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OVID [PUBLIUS OvID1us NASO] (43 B.C.–...
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See also:OVID [PUBLIUS OvID1us NASO] (43 B.C.–A.D. 17)
, See also:Roman poet, the last of the Augustan See also:age, was See also:born in 43 B.C., the last See also:year of the See also:republic, the year of the See also:death of See also:Cicero
.
Thus the only See also:form of See also:political See also:life known to See also:Ovid was that of the See also:absolute See also:rule of See also:Augustus and his successor
.
His See also:character was neither strengthened nor sobered, like that of his older contemporaries, by See also:personal recollection of the crisis through which the republic passed into the See also:empire
.
There is no sense of political freedom in his writings
.
The spirit inherited from his ancestors was that of the See also:Italian See also:country districts, not that of See also:Rome
.
He was born on the loth of See also: He is said to have attended these lectures eagerly, and to have shown in his exercises that his gift was poetical rather than oratorical, and that he had a distaste for the severer processes of thought . Like See also:Pope, "he lisped in See also:numbers,"3 and he wrote and destroyed many verses before he published anything . The earliest edition of the Amores, which first appeared in five books, and the Heroides were given by him to the See also:world at an early age . " See also:Virgil," he informs us, " he had only seen "; but Virgil's friend and contemporary See also:Aemilius See also:Macer used to read his didactic poems to him; and even the fastidious See also:Horace some- Trist. iv. to . 13 . 2 Am. i . 3 . 10 . 3 Trist. is'. to . 26 " et quod temptabam scribere, versus erat." times delighted his ears with the See also:music of his See also:verse . He had a See also:close See also:bond of intimacy with the younger poets of the older See also:generation—Tibullus, whose death he laments in one of the few pathetic pieces among his earlier writings, and Propertius, to whom he describes himself as See also:united in the close ties of comrade-See also:ship . The name of See also:Maecenas he nowhere mentions . The See also:time of his influence was past when Ovid entered upon his poetical career . But the See also:veteran politician Messalla, the friend of Tibullus, together with his powerful son See also:Cotta Messallinus and See also:Fabius See also:Maximus, who are mentioned together by Juvenal4 along with Maecenas as types of munificent patrons of letters, and other influential persons whose names are preserved in the Epistles from See also:Pontus, encouraged his See also:literary efforts and extended to him their support . He enjoyed also the intimacy of poets and literary men, chiefly of the younger generation, whose names he enumerates in Ex Ponto, iv . 16, though, with the exception of Domitius See also:Marsus and Grattius, they are scarcely more than names to us . With the older poet, Macer, he travelled for more than a year . Whether this was immediately after the completion of his education, or in the See also:interval between the publication of his earlier poems and that of the See also:Medea and Ars amatoria is unknown, but it is in his later See also:works, the See also:Fasti and See also:Meta-morphoses, that we chiefly recognize the impressions of the scenes he visited . In one of the Epistles from Pontus (ii. to) to his See also:fellow-traveller there is a vivid See also:record of the pleasant time they had passed together . See also:Athens was to a Roman then what Rome is to an educated Englishman of the See also:present day . Ovid speaks of having gone there under the influence of literary See also:enthusiasm, and a similar impulse induced him to visit the supposed site of See also:Troy . The two See also:friends saw together the illustrious cities of See also:Asia, which had inspired the enthusiasm of travel in See also:Catullus, and had become See also:familiar to Cicero and Horace during the years they passed abroad . They spent nearly a year in See also:Sicily, which attracted him, as it had attracted See also:Lucretius' and Virgil,e by its manifold See also:charm of See also:climate, of See also:sea-See also:shore and inland scenery, and of legendary and poetical association . He recalls with a fresh sense of See also:pleasure the incidents of their tour, and the endless delight which they had in each other's conversation . We would gladly See also:exchange the record of his life of pleasure in Rome for more of these recollections . The highest type of classic Roman culture shows its See also:affinity to that of See also:modern times by nothing more clearly than the enthusiasm. for travel among lands famous for their natural beauty, their monuments of See also:art and their See also:historical associations . When settled at Rome, although a public career leading to senatorial position was open to him, and although he filled various See also:minor judicial posts and claims to have filled them well, he had no ambition for such distinction, and looked upon pleasure and poetry as the occupations of his life . He was three times married; when little more than a boy to his first wife, whom he naively describes as unworthy of himself:7 but he was soon separated from her and took a second wife, with whom his See also:union, although through no See also:fault of hers, did not last See also:long . She was probably the mother of his one daughter . Later he was joined to a third wife, of whom he always speaks with See also:affection and respect . She was a See also:lady of the See also:great See also:Fabian See also:house, and thus connected with his powerful See also:patron Fabius Maximus, and was a friend of the empress Livia . It therefore seems likely that he may have been admitted into the intimacy of the younger society of the See also:Palatine, although in the midst of his most fulsome flattery he does not claim ever to have enjoyed the favour of Augustus . His liaison with his See also:mistress See also:Corinna, whom he celebrates in the Amores, took See also:place probably in the See also:period between his first and second, or between his second and third marriages . It is doubtful whether Corinna was, like Catullus' Lesbia, a lady of recognized position, or whether she belonged to 4 Juv. vii . 95 . Lucret. i . 726 " quae cum magna modis multis See also:miranda videtur gentibus humanis regio visendaque fertur." 6 Sueton . (See also:Donatus), Vita Virg . 9 " quamquam secessu Campaniae Siciliaeque plurimum uteretur . ' 7 Trist. iv. to . 69-70 . the same class as the Chloes and Lalages of Horace's See also:artistic See also:fancy . If we can See also:trust the poet's later apologies for his life, in which he states that he had never given occasion for any serious See also:scandal, it is probable that she belonged to the class of libertinae . However that may be, Ovid is not only a less See also:constant but he is a less serious See also:lover than his great predecessors Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius . His See also:tone is that either of See also:mere sensuous feeling or of See also:irony . In his See also:complete emancipation from all See also:restraint he goes beyond them, and thus reflects the tastes and spirit of fashionable Rome between the years 20 B.C. and the beginning of our era . Society was then See also:bent simply on amusement; and, as a result partly of the loss of political interests, See also:women came to See also:play a more important and brilliant part in its life than they had done before . Julia, the daughter of the See also:emperor, was by her position, her wit and beauty, and her reckless dissipation, the natural See also:leader of such a society . But the See also:discovery of her intrigue (2 B.C.) with See also:Iulus See also:Antonius, the son of See also:Mark Antony, was deeply resented by Augustus as being at once a See also:shock to his affections and a See also:blow to his policy of moral reform . Julia was banished and disinherited; Antonius and her many lovers were punished; and the Roman world awoke from its See also:fool's See also:paradise of pleasure . Nearly coincidently with this scandal appeared Ovid's Ars amatoria, perhaps the most immoral See also:work ever written by a See also:man of See also:genius, though not the most demoralizing, since it is entirely See also:free from morbid sentiment . By its brilliancy and heartlessness it appealed to the prevailing See also:taste of the fashionable world; but its See also:appearance excited deep resentment in the mind of the emperor, as is shown by his See also:edict, issued ten years later, against the See also:book and its author . Augustus had the art of dissembling his anger; and Ovid appears to have had no See also:idea of the See also:storm that was gathering over him . He still continued to enjoy the society of the See also:court and the fashionable world; he passed before the emperor in the See also:annual procession among the ranks of the See also:equites; and he See also:developed a richer vein of genius than he had shown in his youthful See also:prime . But he was aware that public See also:opinion had been shocked, or professed to be shocked, by his last work; and after See also:writing a See also:kind of See also:apology for it, called the Remedia amoris, he turned to other subjects, and wrote during the next ten years the Metamorphoses and the Fasti . He had already written the Heroides, in which he had imparted a modern and romantic See also:interest to the heroines of the old See also:mythology,' and a tragedy, the Medea, which must have afforded greater See also:scope for the dramatic and psychological treatment of the See also:passion with which he was most familiar . In the Fasti Ovid assumes the position of a See also:national poet2 by imparting poetical life and interest to the ceremonial observances of the Roman See also:religion; but it is as the brilliant narrator of the romantic tales that were so strangely blended with the realistic See also:annals of Rome that he succeeds in the part assumed by him . The Metamorphoses is a narrative poem which recounts legends in which the miraculous involved transformations of shape . Beginning with the See also:change from See also:Chaos to Cosmos, legends first See also:Greek and then Roman are passed in See also:review, concluding with the See also:metamorphosis of See also:Julius See also:Caesar into a See also:star and a promise of See also:immortality to Augustus . The long See also:series of stories, which consist to a large extent of tales of the love adventures of the gods with See also:nymphs and the daughters of men, is strongly tinged with Alexandrine influence, being in fact a See also:succession of epyllia in the Alexandrine manner . This work, which Ovid regards as his most serious claim to immortality, had not been finally revised at the time of his disgrace, and in his despair he burnt it; but other copies were in existence, and when he was at Tomi it was published at Rome by one of his friends . He often regrets that it had not received his final revision . The Fasti also was broken off by his See also:exile, after the publication of the first six books, treating of the first six months of the year . Ovid assigns two causes for his banishment, his Ars amatoria, and an actual offence.3 What this was is not known, but his ' The essentially modern character of the work appears in his making a heroine of the time of the Trojan war speak of visiting " learned " Athens (Heroid. ii . 83) . 2 " Animos ad publica carmina flexi " (Trist. v . I . 23) . 3 Trist. ii . 207.frequent references to it enable us toconjecture its character . He tells us that there was no See also:breach of law on his part; he distinctly disclaims having been concerned in any treasonable See also:plot: his fault was a See also:mistake of See also:judgment (See also:error), an unpremeditated See also:act of folly . He had been an unintentional See also:witness of some culpable act committed by another or others—of some act which nearly affected the emperor, and the mention of which was likely to prove offensive to him . Ovid himself had reaped no personal gain from his conduct . Though his See also:original act was a pardonable error, he had been prevented by timidity from atoning for it subsequently by taking the straightforward course . In a See also:letter to an intimate friend, to- whom he had been in the See also:habit of confiding all his secrets, he says that had he confided this one he would have escaped condemnation.4 In writing to another friend he warns him against the danger of courting too high society . This offence, which excited the anger of Augustus, was connected in some way with the publication of the Ars amatoria, since that fact was recited by the emperor in his See also:sentence . All this points to his having been mixed up in a scandal affecting the imperial family, and seems to connect him with one event, coincident with the time of his disgrace (A.D. q), the intrigue of the younger Julia, granddaughter of Augustus, with D . Silanus, mentioned by See also:Tacitus.5 Augustus deeply See also:felt these family scandals, looking upon them as acts of See also:treason and See also:sacrilege . Julia was banished to the See also:island of Trimerus, off the See also:coast of See also:Apulia . Silanus withdrew• into voluntary exile . The chief See also:punishment See also:fell on Ovid, who was banished . The poet at the worst could only have been a confidant of the intrigue; but Augustus must have regarded him and his works as, if not the corrupter of the age, at least the most typical representative of that corruption which had tainted so direly even the imperial family . Ovid's form of banishment was the mildest possible (relegatio); it involved no deprivation of civic rights, and See also:left him the See also:possession of his See also:property . He was ordered to remove to the See also:half-Greek, half-barbaric town of Tomi, near the mouth of the See also:Danube . He reccunts vividly the agony of his last See also:night in Rome, and the hardships of his See also:November voyage down the Adriatic and up the Gulf of See also:Corinth to Lechaeum, where he crossed the See also:isthmus and took ship again from Cenchreae to See also:Samothrace, whence in the following See also:spring he proceeded over-See also:land through See also:Thrace to his destination . For eight years he See also:bore up in his dreary solitude, suffering from the unhealthiness of the climate and the constant alarm of inroads of barbarians . In the See also:hope of procuring a remission of his punishment he wrote poetical complaints, first in the series of the five books of the Tristia, sent successively to Rome, addressed to friends whose names he suppresses; afterwards in a number of poetical epistles, the Epistulae ex Polito, addressed by name to friends who were likely to have influence at court . He believed that Augustus had softened towards him before his death, but his successor Tiberius was inexorable to his appeals . His chief See also:consolation was the exercise of his art, though as time goes on he is painfully conscious of failure in See also:power . But although the works written by him in exile lack the finished art of his earlier writings, their personal interest is greater . They have, like the letters of Cicero to See also:Atticus, the See also:fascination exercised by those works which have been given to the world under the See also:title of Confessions; they are a sincere literary expression of the See also:state of mind produced by a unique experience—that of a man, when well advanced in years but still retaining extraordinary sensibility to pleasure and See also:pain, withdrawn from a brilliant social and intellectual position, and See also:cast upon his own resources in a place and among See also:people affording the dreariest contrast to the brightness of his previous life . How far these confidences are to be regarded as equally sincere expressions of his affection or admiration for his correspondents is another question . Even in those addressed to his wife, though he speaks of her with affection and respect, there may perhaps be detected a certain See also:ring of insincerity in his conventional comparisons of her to the Penelopes and Laodamias of See also:ancient See also:legend . Had she been a See also:Penelope or Laodamia she would have accompanied him in 4 Trist. iii . 6 . 11 . 5 See also:Ann. iii . 24 . his exile, as we learn from Tacitus was done by other wives' in the more evil days of which he wrote the record . The letters, which compose the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, are addressed either to his wife, the emperor, or the See also:general reader, or to his patrons and friends . To his patrons he writes in a vein of supplication, beseeching them to use their influence on his behalf . To his rather large circle of intimate acquaintances he writes in the See also:language of familiarity, and often of affectionate regard; he seeks the sympathy of some, and speaks with bitterness of the coldness of others, and in three poems2 he complains of the relentless hostility of the enemy who had contributed to procure his exile, and whom he attacked in the See also:Ibis . There is a See also:note of true affection in the letter to the young lyric poetess Perilla; of whose genius and beauty he speaks with See also:pride, and whose poetic talents he had fostered by friendly See also:criticism.' He was evidently a man of See also:gentle and genial See also:manners; and, as his active mind induced him to learn the language of the new people among whom he was thrown, his active interest in life enabled him to gain their regard and various marks of See also:honour . One of his last acts was to revise the Fasti, and re-edit it with a See also:dedication to Germanicus . The closing lines of the Epistulae ex Ponto See also:sound like the despairing sigh of a drowning man who had long struggled alone with the waves: " Omnia perdidimus: tantummodo vita relicta est, Praebeat ut sensum materiamque mali." Shortly after these words were written he died in his sixty-first year in A.D . 17, the See also:fourth year of the reign of Tiberius . The temperament of Ovid, as indicated in his writings, has more in See also:common with the suppleness of the later Italian than with the strength and force of the ancient Roman . That See also:stamp of her own character and understanding which Rome impressed on the genius of those other races which she incorporated with herself is fainter in Ovid than in any other great writer . He ostentatiously disclaims the manliness which in the republican times was regarded as the birthright not of See also:Romans only but of the Sabellian races from which he sprang . He is as devoid of dignity in his See also:abandonment to pleasure as in the weakness with which he meets calamity . He has no See also:depth of serious conviction, no vein of sober reflection, and is sustained by no great or elevating purpose . Although the beings of a supernatural world fill a large place in his writings, they appear stripped of all sanctity and See also:mystery . It is difficult to say whether the tone of his references to the gods and goddesses of mythology implies a kind of half-believing return to the most childish elements of paganism, or is simply one of mocking unbelief . He has absolutely no reverence, and consequently inspires no reverence in his reader . With all a poet's feeling for the life, variety and subtlety of nature, he has no sense of her mystery and See also:majesty . The love which he celebrates is sensual and superficial, a See also:matter of vanity as much as of passion . He prefers the piquant attraction of falsehood and fickleness to the charm of truth and constancy . Even where he follows the Roman tendencies in his art he perverts them . The Fasti is a work conceived in the prosaic spirit of Roman antiquarianism . It is redeemed from being prosaic by the picturesqueness and vivacity with which the legends are told . But its conception might have been more poetical if it had been penetrated by the religious and patriotic spirit with which Virgil invests ancient ceremonies, and the See also:mysticism with which he accepts the revelations of See also:science . In this respect the contrast is great between the reverential treatment which the trivialities of legend and science receive in the Georgics and Aeneid, and the literal definiteness of the Fasti . These defects in strength and gravity show a corresponding result in Ovid's writings . Though possessing See also:diligence, per-severance and literary ambition, he seems incapable of conceiv- ' Tac . Hist. i . 3 " comitatae profugos liberos matres, secutae maritos in exilia coniuges." 2 Trist. iii. ii, iv . 9, v . 8 . Trist. iii . 7 . Perilla has by many been erroneously supposed to have been the poet's own daughter; but this is impossible, since she is described as young and still living under her mother's roof, whereas at the time of Ovid's exile his daughter was already married to her second See also:husband.See also:ing a great and serious whole . Though a keen observer of the superficial aspects of life, he has added few great thoughts to the intellectual heritage of the world.' But with all the levity of his character he must have had qualities which made him, if not much esteemed, yet much liked in his own day, and which are apparent in the genial amiability of his writings . 
He claims for himself two virtues highly prized by the Romans, fides and candor—the qualities of social honour and kindly sincerity . There is no indication of anything See also:base, ungenerous or morose in his relations to others . Literary candor, the generous appreciation of all sorts of excellence, he possesses in a remarkable degree . He heartily admires everything in literature, Greek or Roman, that had any merit . In him more than any of the Augustan poets we find words of admiration applied to the See also:rude genius of See also:Ennius and the majestic style of See also:Accius . It is by him, not by Virgil or Horace, that Lucretius is first named and his sublimity is first acknowledged.' The See also:image of Catullus that most haunts the imagination is that of the poet who died so early " hedera iuvenalia cinctus Tempora," as he is represented by Ovid coming to meet the shade of the young Tibullus in See also:Elysium.' To his own contemporaries, known and unknown to fame, he is as liberal in his words of recognition ? He enjoyed society too in a thoroughly amiable and unenvious spirit . He lived on a friendly footing with a large circle of men of letters, poets, critics, grammarians, &c., but he showed none of that sense of superiority which is See also:manifest in Horace's estimate of the " tribes of grammarians " and the poetasters of his day . Like Horace too he courted the society of the great, though probably not with equal See also:independence; but unlike Horace he expresses no contempt for the humbler world outside . With his irony and knowledge of the world it might have been expected that he would become the social satirist of his age . But he lacked the censorious and See also:critical See also:temper, and the admixture of See also:gall necessary for a successful satirist . In his exile he did retaliate on one enemy and persistent detractor in the Ibis, a poem written in See also:imitation of a similar work by See also:Callimachus; but the Ibis is not a. See also:satire, but an invective remarkable rather for recondite learning than for epigrammatic sting . But Ovid's chief personal endowment was his vivacity, and his keen interest in and enjoyment of life . He had no See also:grain of discontent in his See also:composition; no regrets for an ideal past, or longings for an imaginary future . The age in which he lived was, as he tells us, that in which more than any other he would have wished to live 8 He is its most gifted representative, but he does not rise above it . The great See also:object of his art was to amuse and delight it by the vivid picture he presented of its fashions and pleasures, and by creating a literature of See also:romance which reflected them, and which could stimulate the curiosity and fascinate the fancy of a society too idle and luxurious for serious intellectual effort . The sympathy which he felt for the love adventures of his contemporaries, to which he probably owed his fall, quickened his creative power in the composition of the Heroides and the romantic tales of the Metamorphoses . None of the Roman poets can people a purely imaginary world with such spontaneous fertility of fancy as Ovid . In See also:heart and mind he is inferior to Lucretius and Catullus, to Virgil and Horace, perhaps to Tibullus and Propertius; but in the power and range of imaginative See also:vision he is surpassed by no ancient and by few modern poets . This power of vision is the counterpart of his lively sensuous nature . He has a keener eye for the See also:apprehension of outward beauty, for the life and See also:colour and forms of nature, than any Roman or perhaps than any Greek poet . This power, acting upon the wealth of his varied See also:reading, gathered with eager curiosity and received into a singularly retentive mind, has enabled him to depict with consummate skill and sympathy legendary scenes of the most varied and picturesque beauty . If his tragedy, the ' There are found in him some exceptionally See also:fine expressions, such as Her. iii. io6 " qui bene See also:pro patria cum patriaque iacent "; and Met. vii . 20 " video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor." 5 Am. i . 15 . 19 if. a Am. iii . 9 . 61 . ' Ex Ponto, iv. i6 . S Ars amatoria, iii . I2I if . Medea, highly praised by ancient critics, had been preserved, we should have been able to See also:judge whether Roman art was capable of producing a great See also:drama . In many of the Heroides, and in several speeches scattered through his works, he gives See also:evidence of true dramatic creativeness . Unlike his great predecessor Catullus, he has little of the idyllic in his art, cr whatever of idyllic there is in it is lost in the rapid See also:movement of his narrative . But he is one, among the poets of all times, who can imagine a See also:story with the most vivid inventiveness and tell it with the most unflagging animation . The faults of his verse and diction are those which arise from the vitality of his temperament—too facile a flow, too great exuberance of See also:illustration . He has as little sense of the need of severe restraint in his art as in his life . He is not without mannerism, but he is quite unaffected, and. however far See also:short he might fall of the highest excellence of verse or style, it was not possible for him to be rough or harsh, dull or obscure . As regards the school of art to which he belongs, he may be described as the most brilliant representative of Roman Alexandrinism . The latter half of the Augustan age was, in its social and intellectual aspects, more like the Alexandrine age than any other era of antiquity . The Alexandrine age was like the Augustan, one of refinement and luxury, of outward magnificence and literary dilettantism flourishing under the fostering influence of an absolute See also:monarchy . Poetry was the most important See also:branch of literature cultivated, and the chief subjects of poetry were mythological tales, various phases of the passion of love, the popular aspects of science and some aspects of the beauty of nature . These two were the chief subjects of the later Augustan poetry . The higher feelings and ideas which found expression in the poetry of Virgil, Horace and the writers of an older generation no longer acted on the Roman world . It was to the private tastes and pleasures of individuals and society that Roman Alexandrinism had appealed both in the poetry of Catuilus, See also:Cinna, Calvus and their school, and in that of See also:Gallus, Tibullus and Propertius . Ovid was the last of this class of writers . His extant works fall naturally into three divisions, those of his youth, of See also:middle life and of his later years . To the first of these divisions belong the amatory poems: (1) the three books of Amores (originally five, but reduced in a later recension to three) See also:relating to his amours with his mistress Corinna; (2) the Medicamina formae, or, as it is sometimes called Medicamina faciei, a fragment of a See also:hundred lines on the use of cosmetics; (3) the three books of the Ars amatoria, rules for men and women by which they may gain the affections of the other See also:sex; (4) the Remedia amoris (one book), a kind of recantation of the Ars amatoria . To the second See also:division belong (5) the fifteen books of the Metamorphoses, and (6) the six books of the Fasti, which was originally intended to be in twelve books, but which breaks off the See also:account of the Roman See also:calendar with the month of See also:June . To the third division belong (7) the five books of the Tristia, (8) the Ibis, an invective against an enemy who had assisted to procure his fall, written in elegiac couplets probably soon after his exile; (9) the four books of Epistulae ex Ponta . Of these the first three were published soon after the Tristia, while the fourth book is a collection of scattered poems published by some friend soon after the author's death . The Halieutica is a didactic fragment in hexameters on the natural See also:history of fishes, of doubtful genuineness, though it is certain that Ovid did begin such a work at the close of his life.' In his extant works Ovid confined himself to two metres—the elegiac See also:couplet and the See also:hexameter . The great See also:mass of his poetry is written in the first; while the Metamorphoses and the Halieutica are composed in the second . Of the elegiac couplet he is the acknowledged See also:master . By fixing it into a See also:uniform See also:mould he brought it to its highest perfection; and the fact that the great mass of elegiac verse written subsequently has endeavoured merely to reproduce the See also:echo of his See also:rhythm is evidence of his pre-See also:eminence . In the See also:direct expression and illustration of feeling his elegiac See also:metre has more ease, vivacity and sparkle than that of any of his predecessors, while he alone has com- 1 Plin . Hist . Nat. xxxii . 152 . municated to it, without altering its essential characteristic of recurrent and See also:regular pauses, a fluidity and rapidity of movement which make it an admirable vehicle for pathetic and picturesque narrative It was impossible for him to give to the hexameter greater perfection, but he imparted to it also a new character, wanting indeed the See also:weight and majesty and intricate harmonies of Virgil, but rapid, varied, animated in complete See also:accord with the See also: |