Yet oft I take the pen and try,
As now, to build the measured rhyme.
As now, to build the measured rhyme.
Ovid - 1865 - Ovid by Alfred Church
Life had been spared to him, and his pater-
nal 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
Eome, would prolong the days of its lord; to the
country, which would always be grateful for the
blessings of his rule; to Li via, 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 Eoman citizen
* A knight disgraced by the censor (the emperor was per-
petual censor) had his horse taken from him.
+ Drusns, the son, and Germanicus the nephew and adopted
son, of Tiberius, Augustus's step son.
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? 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, 0 Csesar: 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 porticoes 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,--
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? 120 OVID.
verses about swimming, about ball-playing, about the
trundling of hoops (a favourite amusement, it would
seem, even with middle-aged Eomans), about the fur-
nishings of the table and its etiquette, about the
different kinds of earthenware (the fancy for curious
pots and pans was, it will be seen, in full force among
the wealthy Eomans 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!
Eeturn 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
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? THE TRISTIA, OR TEE '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 Getse--were
bursting into leaf. And in Eome'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 Drought some
relief, and opened the sea to navigation, some ship
might reach the shore and bring news of Italy and of
Csesar'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! "
"What dost thou here 1 Has angry Ca3sar sent
Thee too to share my hopeless banishment?
Thihk'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 1
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: Keturn not to these shores again! "
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? 122 OVID.
The gloom of his lot was aggravated by causes of
which he bitterly complains in more than one of his
poenis. 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, ho
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 Csesar, and which their father
wished he had never begotten, but the unoffending
others. Alas! they were all absent; and even while
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? 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 Getse. 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
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? 124 OVID.
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 Eoman 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
"Paduanism " which some superfine critics 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).
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? 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 Csesar's power must end. "
It is needless to go on in detail through what re-
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? 126 OVID.
'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 :--
"' 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 bereavfed 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.
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? THE TR1STIA, OR THE 'SORROWS. ' 127
Can I my land and thee forget,
Nor the felt sorrow wound my breast?
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 now, to build the measured rhyme.
Words come not, or, as meet thine eye,
Words worthy of their place and time.
Last, 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
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? 128 OVID.
Eome. 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.
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? CHAPTEE VIII.
THE POEMS OP EXILE: THE LETTEBS FROM THE PONTUS DEATH OP 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
Brutus--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 i
remember, and even, if it might be, to help him. "We I
may count as many as twenty names; not reckoning i
A. C. S. S. , vol. ii. i \
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? 130 0 VID.
I Germanicus Csesar, to whom Ovid addresses a com-
l 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,
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? THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTUS. 131
the swallow less hates the frost, than Naso hates the
regions which border on the war-loving Getse. 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 1 "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.
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? 132 ovID.
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 Getee; I have arranged
their barbarous words in Eoman 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 Getse. Do you ask me my
subject 1 I sang the praises of Csesar. 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
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? THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTUS. 133
assumed the reigns of an empire which he had often
refused. * I told them that thou, Livia, art the Vesta
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 Csesar, you should have been restored to Ceesar'a
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 resented. 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, Csesar, 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. "
/"
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? 134 OVID.
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
Csesar, 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
Hsemus 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
Msecenas, Virgil, and other friends.
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? THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTOS. 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 Xola, 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 Oermanicus, 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 Ehine
---and, though an object of suspicion to his uncle and
adopting father, high in popular favour--was P. Suil-
lius Eufus. 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
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? 136 OVID.
we hear of his being banished by Nero; and he
filled the part of qusestor (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 Csesar;
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.
nal 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
Eome, would prolong the days of its lord; to the
country, which would always be grateful for the
blessings of his rule; to Li via, 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 Eoman citizen
* A knight disgraced by the censor (the emperor was per-
petual censor) had his horse taken from him.
+ Drusns, the son, and Germanicus the nephew and adopted
son, of Tiberius, Augustus's step son.
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? 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, 0 Csesar: 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 porticoes 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,--
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? 120 OVID.
verses about swimming, about ball-playing, about the
trundling of hoops (a favourite amusement, it would
seem, even with middle-aged Eomans), about the fur-
nishings of the table and its etiquette, about the
different kinds of earthenware (the fancy for curious
pots and pans was, it will be seen, in full force among
the wealthy Eomans 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!
Eeturn 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
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? THE TRISTIA, OR TEE '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 Getse--were
bursting into leaf. And in Eome'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 Drought some
relief, and opened the sea to navigation, some ship
might reach the shore and bring news of Italy and of
Csesar'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! "
"What dost thou here 1 Has angry Ca3sar sent
Thee too to share my hopeless banishment?
Thihk'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 1
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: Keturn not to these shores again! "
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? 122 OVID.
The gloom of his lot was aggravated by causes of
which he bitterly complains in more than one of his
poenis. 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, ho
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 Csesar, and which their father
wished he had never begotten, but the unoffending
others. Alas! they were all absent; and even while
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? 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 Getse. 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
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? 124 OVID.
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 Eoman 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
"Paduanism " which some superfine critics 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).
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? 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 Csesar's power must end. "
It is needless to go on in detail through what re-
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? 126 OVID.
'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 :--
"' 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 bereavfed 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.
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? THE TR1STIA, OR THE 'SORROWS. ' 127
Can I my land and thee forget,
Nor the felt sorrow wound my breast?
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 now, to build the measured rhyme.
Words come not, or, as meet thine eye,
Words worthy of their place and time.
Last, 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
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? 128 OVID.
Eome. 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.
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? CHAPTEE VIII.
THE POEMS OP EXILE: THE LETTEBS FROM THE PONTUS DEATH OP 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
Brutus--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 i
remember, and even, if it might be, to help him. "We I
may count as many as twenty names; not reckoning i
A. C. S. S. , vol. ii. i \
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? 130 0 VID.
I Germanicus Csesar, to whom Ovid addresses a com-
l 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,
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? THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTUS. 131
the swallow less hates the frost, than Naso hates the
regions which border on the war-loving Getse. 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 1 "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.
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? 132 ovID.
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 Getee; I have arranged
their barbarous words in Eoman 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 Getse. Do you ask me my
subject 1 I sang the praises of Csesar. 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
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? THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTUS. 133
assumed the reigns of an empire which he had often
refused. * I told them that thou, Livia, art the Vesta
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 Csesar, you should have been restored to Ceesar'a
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 resented. 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, Csesar, 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. "
/"
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? 134 OVID.
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
Csesar, 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
Hsemus 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
Msecenas, Virgil, and other friends.
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? THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTOS. 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 Xola, 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 Oermanicus, 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 Ehine
---and, though an object of suspicion to his uncle and
adopting father, high in popular favour--was P. Suil-
lius Eufus. 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
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? 136 OVID.
we hear of his being banished by Nero; and he
filled the part of qusestor (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 Csesar;
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.
