes, and was safe from attack only
while the broad stream of the Danube flowed between
it and the enemy. The climate was terrible ; the
snow lay often unmelted for two years together. The
north wind blew with such fury that it levelled
buildings with the ground, or carried away their
roofs. The natives went about clad in garments of
skin, with their faces only exposed to the air. Their
hair, their beards, were covered with icicles. The very
wine froze : break the jar and it stood a solid lump ;
men took not draughts but bites of it. The rivers
were covered with ice ; the Danube itself, though it
was as broad as the Nile, was frozen from shore to shore,
and became a highway for horses and men. The sea
itself, incredible as it may seem, is frozen. “I,” says
the poet, “have myself walked on it.” -
“Had such, Leander, been the sea
That flowed betwixt thy love and thee,
Never on Helles' narrow strait
Had come the scandal of thy fate.” -
“The dolphins cannot leap after their wont : let the
north wind rage as it will, it raises no waves. The
ships stand firmly fixed as in stone, and the oar can-
THE EXILE FROM ROME 111
not cleave the waters. You may see the very fish
bound fast in the ice, imprisoned but still alive. But
the worst of all the horrors of winter is the easy
access which it gives to the barbarian foe. Their
vast troops of cavalry, armed with the far-reaching
bow, scour the whole country. The rustics fly for
their lives, and leave their scanty provisions to be
plundered. Some, more unlucky, are carried off into
captivity; some perish by the arrows which this cruel
enemy dips in poison. And all that the enemy cannot
carry or drive off, he burns.” -
It is difficult to suppose that some of these state-
ments are not exaggerated. The climate of Bulgaria
(the name which Lower Moesia has had since its inva-
sion by the Bulgarians in the seventh century) bears
little resemblance to that which Ovid describes. Ac-
cording to Humboldt's maps of the isothermal lines of
the world, it should have a temperature not unlike
that of northern Spain. Its soil is described as fer-
tile, and the vine is mentioned as one of its chief
products. The Danube is not frozen over in the
lower as it is in the upper parts of its course ; and
though the harbours of some of the Black Sea ports—
as, for instance, of Odessa—are sometimes blocked for
a part of the winter, the phenomenon is not known in
the neighbourhood of Kostendje. On the other hand,
Ovid's statements are remarkably precise. He anti-
cipates that they will be disbelieved, and he solemnly
avers their truth. And he gives among his descriptions
one curious fact which he is not likely to have known
except from personal observation, that fish retain their
112 * O VII).
vitality even when firmly embedded in ice. It is
quite possible that the climate may have materially
changed since Ovid's time. On more than one occa-
sion the classical poets speak of severities of cold such
as are not now experienced in Italy and Greece. If
we allow something for such change, and something
also for the exaggeration which not only expressed a
genuine feeling of disgust, but might possibly have
the effect of moving compassion, we shall probably
be right.
Ovid's life in exile, the details of which are,
brought out in the poems which belong to this
period, lasted about eight years. He left Rome in
the month of December following his fifty-first birth-
day; he died some time before the beginning of the
September after his fifty-ninth.
CHAPTER VII.
THE POEMS OF EXILE: THE TRISTIA, OR THE ‘sorrows.’
OvID's pen was not idle during the melancholy years
of exile which closed his life. He probably, as has
been said before, revised the ‘Metamorphoses.’ It is
certain that he added largely to the ‘Fasti.” But the
special poems of exile are the “Sorrows,' the ‘Letters
from the Pontus,’ and the ‘Ibis.’ In the “Sorrows’
and the ‘Letters from the Pontus’ Ovid pours forth
in an unceasing stream his complaints against the
cruelty of fate and the miseries of his exile; his sup-
plications for the removal, or at least the mitigation,
of his sentence ; and his entreaties to those who had
known him in his prosperity, that they would help,
or, if help was impossible, would at least remember
their fallen friend. It must be confessed that they
lack the brilliancy of the earlier poems. The genius
of the poet stagnated, as he says himself, in the
inclement climate, and amidst the barbarous asso-
ciations of his place of exile. And the reader is
wearied by the garrulous monotony of nearly six thou-
sand verses, in which the absorbing subject of the
poet's own sorrows is only exchanged for flattery—all
A.C.S.S., vol. ii. H.
114 . O VI D.
the more repulsive, because we know it to have been
unavailing—of the ruler from whose anger or policy
he was suffering. Yet there are not wanting points
of interest. There are graphic sketches of scenery
and character, touches of pathos, here and there even
a gleam of humour, and sometimes, when the occasion
brings him to speak of his own genius, and of the
fame to which he looked forward, an assertion of in-
dependence and dignity, which is infinitely refreshing
amidst his unmanly repining against his fate, and the
yet more unmanly adulations by which he hoped to
escape it. . . - -
. The first book of the “Sorrows’ was written and
despatched to Rome before Ovid had reached his al-
lotted place of banishment. A preface commends to
all who still remembered him at Rome the little
volume, which would remind them of the banished
Ovid. It was to go in the guise that became an
exile's book. It was to be without the ornaments
which distinguished more fortunate volumes. A char-
acteristic passage tells us what these ornaments were,
and gives us as good an idea as we can anywhere get
of the appearance of a Roman book. The parchment
or paper, on the inner side of which was the writing,
was tinted on the outer of a warm and pleasing col-
our, by means of saffron or cedar-oil. The title of the
book was written in vermilion letters. The stick
round which, the roll was made had bosses of ivory,
or some other ornamental material, and the ends of
the roll were polished and coloured black. Any era-
sure was considered to be a great disfigurement: of
THE TRISTIA, OR THE • SORROWS.’ 115
such disfigurement the poet's book was not to be
ashamed. Every reader would understand that suffi-
cient cause was found in the author's tears. From
the same preface we may conjecture that the volume
was not actually published, but was, as we should say,
printed for private circulation. It was to go to the
poet's home, and find its resting-place, not in the
book-stalls round the columns of the temple of Apollo,
but on the shelves of the writer's own mansion. No-
where, indeed, throughout the “Sorrows’ does Ovid
venture to name any one of his friends to whom he
addresses the various poems of which the several
books are composed. His wife only is excepted. If
any peril had ever threatened her, it had now passed.
Indeed, if the poet is to be believed, she desired no-
thing more than that she should be allowed to share
her husband's exile. But it was evidently a perilous
thing for friends of the banished man to be supposed
to keep up any intercourse with him. Time, though
it brought no relaxation to the severity of the pun-
ishment, seemed to have removed something of the
bitterness with which the poet's name was regarded
at Rome. The ‘Letters from the Pontus’ are ad-
dressed by name to various friends, and we find from
them that, instead of the two or three faithful hearts
who alone were left to the fallen man in the early
days of his ruin, he had during the latter years of his
exile a goodly number of correspondents.
Of the second poem in the book, describing the
imminent peril of shipwreck in which he found him-
self on his voyage from Italy, mention has already
116 - O VID.
been made. He returns to the same subject in the
fourth elegy, mentioning, not without a certain pathos,
that the adverse winds had driven him back within
sight of that Italy on which it was forbidden him
again to set foot. -
The fourth poem, describing his departure from his
home, has been already given at length. The fifth
makes one of the many fruitless appeals for help
which Ovid continued throughout the weary years of
his banishment to address to any friend whom he
thought sufficiently bold to intercede on his behalf .
with the offended Caesar. An elegy addressed to his
wife, the first of many poems in which he warmly
expresses his gratitude for the devotion with which
she was defending his interests against enemies and
faithless friends; another, addressed to a friend, com-
mending to his notice the book of the Metamor-
phoses, and excusing, on the ground of the sudden
interruption caused by the author's banishment, its
many imperfections; and a pathetic remonstrance with
one who had once professed a great friendship for
lim, but had deserted him in his hour of need,—these,
with two other poems, complete the first book of the
* Sorrows.’ It may be noticed, as a proof of the popu-
larity which the poet had attained, that the friend
whom Ovid addresses was accustomed to wear in a
ring a gem engraved with Ovid's portrait. Gems were
in one sense what miniatures were to the last genera-
tion, and what photographs are to ourselves; but both
the material and the process of engraving were costly,
and it is probable that it was only persons of some
THE TRISTIA, OR THE *SORROWS.’ 117
note who enjoyed the distinction of having their
features thus perpetuated. There is a traditionary
likeness of Ovid, which may possibly have come down
to us in this way. It is a curious fact that, thanks to
this art of gem-engraving, we are well acquainted with
the faces of men separated from us by twenty centuries
and more, while the outward semblance of those who
are within three or four hundred years of our own
time has been irrecoverably lost. .
The second book of the “Sorrows’ is an elaborate
Apologia pro vita sua, addressed to Augustus. He
hopes that, as verse had been his ruin, so verse might
help to ameliorate his condition. “The emperor him-
self had acknowledged its power. At his bidding the
Itoman matrons had chanted the song of praise to
Cybele; and he had ordered the hymns which at the
Secular Games had been raised to Phoebus.* Might
he not hope that the wrath of the terrestrial god might
be propitiated in the same way ? To pardon was the
prerogative of deity. Jupiter himself, when he had
hurled his thunders, allowed the clear sky again to be
seen. And who had been more merciful than Augus-
tus? Ovid had seen many promoted to wealth and
power who had borne arms against him. No such
guilt had been the poet's. He had never forgotten
to offer his prayers for the ruler of Rome, had never
* The Secular Games were celebrated once in a century. This,
at least, was the theory; but more than one emperor found it
convenient to shorten the period. The hymn to Phoebus of
which Ovid speaks has been preserved in the well-known
Secular Hymn (Carmen Saeculare) of Horace.
118 O VII).
failed to sing his praises. And had he not received
the emperor's approval? When the knights had
passed in review before him, the poet's horse had been
duly restored to him.* Nay, he had filled high
stations of responsibility, had been a member of the
Court of the Hundred, and even of the Council of
Ten, which presided over it. And all had been ruined
by an unhappy mistake | Yet the emperor had been
merciful. Life had been spared to him, and his pater-
mal property. No decree of the senate or of any judge
had condemned him to banishment. The emperor
had avenged his own wrongs by an exercise of his
own power, but avenged them with a punishment so
much milder than it might have been, as to leave him
hopes for the future.” These hopes he proceeds to
commend to the emperor by elaborate flattery. He
appeals successively to the gods, who, if they loved
Tome, would prolong the days of its lord; to the
country, which would always be grateful for the
blessings of his rule; to Livia, the one wife who was
worthy of him, and for whom he was the one worthy
husband; to the triumphs which his grandsons t were
winning in his name and under his auspices; and
implores that if return may not be granted to him, at
least some milder exile may be conceded. Here he
was on the very verge of the empire, and within reach
of its enemies. Was it well that a Roman citizen
* A knight disgraced by the censor (the emperor was per-
petual censor) had his horse taken from him. -
+ Drusus, the son, and Germanicus, the nephew and adopted
son, of Tiberius, Augustus's step-son.
THE TRISTIA, OR THE SORROWS' 119
should be in peril of captivity among barbarous tribes?
Ovid then proceeds to set forth an apology for his
offending poems. To the real cause of his banish-
ment he makes one brief allusion. More he dared
not say. “I am not worth so much as that I should
renew your wounds, O Caesar : it is far too much that
you should once have felt the pang.” That in this
error, not in any offending poem, lay the real cause of
his fall, Ovid was doubtless well aware. Hence it is
not too much to suppose that the apology which fol-
lows was intended rather for posterity than for the
person to whom it is addressed. It is needless to
examine it in detail. The sum and substance of it is,
that the poems were written for those to whom they
could not possibly do any harm; that readers to whose
modesty they might be likely to do an injury had
been expressly warned off from them ; that a mind
perversely disposed would find evil anywhere, even
in the most sacred legends; that, if everything whence
the opportunity for wrong might arise was to be con-
demned, the theatre, the circus, the temples with
their porticóes so convenient for forbidden meetings,
and their associations so strangely tinged with licence,
would share the same fate. As for himself, his life
had been pure but for this one fault ; and this fault
how many had committed before him Then follows.
a long list of poets, who, if to sing of love was an
offence, had been grievous offenders. Then there had
been poems on dice-playing, and dice had been a
grievous offence in the old days. All verses that
taught men how to waste that precious thing time, .
120 - OVID.
verses about swimming, about ball-playing, about the
trundling of hoops (a favourite amusement, it would
seem, even with middle-aged Romans), about the fur-
nishings of the table and its etiquette, abóut the
different kinds of earthenware (the fancy for curious
pots and pans was, it will be seen, in full force among
the wealthy Romans of Ovid's time), might be con-
demned. Plays, too, and pictures, were grievous
offenders in the same way. Why should Ovid be
the only one to suffer?—Ovid, too, who had written
grave and serious works which no one could censure,
and who had never wronged any man by slanderous
verses, over whose fall no one rejoiced, but many had
mourned. -
“Permit these pleas thy mighty will to sway,
Great Lord, thy country's Father, Hope, and Stay!
Return. I ask not ; though at last thy heart,
Touched by long suffering, may the boon impart;
Let not the penalty the fault exceed:
Exile I bear; for peace, for life I plead.”
It is probable that the poem was despatched to Rome
immediately after its author had reached Tomi. He
would not have ventured to put in a plea for the miti-
gation of punishment before he had at least begun to
suffer it ; but it is equally certain that the plea would
not be long delayed. The third book of the ‘ Sorrows’
was likewise composed and sent off during the first
year of his banishment. The twelfth out of its four-
teen elegies speaks of the return of spring. The win-
ter of the Pontus, longer than any that he had known
THE TRISTIA, OR THE ‘SORROWS.” 121:
before, had passed away; lads and lasses in happier
lands were gathering violets; the swallow was build-
ing under the eaves; vineyard and forest—strangers,
alas ! both of them, to the land of the Getae— were
bursting into leaf. And in Rome's happier place,
which he might never see again, all the athletic sports.
of the Campus, all the gay spectacles of the theatre,
were being enjoyed. The poet's only solace was that,
as even in these dismal regions spring brought some
relief, and opened the sea to havigation, some ship.
might reach the shore and bring news of Italy and of
Caesar's triumphs. The next elegy must have been
written about the same time. Ovid's birthday (we
know it to have been the 20th of March) came, the
first that had visited him in his exile. “Would that
thou hadst brought,” he says, “not an addition but an
end to my pain l’’
“What dost thou here? Has angry Caesar sent
Thee too to share my hopeless banishment 7
Think'st thou to find the customary rite—
To see, the while I stand in festive white,
With flowery wreaths the smoking altars crowned,
And hear in Spicy flames the Salt meal’s crackling sound?
Shall honeyed cakes do honour to the day,
While I in words of happy omen pray ?
Not such my lot. A cruel fate and stern
Forbids me thus to welcome thy return;
With gloomy cypress be my altars dight,
And flames prepared the funeral flames to light !
I burn no incense to unheeding skies,
From heart so sad no words of blessing rise;
If yet for me one fitting prayer remain,
'Tis this: Return not to these shores again l’
122. . . . . ov1D. . . . . .
The gloom of his lot was aggravated by causes of
which he bitterly complains in more than one of his
poems. In the third elegy, which he addressed to his:
wife, she must not wonder that the letter was written.
in a strange hand. He had been grievously, even:
dangerously, ill. The climate did not suit him ; nor.
the water (Ovid seems to have been a water-drinker),
nor the soil. He had not a decent."house to cover his
head; there was no food that could suit a sick man's,
appetite. No physician could be found to prescribe,
for his malady. There was not even a friend who
could while away the time by conversation or reading.
He felt, he complains in another letter, a constant.
lassitude, which extended from his body to his mind.
Perpetual sleeplessness troubled him ; his food gave
him no nourishment; he was wasted away almost to a
skeleton. Writing about two years after this time, he
assumes a more cheerful tone. His health was restored.
He had become hardened to the climate. If it were
not for his mental trouble, all would be well. Another
pressing matter was anxiety about his literary repu-
tation, which the offended authorities at home were
doing their best to extinguish. He imagines his little
book making its way with trembling steps through the
well-known scenes of the capital. It goes to the
temple of Apollo, where the works of authors old and
new were open for the inspection of readers. There it
looks for its brothers, not the luckless poem which had
excited the wrath of Caesar, and which their father
wished he had never begotten, but the unoffending
others. Alas ! they were all absent ; and even while
THE TRISTIA, OR THE • SORROWS.’ 123
it looked, the guardian of the place bade it begone.
Nor was it more successful in the neighbouring library
of the temple of Liberty. Banished from public, its
only resource was to find shelter from private friend-
ship. To such shelter, accordingly, the volume is
commended in the last elegy of the book. This friend
was, it seems, a patron of literature, “a lover of new
poets.” Ovid calls him. And the author begs his fa-
vour and care for his latest work. Only he must not
look for too much. Everything was against him in
that barbarous land. The wonder was that he could
write at all. “There is no supply of books here to
rouse and nurture my mind; instead of books, there
is the clash of swords and the bow. There is no one
in the country to give me, should I read to him my
verses, an intelligent hearing. There is no place to
which I can retire. The closely-guarded walls and
fast-shut gate keep out the hostile Getae. Often I look
for a word, for a name, for a place, and there is no one
to help me to it; often (I am ashamed to confess
it) when I try to say something, words fail me; I
find that I have forgotten how to speak. On every
side of me I hear the sound of Thracian and Scythian
tongues. I almost believe that I could write in
Getic measures. Nay, believe me, I sometimes fear
lest Pontic words should be found mixed with my
Latin.” We have the same complaints and fears re-
peated in the fifth book. After some uncomplimentary
expressions about the Savage manners of the people,
and their equally savage dress and appearance,—the
furs and loose trousers by which they sought, but with
124 - O. V.P. D.
ill success, to keep out the cold, and their long
and shaggy beards,--he goes on to speak about the
language:—
“Among a few remain traces of the Greek tongue, but
even these corrupted with Getic accent. There is scarcely
a man among the people who by any chance can give you
an answer on any matter in Latin. I, the Roman bard,
am compelled—pardon me, O Muses —to speak for the
most part after Sarmatian fashion. I am ashamed of it,
and I own it ; by this time, from long disuse, I myself can
scarcely recall Latin words. And I do not doubt but that
there are not a few barbarisms in this little book. It is not
the fault of the writer, but of the place.” -
No one has ever discovered any “Ponticisms” in
Ovid. They are probably as imaginary as is the
“Paduamism” which some superfine crities of antiquity
discovered in Livy.” One of the poet's apprehensions
was, however, we shall find, actually fulfilled. He did
“learn to write in Getic measure,” for he composed a
poem in the language. &
One of the elegies in the third book has been
already noticed. It is addressed to Perilla, and the
question whether this lady was, as some commentators
suppose, the daughter of the poet, has been briefly
discussed. The name is certainly not real. It is of
Greek origin, and it has been already seen that none
of the letters in the “Sorrows’ are addressed by name
to the persons for whom they are intended. Besides
this, we are elsewhere informed that Ovid's daughter
was married, and was the mother of two children, and
that, at the time of her father's banishment, she was
* Livy was a native of Padua (Patavium).
THE TRISTIA, OR THE • SORROWS.’ 125
absent in Africa, having probably accompanied her
husband to some post in that province. These circum-
stances do not suit the poem addressed to Perilla:
“Go, letter, hastily penned, to salute Perilla, the
faithful messenger of my words; you will find her
either sitting with her dear mother, or among her
books and Muses.” He reminds her of how he had
been her teacher in the art of verse, and tells her that
if her genius remained still as vivid as of old, only
Sappho would excel her. Let her not be terrified by
his own sad fate; only she must beware of perilous
'subjects. Then follows a noble vindication of his art,
and of the dignity which it gave to him, its humble
follower:- - * * -
“Long years will mar those looks so comely now,
And age will write its wrinkles on thy brow.
Mark how it comes with fatal, noiseless pace,
To spoil the blooming honours of thy face
Soon men will say, and thou wilt hear with pain,
‘Surely she once was lovely;’ and in vain,
That thy too faithful glass is false, complain.
Small are thy riches, though the loftiest state
Would suit thee well; but be they small or great,
Chance takes and brings them still with fickle wing—
To-day a beggar, yesterday a king.
Why name each good? Each has its little day;
Gifts of the soul alone defy decay.
I live of friends, of country, home, bereft, -
All I could lose, but genius still is left;
This is my solace, this my constant friend;
Ere this be reached e'en Caesar's power must end.”
It is needless to go on in detail through what re-
126 º O VI D.
mains of the “Sorrows.’ The tenth poem of the
fourth book should be mentioned as being a brief
autobiography of the poet. Its substance has already
been given. Elsewhere he pursues, with an iteration
which would be wearying in the extreme but for his
marvellous power of saying the same thing in many
ways, the old subjects. The hardships of his lot,
the fidelity or faithlessness of his friends, the solace
which his art supplied him, and the effort to discover
some way of propitiating those who held his fate in
their hands,-these topics occupy in turn his pen. The
following elegant translation by the late Mr Philip
‘Stanhope Worsley, of one of the latest poems of the
book, may serve as a good specimen of his verse:– .
------
ad
, “‘Study the mournful hours away,
Lest in dull sloth thy spirit pine ;’
Hard words thou writest: verse is gay,
And asks a lighter heart than mine.
No calms my stormy life beguile,
Than mine can be no sadder chance ;
You bid bereaved Priam Smile,
And Niobe, the childless, dance.
Is grief or study more my part,
Whose life is doomed to wilds like these ?
Though you should make my feeble heart
Strong with the strength of Socrates,
Such ruin would crush wisdom down ;
Stronger than man is wrath divine.
That sage, whom Phoebus gave the crown,
Never could write in grief like mine.
TIIE TRISTIA, OR THE • SORROWS.’ 127
Can I my land and thee forget,
Nor the felt sorrow wound my breast 7
Say that I can—but foes beset
This place, and rob me of all rest.
Add that my mind hath rusted now,
And fallen far from what it was.
The land, though rich, that lacks the plough
Is barren, Save of thorns and grass.
The horse, that long hath idle stood,
Is soon o’ertaken in the race ;
And, torn from its familiar flood,
The chinky pinnace rots apace.
Nor hope that I, before but mean,
Can to my former self return ;
Long sense of ills hath bruised my brain,
Half the old fires no longer burn.
Yet oft I take the pen and try,
As mow, to build the measured rhyme.
Words come not, or, as meet thine eye,
Words worthy of their place and time.
Tast, glory cheers the heart that fails,
And love of praise inspires the mind—
I followed once Fame's star, my sails
Filled with a favourable wind :
But now ’tis not so well with me,
To care if fame be lost or won :
Nay, but I would, if that might be,
Live all unknown beneath the sun.”
It remains only to fix the date of the “Sorrows.”
Its earliest poems were penned during the voyage from
I28 O VII).
Tome. The latest belongs to the earlier part of the
third year of his exile. “Thrice, since I came to
Pontus, has the Danube been stopped by frost, thrice
the wave of the sea been hardened within.” It is
probable that Ovid reached Tomi somewhere about
the month of September, A.D. 9. The “third winter”
of his banishment, therefore, would be drawing to a
close in March, A.D. 12, when he was about to com-
plete his fifty-fourth year.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE POEMS OF EXILE : THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTUS
—DEATH OF OVID.
THE ‘Letters’ number forty-four in all, and are con-
tained in four books. They are arranged in chrono-
logical order—an order, however, which is not abso-
lutely exact. The earliest of them dates from the same
year to which the fifth book of the “Sorrows’ is to
be attributed. In the prefatory epistle, addressed to
I3rutus—a relative, it is probable, of the famous tyran-
nicide—the poet tells his friend that he will find the
new book as full of sorrows as its predecessor. It
contains, however, not a few indications that his posi-
tion had been somewhat changed—and changed for
the better. He had not ventured to prefix to the
various poems of which the “Sorrows’ were made up
the names of those to whom they were addressed.
This he does not now scruple to do ; and we find ac-
cordingly that, instead of the two or three who, he
complains in the earlier book, had alone been left to
him out of a crowd of companions, there was no in-
considerable number of friends who were willing to
remember, and even, if it might be, to help him. We
may count as many as twenty names; not reckoning
A.C.S.S., vol. ii. I
130 O VI D.
Germanicus Cæsar, to whom Ovid addresses a com-
plimentary letter, and Cotys, a tributary king, the
boundaries of whose dominions were not far from
Tomi. While the revival of these old friendships
consoled the poet, and even buoyed him up with
hopes that his banishment might be terminated, or
at least mitigated, by a change of scene, the place itself
was becoming (though, indeed, he is scarcely willing
to allow it) less odious to him : its semi-barbarous
inhabitants were not insensible to the honour of having
so distinguished a resident among them ; and his own
behaviour, as he tells one of his correspondents, had
made a favourable impression on them. “They would
rather that I left them,” he says, “because they see
that I wish to do so; but as far as regards themselves,
they like me to be here. Do not take all this on my
word; you may see the decrees of the town, which
speak in my praise, and make me free of all taxes.
Such honours are scarcely suitable to a miserable fugi-
tive like myself; but the neighbouring towns have
bestowed on me the same privilege.” The sympathis-
ing people might well complain that their kindness was
repaid with ingratitude, when their fellow-townsman
continued to speak with unmitigated abhorrence of the
place to which he had been condemned. “I care for
nothing,” he says, still harping on the constant theme
of his verse, to one of his distant friends, “but to get
out of this place. Even the Styx—if there is a Styx
—would be a good exchange for the Danube ; yes,
and anything, if such the world contain, that is below
the Styx itself. The plough-land less hates the weed,
THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTU.S. 13]
the swallow less hates the frost, than Naso hates the
regions which border on the war-loving Getae. Such
words as these make the people of Tomi wroth with
me. The public anger is stirred up by my verse.
Shall I never cease to be injured by my song? Shall
I always suffer from my imprudent genius'! Why do
I hesitate to lop off my fingers, and so make writing
impossible % why do I take again, in my folly, to the
warfare which has damaged me before ? Yet I have
done no wrong. It is no fault of mine, men of Tomi ;
you I love, though I cordially hate your country. Let
any one search the record of my toils—there is no
letter in complaint of you. It is the cold—it is the
attack that we have to dread on all sides—it is the
assaults that the enemy make on our walls, that I com-
plain of. It was against the place, not against the
people, that I made the charge. You yourselves often
blame your own country. . . . It is a malicious in-
terpreter that stirs up the anger of the people against
me, and brings a new charge against my verse. I
wish that I was as fortunate as I am honest in heart.
There does not live a man whom my words have
wronged. Nay, were I blacker than Illyrian pitch, I
could not wrong so loyal a people as you. The kind-
ness with which you have received me in my troubles
shows, men of Tomi, that a people so gentle must be
genuine Greeks.” My own people, the Peligni, and
Sulmo, the land of my home, could not have behaved
more kindly in my troubles. Honours which you
* This was a compliment which would be certain to please a
half-bred population like that of the old colony.
132 O VID.
would scarcely give to the prosperous and unharmed,
you have lately bestowed upon me. I am the only
inhabitant—one only excepted, who held the privilege
of legal right—that has been exempted from public
burdens. My temples have been crowned with the
sacred chaplet, lately voted to me, against my will, by
the favour of the people. Dear, then, as to Latona
was that Delian land, the only spot which gave a safe
refuge to the wanderer, so dear is Tomi to me—Tomi
which down to this day remains a faithful host to one
who has been banished from his native land If only
the gods had granted that it might have some hope
of peace and quiet, and that it were a little further
removed from the frosts of the pole !”
The poet, though he could not restrain or moderate
his complaints about the miseries of his exile, did his
best to make a return for these honours and hospitali-
ties. “I am ashamed to say it,” he writes to Carus,
a scholar of distinction, who had been appointed tutor
to the children of Germanicus, “but I have written a
book in the language of the Getae ; I have arranged
their barbarous words in Roman measures. I was
happy enough to please (congratulate me on the suc-
cess); nay, I begin to have the reputation of a poet
among these uncivilised Getae. Do you ask me my
subject' I sang the praises of Caesar. I was assisted
in my novel attempt by the power of the god. I told
them how that the body of Father Augustus was mor-
tal, while his divinity had departed to the dwellings
of heaven. I told them how there was one equal
in virtue to his father, who, under compulsion, had
THE LETTERS FROM THE POWTU.S. 133
assumed the reigns of an empire which he had often
refused.* I told them that thou, Livia, art the Westa
of modest matrons, of whom it cannot be determined
whether thou art more worthy of thy husband or
thy son. I told them that there were two youths,
firm supporters of their father, who have given some
pledges of their spirit. When I had read this to the
end, written as it was in the verse of another tongue,
and the last page had been turned by my fingers, all
nodded their heads, all shook their full quivers, and a
prolonged murmur of applause came from the Getic
crowd; and some cried, “Since you write such things
about Caesar, you should have been restored to Caesar's
empire.’ So he spake; but, alas, my Carus ! the sixth
winter sees me still an exile beneath the snowy sky.”
It is to this subject of his exile that in the ‘Letters,”
as in the “Sorrows,’ he returns with a mournful and
wearisome iteration. The greater number of them
* Tacitus describes with scorn the assumed reluctance of
Tiberius openly to accept the power which he really possessed,
and which he had no intention of abandoning, or even in the
least degree diminishing. Any attempt to take him at his word
was at once fiercely lesented. He had said, for instance, that
though not equal to the whole burden of the state, he would
undertake the charge of whatever part might be intrusted to
him ; and one of the senators committed the indiscretion of
saying, “I ask you, Caesar, what part of the state you wish in-
trusted to you?” This embarrassing question was never forgotten
or forgiven, and was ultimately, if we may believe the histo-
rian, punished with death. Tiberius's final acquiescence is thus
described: “Wearied at last by the assembly's clamorous im-
portunity and the urgent demands of individual senators, he
gave way by degrees, not admitting that he undertook empire,
but yet ceasing to refuse it and to be entreated.”
134 - O VI D.
belong to the fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth years of the
poet's life. The fifth of the last book, for instance, is
addressed to “Sextus Pompeius, now Consul.” Pom-
peius, who was collaterally related to the great rival of
Caesar, entered on his consulship on January 1st, A.D.
14. “Go, trivial elegy, to our consul’s learned ears
take words for that honoured man to read. The way
is long, and you go with halting feet.” And the
earth lies hidden, covered with snows of winter.
When you shall have crossed frosty Thrace, and
Haemus covered with clouds, and the waters of the
Ionian Sea, you will come to the imperial city in less
than ten days, even though you do not hasten your
journey.” t The letter marks the time at which Ovid's
hopes of pardon had risen to their highest. Powerful
friends had interceded for him ; with one of them ad-
vanced to the consulship—a token of high favour,
though nothing but a shadow of power—he might
hope for the best. And it is probable, as has been
before explained, that Augustus was at this very
* This is a favourite witticism with Ovid. The elegiac
couplet was made up of two feet of unequal length—the hexa-
meter or six-foot, and the pentameter or five-foot verse. Hence
it was said to halt. • -
+ This means that the letter would be somewhat less than .
ten days in travelling from Brundusium (the port of departure
and arrival for travellers to or from the East) to Rome. The
distance may be roughly stated at about 300 miles. Cicero
gives us to understand on one occasion that a letter addressed
to him had travelled the same distance in Seven days. Horace
occupied about double the time in the leisurely journey which
he describes himself as making (Sat. i. 5) in company with
Maecenas, Virgil, and other friends.
THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTU.S. 135
time meditating nothing less than another dispo-
sition of the imperial power, a disposition which
would have reinstated in their position his own direct
descendants, and with them have restored the fortunes
of Ovid. These hopes were to be disappointed. On
the 29th of August in the same year, Augustus died
at Nola, in Campania. There were some who declared
that his end was at least hastened by Livia, deter-
termined to secure at any price the prospects of her
son Tiberius. As the emperor had completed his
seventy-sixth year, it is unnecessary thus to account
for a death which, though it may have been oppor-
tune, was certainly to be expected. On Ovid's for-
tunes the effect was disastrous. The very next letter
is that which has been already quoted as deplor-
ing the death of Augustus at the very time when
he was beginning to entertain milder thoughts, and
the ruin which had overtaken his old friend and
patron, Fabius Maximus. Ovid, however, did not
yet abandon all hope. To address directly Tiberius
or Livia seemed useless. His thoughts turned to the
young Germanicus, Tiberius's nephew, whose wife was
Agrippina, daughter of the elder and sister of the
younger Julia. Among the friends of this prince,
who was then in command of the armies of the Rhine
—and, though an object of suspicion to his uncle and
adopting father, high in popular favour—was P. Suil-
lius Rufus. Suillius was closely connected with Ovid,
whose step-daughter (the daughter of his third wife)
he had married. He must then have been a young
man, as it is more than forty years afterwards that
136 O VII).
we hear of his being banished by Nero; and he
filled the part of quaestor (an office of a financial
kind) on the staff of Germanicus. “If you shall feel
a hope,” he writes, “that anything can be done by
prayer, entreat with suppliant voice the gods whom
you worship. Thy gods are the youthful Caesar;
make propitious these thy deities. Surely no altar is
more familiar to you than this. That does not allow
the prayers of any of its ministers to be in vain; from
hence seek thou help for my fortunes. . If it should
help, with however Small a breeze, my sinking boat
will rise again from the midst of the waters. Thou
wilt bring due incense to the devouring flames, and
testify how strong the gods can be.” The writer then
addresses, and continues to address throughout the rest
of the letter, Germanicus himself, for whose eye it
was of course intended, and before whom Suillius is
entreated in the concluding couplet by his “almost
father-in-law,” as Ovid quaintly calls himself, to bring
it. Another friend, whose intercession in the same
quarter the poet entreats, is Carus—tutor, as has been
said before, to the sons of Germanicus. This letter
was written in “the sixth winter of exile”—i.e., about
the end of A.D. 14 or the beginning of 15—the time
to which we are to ascribe the poem in the Getic
language, on the death and deification of Augustus.
Shortly afterwards must have been written a letter
addressed to Graecinus, who filled the office of consul
during the second half of the latter year. Here we
see the most humiliating phase of Ovid's servility. It
is difficult to understand how little more than fifty
THE LETTERS FROM THE POWTU.S. 137
years after the republic had ceased to exist, an Italian
of the Italians, one of that hardy Samnite race which
had so long contended on equal terms with Rome
itself, could be found descending to such depths of
degradation. The servile multitudes of Egypt and
Assyria had never prostrated themselves more ignobly
before Sesostris or Nimrod than did this free-born
citizen before the men who were so relentlessly perse-
cuting him. He tells, his powerful friend that his.
piety was known to the whole country. “This stranger
land sees that there is in my dwelling a chapel to
Caesar. There stand along with him, his pious son
and his priestess spouse, powers not inferior to the .
already perfected deity. And that no part of the
family should be wanting, there stand both his grand,
sons, the one close to his grandmother's, and the
other to his father's side. To these I address words
of prayer with an offering of incense as often as the
day arises from the eastern sky.” Two years before,
we find him thanking his friend Maximus Cotta for
a present of the statues which this chapel enshrined.
He mentions three as the number which had been
sent. (The images of the two young princes had since
been added.) In this letter he seems to lose himself
in transports of gratitude. “He is no longer an exile
at the ends of the earth. He is a prosperous dweller
* It may be as well to explain that by Caesar is meant
Augustus (who was now dead), and by the “pious son ’’ Tibe-
rius. Livia, as the widow of the deified prince, was the priest-
ess of his worship ; the two grandsons are Drusus, son of Tibe-
rius, who stands by his grandmother Livia—and Germanicus,
who stands by his adopting father Tiberius.
138 . . - - O VI D.
in the midst of the capital. He sees the faces of the
Caesars. Such happiness he had never ventured to
hope for.” And so he treads the well-worn round of
customary adulation. A short specimen will be enough
to show to what depths he could descend. “Happy
they who look not on the likenesses but on the reality;
who see before their eyes the very bodies of the god
Since a hard fate has denied me this privilege, I wor-
ship those whom art has granted to my prayer—the
likeness of the true. 'Tis thus men know the gods,
whom the heights of heaven conceal; ’tis thus that
the shape of Jupiter is worshipped for Jupiter him-
self.” And then, anxious not to forget the practi-
cal object to which all these elaborate flatteries were
directed, he goes on : “Take care that this semblance
of yours which is with me, and shall ever be with me,
be not found in a hostile spot. My head.shall sooner
part from the neck, the eye shall sooner leave the
mangled cheeks, than I should bear your loss, O
Deities of the Commonwealth you shall be the har-
bour and the sanctuary of my banishment. You I
will embrace, if I be surrounded by Getic arms. You,
as my eagles and my standards, I will follow. If
I am not deceived and cheated by too powerful a
desire, the hope of a happier place of exile is at hand,
The look upon your likeness is less and less gloomy;
the face seems to give assent to my prayer. I pray
that the presages of my anxious heart may be true,
and that the anger of my god, however just it is,
may yet be mitigated.” It is difficult to conceive a
more pitiable sight than that of the wretched exile
THE LETTERS FROM THE PO.VTU.S. 139
day after day going through, with sinking hopes and
failing spirits, this miserable pretence of worship ;
prostrating himself before men whose baseness and
profligacy no one knew better than himself, and, while
he crushed down the curses that rose naturally to his
lips, reiterating the lying prayer, for which he must
have now despaired of an answer. That he should
have performed this elaborate hypocrisy, not in public
but in the privacy of his own home, merely for the
sake of being able to say that he had done it, and with
but the very dimmest hope of getting any good from
it, is inexpressibly pitiable; and that it should be pos-
sible for a man of genius to stoop to such degradation,
and for great princes, as Augustus and Tiberius cer-
tainly were, to be swayed in their purposes by such an
exhibition—and that they might be swayed by it Ovid
certainly believed—is a warning against the evils of
despotic power such as it would not be easy to match.
One or two other letters may be briefly noticed.
One addressed to Tuticanus, a brother poet, who had
been distinguished by a translation of the Odyssey, re-
lieves the gloomy monotony of complaint and entreaty
by a faint spark of humour. Whether Tuticanus had
hinted annoyance at not having received any of the
poetical epistles with which other friends had been
honoured, or whether, as is more probable, there was
a hope that some help might be got from him, Ovid
apologises for not having written before. The hu-
mour of his excuse is not very brilliant ; and it is not
easy to explain it without a reference to the principles
of Latin versification, which would be here out of place.
140 - 'O VII).
Tuticanus, in fact, was a name which “might be said,
but never could be sung.” “There is no one,” says
the poet, “whom I should have more delighted to
honour—if, indeed, there is any honour to be found
in my poetry. But your name will not come into my
verse. I am ashamed to split it into two, and put
‘Tuti’ in one line and ‘ canus’ in the next. Nor
while it is properly pronounced Tüticănus, can I pre-
vail upon myself to shorten the third syllable and call
you Tüticănus, or to shorten the first and call you Túti-
canus, or make all three long and change it into Tüti-
cănus.” It has been said that the ancients, and espe-
cially the Romans, were easily amused, and Ovid's
friend was apparently no exception to the rule.
Another letter introduces us to a personage of whom
we would gladly know more, Cotys, one of the tribu-
tary kings of Thrace. Cotys was a name of consid-
erable antiquity in this region. Among those who
had borne it was a prince who had played a part in
the struggle between Philip of Macedon and Athens.
Athenaeus tells a strange story of his insane extrava-
gance and cruelty, indicating the barbarian nature
thinly veneered with Greek civilisation, or rather
luxury. The Cotys to whom Ovid writes was, if the
poet is to be believed, of a different temper. Claim-
ing descent from Eumolpus, a Thracian bard, who
figures in the early legends of Attica, his tastes were
such as became his genealogy. He wrote verse, pro-
bably in the Greek language ; and Ovid declares that,
had they not had the name of their author prefixed
to them, he could not have supposed them to have
THE LETTERS FROM THIE POWTU.S. 141
'been written by a native of Thrace. Orpheus, adds
the practised flatterer, was not the only poet whom
that region had produced. It had now good reason
to be proud of the genius of its king. It is a curious
circumstance that a semi-barbarous prince—for such
Cotys must have seemed to any Roman who had no
special reason for complimenting him—should have
been the occasion of the famous lines which have be-
come the standing apology for a liberal education :
“Diligently to acquire a liberal education, softens
men's manners, and forbids them to grow rude.” From
what we hear of Cotys elsewhere, we find that his
culture was not exactly in the right place among the
savage tribes of Thrace. Augustus divided between
him and his brother Rhescuporis the kingdom which
had belonged to his father Rhoemetalces. “In this
division,” continues Tacitus, to whom we are indebted
for the facts, “the cultivated lands, the towns, and
what bordered on Greek territory, fell to Cotys ; the
wild and barbarous portion, with enemies on its fron-
tier, to Rheseuporis. The kings, too, themselves dif-
fered—Cotys having a gentle and kindly temper, the
“other a fierce and ambitious spirit, which could not
brook a partner.” Open hostilities, provoked by Rhes-
cuporis, broke out. The temporising policy of Tiberius,
who had by that time succeeded to the throne, pre-
.vented him from rendering due assistance to Cotys,
who, in the end, was treacherously seized by his
brother, and put to death. *.
* “Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes
Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros.”
142 - O VI D.
Of the literary merits of the ‘Letters from the
IPontus’ there is little to be said. The monotony of
its subject was fatal to excellence. Ovid knew, at
least as well as any man who ever wrote, how to say
the same thing over and over again in different ways;
but even his genius could not indefinitely vary his
constant complaint that he was living among Savages,
and under an inhospitable sky; his constant prayer
that he might be released from his gloomy prison, or,
at least, transferred to a more genial spot. Nor does
he vary his subject with the episodical narratives in
the telling of which he so much excelled. The story
of Orestes and Pylades is the only specimen of the
kind that occurs in the four books. Ovid puts it
into the mouth of an old native of the country, who
speaks of having himself seen the temple where the
incident happened, towering high with its vast
columns, and approached by an ascent of twelve
steps.” The versification is somewhat languid, and
occasionally careless. The poems are not exactly un-
worthy of their author, for they are probably as good
as the subject admitted. To a Latin scholar, Ovid's
verse, even when his subject is uninteresting, is al-
* The story is so well known that a very few words may
suffice for it. Orestes and Pylades land at Tauri, and, according
to the custom of the place, are seized and taken to the temple
of Diana. There one of them must be offered to the goddess.
Each is anxious to be the object of the fatal choice. While
they are contending, they find that the priestess is the sister of
Orestes, Iphigenia, who had been transported hither from the
altar at Aulis, where she had been about to suffer a similar fate.
By her help they escape.
THE LETTERS FROM THE POWTU.S. 143
ways pleasing; an English reader would certainly
find them exceedingly tedious. -
The “Ibis’ is a poem of between six and seven hun-
dred lines in length, containing almost as many impre-
cations, displaying in their variety an amazing fertility
of imagination, which are directed against a personal
enemy who had spoken ill of the poet in his banish-
ment, had persecuted his wife with his attentions, and
had endeavoured to Snatch some plunder from his pro-
perty. It is modelled, as Ovid himself states, on a
poem of the same name which Callimachus wrote
against a poet who had been his pupil, and afterwards
became a rival—Apollonius Rhodius. Callimachus's
Quarrel with his brother poet seems to have been a
purely literary one. Apollonius preferred the simpli-
city of the epic writers to the artificial style of his
master. The censure was bitterly felt, and resented
with a vehemence which transcends anything that
has been recorded in the history of letters. The
person whom Ovid attacked under the name of
Ibis is said to have been one Hyginus, a freedman
of the Emperor Augustus, and chief of the Palatine
Library. The principal ground for this idea is that
Hyginus was certainly at one time on terms of
intimate friendship with Ovid, and that none of
the letters written in exile are addressed to him.
IEither he or some one else among the numerous
acquaintances who courted the poet in the days of
his popularity, and who deserted him in his exile,
may have been in the author's thoughts; but the
poem is scarcely serious. It has the look of being a
144 - O VI D. .
*#:
literary tour de force, Callimachus was a favourite
model with Roman authors, and Ovid probably amused
some of the vacant hours of his exile with translating
his poem.* Every story of Greek mythology, legend,
and history is ransacked to furnish the curses which
are heaped on the head of the luckless man. “May he
fall over a staircase, as did Elpenor, the companion of
Tlysses 1 May he be torn to pieces by a lioness, as
was Phayllus, tyrant of Ambracia 1 May he be killed
by a bee-sting in the eye, as was the poet Achaeus !
May he be devoured, as Glaucus was devoured, by his
horses; or leap, as did another Glaucus, into the sea
May he drink, with trembling mouth, the same
draught that Socrates drank, all undisturbed 1 May
he perish caught by the hands, as was Milo in the
oak which he tried to rend I’’ These are a few, but,
it will probably be thought, sufficient, examples of
the “Ibis.’
The last lines written by Ovid are probably some
which we find in the ‘Fasti’ under the first of June,
praising Tiberius for the pious work which he had ac-
complished in rebuilding and dedicating various temples
at Rome. These temples were dedicated, as we learn
from Tacitus, in A.D. 17. The poet died, St Jerome
tells us, in the same year, some time before September,
from which month, in Jerome's chronicle, the years
* Allusions to Virgil's AEneid show that it was not wholly a
translation. . - * -
DEATH OF OVID. 145.
are reckoned. It had been his earnest wish that the
sentence which had been so rigorously executed against
him during his life might at least be relaxed, after
his death, and that his bones might be permitted to
rest in his native Italy. The desire was not granted:
he was buried at Tomi. A pretended discovery of
his tomb was made early in the sixteenth century at
Stainz, in Austria, a place far too remote from Tomi
to make the story at all probable. If his body could
have been transported so far, why not to Italy'ſ The
story appeared in another edition ; the tomb and its
epitaph were the same, as was also the year of the dis-
covery, but the place was now Sawar, in Lower Hun-
gary. It may probably be put down as one of the
impostures, more or less ingenious, with which schol-
ars have often amused themselves, and of which the
period following the revival of learning—a period dur-
ing which genuine discoveries of classical remains were
frequently made—was particularly fertile. As recently
as the beginning of this century, it was announced in
some of the Parisian papers that the Russian troops,
while engaged in building a fortress on the banks of
the Danube, had opened the poet's sepulchre, and had
named the place Ovidopol, in his honour. Unfortu-
mately it turned out that the fortress had never been
|built, or even commenced ; and that the local name
of Lagone Ovidouloni (which, to give a colour to the
story, had been changed into Lacus Ovidoli) owed its
origin, not to any remembrance of Ovid, but to the
practice of washing there the sheep (Lat. ovis) which
A.C.S.S., Vol. ii. * FC
I+6. * OTVI D.
were exported in large numbers from Moldavia for the
consumption of Constantinople. We may dismiss as
equally apocryphal the story of the silver writing-style
of the poet, which was shown in 1540 to Isabella,
Queen of Hungary, as having been recently discovered
at Belgrade, the ancient Taurunum.
CHAPTER IX.
FRAGMENTS–LOST POEMS.–GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.
IN his “Art of Love,’ Ovid tells his readers that he had
written a book on “Cosmetics,” which was small in
size, but had cost him much pains. Of this book we
have remaining a fragment of about a hundred lines.
The poet begins by saying that everything is the better
for cultivation—the human face of course included.
The simple Sabine matrons of old may have been con-
tent to spend all their labour on their fields, but the
fair ones of modern Rome had different tastes. TXresses
embroidered with gold, hair richly scented and ar-
ranged in various ways, fingers adorned with rings,
and ear-rings of pearls, so heavy that two pearls were
weight enough for an ear—such were now their tastes.
How could they be blamed, for the tastes of men were
just the same? They were quite right in trying to
please; only let them please in lawful ways. Drugs
and love-potions must be eschewed. Goodness should
be their chief charm. The days would come when it
would be a pain to look into the mirror; but virtue
lasts through life, and the love which attaches itself
to it is not lightly lost. After this edifying preface,
148 O VII),
the poet proceeds to his subject. His instructions are
eminently practical in character, giving the ingredi-
ents, the proper weight, and the right manner of mix-
ing them. His first recipe is for brightening the com-
plexion. Take two pounds of barley, as much of
bitter lupine, and ten eggs; dry and then grind the
substance. Add a sixth of a pound of stag's-horns;
they must be those shed by the animal for the first
time. The mixture is to be passed through a sieve.
Twelve narcissus-roots with the rind stripped off are
to be pounded in a marble mortar ; add the sixth of a
pound of gum, and as much spelt, with a pound and
a half of honey. “Dress your face,” says the poet,
“with this, and you will have a complexion brighter
than your mirror itself.” The prescription is some-
what complicated ; but then, it must be allowed, the
object is difficult of attainment. Colour, as might be
expected, is more easily secured. To five scruples of
fennel add nine of myrrh, a handful of dry rose-leaves,
and a quantity equal in weight to the rose-leaves of
gum-ammoniacum and frankincense, and pour over it
the liquor of barley, What other secrets of beauty
Ovid may have unfolded cannot be known, for here
the fragment breaks off.
About a hundred and thirty lines of a poem on
“Fishing” have also survived; but they are in a very
broken condition, and a passage descriptive of land
animals has somehow found its way into the midst of
them. They contain nothing practical, except it is
the advice which those acquainted with the art of
sea-fishing will recognise as sound, that the fisherman
FRAGMENT'S AND LOST POEMS. T 4 9.
must not try his fortune in very deep water. A poem
called the “Walnut,” in which the tree complains,
among other things, of its hard lot in being pelted
with stones by passers-by, has been attributed to
Ovid. Some critics have supposed it to be a juvenile
production, but the weight of authority is against its
authenticity. -
In the tragedy of “Medea” the world has suffered a
serious loss, Quintilian, a severe critic, says of it that
it seemed to him to prove how much its author could
have achieved, if he had chosen to moderate rather
than to indulge his cleverness. He mentions in the
same context, the “Thyestes” of Varius, which might
challenge comparison, he says, with any of the Greek
tragedies. The two dramas are also coupled together
by Tacitus in his “Dialogue about Famous Orators,”
where he compares the popularity of dramatic and
oratorical works, just as we might couple together
“Hamlet” and “Ring Lear.” The “Medea” has been
, altogether lost, but we may gather some idea of the
manner in which the poet treated his subject from
the seventh book of the ‘Metamorphoses,’ the first
half of which is devoted to the legend of the great
Colchian sorceress. What portion of it was chosen
for the subject of the drama we do not know; but it
may be conjectured that while the “Medea” of Euri-
pides depicted the last scenes of her career, when she
avenged the infidelity of Jason by the murder of her
children, Ovid represented her at an earlier time,
when, as the daughter of King Æétes, she loved and
helped the gallant leader of the Argonauts. Anyhow,
150 tº O VII),
we find in the ‘Metamorphoses’ a very fine soliloquy, in
which the love-stricken princess holds debate between
Love and Duty:-
“Up! gird thee! for delay
Is death ! For aye thy debtor for his life
Preserved must Jason be And torch and rite
His honoured wife will make thee, and through all
Pelasgian cities shall their matrons hail
The Saviour of their Prince —Ah! thus then, thus
My Sister, Brother, Sire, my natal soil,
My country's Gods, do I desert, and fly
To exile with the winds?—my Sire is stern,
Our land is barbarous:–my Brother yet
An infant:-for my Sister, with my own
Her vows are one:–and, for the gods,-within
This bosom beats the Greatest Little 'tis
To lose, and much to win Fame to have saved
This flower of all Achaian youth, and sight
And knowledge of a nobler land, where tower
The cities of whose glory Fame even here
Loud rumours, and the culture and the arts
That grace the life of Heroes! More than all
I win me AEson’s son, for whom the world
With all its treasures were but cheap exchange!
Oh bliss 1 to be his wife, his envied wife,
Tear to his kindred-Gods ! My head will touch
The very stars with rapture! What if rocks,
As Rumour speaks, clash jostling in our track
Athwart the Seas, and fell Charybdis, foe
To ships, with flux and reflux terrible
Swallows and spouts the foam-flood?—what if, girt
With Serpents, in Sicilian ocean-caves
Devouring Scylla barks?—The seas for me,
Clasped to the bosom of the man I love,
Will wear no terrors:–or, within his arms, 43-
GENERAL () BSERVATIONS. 15}~
If fear should rise, 'twill be, not for myself,
But only for my Husband. Husband?—Ah!
With what fair name, Medea, dost thou cloak
Thy purposed crime? Ah think how great the guilt
Thou darest, and, while yet thou canst, escape!”
The value of Ovid's poetry has been estimated from
time to time in the course of these pages. Quintilian.
says that he was too much in love with his own clever-
ness, but that he was in some respects worthy of com-
mendation. Lord Macaulay confirms, or perhaps am-
plifies, this judgment, when he says that Ovid “had
two insupportable faults: the one is, that he will al-
ways be clever; the other, that he never knows when
to have done.” Of the ‘Metamorphoses’ the same
great critic wrote: “There are some very fine things
in this poem ; and in ingenuity, and the art of doing
difficult things in expression and versification as if
they were the easiest in the world, Ovid is quite in-
comparablé.” He thought that the best parts of the
work were the second book (specimens of which have
been given in Chapter IV.), and the first half of
the thirteenth book, where, in the oratorical contest
between Ajax and Ulysses for the arms of Achilles,
his own tastes were doubtless satisfied. The sever-
est criticism which he passes upon the poet is when
he pronounces the “Art of Love' to be his best poem.
If popularity is a test of merit, Ovid must be placed
very high among the writers of antiquity. No classical
poet has been so widely and so continuously read. He
152. -* Ö VID. .
seems not to have been forgotten even when learning
and the taste for literature were at their lowest ebb.
Among the stories which attest the favour in which
he was held may be quoted the words which are
reported to have been used by Alphonso, surnamed
the Magnanimous. That eccentric prince, who may
be called the Pyrrhus of modern history, while prose-
cuting his conquests in Italy, came to the town of
Sulmo, which has been mentioned as Ovid’s birth-
place. “Willingly would I yield this region, which
is no small or contemptible part of the kingdom of
Naples, could it have been granted to my times to
possess this poet. Even dead I hold him to be of
more account than the possession of the whole of
Apulia.” The bibliography of Ovid, as a writer in
the “Nouvelle Biographie Universelle’ remarks, is im-
mense. Two folio volumes of the ‘New Catalogue of
the British Museum’ are devoted to an enumeration
of editions and translations of the whole or various
parts of his works.
For the immorality of much of his writings no de-
fence can be made. Yet, if it is anything in favour
of a culprit that he is not alone in his guilt, it may be
urged in arrest of judgment that one of the greatest
of English poets translated with much approval of
his own generation the very worst of these writings,
and not only translated them, but contrived to make
them more offensive in their new dress than they are
in the old.
It was not altogether a bad character which has
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 153
been thus summed up by Lord Macaulay : “He seems
to have been a very good fellow; rather too fond of
women ; a flatterer and a coward : but kind and
generous ; and free from envy, though a man of
letters, and though sufficiently vain of his own per-
formances.”
END OF OWID,
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