Ovid Publius Ovidius Nasd 43 Bc-Ad 17

OVID [PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASD] (43 B.C.-A.D. 17), Roman poet, the last of the Augustan age, was born in 43 B.C., the last year of the republic. Thus the only form of political life known to Ovid was that of the absolute rule of Augustus and his suc cessor. He was born on March 20 at Sulmo, picturesquely situ ated among the mountains of the Abruzzi : its wealth of waters and natural beauties seem to have quickened in him that appre ciative eye for the beauties of nature which is one of the chief characteristics of his poems. Ovid, whose father was of eques trian family, belonged by birth to the same social class as Tibul lus and Propertius, that of old hereditary landowners ; but he was more fortunate than they in the immunity which his native dis trict enjoyed from the confiscations made by the triumvirs. He and his brother had been brought early to Rome for their education, where they attended the lectures of two most eminent teachers of rhetoric, Arellius Fuscus and Porcius Latro, to which influence is due the strong rhetorical element in Ovid's style. His father did his best to dissuade him from poetry, and to drive him into the legal profession.

The earliest edition of the Amores, which first appeared in 5 books, and the Heroides were given by him to the world at an early age. "Virgil," he informs us, "he had only seen"; but Vir gil's friend and contemporary Aemilius Macer used to read his didactic poems to him; and even the fastidious Horace some times delighted his ears with the music of his verse. He had a close bond of intimacy with the younger poets of the older genera tion—Tibullus, whose death he laments in one of the few pa thetic pieces among his earlier writings, and Propertius, to whom he describes himself as united in the close ties of comradeship. The name of Maecenas he nowhere mentions. The time of his influence was past when Ovid entered upon his poetical career. But the veteran politician Messalla, the friend of Tibullus, to gether with his powerful son Cotta Messallinus and Fabius Maxi mus and other influential persons whose names are preserved in the Epistles from Pontus supported him. 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 interval between the publication of his earlier poems and that of the Medea and Ars amatoria is unknown, but it is in his later works, the Fasti and Metamorphoses, that we chiefly recognize the impressions of the scenes he visited. In one of the Epistles from Pontus (ii. I o) to his fellow-traveller there is a vivid record of the pleasant time they had passed together. They visited Athens, of course, the Mecca of all artistic pilgrimages then; went on to the site of Troy, and through the cities of Asia Minor; and finally spent a year in Sicily.

Life in Rome.

When settled at Rome, although a public career leading to senatorial position was open to him, and although he filled various minor posts, he had no ambition for such dis tinction, 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 naïvely describes as unworthy of himself ; but he was soon separated from her and took a second wife, with whom his union also did not last long. She was probably the mother of his one daughter. Later he married a third, of whom he always speaks with affection and respect. She was a lady of the great Fabian house, and thus connected with his powerful patron Fabius Maximus, and was a friend of the em press Livia. It therefore seems likely that he may have been admitted into the intimacy of the younger society of the Palatine. His liaison with his mistress Corinna, whom he celebrates in the Amores, took place probably in the period between his first and second, or between his second and third marriages. Ovid is not only a less constant but he is a less serious lover than his great predecessors Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius. His tone is that either of mere sensuous feeling or of irony. In his com plete emancipation from all 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.