In this
capacity
he had the
opportunity of serving his old friend.
opportunity of serving his old friend.
Ovid - 1865 - Ovid by Alfred Church
The Elder Seneca * 6peaks of having
heard Ovid perform such an exercise before Fuscus.
"His speech," he says, "could not then be called
anything else than poetry out of metre. " But he adds
that the poet had while a student a high reputation
as a declaimer; and he speaks strongly in praise of
the particular discourse which he had himself hap-
pened to hear, describing it as one of marked ability,
though somewhat wanting in order. The poetical
character of the young student's oratory--a character
quite out of keeping, it should be remarked, with the
genius of Latin eloquence--exactly suits what Ovid
says of himself--
"Whate'er I sought to say was still in verse ;"
which may be paraphrased by Pope's famous line--
"I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. "
Seneca further tells us that he had a special fondness
for dealing with moral themes, and he gives some in-
teresting instances of expressions in the poems which
were borrowed from the declamations of his master,
Latro. The brothers assumed, in due time, the toga,
or distinguishing dress of manhood, t This robe, as
sons of a knight of ancient family, and aspirants, it was
* He was the father of the Younger Seneca, Nero's tutor,
and of Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia (Acts xviii. ), and grand-
father of the poet Lucan.
t This was commonly done on completing the sixteenth year.
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? EARLY LIFE. 7
presumed, to public life, they were permitted to wear
with the broad edge of purple which distinguished the
senator. The elder brother died immediately after
completing his twentieth year, and this event removed
the objection which the father had made to the indul-
gence of Ovid's poetical tastes. The family property,
which was not of more than moderate extent, would
not have to be divided, and there was no longer any
necessity why the only son should follow a lucrative
profession.
About this time we may place Ovid's visit to Athens, i
A single line contains all the mention that he makes ofi
it, but this informs us that he went there for purposes
of study. "What particular study he followed we do)
not know. It could scarcely have been moral philoso-i
phy, which Horace tells us had been his own favourite
subject there; rhetoric he had probably, by this time,
resolved to abandon. But Athens, which may be de-
scribed as the university of the Eoman world, doubt-
less contained professors of the belles lettres, as well as
of severer studies; and we may feel sure that the poet
took this opportunity of perfecting his knowledge of
the Greek literature and language. Possibly his stay
at Athens was followed or interrupted by a tour which
he made in company with the poet Macer, the younger
of that name, whose friendship he retained until the
end of his life. This tour included the famous Greek
cities of western Asia Minor. As Macer found the sub-
ject of his verse in the Trojan war, the friends proba-
bly visited the site of the famous city. Ovid, we know,
was once there; and, in these days of Trojan dis-
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? 8 OVID.
coveries, it may be interesting to remember that he
speaks of himself as having seen the temple of Pallas.
From Asia Minor they passed to Sicily, where they
spent the greater part of a year;--a happy time, to
which Ovid, addressing his old companions, in one of
the letters of his exile, turns with pathetic regret.
. Eeturning to the capital, he did not at once give up
1 the prospect of a public career. On the contrary, he
i sought some of the minor offices in which the aspirant
, for promotion commonly began his course. We find
| him filling a post which seems singularly incongruous
with his tastes and pursuits. He was made one of the
Triumviri CapitaZes, officials who combined, to a certain
degree, the duties of our police magistrates and under-
sheriffs. They took the preliminary examination in
cases of serious crimes, exercised a summary jurisdic-
tion, both civil and criminal, in causes where slaves, or
other persons not citizens, were concerned, inspected
prisons, and superintended the execution of criminals.
There were other Triumviri, however, who had duties
connected with the coining of money, and Ovid's words
! are so vague as to leave it uncertain which of the two
offices he filled. He also afterwards became a mem-
ber of the "Court of the Hundred," which had an ex-
tensive and important jurisdiction in both civil and
criminal matters. In this he was promoted to be one
of the ten superintendents (decemviri) who formed the
council of the presiding judge. He seems also to have
occasionally acted as an arbitrator or referee. The pro-
fession of an advocate he never followed. An expres-
sion that has been sometimes taken to mean that he did
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? EARLY LIFE. 9
so, really refers to his position in the Court of the
Hundred. "The fate of men accused," he says, seek-
ing to prove to Augustus that he had been a man of
integrity, "was intrusted to me without damage. " He
was now one of the "Twenty" who were regarded as
candidates for the higher offices in the state, and for
seats in the senate,* and who enjoyed the distinction
of sitting among senators in the orchestra seats of the
circus and the amphitheatre. The time soon came
when he had definitely to choose whether he would fol-
low public life, or rather that shadow of it which was left
to Eoman citizens under the Empire. Members of the
"Twenty," on attaining their twenty-fourth year, be-
came eligible for the qusestorship, an office connected
with the revenue--the lowest in grade of the magis-
tracies, properly so called, but giving a seat in the
senate. Ovid declined to become a candidate for the
office. He exchanged the broad purple stripe which
he had worn as a possible senator, for the narrower
stripe which belonged to his hereditary rank as a
knight. "We must now regard him as a private gentle-
man of Eome, well-born, and of respectable but not
ample means. His parents were still living, and he
hints in one place that he had to content himself
with a moderate allowance.
Very early in life, when, as he says himself, he was
"almost a boy," Ovid was married to a wife probably
* The "Twenty " were made up in this way: three Commis-
sioners of Police (the Triumviri Oapiiales, mentioned hefore),
three Commissioners of the Mint, four Commissioners of Eoads,
and ten Superintendents of the Court of the Hundred.
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? 10 OVID.
chosen for him by his father. The match, he gives us
to understand, brought him neither honour nor profit.
Probably her conduct was not without reproach, and
her fortune did not answer his expectations. She was
speedily divorced. Another wife was soon found by
him or for him. All that we know of her is, that she
was a native of the Etrurian town of Falisci. He con-
fesses that he had no fault to find with her; but the
second marriage was, nevertheless, of as short duration
as the first. It is easy to gather the cause from the
poet's own confessions about himself.
The literary society of which the young poet now
found himself a recognised member, was perhaps the
most brilliant which has ever been collected in one
place. The Athens of Pericles in one point surpassed
it in the magnitude of individual genius. But in ex-
tent, in variety of literary power, the Eome of Augustus
stands pre-eminent in the history of letters. That
pre-eminence, indeed, has been recorded in the name
which it has bequeathed to following times.
"Augustan" is the epithet that has been applied in
more than one instance to the age in which a national
literature has attained its greatest development. In our
own history it signifies the period of which Pope was
in poetry the most brilliant representative. Used of
Eoman literature, it may be taken to denote, speaking
somewhat loosely, the former half of the reign of Au-
gustus. Virgil, Livy, Horace, Sallust, the greatest of
the names which adorned it, had grown to manhood
while the Eepublic still stood; Ovid, who may be said
to close the period, was, as we have seen, born on the
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? AUGUSTAN AGE OF LOVE-POETRY. 11
last day of Eoman freedom. But, indeed, the best
days of the Augustan age had almost passed when
Ovid became a member of the literary society of the
capital. The man who was, in one sense, its ruling
spirit, no longer possessed the power which he had
used so generously and wisely for the encouragement
of genius. For in this case, as in so many others, the
ruler has usurped the honour which belongs to the
minister. It was Msecenas, not Augustus, who made
the imperial court the abode of letters. The emperor
deserves only the credit of possessing culture sufficient
to appreciate the genius which his minister had discov-
ered. But the power of Msecenas did not last beyond
the first ten years of Augustus's reign. Though not
ostensibly disgraced, he no longer shared, or indeed
could have desired to share--so bitter was the wrong
which he had suffered from his master--the emperor's
friendship. Though still nominally a Councillor of
State, he had actually retired into private life. Re-
taining, if we may judge from what we know of
Horace, the private friendship of those whom he had
assisted, he no longer bestowed his patronage on rising
genius. "We find, accordingly, that Ovid never men-
tions his name. Nor was the young poet ever admit-
ted to the intimacy of Augustus, whose court probably
somewhat changed its tone after the retirement of the
great literary minister.
For the older poets, whom he was privileged to see
or know, Ovid describes himself as having felt an
unbounded veneration:--
"In every bard I saw a form divine. "
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? 12 OVID.
"Virgil I did tut see" (a phrase which has become
almost proverbial*), he says, in his interesting account
of his poetical acquaintances and friends. Virgil cer-
tainly visited Eome some time between the years B. C.
23, when Marcellus died,t and B. C. 20, the date of his
own death, for he recited before the imperial family
the magnificent eulogy on the young prince which
adorns the sixth book of the iEneid. Very likely it
was on this occasion that Ovid saw him. His habits
--for he loved the country as truly as did Horace--
and the feebleness of his health, seem to have made
him a stranger at Eome during the latter years of his
life.
Another great contemporary Ovid mentions in these
words--
"The tuneful Horace held our ears enchained. "
"Tuneful," indeed, is a word which but feebly ex-
presses the original epithet (numerosus). "That mas-
ter of melody " is a more adequate rendering, and it is
fit praise for one who had no predecessor or successor
among his countrymen in his power of versification.
There is nothing to indicate the existence of any friend-
ship between the two poets. Horace was by more
than twenty years the elder, and was beginning to
weary of the life of pleasure upon which the younger
man was just entering.
Not a single line has been preserved of three other
* '" Virgilium tantum vidi. "
+ Marcellus was the nephew of Augustus.
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? AUGUSTAN AGE OF LOVE-POETRY. 13
of the poets whom Ovid regarded with such reverence.
Ponticus--
"For epic song renowned "--
wrote a poem in heroic--i. e. , hexameter--verse on the
war of the "Seven against Thebes. " Time has been pe-
culiarly cruel to the world in not suffering it to survive,
if we are to trust Propertius, who affirms, " as he hopes
to be happy," that Ponticus was a match for Homer
himself. Of Bassu3 we absolutely know nothing but
what Ovid tells us, that he was famous for his dramatic
verse. iEMinus Macbr, of Verona, a fellow-countryman,
and, as Ovid expressly mentions that he was much his
own junior, probably a contemporary of Catullus, wrote
poems, doubtless modelled after Greek originals, on
birds, and noxious serpents, and the healing qualities
of herbs. Another Macer, who has been mentioned
already a3 Ovid's companion in travel, wrote about the
Trojan war. Of Domitius Marsus, an elegiac poet,
time has spared a beautiful epigram commemorat-
ing the death of Tibullus. It would be easy to pro-
long the list. In the last of his "Letters from the
Pontus," Ovid names, each with a phrase descriptive
of his genius or his work, the poets contemporary with
himself. There are about thirty of them. Of some
we do not know even the names, the poet having
thought it sufficient to mention or allude to their prin-
cipal works. Many of these who are named we do not
find mentioned elsewhere, and Ovid's brief phrase is all
that is left of them. The works of all have either per-
ished altogether or survive in insignificant fragments. *
* The reader will be glad to see a noble utterance that has
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? 14 OVID.
Burmann, the most learned of Ovid's editors, says
of Maximus Cotta, the last on the list,--"Him and
Capella and others oblivion has overwhelmed with
inexorable night. Would that these poets, or, at
least, the best part of them, had come down to us, and
other foolish and useless books had remained sunk in
eternal darkness! "
Happily for us, a kinder fate has spared the works of
two out of the three poets whom Ovid has named as
his predecessors and teachers in his own peculiar art of
amatory verse. "He," says the poet, speaking of the
untimelydeath of Tibullus, " was thy successor, Gallus";
Propertius was his; I was myself the fourth in the
order of time. " The same collocation of names is re-
peated more than once, and never without expressions
that indicate the pride which Ovid felt in being asso-
ciated with men of such genius. This judgment has
been ratified by modern taste. Some critics have not
hesitated to prefer the happiest efforts of Tibullus and
Propertius (the poems of Gallus have been entirely lost)
to anything of the same kind that came from the pen of
Ovid. The plan of this series includes, for obvious
reasons of convenience, the works of Tibullus and Pro-
pertius in the volume which will give an account of
Catullus. They may be dismissed, for the present,
with the briefest notice. Pate, says Ovid of Tibullus,
refused the time which might have made us friends.
The very elegant memorial which he dedicated to his
been preserved of one of their number: '' All that I once have
given still is mine" (Hoc habeo quodcunque dedi).
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? AUGUSTAN AGE OF LOVE-POETRY. 15
memory * is scarcely expressive of a personal sorrow.
"With Propertius he was on terms of intimacy:--
"To me by terms of closest friendship bound. "
"Friendship" indeed hardly expresses the term
(sodalitium) which the poet uses, and which implies
a certain formal tie. Eeaders will remember that in
the ancient world, where there was seldom anything
ennobling in the relation of the sexes, friendship as-
sumed a dignity and importance which it scarcely pos-
sesses in the social or moral systems of modern life.
Of Gallus, the founder of the school, a longer account
may be given.
Caius Cornelius Gallus, born at Forum Iulii (now
Frejus, in the Eiviera), was, like Horace, of low birth,
but received, like him, an education superior to his
station. He studied under one of the best teachers of
the age, and had Virgil for one of his schoolfellows.
After the murder of Julius Csesar, he joined the party
of Octavianus (better known by his later title of
Augustus), and was appointed by him one of the three
commissioners charged with the distribution of the
confiscated lands of the North Italian colonies among
the discharged veterans.
In this capacity he had the
opportunity of serving his old friend. Mantua, though
* Graceful and elegant as it is, it cannot be classed with the
finest works of its kind. The "Lycidas " of Milton, the "Ad-
onais " of Shelley, and Mr Matthew Arnold's " Thyrsis," are all
incomparably superior to it. It is entirely a work of art.
There is little or nothing of personal feeling in it.
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? 16 ov ID.
guiltless of any offence against the victorious party,
was included in the confiscation; and the estate of
Virgil, which was situated in one of the neighbouring
villages, was seized. Gallus exerted himself to get it
restored to its owner. The poet repaid him by most
graceful praise of the poetical powers which Gallus
probably valued more than his reputation as a soldier.
In one of his pastorals he makes the god Silenus
"How Gallus, wandering by Permessian streams,
Some Muse conducted to th' Aonian hills,
And how the tuneful choir of Phoebus rose
To greet their mortal guest, while Linus spake,
Old Linus, shepherd of the deathless song,
His hair with flowers and bitter parsley crowned--
'Take thou these pipes, the Muses' gift to thee,
As erst their gift to Ascra's aged bard;
With them he knew to draw from down the cliff
The sturdy mountain-ash trees. Sing on these
How Grynia's grove was planted, till there stand
No forest dearer to Apollo's heart. '"
Another of the pastorals, the tenth and last, has the
name of "Gallus" for its title, and celebrates in
exquisite verse the unhappy passion of the soldier-
poet for the faithless Lycoris. It has been thought,
on the strength of a somewhat obscure passage in
Ovid's elegy on the death of Tibullus, that Gallus
behaved in a less friendly manner to that poet.
The departed bard, we are told, would meet his
fellow-singers Catullus and Calvus in the Elysian
fields--
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? AUGUSTAN AGE OF LOVE-POETRY. 17
"And thou too, Gallus, if they did thee wrong,
Who spake of friendship shamed, wilt join the throng. "
Tibullus certainly lost, and apparently failed to re-
cover, a great part of his property; and it has been
conjectured that the influence of Gallus was used to
obstruct restitution. Perhaps a more plausible ex-
planation may be found in the circumstances that
brought his career to an end. He had rendered great
services in that final struggle with Mark Antony
which put the undivided empire into the hands of
Augustus, and was appointed in reward to the gov-
ernment of Egypt, then for the first time a Eoman
province. This elevation turned, or was said to
have turned, his head. Accused of having used in-
sulting words about Augustus, he was recalled Other
charges were brought against him, and were investi-
gated by the senate, with the result that his property
was confiscated, and that he was sent into exile.
Unable to bear the disgrace, he fell upon his sword.
He was in his fortieth year. "We can judge of his
poetical merit only by the statements of his contem-
poraries; but if these are to be trusted, they were of
the very highest order. * His amatory poems consisted
of four books of elegies addressed to Lycoris.
"Gallus to east and west is known, and fame
With Gallus joins his own Lycoris' name. "
One reflection strikes us forcibly as we compare
* Quintilian, however, says of his poetry that it was "some-
what harsh. "
A. o. s. s. , vol. ii. B
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? 18 OVID.
Ovid with his predecessors and contemporaries--a re-
flection which, whatever the qualities in which they
may be allowed to have excelled him, explains and
justifies the higher rank which he has received in the
judgment of posterity. He was cast, so to speak, in
a larger mould, and made of stronger stuff. Nothing
is more significant of this than the very superiority of
his physical constitution. They almost without ex-
ception (we are not speaking now of Horace and Virgil)
passed away in the very prime of their youth. Ca-
tullus died, when we do not know, but certainly before
the age which opened to a Eoman citizen the highest
offices of state. He comes to meet Tibullus in the
Elysian fields, "his youthful brows with ivy crowned. "
Calvus, his closest friend, died at thirty-six; Gallus,
Tibullus, Propertius, were not older when they passed
away. The fiery passion which shines through theirverse,
and which often gives it a more genuine ring than we
find in Ovid's smoother song, consumed them. Ovid
was more master of himself. Nor was his intellectual
life limited to the expression of passion. His mind
was braced by the severe studies that produced the
'Transmutations' and the ' Eoman Calendar. ' "With
this stronger, more practical, more varied intellect
went along the more enduring physical frame. He
had nearly reached his sixtieth year before he suc-
cumbed to the miseries and privations of a protracted
exile. And sixty years of Eoman life correspond, it
must be remembered, to at least seventy among those
who, like ourselves, date the beginning of manhood
not from sixteen, but only nominally even from
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? AUGUSTAN AGE OF LOVE-POETRY. 19
twenty-one. "We may perhaps find a parallel, at
least partially appropriate, in the contrast between
Shakespeare and his more sturdy and healthful soul
and frame, and his short-lived predecessors in the
dramatic art, Marlowe and Greene, men of genius both,
but consumed, as it were, by the fire with which he
was inspired.
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? CHAPTEE II.
THE LOVE-POEMS.
Under this title are included four productions wbich
--to speak of those works alone which have come down
to us--formed the literary occupation of Ovid from,
his twentieth to his forty-second year. These four are
'^ The Epistle's of the Heroines,' ? The Loves," The Art
of Love,' and ~ Eemedies for Love. ' It is in the second
of these, doubtless, that we have the earliest of-the
poet's productions that survive. He tells us that he
recited his juvenile poems to a public audience, for
the first time, when his beard had been twice or thrice
shaved. Shaving the beard seems to have been a fixed
epoch in a young Eoman's life, occurring somewhere
about his twenty-first or twenty-second year. He also
tells us that of these poems Corinna had been the in-
spiring subject, and Corinna, we know, is celebrated in
'The Loves. ' As this book, however, in the form in
which we now have it, is a second edition, and as it
makes express mention of 'The Epistles of the Heroines'
as a work already published, it will be convenient to
speak first of the latter poem. It consists of twenty-
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? THE LOVE-POEMS. 21
one* letters, supposed to have been written by women
famous in legend, to absent husbands or lovers. Ovid
claims the idea as original, and we must therefore sup-
pose that the one example of the kind which we find
in Propertius was imitated from him--a supposition
which gives as a probable date for the publication of the
Letters, the poet's twenty-fifth year (b,o. 18). Pene-
lope, the faithful wife, whom the twenty years' absence
of her lord has not been able to estrange, writes to the
wandering Ulysses; Phyllis, daughter of the Thracian
king Sithon, complains of the long delay of her Athe-
nian lover, Demophoon, in the land whither he had
gone to prepare, as he said, for their marriage; the de-
serted Ariadne sends her reproaches after Theseus j
Medea, with mingled threats and entreaties, seeks to
turn Jason from the new marriage which he is contem-
plating; and Dido,t a figure which Ovid has borrowed
from the beautiful episode of the 'iEneid,' alternately
appeals to the pity and denounces the perfidy of her
Trojan lover. These are some of the subjects which the
poet has chosen. The idea of the book, it must be corP"\
fessed, is not a peculiarly happy one. Sometimes it ?
has an almost ludicrous air. There is an absurdity, as
Bayle suggests, in the notion of the post reaching to
* The authenticity of some of this number is doubted, or,
we might say, more than doubted. But the question is beside
our present purpose.
+ It may be as well to remind the reader that though the
legend of Dido is much older than the ' -ffineid,' the introduction
of . ffineas into it is Virgil's own idea--a gross anachronism, by
the way, with which, however, no reader of the fourth book
of the 'jEneid' will reproach him.
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? 22 0 VID.
Naxos, the desolate island from whose shore Ariadne
has seen the departing sails of the treacherous Theseus.
Nor is there even an attempt at giving any colouring
appropriate to the time and place to which the several
letters are supposed to belong. Penelope, Dido, Ari-
; adne are all alike refined and well-educated persons,
i just like the great Eoman ladies whom the poet used
to meet in daily life. This artificial writing, abso-
lutely without all that is called realism, was character-
istic of Ovid's age, and we cannot make it a special
charge against him. But it has certainly a wearying
effect, which is increased by the sameness and mono-
tony of the subject-matter of the Epistles. The names
are different, the circumstances are changed according
as the several stories demand, but the theme is ever the
same--love, now angry and full of reproaches, now ten-
der and condescending to entreaty. Nor is that love
the "maiden passion" which has supplied in mod-
ern times the theme of poems and romances without
number. It is the fierce emotion, guilty or wrathful,
though sometimes, it must be allowed, melting into
genuine pathos and tenderness, of betrayed maidens
and outraged wives. But, on the other hand, though
the theme is the same, the variety of expression is end-
\ less. The skill with which Ovid continues, again and
again, to say the same thing without repeating him-
self, is astonishing. In this respect no poet has ever
shown himself more thoroughly a master of his art.
Feeling, too, real though not elevated, often makes it-
self felt in the midst of the artificial sentiment; if the
style is disfigured with conceits, it is always exquisitely
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? THE LOVE-POEMS. 23
polished; the language is universally easy and trans-
parent, and the verse an unbroken flow of exquisite
melody.
Of all the Epistles, the one which for purity and ten-
derness most commends itself to our taste, is that ad-
dressed by the Thessalian princess Laodamia to her
husband Protesilaus. He had joined the expedition
of the Greeks against Troy, and was the destined
victim of the prophecy which foretold the death of the
Greek chieftain who should be the first to leap from
the ships on to the Trojan shore. Eeaders of "Words-
worth will remember the beautiful poem in which he
has treated that part of the legend which relates how
Jove granted to the prayers of the widowed queen
that her hero should for a brief space of time revisit
the earth. Laodamia had heard that her husband and
his companions were detained at Aulis by contrary
winds. '"Why had not the winds been contrary when
he left his home? They had been too favourable--
favourable for the sailor, not for the lover. As long
as she could see, she had watched the departing sails.
"When they vanished, she had seemed to pass from life,
and could wish that she never had been recalled--for
her, life was sorrow. How could she wear her royal
robes while her husband was enduring the toil and
wretchedness of war? Accursed beauty of Paris that
had wrought such woe! Accursed vengeance of Mene-
laus that would be fatal to so many! How foolish the
enterprise of the Greeks! Surely the man who had
dared to carry off the daughter of Tyndarus would be
able to keep her. And there was some dreadful
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? 24 0 VID.
Hector of whom she had heard; let Protesilaus be-
ware of him. Let him always fight as one who re-
membered that there was a wife waiting for him at
home. It was Menelaus who had been wronged; let
it be Menelaus who should exact vengeance. A rumour
had reached her that the first chief to touch Trojan
soil must fall . Let Protesilaus be careful not to be
he. Eather let his be the last of the thousand ships
--the last in going, but the first to return. Now she
mourned for him night and day. The dreams hi
which she hoped to meet her husband did but bring
back his pale image. This made her pray to the gods
and burn incense on every altar in Thessaly. "When
would he return and tell the tale of his deeds? But
the hope suggested the dreadful thought of Troy and
the dangers of the sea. The sea, indeed, seemed to
forbid their journey. If it was so, what madness to
go! The delay was not an accident; it was an inti-
mation from heaven. Let them return while they
could. But no! She will recall the wish. She will
pray for favourable winds. If only it was not so far
away! ' And then she contrasts the sorrows of her own
loneliness with what she cannot but think the happier
lot of those who were shut up in the walls of Troy:--
j"Ah! Trojan women (happier far than we),
Fain in your lot would I partaker be!
If ye must mourn o'er some dead hero's bier,
And all the dangers of the war are near,
With you at least the fair and youthful bride
May arm her husband, in becoming pride;
Lift the fierce helmet to his gallant brow,
And, with a trembling hand, his sword bestow;
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?
heard Ovid perform such an exercise before Fuscus.
"His speech," he says, "could not then be called
anything else than poetry out of metre. " But he adds
that the poet had while a student a high reputation
as a declaimer; and he speaks strongly in praise of
the particular discourse which he had himself hap-
pened to hear, describing it as one of marked ability,
though somewhat wanting in order. The poetical
character of the young student's oratory--a character
quite out of keeping, it should be remarked, with the
genius of Latin eloquence--exactly suits what Ovid
says of himself--
"Whate'er I sought to say was still in verse ;"
which may be paraphrased by Pope's famous line--
"I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. "
Seneca further tells us that he had a special fondness
for dealing with moral themes, and he gives some in-
teresting instances of expressions in the poems which
were borrowed from the declamations of his master,
Latro. The brothers assumed, in due time, the toga,
or distinguishing dress of manhood, t This robe, as
sons of a knight of ancient family, and aspirants, it was
* He was the father of the Younger Seneca, Nero's tutor,
and of Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia (Acts xviii. ), and grand-
father of the poet Lucan.
t This was commonly done on completing the sixteenth year.
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? EARLY LIFE. 7
presumed, to public life, they were permitted to wear
with the broad edge of purple which distinguished the
senator. The elder brother died immediately after
completing his twentieth year, and this event removed
the objection which the father had made to the indul-
gence of Ovid's poetical tastes. The family property,
which was not of more than moderate extent, would
not have to be divided, and there was no longer any
necessity why the only son should follow a lucrative
profession.
About this time we may place Ovid's visit to Athens, i
A single line contains all the mention that he makes ofi
it, but this informs us that he went there for purposes
of study. "What particular study he followed we do)
not know. It could scarcely have been moral philoso-i
phy, which Horace tells us had been his own favourite
subject there; rhetoric he had probably, by this time,
resolved to abandon. But Athens, which may be de-
scribed as the university of the Eoman world, doubt-
less contained professors of the belles lettres, as well as
of severer studies; and we may feel sure that the poet
took this opportunity of perfecting his knowledge of
the Greek literature and language. Possibly his stay
at Athens was followed or interrupted by a tour which
he made in company with the poet Macer, the younger
of that name, whose friendship he retained until the
end of his life. This tour included the famous Greek
cities of western Asia Minor. As Macer found the sub-
ject of his verse in the Trojan war, the friends proba-
bly visited the site of the famous city. Ovid, we know,
was once there; and, in these days of Trojan dis-
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? 8 OVID.
coveries, it may be interesting to remember that he
speaks of himself as having seen the temple of Pallas.
From Asia Minor they passed to Sicily, where they
spent the greater part of a year;--a happy time, to
which Ovid, addressing his old companions, in one of
the letters of his exile, turns with pathetic regret.
. Eeturning to the capital, he did not at once give up
1 the prospect of a public career. On the contrary, he
i sought some of the minor offices in which the aspirant
, for promotion commonly began his course. We find
| him filling a post which seems singularly incongruous
with his tastes and pursuits. He was made one of the
Triumviri CapitaZes, officials who combined, to a certain
degree, the duties of our police magistrates and under-
sheriffs. They took the preliminary examination in
cases of serious crimes, exercised a summary jurisdic-
tion, both civil and criminal, in causes where slaves, or
other persons not citizens, were concerned, inspected
prisons, and superintended the execution of criminals.
There were other Triumviri, however, who had duties
connected with the coining of money, and Ovid's words
! are so vague as to leave it uncertain which of the two
offices he filled. He also afterwards became a mem-
ber of the "Court of the Hundred," which had an ex-
tensive and important jurisdiction in both civil and
criminal matters. In this he was promoted to be one
of the ten superintendents (decemviri) who formed the
council of the presiding judge. He seems also to have
occasionally acted as an arbitrator or referee. The pro-
fession of an advocate he never followed. An expres-
sion that has been sometimes taken to mean that he did
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? EARLY LIFE. 9
so, really refers to his position in the Court of the
Hundred. "The fate of men accused," he says, seek-
ing to prove to Augustus that he had been a man of
integrity, "was intrusted to me without damage. " He
was now one of the "Twenty" who were regarded as
candidates for the higher offices in the state, and for
seats in the senate,* and who enjoyed the distinction
of sitting among senators in the orchestra seats of the
circus and the amphitheatre. The time soon came
when he had definitely to choose whether he would fol-
low public life, or rather that shadow of it which was left
to Eoman citizens under the Empire. Members of the
"Twenty," on attaining their twenty-fourth year, be-
came eligible for the qusestorship, an office connected
with the revenue--the lowest in grade of the magis-
tracies, properly so called, but giving a seat in the
senate. Ovid declined to become a candidate for the
office. He exchanged the broad purple stripe which
he had worn as a possible senator, for the narrower
stripe which belonged to his hereditary rank as a
knight. "We must now regard him as a private gentle-
man of Eome, well-born, and of respectable but not
ample means. His parents were still living, and he
hints in one place that he had to content himself
with a moderate allowance.
Very early in life, when, as he says himself, he was
"almost a boy," Ovid was married to a wife probably
* The "Twenty " were made up in this way: three Commis-
sioners of Police (the Triumviri Oapiiales, mentioned hefore),
three Commissioners of the Mint, four Commissioners of Eoads,
and ten Superintendents of the Court of the Hundred.
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? 10 OVID.
chosen for him by his father. The match, he gives us
to understand, brought him neither honour nor profit.
Probably her conduct was not without reproach, and
her fortune did not answer his expectations. She was
speedily divorced. Another wife was soon found by
him or for him. All that we know of her is, that she
was a native of the Etrurian town of Falisci. He con-
fesses that he had no fault to find with her; but the
second marriage was, nevertheless, of as short duration
as the first. It is easy to gather the cause from the
poet's own confessions about himself.
The literary society of which the young poet now
found himself a recognised member, was perhaps the
most brilliant which has ever been collected in one
place. The Athens of Pericles in one point surpassed
it in the magnitude of individual genius. But in ex-
tent, in variety of literary power, the Eome of Augustus
stands pre-eminent in the history of letters. That
pre-eminence, indeed, has been recorded in the name
which it has bequeathed to following times.
"Augustan" is the epithet that has been applied in
more than one instance to the age in which a national
literature has attained its greatest development. In our
own history it signifies the period of which Pope was
in poetry the most brilliant representative. Used of
Eoman literature, it may be taken to denote, speaking
somewhat loosely, the former half of the reign of Au-
gustus. Virgil, Livy, Horace, Sallust, the greatest of
the names which adorned it, had grown to manhood
while the Eepublic still stood; Ovid, who may be said
to close the period, was, as we have seen, born on the
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? AUGUSTAN AGE OF LOVE-POETRY. 11
last day of Eoman freedom. But, indeed, the best
days of the Augustan age had almost passed when
Ovid became a member of the literary society of the
capital. The man who was, in one sense, its ruling
spirit, no longer possessed the power which he had
used so generously and wisely for the encouragement
of genius. For in this case, as in so many others, the
ruler has usurped the honour which belongs to the
minister. It was Msecenas, not Augustus, who made
the imperial court the abode of letters. The emperor
deserves only the credit of possessing culture sufficient
to appreciate the genius which his minister had discov-
ered. But the power of Msecenas did not last beyond
the first ten years of Augustus's reign. Though not
ostensibly disgraced, he no longer shared, or indeed
could have desired to share--so bitter was the wrong
which he had suffered from his master--the emperor's
friendship. Though still nominally a Councillor of
State, he had actually retired into private life. Re-
taining, if we may judge from what we know of
Horace, the private friendship of those whom he had
assisted, he no longer bestowed his patronage on rising
genius. "We find, accordingly, that Ovid never men-
tions his name. Nor was the young poet ever admit-
ted to the intimacy of Augustus, whose court probably
somewhat changed its tone after the retirement of the
great literary minister.
For the older poets, whom he was privileged to see
or know, Ovid describes himself as having felt an
unbounded veneration:--
"In every bard I saw a form divine. "
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? 12 OVID.
"Virgil I did tut see" (a phrase which has become
almost proverbial*), he says, in his interesting account
of his poetical acquaintances and friends. Virgil cer-
tainly visited Eome some time between the years B. C.
23, when Marcellus died,t and B. C. 20, the date of his
own death, for he recited before the imperial family
the magnificent eulogy on the young prince which
adorns the sixth book of the iEneid. Very likely it
was on this occasion that Ovid saw him. His habits
--for he loved the country as truly as did Horace--
and the feebleness of his health, seem to have made
him a stranger at Eome during the latter years of his
life.
Another great contemporary Ovid mentions in these
words--
"The tuneful Horace held our ears enchained. "
"Tuneful," indeed, is a word which but feebly ex-
presses the original epithet (numerosus). "That mas-
ter of melody " is a more adequate rendering, and it is
fit praise for one who had no predecessor or successor
among his countrymen in his power of versification.
There is nothing to indicate the existence of any friend-
ship between the two poets. Horace was by more
than twenty years the elder, and was beginning to
weary of the life of pleasure upon which the younger
man was just entering.
Not a single line has been preserved of three other
* '" Virgilium tantum vidi. "
+ Marcellus was the nephew of Augustus.
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? AUGUSTAN AGE OF LOVE-POETRY. 13
of the poets whom Ovid regarded with such reverence.
Ponticus--
"For epic song renowned "--
wrote a poem in heroic--i. e. , hexameter--verse on the
war of the "Seven against Thebes. " Time has been pe-
culiarly cruel to the world in not suffering it to survive,
if we are to trust Propertius, who affirms, " as he hopes
to be happy," that Ponticus was a match for Homer
himself. Of Bassu3 we absolutely know nothing but
what Ovid tells us, that he was famous for his dramatic
verse. iEMinus Macbr, of Verona, a fellow-countryman,
and, as Ovid expressly mentions that he was much his
own junior, probably a contemporary of Catullus, wrote
poems, doubtless modelled after Greek originals, on
birds, and noxious serpents, and the healing qualities
of herbs. Another Macer, who has been mentioned
already a3 Ovid's companion in travel, wrote about the
Trojan war. Of Domitius Marsus, an elegiac poet,
time has spared a beautiful epigram commemorat-
ing the death of Tibullus. It would be easy to pro-
long the list. In the last of his "Letters from the
Pontus," Ovid names, each with a phrase descriptive
of his genius or his work, the poets contemporary with
himself. There are about thirty of them. Of some
we do not know even the names, the poet having
thought it sufficient to mention or allude to their prin-
cipal works. Many of these who are named we do not
find mentioned elsewhere, and Ovid's brief phrase is all
that is left of them. The works of all have either per-
ished altogether or survive in insignificant fragments. *
* The reader will be glad to see a noble utterance that has
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? 14 OVID.
Burmann, the most learned of Ovid's editors, says
of Maximus Cotta, the last on the list,--"Him and
Capella and others oblivion has overwhelmed with
inexorable night. Would that these poets, or, at
least, the best part of them, had come down to us, and
other foolish and useless books had remained sunk in
eternal darkness! "
Happily for us, a kinder fate has spared the works of
two out of the three poets whom Ovid has named as
his predecessors and teachers in his own peculiar art of
amatory verse. "He," says the poet, speaking of the
untimelydeath of Tibullus, " was thy successor, Gallus";
Propertius was his; I was myself the fourth in the
order of time. " The same collocation of names is re-
peated more than once, and never without expressions
that indicate the pride which Ovid felt in being asso-
ciated with men of such genius. This judgment has
been ratified by modern taste. Some critics have not
hesitated to prefer the happiest efforts of Tibullus and
Propertius (the poems of Gallus have been entirely lost)
to anything of the same kind that came from the pen of
Ovid. The plan of this series includes, for obvious
reasons of convenience, the works of Tibullus and Pro-
pertius in the volume which will give an account of
Catullus. They may be dismissed, for the present,
with the briefest notice. Pate, says Ovid of Tibullus,
refused the time which might have made us friends.
The very elegant memorial which he dedicated to his
been preserved of one of their number: '' All that I once have
given still is mine" (Hoc habeo quodcunque dedi).
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? AUGUSTAN AGE OF LOVE-POETRY. 15
memory * is scarcely expressive of a personal sorrow.
"With Propertius he was on terms of intimacy:--
"To me by terms of closest friendship bound. "
"Friendship" indeed hardly expresses the term
(sodalitium) which the poet uses, and which implies
a certain formal tie. Eeaders will remember that in
the ancient world, where there was seldom anything
ennobling in the relation of the sexes, friendship as-
sumed a dignity and importance which it scarcely pos-
sesses in the social or moral systems of modern life.
Of Gallus, the founder of the school, a longer account
may be given.
Caius Cornelius Gallus, born at Forum Iulii (now
Frejus, in the Eiviera), was, like Horace, of low birth,
but received, like him, an education superior to his
station. He studied under one of the best teachers of
the age, and had Virgil for one of his schoolfellows.
After the murder of Julius Csesar, he joined the party
of Octavianus (better known by his later title of
Augustus), and was appointed by him one of the three
commissioners charged with the distribution of the
confiscated lands of the North Italian colonies among
the discharged veterans.
In this capacity he had the
opportunity of serving his old friend. Mantua, though
* Graceful and elegant as it is, it cannot be classed with the
finest works of its kind. The "Lycidas " of Milton, the "Ad-
onais " of Shelley, and Mr Matthew Arnold's " Thyrsis," are all
incomparably superior to it. It is entirely a work of art.
There is little or nothing of personal feeling in it.
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? 16 ov ID.
guiltless of any offence against the victorious party,
was included in the confiscation; and the estate of
Virgil, which was situated in one of the neighbouring
villages, was seized. Gallus exerted himself to get it
restored to its owner. The poet repaid him by most
graceful praise of the poetical powers which Gallus
probably valued more than his reputation as a soldier.
In one of his pastorals he makes the god Silenus
"How Gallus, wandering by Permessian streams,
Some Muse conducted to th' Aonian hills,
And how the tuneful choir of Phoebus rose
To greet their mortal guest, while Linus spake,
Old Linus, shepherd of the deathless song,
His hair with flowers and bitter parsley crowned--
'Take thou these pipes, the Muses' gift to thee,
As erst their gift to Ascra's aged bard;
With them he knew to draw from down the cliff
The sturdy mountain-ash trees. Sing on these
How Grynia's grove was planted, till there stand
No forest dearer to Apollo's heart. '"
Another of the pastorals, the tenth and last, has the
name of "Gallus" for its title, and celebrates in
exquisite verse the unhappy passion of the soldier-
poet for the faithless Lycoris. It has been thought,
on the strength of a somewhat obscure passage in
Ovid's elegy on the death of Tibullus, that Gallus
behaved in a less friendly manner to that poet.
The departed bard, we are told, would meet his
fellow-singers Catullus and Calvus in the Elysian
fields--
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? AUGUSTAN AGE OF LOVE-POETRY. 17
"And thou too, Gallus, if they did thee wrong,
Who spake of friendship shamed, wilt join the throng. "
Tibullus certainly lost, and apparently failed to re-
cover, a great part of his property; and it has been
conjectured that the influence of Gallus was used to
obstruct restitution. Perhaps a more plausible ex-
planation may be found in the circumstances that
brought his career to an end. He had rendered great
services in that final struggle with Mark Antony
which put the undivided empire into the hands of
Augustus, and was appointed in reward to the gov-
ernment of Egypt, then for the first time a Eoman
province. This elevation turned, or was said to
have turned, his head. Accused of having used in-
sulting words about Augustus, he was recalled Other
charges were brought against him, and were investi-
gated by the senate, with the result that his property
was confiscated, and that he was sent into exile.
Unable to bear the disgrace, he fell upon his sword.
He was in his fortieth year. "We can judge of his
poetical merit only by the statements of his contem-
poraries; but if these are to be trusted, they were of
the very highest order. * His amatory poems consisted
of four books of elegies addressed to Lycoris.
"Gallus to east and west is known, and fame
With Gallus joins his own Lycoris' name. "
One reflection strikes us forcibly as we compare
* Quintilian, however, says of his poetry that it was "some-
what harsh. "
A. o. s. s. , vol. ii. B
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? 18 OVID.
Ovid with his predecessors and contemporaries--a re-
flection which, whatever the qualities in which they
may be allowed to have excelled him, explains and
justifies the higher rank which he has received in the
judgment of posterity. He was cast, so to speak, in
a larger mould, and made of stronger stuff. Nothing
is more significant of this than the very superiority of
his physical constitution. They almost without ex-
ception (we are not speaking now of Horace and Virgil)
passed away in the very prime of their youth. Ca-
tullus died, when we do not know, but certainly before
the age which opened to a Eoman citizen the highest
offices of state. He comes to meet Tibullus in the
Elysian fields, "his youthful brows with ivy crowned. "
Calvus, his closest friend, died at thirty-six; Gallus,
Tibullus, Propertius, were not older when they passed
away. The fiery passion which shines through theirverse,
and which often gives it a more genuine ring than we
find in Ovid's smoother song, consumed them. Ovid
was more master of himself. Nor was his intellectual
life limited to the expression of passion. His mind
was braced by the severe studies that produced the
'Transmutations' and the ' Eoman Calendar. ' "With
this stronger, more practical, more varied intellect
went along the more enduring physical frame. He
had nearly reached his sixtieth year before he suc-
cumbed to the miseries and privations of a protracted
exile. And sixty years of Eoman life correspond, it
must be remembered, to at least seventy among those
who, like ourselves, date the beginning of manhood
not from sixteen, but only nominally even from
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? AUGUSTAN AGE OF LOVE-POETRY. 19
twenty-one. "We may perhaps find a parallel, at
least partially appropriate, in the contrast between
Shakespeare and his more sturdy and healthful soul
and frame, and his short-lived predecessors in the
dramatic art, Marlowe and Greene, men of genius both,
but consumed, as it were, by the fire with which he
was inspired.
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? CHAPTEE II.
THE LOVE-POEMS.
Under this title are included four productions wbich
--to speak of those works alone which have come down
to us--formed the literary occupation of Ovid from,
his twentieth to his forty-second year. These four are
'^ The Epistle's of the Heroines,' ? The Loves," The Art
of Love,' and ~ Eemedies for Love. ' It is in the second
of these, doubtless, that we have the earliest of-the
poet's productions that survive. He tells us that he
recited his juvenile poems to a public audience, for
the first time, when his beard had been twice or thrice
shaved. Shaving the beard seems to have been a fixed
epoch in a young Eoman's life, occurring somewhere
about his twenty-first or twenty-second year. He also
tells us that of these poems Corinna had been the in-
spiring subject, and Corinna, we know, is celebrated in
'The Loves. ' As this book, however, in the form in
which we now have it, is a second edition, and as it
makes express mention of 'The Epistles of the Heroines'
as a work already published, it will be convenient to
speak first of the latter poem. It consists of twenty-
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? THE LOVE-POEMS. 21
one* letters, supposed to have been written by women
famous in legend, to absent husbands or lovers. Ovid
claims the idea as original, and we must therefore sup-
pose that the one example of the kind which we find
in Propertius was imitated from him--a supposition
which gives as a probable date for the publication of the
Letters, the poet's twenty-fifth year (b,o. 18). Pene-
lope, the faithful wife, whom the twenty years' absence
of her lord has not been able to estrange, writes to the
wandering Ulysses; Phyllis, daughter of the Thracian
king Sithon, complains of the long delay of her Athe-
nian lover, Demophoon, in the land whither he had
gone to prepare, as he said, for their marriage; the de-
serted Ariadne sends her reproaches after Theseus j
Medea, with mingled threats and entreaties, seeks to
turn Jason from the new marriage which he is contem-
plating; and Dido,t a figure which Ovid has borrowed
from the beautiful episode of the 'iEneid,' alternately
appeals to the pity and denounces the perfidy of her
Trojan lover. These are some of the subjects which the
poet has chosen. The idea of the book, it must be corP"\
fessed, is not a peculiarly happy one. Sometimes it ?
has an almost ludicrous air. There is an absurdity, as
Bayle suggests, in the notion of the post reaching to
* The authenticity of some of this number is doubted, or,
we might say, more than doubted. But the question is beside
our present purpose.
+ It may be as well to remind the reader that though the
legend of Dido is much older than the ' -ffineid,' the introduction
of . ffineas into it is Virgil's own idea--a gross anachronism, by
the way, with which, however, no reader of the fourth book
of the 'jEneid' will reproach him.
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? 22 0 VID.
Naxos, the desolate island from whose shore Ariadne
has seen the departing sails of the treacherous Theseus.
Nor is there even an attempt at giving any colouring
appropriate to the time and place to which the several
letters are supposed to belong. Penelope, Dido, Ari-
; adne are all alike refined and well-educated persons,
i just like the great Eoman ladies whom the poet used
to meet in daily life. This artificial writing, abso-
lutely without all that is called realism, was character-
istic of Ovid's age, and we cannot make it a special
charge against him. But it has certainly a wearying
effect, which is increased by the sameness and mono-
tony of the subject-matter of the Epistles. The names
are different, the circumstances are changed according
as the several stories demand, but the theme is ever the
same--love, now angry and full of reproaches, now ten-
der and condescending to entreaty. Nor is that love
the "maiden passion" which has supplied in mod-
ern times the theme of poems and romances without
number. It is the fierce emotion, guilty or wrathful,
though sometimes, it must be allowed, melting into
genuine pathos and tenderness, of betrayed maidens
and outraged wives. But, on the other hand, though
the theme is the same, the variety of expression is end-
\ less. The skill with which Ovid continues, again and
again, to say the same thing without repeating him-
self, is astonishing. In this respect no poet has ever
shown himself more thoroughly a master of his art.
Feeling, too, real though not elevated, often makes it-
self felt in the midst of the artificial sentiment; if the
style is disfigured with conceits, it is always exquisitely
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? THE LOVE-POEMS. 23
polished; the language is universally easy and trans-
parent, and the verse an unbroken flow of exquisite
melody.
Of all the Epistles, the one which for purity and ten-
derness most commends itself to our taste, is that ad-
dressed by the Thessalian princess Laodamia to her
husband Protesilaus. He had joined the expedition
of the Greeks against Troy, and was the destined
victim of the prophecy which foretold the death of the
Greek chieftain who should be the first to leap from
the ships on to the Trojan shore. Eeaders of "Words-
worth will remember the beautiful poem in which he
has treated that part of the legend which relates how
Jove granted to the prayers of the widowed queen
that her hero should for a brief space of time revisit
the earth. Laodamia had heard that her husband and
his companions were detained at Aulis by contrary
winds. '"Why had not the winds been contrary when
he left his home? They had been too favourable--
favourable for the sailor, not for the lover. As long
as she could see, she had watched the departing sails.
"When they vanished, she had seemed to pass from life,
and could wish that she never had been recalled--for
her, life was sorrow. How could she wear her royal
robes while her husband was enduring the toil and
wretchedness of war? Accursed beauty of Paris that
had wrought such woe! Accursed vengeance of Mene-
laus that would be fatal to so many! How foolish the
enterprise of the Greeks! Surely the man who had
dared to carry off the daughter of Tyndarus would be
able to keep her. And there was some dreadful
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? 24 0 VID.
Hector of whom she had heard; let Protesilaus be-
ware of him. Let him always fight as one who re-
membered that there was a wife waiting for him at
home. It was Menelaus who had been wronged; let
it be Menelaus who should exact vengeance. A rumour
had reached her that the first chief to touch Trojan
soil must fall . Let Protesilaus be careful not to be
he. Eather let his be the last of the thousand ships
--the last in going, but the first to return. Now she
mourned for him night and day. The dreams hi
which she hoped to meet her husband did but bring
back his pale image. This made her pray to the gods
and burn incense on every altar in Thessaly. "When
would he return and tell the tale of his deeds? But
the hope suggested the dreadful thought of Troy and
the dangers of the sea. The sea, indeed, seemed to
forbid their journey. If it was so, what madness to
go! The delay was not an accident; it was an inti-
mation from heaven. Let them return while they
could. But no! She will recall the wish. She will
pray for favourable winds. If only it was not so far
away! ' And then she contrasts the sorrows of her own
loneliness with what she cannot but think the happier
lot of those who were shut up in the walls of Troy:--
j"Ah! Trojan women (happier far than we),
Fain in your lot would I partaker be!
If ye must mourn o'er some dead hero's bier,
And all the dangers of the war are near,
With you at least the fair and youthful bride
May arm her husband, in becoming pride;
Lift the fierce helmet to his gallant brow,
And, with a trembling hand, his sword bestow;
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