The lively fancy of the poet found in the legend of
Medea a more romantic origin.
Medea a more romantic origin.
Ovid - 1865 - Ovid by Alfred Church
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.
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? 100 ov ID.
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, 0 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
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? THE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALENDAR. 101
owed 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.
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? CHAPTEE VI.
DEPASTURE FROM ROME--THE PLACE OP 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 Eoman
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
Eome in so many days, and to transport himself to
Tomi. Guards and jailers were unnecessary. " But 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
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? 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 Eome, 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 Csesar 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,
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? 104 ovid.
and could not have heard of her father's fate. Look 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 Eomulus,
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.
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? THE 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!
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 Eome 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 Csesar that bids thee leave thy country--
* To touch the threshold with the foot in crossing it was
considered unlucky.
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? 106 OVID.
'tis love that Lids me; love shall be in Csesar'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 him1? So Minerva had helped Ulysses, while
Neptune sought to destroy him. But it seems vain
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? THE EXILE FROM ROME. 107
to pray; the winds will not allow the prayers to reach
the gods to whom they are sent. How 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:--
"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, Lechseum, 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
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? 108 OVID.
, representation of the object from which it got its
iname. 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, Tonus, 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
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? 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 Eoman. To him no charm of climate,
no beauty of scenery, no interest of historical asso-
ciation, could make a place endurable, while Eome,
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-
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? 110 OVID.
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-
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? THE EXILE FROM ROME. Ill
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 Mcesia 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
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? 112 OVID.
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 Eome 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.
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? CHAPTEE VII.
THK POEMS OP EXILE: THE TEISTIA, 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
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? 114 OVID.
1 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 Eome before Ovid had reached his al-
lotted place of banishment. A preface commends to
J all who still remembered him at Eome 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 Eoman 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
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? 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-1
where, indeed, throughout the 'Sorrows' does Ovid
venture to name any one of his friends to whom he
addresses the various poems of Avhich 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 Eome. 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
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? 116 OVID.
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 Csesar. 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
him, 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
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? 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\
Eoman matrons had chanted the song of praise toj
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-
tus1! 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 Eome, had never
* The Secular Games were celebrated once in a century. This,
at least, was the theory ; hut more than one emperor found it
convenient to shorten the period. The hymn to Phcebus of
which Ovid speaks has been preserved in the well-known
Secular Hymn (Carmen Sseculare) of Horace.
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? 118 OVID.
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.
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.
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? 100 ov ID.
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, 0 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
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? THE FASTI, OR ROMAN CALENDAR. 101
owed 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.
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? CHAPTEE VI.
DEPASTURE FROM ROME--THE PLACE OP 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 Eoman
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
Eome in so many days, and to transport himself to
Tomi. Guards and jailers were unnecessary. " But 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
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? 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 Eome, 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 Csesar 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,
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? 104 ovid.
and could not have heard of her father's fate. Look 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 Eomulus,
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.
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? THE 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!
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 Eome 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 Csesar that bids thee leave thy country--
* To touch the threshold with the foot in crossing it was
considered unlucky.
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? 106 OVID.
'tis love that Lids me; love shall be in Csesar'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 him1? So Minerva had helped Ulysses, while
Neptune sought to destroy him. But it seems vain
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? THE EXILE FROM ROME. 107
to pray; the winds will not allow the prayers to reach
the gods to whom they are sent. How 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:--
"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, Lechseum, 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
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? 108 OVID.
, representation of the object from which it got its
iname. 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, Tonus, 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
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? 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 Eoman. To him no charm of climate,
no beauty of scenery, no interest of historical asso-
ciation, could make a place endurable, while Eome,
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-
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? 110 OVID.
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-
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? THE EXILE FROM ROME. Ill
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 Mcesia 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
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? 112 OVID.
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 Eome 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.
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? CHAPTEE VII.
THK POEMS OP EXILE: THE TEISTIA, 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
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? 114 OVID.
1 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 Eome before Ovid had reached his al-
lotted place of banishment. A preface commends to
J all who still remembered him at Eome 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 Eoman 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
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? 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-1
where, indeed, throughout the 'Sorrows' does Ovid
venture to name any one of his friends to whom he
addresses the various poems of Avhich 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 Eome. 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
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? 116 OVID.
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 Csesar. 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
him, 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
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? 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\
Eoman matrons had chanted the song of praise toj
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-
tus1! 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 Eome, had never
* The Secular Games were celebrated once in a century. This,
at least, was the theory ; hut more than one emperor found it
convenient to shorten the period. The hymn to Phcebus of
which Ovid speaks has been preserved in the well-known
Secular Hymn (Carmen Sseculare) of Horace.
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? 118 OVID.
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.
