INTRODUCTION.

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF OVID.

THE little that is known to us of the personal history of this poet has been principally gathered by the research of varios scholars from detached passages in his works, which incidentally bear reference to himself or to his family. From contemporary writers we learn nothing of his history; and those of the succeeding age are almost equally silent respecting him.

Publius Ovidius Naso was born at Sulmo, a small town of Pelignum, situated in the Apennines, and about ninety miles. from Rome, on the 20th of March, A.U.c. 711, or B.c. 43, being the year in which the consuls Hirtius and Pansa fell at the battle of Mutina. He was of Equestrian family, and had one brother, who was his senior by exactly a year, and who died at the early age of twenty.

The patrimonial property of his family appears to have been of limited extent; and he was trained by his parents to habits of strict frugality. In his writings he speaks of his hereditary estate at Sulmo, and of his house in the neighbourhood of the Capitol; and he also makes mention of his orchards in the vicinity of the Claudian Way.

By the desire of his father he proceeded to Rome, and, with his brother, commenced the study of law and rhetoric; but, finding that he was little fitted for these pursuits, and that his poetical tendencies ill-accorded with them, he neglected them as soon as he had adopted the "toga virilis,' and thereby became his own master. Contrary to the advice of his father, who, as he tells us, often represented to him

that poetry was a worthless pursuit, and that Homer himself died in poverty, he devoted himself entirely to poetical composition, and the Muses thenceforth became the chief objects of his veneration:

To complete his education, in conformity with the custom of the time, he proceeded to Athens, the great school of philosophy; and it was probably in his early years that he visited Sicily and Asia Minor.

With the view, perhaps, of obtaining political preferment, he assumed the senatorial badge of the "broad hem,” or “Laticlave,” a right which seems to have been conferred by Augustus on the sons of persons of Equestrian rank, as a prelude to their entering the Senate; and he soon after took office as one of the "Vigintiviri," or city magistrates. He afterwards acted as one of the "Centumviri," a body of one hundred and five officers elected from the thirty-five tribes of Rome, and whose duty was to assist the Prætor in questions where the right to property was litigated. He also occasion

ally acted as a private judge or arbitrator.

He was three times married; to his first wife, when, as he says, he was almost a boy; but neither that marriage nor his succeeding one was of long duration; and it is supposed that in both instances he had recourse to the then existing facilities of divorce. His last wife was of the Fabian family, and was a favourite of Marcia, the cousin of the Emperor Augustus. At the time of her marriage she was a widow, and had a daughter, who became the wife of Suilius, a friend of Germanicus. It was probably by her that the poet had a daughter, who, in his lifetime, was twice married, her second husband being Fidus Cornelius, a senator. It is not known whether he had any other children.

In the fifty-first year of his age he was banished from Rome by the edict of the Emperor Augustus. By the terms of his "relegatio," or banishment, he was ordered to reside at Tomi (sometimes called Tomis, or Tomos), the principal city of Pontus; but his rights as a citizen, he tells us, remained unimpaired. The place, whose site is now unknown, was situated in a bleak, inhospitable, climate, near the mouth of the Danube, a spot, in those days, on the very confines of civilization. The poet tells us that the people were immersed in barbarism, spoke the Getic language mingled with Greek, and wore "braccæ,"

or "trowsers," after the manner of the Parthians. Having soon learned their language, he wrote a poem in it, which secured to him the esteem and sympathy of the natives. The immoral nature of some of his earlier writings is said to have been the cause of his exile; and he informs us that they were excluded from the public libraries of Rome. There seems, however, to have been another and a more influential reason for his punishment, which he repeatedly hints at in his Pontic writings, but which he nowhere reveals. From his remarks it has been supposed by some that he had inadvertently been witness of an immoral act of a member of the family of Augustus. Perhaps, as Julia, the Emperor's grand-daughter, was about that period banished for her extreme profligacy, he had, prematurely and by accident, become acquainted with her guilt, and had failed to keep silence on the subject. Other writers suggest that he had an intrigue with Julia, which was discovered by Augustus; but there seem to be no good grounds for such a conjecture. The reason was, very probably, a political one.

His departure from Rome was very precipitate, being in the midst of winter. He embarked at Brundisium for Greece, whence he took ship to the coast of Thrace, and completed his journey by land.

He afterwards made repeated applications to Augustus and his successor, Tiberius, for a remission of his sentence; but his entreaties were in vain, for he died at Tomi, in the ninth year of his exile, and the sixtieth of his age. We learn from Eusebius that his remains were buried at that place.

His "Amores," or "Amours,' were the work of his youth, and it is supposed that he destroyed the more objectionable portion of them. The "Epistolæ Heröidum," or "Epistles of the Heroines," were written by him in about his thirty-second year. He next produced his Ars Amatoria," or "Art of Love," which was quickly succeeded by his "Remedium Amoris," or "Cure of Love." He then devoted himself to the "Metamorphoses," his principal work; which, when he received his sentence of exile, he committed, in an unfinished state, to the flames. Duplicate copies of that poem were, however, in the hands of his friends, and to this fact we are indebted for its preservation. It is uncertain whether the poet wrote six or twelve books of the "Fasti," or Roman Calendar. From a remark in his epistle to Augustus, in the

sceond book of the " Tristia," it would appear, according to one mode of translating the passage, that he had written twelve books, one for each month, and that he was interrupted in the completion or revision of the work by his exile. Another meaning for the words there used by him, is, however, suggested in this Translation. Masson would interpret the passage as meaning that he had collected materials for the first six months only, and that he had worked them into a poem of six books. From the fact that allusions are made, in the Fasti, to political events which occurred very near to the close of his life, and the more striking circumstance, that among the very numerous quotations from that work by ancient writers, there is not one that is not to be found in the six books now possessed by us, we shall probably not err in the conclusion that either he wrote but six books, which he revised in his latter years, or that, if he wrote twelve, the last six were lost at his death. The four lines which are sometimes appended to the end of the sixth book of that work are placed in one of the Vatican MSS. as the commencement of a seventh book; but they are universally regarded as spurious. Gronovius, indeed, informed Heinsius that he had seen an old copy of Ovid, in which Celtes Protacius, an eminent German scholar, had written to the effect that the remaining six books of the Fasti were in the possession of a clergyman near Ulm, and that the commencement of the seventh book was—

"Tu quoque mutati causas et nomine mensis,
"A te, qui sequitur, maxime Cæsar, habes."

But Heinsius expresses it as his decided opinion that Protacius had been either misinformed or wilfully imposed upon.

وو

During his journey to Tomi Ovid wrote the first book of his "Tristia,' or "Lament:" the next two books were composed in the second and third years of his exile, and the others in the following years. After the latter period he addressed his friends in his "Pontic Epistles."

His poem,

In Ibin," "against the Ibis," and his "Halieu ticon," or "Treatise on Fishes," were also composed during his exile. Two other trifling poems of his also exist, which are supposed to have been the productions of his youthful years. Among his lost works we have to include his Getic composition in praise of Augustus, his tragedy of Medea, his

Elegy on the Death of Messala Corvinus, his Epigrams, a version of the Phænomena of Aratus, a Poem on Bad Poets, one on the Battle of Actium, and another on the Illyrian Victories of Tiberius.

We are told that the poet was of delicate health, slight in figure, and of graceful manners. Like Horace, he was no lover of war; and he was moderate in his diet, while he tempered his wine with copious dilutions of water. Though too susceptible of the tender passion, we do not learn that he ever degraded himself by sensual indulgences, and his kind and gentle demeanour rendered him generally beloved by his friends.

The servility which he appears to manifest when addressing Augustus and Tiberius would certainly reflect much discredit on him, if it could be shown to be the spontaneous effusion of his breast; but, in justice to him, we ought to remember that adulation was the universal fashion of the day, and that, while he naturally longed for a return to his kindred, his friends, and his country, he was too sensible that he and his family were at the mercy of persons of no forgiving temper, and who would be satisfied with no homage short of servility. We shall, then, find some reason for palliating his conduct in this respect, and for, at least, considering him more excusable than many of his more ennobled and more favoured contemporaries, who did not disdain to swell the crowd of flatterers by which Augustus was surrounded.

ON THE RECKONING OF TIME AMONG THE
ROMANS.

ACCORDING to Ovid, the year of Romulus consisted of ten months, commencing with the month of Martius, or March, and ending with December. Numa is said to have inserted two additional months, and we learn from the poet (in which statement, however, he is not confirmed by any other writer) that he prefixed January to March, and subjoined February to December, which order continued till the Decemviri placed February in its present position. The year of Romulus is supposed to have contained six months of thirty days, and four of thirty-one, making in all 304 days. The year of Numa originally consisted of 355 days, which falling short