A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

70 OVIDIUS. OVIDIUS.
father at the age of ninety; soon after whose that Ovid had accidentally discovered anincestuous
decease his mother also died. commerce between Augustus and his daughter. To
This is all the account that can be given of obviate these objections on the score of chronology,
Ovid's life, from his birth to the age of fifty; and other authors have transferred both these surmises
it has been for the most part drawn from his own to the younger Julia, the daughter of the elder one.
writings. It is chiefly misfortune that swells the But with respect to any intrigue with her having
page of human history. The very dearth of events been the cause of Ovid's banishment, the expresjustifies the inference that his days glided away sions alluded to in the former case, and which show
smoothly and happily, with just enough of em- that his fault was an involuntary one, are here
ployment to give a zest to the pursuits of his equally conclusive, and are, too, strengthened by the
leisure, and in sufficient affluence to secure to him great disparity of years between the parties, the
all the pleasures of life, without exposing him to poet being old enough to be the father of the
its storms and dangers. His residence at Rome, younger Julia. As regards the other point - the
where he had a house near the Capitol, was diver- imputed incest of the emperor with his grandsified by an occasional trip to his Pelignan farm, daughter-arguments in refutation can be drawn
and by the recreation which he derived from his only from probability, for there is nothing in Ovid's
garden, situated between the Flaminian and Clodian poems that can be said directly to contradict it.
ways. His devotion to love and to Corinna had But in the first place, it is totally unsupported by
not so wholly engrossed him as to prevent his any historical authority, though the same impuachieving great reputation in the higher walks of tation on Augustus with regard to his daughter
poetry. Besides his love Elegies, his Heroical might derive some slight colouring from a passage
Epistles, which breathe purer sentiments in lan- in Suetonius's life of Caligula (c. 23). Again, it
guage and versification still more refined, and his is the height of improbability that Ovid, when
Art of Love, in which he had embodied the expe- suing for pardon, would have alluded so frequently
rience of twenty years, he had written his Miedea, to the cause of his offence had it been of a kind so
the finest tragedy that had appeared in the Latin disgracefully to compromise the emperor's chatongue. The Metmnoelphoses were finished, with racter. Nay, Bayle (art. Ovide) has pushed this
the exception of the last corrections; on which argument so far as to think that the poet's life
account they had been seen only by his private would not have been safe had he been in posfriends. Bat they were in the state in which we session of so dangerous a secret, and that silence
now possess them, and were sufficient of them- would have been secured by his assassination.
selves to establish a great poetic fame. He not The conjecture that Ovid's offence was his having
only enjoyed the friendship of a large circle of accidentally seen Livia in the bath is hardly
distinguished men, but the regard and favour of worthy of serious notice. On the common prinAugustus and the imperial family. Nothing, in ciples of human action we cannot reconcile so
short, seemed wanting, either to his domestic hap- severe a punishment with so trivial a fault; and
piness or to his public reputation. But a cloud the supposition is, besides, refuted by Ovid's
now rose upon the horizon which was destined to telling us that what he had seen was some crime.
throw a gloom over the evening of his days. One of the most elaborate theories on the subject
Towards the close of the year of Rome, 761 (A. D. is that of M. Villenave, in a life of Ovid published
8), Ovid was suddenly commanded by an imperial in 1809, and subsequently in the Biographie Uniedict to transport himself to Tomi, or, as he him- verselle. He is of opinion that the poet was the
self calls it, Tomis (sing. felsz.), a town on the victim of a coup d'etat, and that his offence was
Euxine, near the mouths of the Danube, on the his having been the political partizan of Posthumus
very border of the empire, and where the Roman Agrippa; which prompted Livia and Tiberius,
dominion was but imperfectly assured. Ovid whose influence over the senile Augustus was
underwent no trial, and the sole reason for his then complete, to procure his banishment. This
banishment stated in the edict was his having solution is founded on the assumed coincidence of
published his poem on the Art of Love. It was time in the exiles of Agrippa and Ovid. But the
not, however, an exsilium, but a releglatio; that is, fact is that the former was banished, at least a
lie was not utterly cut off from all hope of return, year before the latter, namely some time in A. D. 7
nor did he lose his citizenship. (Dion Cass. lv. 32; Vell. Pat. ii. 112), whereas
What was the real cause of his banishment? Ovid did notleave Rome till December A.D. 8. Nor
This is a question that has long exercised the in- can Ovid's expressions concerning the cause of his
genuity of scholars, and various are the solutions disgrace be at all reconciled with Villenave's supthat have been proposed. The publication of the position. The coincidence of his banishment,
Aiss Anzatolria was certainly a mere pretext; and however, with that of the younger Julia, who, as
for Augustus, the author of one of the filthiest, but we learn from Tacitus (Ann. iv. 71) died in A. D.
funniest, epigrams in the language, and a systematic 28, after twenty years' exile, is a remarkable fact,
adulterer, for reasons of state policy (Suet. Aug. and leads very strongly to the inference that his
69),not a very becoming one. The Ars had been fate was in some way connected with hers. This
published nearly ten years previously; and more- opinion has been adopted by Tiraboschi in his
over, whenever Ovid atlludes to that, the ostensible Stolla della Letleratura Italiana, and after him by
cause, he illvariably souples with it another which Rosmini, in his Vita d' Ovidio, who, however,
hIe mysteriously conceals. According to some has not improved upon Tiraboschi, by making
writers, the latter was his intrigue with Julia. Ovid deliberately seduce Julia for one of his
But this, besides that it does not agree with the exalted friends. There is no evidence to fix on
poet's expressions, is sufficiently refuted by the fact the poet the detestable character of a procurer.
that Julia had been an exile since n.c. 2. (Dion He may more probably have become acquainted
Cass. lv. 10; Vell. Pat. ii. 100.) The same chronolo- with Julia's profligacy by accident, and by his
gical objection may be urged against those who think subseqluent condluct, perhaps, for inlstance, by con