Nor does
he vary his subject with the episodical narratives in
the telling of which he so much excelled.
he vary his subject with the episodical narratives in
the telling of which he so much excelled.
Ovid - 1865 - Ovid by Alfred Church
"
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. If it should
help, with however small a breeze, my sinking boat
will rise again from the midst of the waters. Thou
wilt bring due incense to the devouring flames, and
testify how strong the gods can be. " The writer then
addresses, and continues to address throughout the rest
of the letter, Germanicus himself, for whose eye it
was of course intended, and before whom Suillius is
entreated in the concluding couplet by his "almost
father-in-law," as Ovid quaintly calls himself, to bring
it. Another friend, whose intercession in the same
quarter the poet entreats, is Carus--tutor, as has been
said before, to the sons of Germanicus. This letter
was written in " the sixth winter of exile"--i. e. , about
the end of a. d. 14 or the beginning of 15--the time
to which we are to ascribe the poem in the Getic
language, on the death and deification of Augustus.
Shortly afterwards must have been written a letter
addressed to Grsecinus, who filled the office of consul
during the second half of the latter year. Here we
see the most humiliating phase of Ovid's servility. It
is difficult to understand how little more than fifty
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? THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTUS. 137
years after the republic had ceased to exist, an Italian i
of the Italians, one of that hardy Samnite race which
had so long contended on equal terms with Home
itself, could be found descending to such depths of I
degradation. The servile multitudes of Egypt and ,
Assyria had never prostrated themselves more ignobly I
before Sesostris or Mmrod than did this free-born
citizen before the men who were so relentlessly perse-
cuting him. He tells his powerful friend that his
piety was known to the whole country. "This stranger
land sees that there is in my dwelling a chapel to
Csesar. There stand along with him, his pious son
and his priestess spouse, powers not inferior to the
already perfected deity. And that no part of the
family should be wanting, there stand both his grand-
sons, the one close to his grandmother's, and the
other to his father's side. To these I address words
of prayer with an offering of incense as often as the
day arises from the eastern sky. "* Two years before,
we find him thanking his friend Maximus Cotta for
a present of the statues which this chapel enshrined.
He mentions three as the number which had been
sent. (The images of the two young princes had since
been added. ) In this letter he seems to lose himself
in transports of gratitude. "He is no longer an exile
at the ends of the earth. He is a prosperous dweller
* It may be as well to explain that by Csesar is meant
Augustus (who was now dead), and by the "pious son " Tibe-
rius. Livia, as the widow of the deified prince, was the priest-
ess of his worship ; the two grandsons are Drusus, son of Tibe-
rius, who stands by his grandmother Livia--and Germanicus,
who stands by his adopting father Tiberius.
,
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? 138 ovID.
in the midst of the capital. He sees the faces of the
Csesars. Such happiness he had never ventured to
hope for. " And so he treads the well-worn round of
customary adulation. A short specimen will be enough
to show to what depths he could descend. "Happy
they who look not on the likenesses but on the reality;
who see before their eyes the very bodies of the god!
Since a hard fate has denied me this privilege, I wor-
ship those whom art has granted to my prayer--the
likeness of the true. Tis thus men know the gods,
whom the heights of heaven conceal; 'tis thus that
the shape of Jupiter is worshipped for Jupiter him-
self. " And then, anxious not to forget the practi-
cal object to which all these elaborate flatteries were
directed, he goes on: "Take care that this semblance
of yours which is with me, and shall ever be with me,
be not found in a hostile spot. My head shall sooner
part from the neck, the eye shall sooner leave the
mangled cheeks, than I should bear your loss, O
Deities of the Commonwealth! you shall be the har-
bour and the sanctuary of my banishment. You I
will embrace, if I be surrounded by Getic arms. You,
as my eagles and my standards, I will follow. If
I am not deceived and cheated by too powerful a
desire, the hope of a happier place of exile is at hand.
The look upon your likeness is less and less gloomy;
the face seems to give assent to my prayer. I pray
that the presages of my anxious heart may be true,
and that the anger of my god, however just it is,
may yet be mitigated. " It is difficult to conceive a
more pitiable sight than that of the wretched exile
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? THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTUS. 139
day after day going through, with sinking hopes and ,
failing spirits, this miserable pretence of worship;
prostrating' himself before men whose baseness and
profligacy no one knew better than himself, and, while
he crushed down the curses that rose naturally to his ,
lips, reiterating the lying prayer, for which he must |
have now despaired of an answer. That he should
have performed this elaborate hypocrisy, not in public
but in the privacy of his own home, merely for the
sake of being able to say that he had done it, and with
but the very dimmest, hope of getting any good from
it, is inexpressibly pitiable; and that it should be pos-
sible for a man of genius to stoop to such degradation,
and for great princes, as Augustus and Tiberius cer-
tainly were, to be swayed in their purposes by such an
exhibition--and that they might be swayed by it Ovid
certainly believed--is a warning against the evils of
despotic power such as it would not be easy to match.
One or two other letters may be briefly noticed.
One addressed to Tuticanus, a brother poet, who had
been distinguished by a translation of the Odyssey, re- i
lieves the gloomy monotony of complaint and entreaty |
by a faint spark of humour. "Whether Tuticanus had
hinted annoyance at not having received any of the
poetical epistles with which other friends had been
honoured, or whether, as is more probable, there was!
a hope that some help might be got from him, Ovidi
apologises for not having written before. The hu-
mour of his excuse is not very brilliant; and it is not
easy to explain it without a reference to the principles
of Latin versification, which would be here out of place.
/
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? 140 OVID.
Tutioanus, in fact, was a name which " might be said,
but never could be sung. " "There is no one," says
the poet, "whom I should have more delighted to
honour--if, indeed, there is any honour to be found
in my poetry. But your name will not come into my
verse. I am ashamed to split it into two, and put
'Tuti' in one line and 'canus' in the next. Nor
while it is properly pronounced Tuticanus, can I pre-
vail upon myself to shorten the third syllable and call
you Tuticanus, or to shorten the first and call you Tiiti-
canus, or make all three long and change it into Tuti-
canus. " It has been said that the ancients, and espe-
cially the Komans, were easily amused, and Ovid's
friend was apparently no exception to the rule.
Another letter introduces us to a personage of whom
we would gladly know more, Cotys, one of the tribu-
tary kings of Thrace. Cotys was a name of consid-
erable antiquity in this region. Among those who
; had borne it was a prince who had played a part in
the struggle between Philip of Macedon and Athens.
Athenseus tells a strange story of his insane extrava-
gance and cruelty, indicating the barbarian nature
thinly veneered with Greek civilisation, or rather
luxury. The Cotys to whom Ovid writes was, if the
poet is to be believed, of a different temper. Claim-
ing descent from Eumolpus, a Thracian bard, who
figures in the early legends of Attica, his tastes were
such as became his genealogy. He wrote verse, pro-
bably in the Greek language; and Ovid declares that,
had they not had the name of their author prefixed
to them, he could not have supposed them to have
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? THE LETTERS FROM THE P0NTU8. 141
been -written by a native of Thrace. Orpheus, adds
the practised flatterer, was not the only poet whom
that region had produced. It had now good reason
to be proud of the genius of its king. It is a curious
circumstance that a semi-barbarous prince--for such
Cotys must have seemed to any Eoman who had no
special reason for complimenting him--should have
been the occasion of the famous lines which have be-
come the standing apology for a liberal education:
"Diligently to acquire a liberal education, softens
men's manners, and forbids them to grow rude. "* From
what we hear of Cotys elsewhere, we find that his
culture was not exactly in the right place among the
savage tribes of Thrace. Augustus divided between
him and his brother Ehescuporis the kingdom which
had belonged to his father Ehcemetalces. "In this
division," continues Tacitus, to whom we are indebted
for the facts, "the cultivated lands, the towns, and
what bordered on Greek territory, fell to Cotys; the
wild and barbarous portion, with enemies on its fron-
tier, to Ehescuporis. The kings, too, themselves dif-
fered--Cotys having a gentle and kindly temper, the
other a fierce and ambitious spirit, which could not
brook a partner. " Open hostilities, provoked by Ehes-
cuporis, broke out. The temporising policy of Tiberius,
who had by that time succeeded to the throne, pre-
vented him from rendering due assistance to Cotys,
who, in the end, was treacherously seized by his
brother, and put to death.
* "Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes
Emollit mores nee sinit esse feros. "
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? 142 OVID.
Of the literary merits of the 'Letters from the
Pontus' there is little to be said. The monotony of
its subject was fatal to excellence. Ovid knew, at
least as well as any man who ever wrote, how to say
the same thing over and over again in different ways;
but even his genius could not indefinitely vary his
constant complaint that he was living among savages,
and under an inhospitable sky; his constant prayer
that he might be released from his gloomy prison, or,
at least, transferred to a more genial spot.
Nor does
he vary his subject with the episodical narratives in
the telling of which he so much excelled. The story
of Orestes and Pylades is the only specimen of the
kind that occurs in the four books. Ovid puts it
into the mouth of an old native of the country, who
speaks of having himself seen the temple where the
incident happened, towering high with its vast
columns, and approached by an ascent of twelve
steps. * The versification is somewhat languid, and
occasionally careless. The poems are not exactly un-
worthy of their author, for they are probably as good
as the subject admitted. To a Latin scholar, Ovid's
verse, even when his subject is uninteresting, is al-
* The story is so well known that a very few words may
suffice for it. Orestes and Pylades land at Tauri, and, according
to the custom of the place, are seized and taken to the temple
of Diana. There one of them must be offered to the goddess.
Each is anxious to he the object of the fatal choice. While
they are contending, they find that the priestess is the sister of
Orestes, Iphigenia, who had been transported hither from the
altar at Aulis, where she had been about to suffer a similar fate.
By her help they escape.
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? THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTUS. 143
? ways pleasing; an English reader would certainly
find them exceedingly tedious.
The ' Ibis' is a poem of between six and seven hun-
dred lines in length, containing almost as many impre-
cations, displaying in their variety an amazing fertility
of imagination, which are directed against a personal
enemy who had spoken ill of the poet in his banish-
ment, had persecuted his wife with his attentions, and
had endeavoured to snatch some plunder from his pro-
perty. It is modelled, as Ovid himself states, on a
poem of the same name which Callimachus wrote
against a poet who had been his pupil, and afterwards
became a rival--Apollonius Ehodius. Callimachus's
quarrel with his brother poet seems to have been a
purely literary one. Apollonius preferred the simpli-
city of the epic writers to the artificial style of his
master. The censure was bitterly felt, and resented
with a vehemence which transcends anything that
has been recorded in the history of letters. The
person whom Ovid attacked under the name of
Ibis is said to have been one Hyginus, a freedman
of the Emperor Augustus, and chief of the Palatine
Library. The principal ground for this idea is that
Hyginus was certainly at one time on terms of
intimate friendship with Ovid, and that none of
the letters written in exile are addressed to him.
Either he or some one else among the numerous
acquaintances who courted the poet in the days of
his popularity, and who deserted him in his exile,
may have been in the author's thoughts; but the
poem is scarcely serious. It has the look of being a
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? 144 OVID.
literary tour de force. Callimachus was a favourite
model with Eoman authors, and Ovid probably amused
some of the vacant hours of his exile with translating
his poem. * Every story of Greek mythology, legend,
and history is ransacked to furnish the curses which
are heaped on the head of the luckless man. "May he
fall over a staircase, as did Elpenor, the companion of
Ulysses! May he be torn to pieces by a lioness, as
was Phayllus, tyrant of Ambracia! May he be killed
by a bee-sting in the eye, as was the poet Achseus!
May he be devoured, as Glaucus was devoured, by his
horses; or leap, as did another Glaucus, into the sea!
May he drink, with trembling mouth, the same
draught that Socrates drank, all undisturbed! May
he perish caught by the hands, as was Milo in the
oak which he tried to rend! " These are a few, but,
it will probably be thought, sufficient, examples of
the 'Ibis. '
The last lines written by Ovid are probably some
which we rind in the 'Fasti' under the first of June,
praising Tiberius for the pious work which he had ac-
complished in rebuilding and dedicating various temples
at Eome. These temples were dedicated, as we learn
from Tacitus, in a. d. 17. The poet died, St Jerome
tells us, in the same year, some time before September,
from which month, in Jerome's chronicle, the years
* Allusions to Virgil's ^Eneid show that it was not wholly a
translation.
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? DEATH OF OVID. 145
are reckoned. It had been his earnest wish that the
sentence which had been so rigorously executed against
him during his life might at least be relaxed after
his death, and that his bones might be permitted to
rest in his native Italy. The desire was not granted:
he was buried at Tomi. A pretended discovery of
his tomb was made early in the sixteenth century at
Stainz, in Austria,--a place far too remote from Tomi
to make the story at all probable. If his body could
have been transported so far, why not to Italy 1 The
story appeared in another edition; the tomb and its
epitaph were the same, as was also the year of the dis-
covery, but the place was now Sawar, in Lower Hun-
gary. It may probably be put down as one of the
impostures, more or less ingenious, with which schol-
ars have often amused themselves, and of which the
period following the revival of learning--a period dur-
ing which genuine discoveries of classical remains were
frequently made--was particularly fertile. As recently
as the beginning of this century, it was announced in
some of the Parisian papers that the Eussian troops,
while engaged in building a fortress on the banks of
the Danube, had opened the poet's sepulchre, and had
named the place Ovidopol, in his honour. Unfortu-
nately it turned out that the fortress had never been
built, or even commenced; and that the local name
of Lagone Ovidouloni (which, to give a colour to the
story, had been changed into Laeus Ovidoli) owed its
origin, not to any remembrance of Ovid, but to the
practice of washing there the sheep (Lat. oois) which
A. C. S. S. , vol. ii. k
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? H6 oviD.
were exported in large numbers from Moldavia for the
consumption of Constantinople. We may dismiss as
equally apocryphal the story of the silver writing-style
of the poet, which was shown in 1540 to Isabella,
Queen of Hungary, as having been recently discovered
at Belgrade, the ancient Taurunum.
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? CHAPTEE IX.
FRAGMENTS--LOST POEMS GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.
In his 'Art of Love,' Ovid tells his readers that he had
written a book on " Cosmetics," which was small in
size, but had cost him much pains. Of this book we
have remaining a fragment of about a hundred lines.
The poet begins by saying that everything is the better
for cultivation--the human face of course included.
The simple Sabine matrons of old may have been con-
tent to spend all their labour on their fields, but the
fair ones of modern Eome had different tastes. Dresses
embroidered with gold, hair richly scented and ar-
ranged in various ways, fingers adorned with rings,
and ear-rings of pearls, so heavy that two pearls were
,weight enough for an ear--such were now their tastes.
How could they be blamed, for the tastes of men were
just the same? They were quite right in trying to
please; only let them please in lawful ways. Drugs
and love-potions must be eschewed. Goodness should
be their chief charm. The days would come when it
'would be a pain to look into the mirror; but virtue
lasts through life, and the love which attaches itself
to it is not lightly lost. After this edifying preface,
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? 148 ov ID.
the poet proceeds to his subject. His instructions are
eminently practical in character,--giving the ingredi-
ents, the proper weight, and the right manner of mix-
ing them. His first recipe is for brightening the com-
plexion. Take two pounds of barley, as much of
bitter lupine, and ten eggs; dry and then grind the
substance. Add a sixth of a pound of stag's-horns;
they must be those shed by the animal for the first
time. The mixture is to be passed through a sieve.
Twelve narcissus-roots with the rind stripped off are
to be pounded in a marble mortar; add the sixth of a
pound of gum, and as much spelt, with a pound and
a half of honey. "Dress your face," says the poet,
"with this, and you will have a complexion brighter
than your mirror itself. " The prescription is some-
what complicated; but then, it must be allowed, the
object is difficult of attainment. Colour, as might be
expected, is more easily secured. To five scruples of
fennel add nine of myrrh, a handful of dry rose-leaves,
and a quantity equal in weight to the rose-leaves of
gum-ammoniacum and frankincense, and pour over it
the liquor of barley. "What other secrets of beauty
Ovid may have unfolded cannot be known, for here
the fragment breaks off.
About a hundred and thirty lines of a poem on
"Fishing" have also survived; but they are in a very
broken condition, and a passage descriptive of land
animals has somehow found its way into the midst of
them. They contain nothing practical, except it is
the advice which those acquainted with the art of
sea-fishing will recognise as sound, that the fisherman
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? FRAGMENTS AND LOST POEMS. 149
must not try his fortune in very deep water. A poem
called the ""Walnut," in which the tree complains,
among other things, of its hard lot in being pelted
with stones by passers-by, has been attributed to
Ovid. Some critics have supposed it to be a juvenile
production, but the weight of authority is against its
authenticity.
In the tragedy of " Medea" the world has suffered a
serious loss. Quintilian, a severe critic, says of it that
it seemed to him to prove how much its author could
have achieved, if he had chosen to moderate rather
than to indulge his cleverness. He mentions in the
same context the "Thyestes" of Varius, which might
challenge comparison, he says, with any of the Greek
tragedies. The two dramas are also coupled together
by Tacitus in his "Dialogue about Famous Orators,"
where he compares the popularity of dramatic and
oratorical works, just as we might couple together
"Hamlet" and "King Lear. " The " Medea" has been
altogether lost, but we may gather some idea of the
manner in which the poet treated his subject from
the seventh book of the 'Metamorphoses,' the first
half of which is devoted to the legend of the great
Colchian sorceress. "What portion of it was chosen
for the subject of the drama we do not know; but it
may be conjectured that while the "Medea" of Euri-
pides depicted the last scenes of her career, when she.
avenged the infidelity of Jason by the murder of her
children, Ovid represented her at an earlier time,
when, as the daughter of King iEetes, she loved and
helped the gallant leader of the Argonauts. Anyhow,
,-
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? 150 o vi D.
we find in the ' Metamorphoses' a very fine soliloquy,in
which the love-stricken princess holds debate between
Love and Duty :--
"Up! gird thee! for delay ?
Is death! For aye thy debtor for his life
Preserved must Jason be! And torch and rite
His honoured wife will make thee, and through all
Pelasgian cities shall their matrons hail
The Saviour of their Prince! --Ah! thus then, thus
My Sister, Brother, Sire, my natal soil,
My country's Gods, do I desert, and fly
To exile with the winds ? --my Sire is stem,
Our land is barbarous:--my Brother yet
An infant:--for my Sister, with my own
Her vows are one:--and, for the gods,--within
This bosom beats the Greatest! Little 'tis
To lose, and much to win! Fame to have saved
This flower of all Achaian youth, and sight
And knowledge of a nobler land, where tower
The cities of whose glory Fame even here
Loud rumours, and the culture and the arts
That grace the life of Heroes! More than all
I win me ^Eson's son, for whom the world
With all its treasures were but cheap exchange!
Oh bliss! to be his wife, his envied wife,
Dear to his kindred-Gods! My head will touch
The very stars with rapture! What if rocks,
As Rumour speaks, clash jostling in our track
Athwart the Seas, and fell Charybdis, foe
To ships, with flux and reflux terrible
Swallows and spouts the foam-flood 1--what if, girt
With serpents, in Sicilian ocean-caves
Devouring Scylla barks ? --The seas for me,
Clasped to the bosom of the man I love,
Will wear no terrors:--or, within his arms,
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? GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 151
If fear should rise, 'twill be, not for myself,
But only for my Husband. Husband 1--Ah!
With what fair name, Medea, dost thou cloak
Thy purposed crime? Ah! think how great the guilt
Thou darest, and, while yet thou canst, escape! "
/*
The value of Ovid's poetry has been estimated from
time to time in the course of these pages. Quintilian
says that he was too much in love with his own clever-
ness, but that he was in some respects worthy of com-
mendation. Lord Macaulay confirms, or perhaps am-
plifies, this judgment, when he says that Ovid "had
two insupportable faults: the one is, that he will al-
ways be clever; the other, that he never knows when
to have done. " Of the 'Metamorphoses' the same
great critic wrote: "There are some very fine things
in this poem; and in ingenuity, and the art of doing
difficult things in expression and versification as if
they were the easiest in the world, Ovid is quite in-
comparable. " He thought that the best parts of the
work were the second book (specimens of which have
been given in Chapter IV. ), and the first half of
the thirteenth book, where, in the oratorical contest
between Ajax and Ulysses for the arms of Achilles,
his own tastes were doubtless satisfied. The sever-
est criticism which he passes upon the poet is when
he pronounces the 'Art of Love' to be his best poem.
If popularity is a test of merit, Ovid must be placed I
very high among the writers of antiquity. No classical
poet has been so widely and so continuously read. He
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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. If it should
help, with however small a breeze, my sinking boat
will rise again from the midst of the waters. Thou
wilt bring due incense to the devouring flames, and
testify how strong the gods can be. " The writer then
addresses, and continues to address throughout the rest
of the letter, Germanicus himself, for whose eye it
was of course intended, and before whom Suillius is
entreated in the concluding couplet by his "almost
father-in-law," as Ovid quaintly calls himself, to bring
it. Another friend, whose intercession in the same
quarter the poet entreats, is Carus--tutor, as has been
said before, to the sons of Germanicus. This letter
was written in " the sixth winter of exile"--i. e. , about
the end of a. d. 14 or the beginning of 15--the time
to which we are to ascribe the poem in the Getic
language, on the death and deification of Augustus.
Shortly afterwards must have been written a letter
addressed to Grsecinus, who filled the office of consul
during the second half of the latter year. Here we
see the most humiliating phase of Ovid's servility. It
is difficult to understand how little more than fifty
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? THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTUS. 137
years after the republic had ceased to exist, an Italian i
of the Italians, one of that hardy Samnite race which
had so long contended on equal terms with Home
itself, could be found descending to such depths of I
degradation. The servile multitudes of Egypt and ,
Assyria had never prostrated themselves more ignobly I
before Sesostris or Mmrod than did this free-born
citizen before the men who were so relentlessly perse-
cuting him. He tells his powerful friend that his
piety was known to the whole country. "This stranger
land sees that there is in my dwelling a chapel to
Csesar. There stand along with him, his pious son
and his priestess spouse, powers not inferior to the
already perfected deity. And that no part of the
family should be wanting, there stand both his grand-
sons, the one close to his grandmother's, and the
other to his father's side. To these I address words
of prayer with an offering of incense as often as the
day arises from the eastern sky. "* Two years before,
we find him thanking his friend Maximus Cotta for
a present of the statues which this chapel enshrined.
He mentions three as the number which had been
sent. (The images of the two young princes had since
been added. ) In this letter he seems to lose himself
in transports of gratitude. "He is no longer an exile
at the ends of the earth. He is a prosperous dweller
* It may be as well to explain that by Csesar is meant
Augustus (who was now dead), and by the "pious son " Tibe-
rius. Livia, as the widow of the deified prince, was the priest-
ess of his worship ; the two grandsons are Drusus, son of Tibe-
rius, who stands by his grandmother Livia--and Germanicus,
who stands by his adopting father Tiberius.
,
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? 138 ovID.
in the midst of the capital. He sees the faces of the
Csesars. Such happiness he had never ventured to
hope for. " And so he treads the well-worn round of
customary adulation. A short specimen will be enough
to show to what depths he could descend. "Happy
they who look not on the likenesses but on the reality;
who see before their eyes the very bodies of the god!
Since a hard fate has denied me this privilege, I wor-
ship those whom art has granted to my prayer--the
likeness of the true. Tis thus men know the gods,
whom the heights of heaven conceal; 'tis thus that
the shape of Jupiter is worshipped for Jupiter him-
self. " And then, anxious not to forget the practi-
cal object to which all these elaborate flatteries were
directed, he goes on: "Take care that this semblance
of yours which is with me, and shall ever be with me,
be not found in a hostile spot. My head shall sooner
part from the neck, the eye shall sooner leave the
mangled cheeks, than I should bear your loss, O
Deities of the Commonwealth! you shall be the har-
bour and the sanctuary of my banishment. You I
will embrace, if I be surrounded by Getic arms. You,
as my eagles and my standards, I will follow. If
I am not deceived and cheated by too powerful a
desire, the hope of a happier place of exile is at hand.
The look upon your likeness is less and less gloomy;
the face seems to give assent to my prayer. I pray
that the presages of my anxious heart may be true,
and that the anger of my god, however just it is,
may yet be mitigated. " It is difficult to conceive a
more pitiable sight than that of the wretched exile
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? THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTUS. 139
day after day going through, with sinking hopes and ,
failing spirits, this miserable pretence of worship;
prostrating' himself before men whose baseness and
profligacy no one knew better than himself, and, while
he crushed down the curses that rose naturally to his ,
lips, reiterating the lying prayer, for which he must |
have now despaired of an answer. That he should
have performed this elaborate hypocrisy, not in public
but in the privacy of his own home, merely for the
sake of being able to say that he had done it, and with
but the very dimmest, hope of getting any good from
it, is inexpressibly pitiable; and that it should be pos-
sible for a man of genius to stoop to such degradation,
and for great princes, as Augustus and Tiberius cer-
tainly were, to be swayed in their purposes by such an
exhibition--and that they might be swayed by it Ovid
certainly believed--is a warning against the evils of
despotic power such as it would not be easy to match.
One or two other letters may be briefly noticed.
One addressed to Tuticanus, a brother poet, who had
been distinguished by a translation of the Odyssey, re- i
lieves the gloomy monotony of complaint and entreaty |
by a faint spark of humour. "Whether Tuticanus had
hinted annoyance at not having received any of the
poetical epistles with which other friends had been
honoured, or whether, as is more probable, there was!
a hope that some help might be got from him, Ovidi
apologises for not having written before. The hu-
mour of his excuse is not very brilliant; and it is not
easy to explain it without a reference to the principles
of Latin versification, which would be here out of place.
/
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? 140 OVID.
Tutioanus, in fact, was a name which " might be said,
but never could be sung. " "There is no one," says
the poet, "whom I should have more delighted to
honour--if, indeed, there is any honour to be found
in my poetry. But your name will not come into my
verse. I am ashamed to split it into two, and put
'Tuti' in one line and 'canus' in the next. Nor
while it is properly pronounced Tuticanus, can I pre-
vail upon myself to shorten the third syllable and call
you Tuticanus, or to shorten the first and call you Tiiti-
canus, or make all three long and change it into Tuti-
canus. " It has been said that the ancients, and espe-
cially the Komans, were easily amused, and Ovid's
friend was apparently no exception to the rule.
Another letter introduces us to a personage of whom
we would gladly know more, Cotys, one of the tribu-
tary kings of Thrace. Cotys was a name of consid-
erable antiquity in this region. Among those who
; had borne it was a prince who had played a part in
the struggle between Philip of Macedon and Athens.
Athenseus tells a strange story of his insane extrava-
gance and cruelty, indicating the barbarian nature
thinly veneered with Greek civilisation, or rather
luxury. The Cotys to whom Ovid writes was, if the
poet is to be believed, of a different temper. Claim-
ing descent from Eumolpus, a Thracian bard, who
figures in the early legends of Attica, his tastes were
such as became his genealogy. He wrote verse, pro-
bably in the Greek language; and Ovid declares that,
had they not had the name of their author prefixed
to them, he could not have supposed them to have
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? THE LETTERS FROM THE P0NTU8. 141
been -written by a native of Thrace. Orpheus, adds
the practised flatterer, was not the only poet whom
that region had produced. It had now good reason
to be proud of the genius of its king. It is a curious
circumstance that a semi-barbarous prince--for such
Cotys must have seemed to any Eoman who had no
special reason for complimenting him--should have
been the occasion of the famous lines which have be-
come the standing apology for a liberal education:
"Diligently to acquire a liberal education, softens
men's manners, and forbids them to grow rude. "* From
what we hear of Cotys elsewhere, we find that his
culture was not exactly in the right place among the
savage tribes of Thrace. Augustus divided between
him and his brother Ehescuporis the kingdom which
had belonged to his father Ehcemetalces. "In this
division," continues Tacitus, to whom we are indebted
for the facts, "the cultivated lands, the towns, and
what bordered on Greek territory, fell to Cotys; the
wild and barbarous portion, with enemies on its fron-
tier, to Ehescuporis. The kings, too, themselves dif-
fered--Cotys having a gentle and kindly temper, the
other a fierce and ambitious spirit, which could not
brook a partner. " Open hostilities, provoked by Ehes-
cuporis, broke out. The temporising policy of Tiberius,
who had by that time succeeded to the throne, pre-
vented him from rendering due assistance to Cotys,
who, in the end, was treacherously seized by his
brother, and put to death.
* "Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes
Emollit mores nee sinit esse feros. "
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? 142 OVID.
Of the literary merits of the 'Letters from the
Pontus' there is little to be said. The monotony of
its subject was fatal to excellence. Ovid knew, at
least as well as any man who ever wrote, how to say
the same thing over and over again in different ways;
but even his genius could not indefinitely vary his
constant complaint that he was living among savages,
and under an inhospitable sky; his constant prayer
that he might be released from his gloomy prison, or,
at least, transferred to a more genial spot.
Nor does
he vary his subject with the episodical narratives in
the telling of which he so much excelled. The story
of Orestes and Pylades is the only specimen of the
kind that occurs in the four books. Ovid puts it
into the mouth of an old native of the country, who
speaks of having himself seen the temple where the
incident happened, towering high with its vast
columns, and approached by an ascent of twelve
steps. * The versification is somewhat languid, and
occasionally careless. The poems are not exactly un-
worthy of their author, for they are probably as good
as the subject admitted. To a Latin scholar, Ovid's
verse, even when his subject is uninteresting, is al-
* The story is so well known that a very few words may
suffice for it. Orestes and Pylades land at Tauri, and, according
to the custom of the place, are seized and taken to the temple
of Diana. There one of them must be offered to the goddess.
Each is anxious to he the object of the fatal choice. While
they are contending, they find that the priestess is the sister of
Orestes, Iphigenia, who had been transported hither from the
altar at Aulis, where she had been about to suffer a similar fate.
By her help they escape.
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? THE LETTERS FROM THE PONTUS. 143
? ways pleasing; an English reader would certainly
find them exceedingly tedious.
The ' Ibis' is a poem of between six and seven hun-
dred lines in length, containing almost as many impre-
cations, displaying in their variety an amazing fertility
of imagination, which are directed against a personal
enemy who had spoken ill of the poet in his banish-
ment, had persecuted his wife with his attentions, and
had endeavoured to snatch some plunder from his pro-
perty. It is modelled, as Ovid himself states, on a
poem of the same name which Callimachus wrote
against a poet who had been his pupil, and afterwards
became a rival--Apollonius Ehodius. Callimachus's
quarrel with his brother poet seems to have been a
purely literary one. Apollonius preferred the simpli-
city of the epic writers to the artificial style of his
master. The censure was bitterly felt, and resented
with a vehemence which transcends anything that
has been recorded in the history of letters. The
person whom Ovid attacked under the name of
Ibis is said to have been one Hyginus, a freedman
of the Emperor Augustus, and chief of the Palatine
Library. The principal ground for this idea is that
Hyginus was certainly at one time on terms of
intimate friendship with Ovid, and that none of
the letters written in exile are addressed to him.
Either he or some one else among the numerous
acquaintances who courted the poet in the days of
his popularity, and who deserted him in his exile,
may have been in the author's thoughts; but the
poem is scarcely serious. It has the look of being a
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? 144 OVID.
literary tour de force. Callimachus was a favourite
model with Eoman authors, and Ovid probably amused
some of the vacant hours of his exile with translating
his poem. * Every story of Greek mythology, legend,
and history is ransacked to furnish the curses which
are heaped on the head of the luckless man. "May he
fall over a staircase, as did Elpenor, the companion of
Ulysses! May he be torn to pieces by a lioness, as
was Phayllus, tyrant of Ambracia! May he be killed
by a bee-sting in the eye, as was the poet Achseus!
May he be devoured, as Glaucus was devoured, by his
horses; or leap, as did another Glaucus, into the sea!
May he drink, with trembling mouth, the same
draught that Socrates drank, all undisturbed! May
he perish caught by the hands, as was Milo in the
oak which he tried to rend! " These are a few, but,
it will probably be thought, sufficient, examples of
the 'Ibis. '
The last lines written by Ovid are probably some
which we rind in the 'Fasti' under the first of June,
praising Tiberius for the pious work which he had ac-
complished in rebuilding and dedicating various temples
at Eome. These temples were dedicated, as we learn
from Tacitus, in a. d. 17. The poet died, St Jerome
tells us, in the same year, some time before September,
from which month, in Jerome's chronicle, the years
* Allusions to Virgil's ^Eneid show that it was not wholly a
translation.
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? DEATH OF OVID. 145
are reckoned. It had been his earnest wish that the
sentence which had been so rigorously executed against
him during his life might at least be relaxed after
his death, and that his bones might be permitted to
rest in his native Italy. The desire was not granted:
he was buried at Tomi. A pretended discovery of
his tomb was made early in the sixteenth century at
Stainz, in Austria,--a place far too remote from Tomi
to make the story at all probable. If his body could
have been transported so far, why not to Italy 1 The
story appeared in another edition; the tomb and its
epitaph were the same, as was also the year of the dis-
covery, but the place was now Sawar, in Lower Hun-
gary. It may probably be put down as one of the
impostures, more or less ingenious, with which schol-
ars have often amused themselves, and of which the
period following the revival of learning--a period dur-
ing which genuine discoveries of classical remains were
frequently made--was particularly fertile. As recently
as the beginning of this century, it was announced in
some of the Parisian papers that the Eussian troops,
while engaged in building a fortress on the banks of
the Danube, had opened the poet's sepulchre, and had
named the place Ovidopol, in his honour. Unfortu-
nately it turned out that the fortress had never been
built, or even commenced; and that the local name
of Lagone Ovidouloni (which, to give a colour to the
story, had been changed into Laeus Ovidoli) owed its
origin, not to any remembrance of Ovid, but to the
practice of washing there the sheep (Lat. oois) which
A. C. S. S. , vol. ii. k
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? H6 oviD.
were exported in large numbers from Moldavia for the
consumption of Constantinople. We may dismiss as
equally apocryphal the story of the silver writing-style
of the poet, which was shown in 1540 to Isabella,
Queen of Hungary, as having been recently discovered
at Belgrade, the ancient Taurunum.
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? CHAPTEE IX.
FRAGMENTS--LOST POEMS GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.
In his 'Art of Love,' Ovid tells his readers that he had
written a book on " Cosmetics," which was small in
size, but had cost him much pains. Of this book we
have remaining a fragment of about a hundred lines.
The poet begins by saying that everything is the better
for cultivation--the human face of course included.
The simple Sabine matrons of old may have been con-
tent to spend all their labour on their fields, but the
fair ones of modern Eome had different tastes. Dresses
embroidered with gold, hair richly scented and ar-
ranged in various ways, fingers adorned with rings,
and ear-rings of pearls, so heavy that two pearls were
,weight enough for an ear--such were now their tastes.
How could they be blamed, for the tastes of men were
just the same? They were quite right in trying to
please; only let them please in lawful ways. Drugs
and love-potions must be eschewed. Goodness should
be their chief charm. The days would come when it
'would be a pain to look into the mirror; but virtue
lasts through life, and the love which attaches itself
to it is not lightly lost. After this edifying preface,
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? 148 ov ID.
the poet proceeds to his subject. His instructions are
eminently practical in character,--giving the ingredi-
ents, the proper weight, and the right manner of mix-
ing them. His first recipe is for brightening the com-
plexion. Take two pounds of barley, as much of
bitter lupine, and ten eggs; dry and then grind the
substance. Add a sixth of a pound of stag's-horns;
they must be those shed by the animal for the first
time. The mixture is to be passed through a sieve.
Twelve narcissus-roots with the rind stripped off are
to be pounded in a marble mortar; add the sixth of a
pound of gum, and as much spelt, with a pound and
a half of honey. "Dress your face," says the poet,
"with this, and you will have a complexion brighter
than your mirror itself. " The prescription is some-
what complicated; but then, it must be allowed, the
object is difficult of attainment. Colour, as might be
expected, is more easily secured. To five scruples of
fennel add nine of myrrh, a handful of dry rose-leaves,
and a quantity equal in weight to the rose-leaves of
gum-ammoniacum and frankincense, and pour over it
the liquor of barley. "What other secrets of beauty
Ovid may have unfolded cannot be known, for here
the fragment breaks off.
About a hundred and thirty lines of a poem on
"Fishing" have also survived; but they are in a very
broken condition, and a passage descriptive of land
animals has somehow found its way into the midst of
them. They contain nothing practical, except it is
the advice which those acquainted with the art of
sea-fishing will recognise as sound, that the fisherman
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? FRAGMENTS AND LOST POEMS. 149
must not try his fortune in very deep water. A poem
called the ""Walnut," in which the tree complains,
among other things, of its hard lot in being pelted
with stones by passers-by, has been attributed to
Ovid. Some critics have supposed it to be a juvenile
production, but the weight of authority is against its
authenticity.
In the tragedy of " Medea" the world has suffered a
serious loss. Quintilian, a severe critic, says of it that
it seemed to him to prove how much its author could
have achieved, if he had chosen to moderate rather
than to indulge his cleverness. He mentions in the
same context the "Thyestes" of Varius, which might
challenge comparison, he says, with any of the Greek
tragedies. The two dramas are also coupled together
by Tacitus in his "Dialogue about Famous Orators,"
where he compares the popularity of dramatic and
oratorical works, just as we might couple together
"Hamlet" and "King Lear. " The " Medea" has been
altogether lost, but we may gather some idea of the
manner in which the poet treated his subject from
the seventh book of the 'Metamorphoses,' the first
half of which is devoted to the legend of the great
Colchian sorceress. "What portion of it was chosen
for the subject of the drama we do not know; but it
may be conjectured that while the "Medea" of Euri-
pides depicted the last scenes of her career, when she.
avenged the infidelity of Jason by the murder of her
children, Ovid represented her at an earlier time,
when, as the daughter of King iEetes, she loved and
helped the gallant leader of the Argonauts. Anyhow,
,-
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? 150 o vi D.
we find in the ' Metamorphoses' a very fine soliloquy,in
which the love-stricken princess holds debate between
Love and Duty :--
"Up! gird thee! for delay ?
Is death! For aye thy debtor for his life
Preserved must Jason be! And torch and rite
His honoured wife will make thee, and through all
Pelasgian cities shall their matrons hail
The Saviour of their Prince! --Ah! thus then, thus
My Sister, Brother, Sire, my natal soil,
My country's Gods, do I desert, and fly
To exile with the winds ? --my Sire is stem,
Our land is barbarous:--my Brother yet
An infant:--for my Sister, with my own
Her vows are one:--and, for the gods,--within
This bosom beats the Greatest! Little 'tis
To lose, and much to win! Fame to have saved
This flower of all Achaian youth, and sight
And knowledge of a nobler land, where tower
The cities of whose glory Fame even here
Loud rumours, and the culture and the arts
That grace the life of Heroes! More than all
I win me ^Eson's son, for whom the world
With all its treasures were but cheap exchange!
Oh bliss! to be his wife, his envied wife,
Dear to his kindred-Gods! My head will touch
The very stars with rapture! What if rocks,
As Rumour speaks, clash jostling in our track
Athwart the Seas, and fell Charybdis, foe
To ships, with flux and reflux terrible
Swallows and spouts the foam-flood 1--what if, girt
With serpents, in Sicilian ocean-caves
Devouring Scylla barks ? --The seas for me,
Clasped to the bosom of the man I love,
Will wear no terrors:--or, within his arms,
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? GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 151
If fear should rise, 'twill be, not for myself,
But only for my Husband. Husband 1--Ah!
With what fair name, Medea, dost thou cloak
Thy purposed crime? Ah! think how great the guilt
Thou darest, and, while yet thou canst, escape! "
/*
The value of Ovid's poetry has been estimated from
time to time in the course of these pages. Quintilian
says that he was too much in love with his own clever-
ness, but that he was in some respects worthy of com-
mendation. Lord Macaulay confirms, or perhaps am-
plifies, this judgment, when he says that Ovid "had
two insupportable faults: the one is, that he will al-
ways be clever; the other, that he never knows when
to have done. " Of the 'Metamorphoses' the same
great critic wrote: "There are some very fine things
in this poem; and in ingenuity, and the art of doing
difficult things in expression and versification as if
they were the easiest in the world, Ovid is quite in-
comparable. " He thought that the best parts of the
work were the second book (specimens of which have
been given in Chapter IV. ), and the first half of
the thirteenth book, where, in the oratorical contest
between Ajax and Ulysses for the arms of Achilles,
his own tastes were doubtless satisfied. The sever-
est criticism which he passes upon the poet is when
he pronounces the 'Art of Love' to be his best poem.
If popularity is a test of merit, Ovid must be placed I
very high among the writers of antiquity. No classical
poet has been so widely and so continuously read. He
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