Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/83

Rh it, have given offence to Livia, or Augustus, or both. But we have not space here to pursue a subject which at best can only end in a plausible conjecture; and therefore the reader who is desirous of seeing it discussed at greater length, is referred to the Classical Museum, vol. iv. No. 13.

Ovid has described in one of his most pathetic elegies (Trist. i. 3), the last night spent in Rome, and the overwhelming sorrow with which he tore himself from his home and family. To add to his affliction, his daughter was absent with her husband in Africa, and he was thus unable to bid her a last farewell. Accompanied by Maximus, whom he had known from a child, and who was almost the only friend who remained faithful to him in his adversity, he departed for the shores of the Adriatic, which he crossed in the month of December. After experiencing some of the storms common at that season, and which had well nigh shipwrecked him, he at length landed safely on the Corinthian isthmus, and having crossed it, embarked in another vessel at Cenchreae, on the Saronic gulf. Hence his navigation through the Hellespont, and northwards up the Euxine to his destined port, seems to have been tedious, but safe. The greater part of a year was consumed in the voyage; but Ovid beguiled the time by the exercise of his poetical talent, several of his pieces having been written on shipboard. To one like Ovid, accustomed from his youth to all the luxury of Rome, and so ardent a lover of politeness and refinement (Ars Am. iii. 121), painful indeed must have been the contrast presented by his new abode, which offered him an inhospitable soil, a climate so severe as to freeze even the wine, and the society of a horde of semi-barbarians, to whose language he was a stranger. Life itself was hardly safe. When winter had covered the Danube with ice, the barbarous tribes that dwelt beyond, crossed it on their horses, plundering all around, and insulting the very walls of Tomi. Add to all this the want of convenient lodging, of the decent luxuries of the table, and of good medical advice, and we shall scarcely be surprised at the urgency with which the poet solicits, not so much for his recal as for a change in his place of banishment. He has often been reproached with the abjectness of his supplications, and the fulsome flattery towards Augustus by which he sought to render them successful: nor can these charges be denied, or altogether defended. But it seems very unreasonable to require the bearing of a Cato from the tender poet of love under such truly distressing circumstances. To a Roman, who looked upon the metropolis as the seat of all that was worth living for, banishment, even to an agreeable spot, was an evil of great magnitude. In Ovid's case it was aggravated tenfold by the remoteness and natural wretchedness of the place. If he deified Augustus it was no more than was done by Virgil, Horace, and the other poets of the age, without a tithe of his inducements to offer in excuse. But in truth this was nothing more than a part of the manners of the age, for which neither Ovid nor any other writer is to be held individually responsible. Such deifications were public and national acts, formally recognised by the senate. But in the midst of his misfortunes, Ovid felt a noble confidence in his genius and fame; and it is refreshing to read a passage like the following, where he exults in the impotence of the imperial tyrant to hurt them:—

Nor were his mind and spirit so utterly prostrated as to prevent him from seeking some relief to his misfortunes by the exercise of his poetical talents. Not only did he finish his Fasti, in his exile, besides writing the Ibis, the Tristia, Ex Ponto, &c., but he likewise acquired the language of the Getae, in which he composed some poems in honour of Augustus. These he publicly recited, and they were received with tumultuous applause by the Tomitae. With his new fellow-citizens, indeed, he had succeeded in rendering himself highly popular, insomuch that they honoured him with a decree, declaring him exempt from all public burthens. (Ex Ponto, iv. 9. 101.) From the same passage (v. 89, &c.) we learn that the secret of his popularity lay in his unaltered bearing; that he maintained the same tranquillity of mind, the same modesty of demeanour, for which he had been known and esteemed by his friends at Rome. Yet, under all this apparent fortitude, he was a prey to anxiety, which, combined with the effects of a rigorous climate, produced in a few years a declining state of health. He was not afflicted with any acute disorder; but indigestion, loss of appetite, and want of sleep, slowly, but surely, undermined a constitution originally not the most robust. (Ex Ponto, i. 10, &c.) He died in the sixtieth year of his age and tenth of his exile, A. D. 18, a year also memorable by the death of the historian, Livy. Two or three pretended discoveries of his tomb have been made in modern times, but they are wholly undeserving of attention.

1. Among the earliest of Ovid's works must be placed the Amorum Libri III., which however extends over a considerable number of years. According to the epigram prefixed, the work, as we now possess it, is a second edition, revised and abridged, the former one having consisted of five books. The authenticity of this epigram has been questioned by Jahn, but Ovid himself tells us in another place that he had destroyed many of the elegies dedicated to Corinna. (Multa quidem scripsi, sed quæ vitiosa putavi, Emendaturis ignibus ipse dedi, Trist. iv. 10. 61.) Nor can we very well account for the allusion made to the Ars Amatoria in the Amores (ii. 18, 19), except on the assumption of a second and late edition of the latter, in which the piece containing the allusion was inserted. This second edition must, however, have been published before the third book of the Ars, since the Amores are there mentioned (v. 343) as consisting of three books. The elegies of the Amores seem thrown together without any regard to chronological order. Thus from the first elegy of the third book it would seem that Ovid had not yet written tragedy; whilst in the eighteenth elegy of the preceding book he not only alludes to his Medea (v. 13), but, as we have seen, to his Ars Amatoria. This want of sequence is another proof of a later edition. Though the Amores is principally addressed to Corinna, it contains elegies to other mistresses. For instance, the ninth and tenth of the first book