Ovid Publius Ovidius Nasd 43 Bc-Ad 17

Works.

His extant works fall naturally into three divisions, those of his youth, of middle life and of his later years. To the first of these divisions belong the amatory poems: (I) the three books of Amores (originally five, but reduced later to three) re la ting to his amours with his mistress Corinna ; the Heroidum Epistolae; (3) the Medicamina formae, a fragment of zoo lines on the use of cosmetics; (4) the three books of the Ars amatoria; (5) the Remedia amoris (one book), a kind of recantation of the Ars amatoria. To the second division belong (6) the fifteen books of the Metamorphoses, and (7) the six books of the Fasti, which was originally intended to be in twelve books, but which breaks off the account of the Roman calendar with the month of June. To the third division belong (8) the five books of the Tristia, (9) the Ibis, an invective against an enemy who had assisted to procure his fall, written in elegiac couplets probably soon after his exile; (io) the four books of Epistulae ex Ponto. 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 history of fishes, of doubt ful 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 couplet and the hexameter. The great 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 master. By fixing it into a uniform 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 echo of his rhythm is evidence of his pre-eminence. In the direct expression and illustration of feel ing his elegiac metre has more ease, vivacity and sparkle than that of any of his predecessors, while he alone has communicated to it, without altering its essential characteristic of recurrent and 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 per fection, but he imparted to it also a new character, rapid, varied, animated in complete accord with the swift, versatile and fervid movement of his imagination. One other proof he gave of his irrepressible energy by composing during his exile a poem in the Getic (Gothic) language in praise of the imperial family, the loss of which, whatever it may have been to literature, is much to be regretted in the interests of philology.

It was in Ovid's writings that the world of romance and wonder created by Greek imagination was first revealed to modern times. His influence was first felt in the literature of the Italian Renais sance. But in the most creative periods of English literature he seems to have been read more than any other ancient poet, not even excepting Virgil, and it was on minds such as those of Mar lowe, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden that he acted most powerfully. His influence is equally unmistakable during the classical era of Addison and Pope. The most successful Latin verse of modern times has been written in imitation of him; the faculty of literary composition and feeling for ancient Roman culture has been largely developed in the great schools of Eng land and France by the writing of Ovidian elegiacs. His works

afforded also abundant stimulus and materials to the great paint ers who flourished during and immediately after the Renaissance. Thus his first claim on the attention of modern readers is the influence which he has exercised on the development of literature and art ; for this, if for no other reason, his works must always retain an importance second only to those of Virgil and Horace.

He is interesting further as the sole contemporary exponent of the last half of the Augustan age, the external aspects and inner spirit of which is known from the works, not of contempor ary historians or prose-writers, but from its poets. The successive phases of Roman feeling and experience during this critical period are revealed in the poetry of Virgil, Horace and Ovid. Virgil throws an idealizing and religious halo around the hopes and aspirations of the nascent empire. Horace presents the most complete image of its manifold aspects, realistic, and ideal. Ovid reflects the life of the world of wealth and fashion under the influence of the new court, its material prosperity, its refine ment, its frivolity and its adulation. He is the last true poet of the great age of Roman literature, which begins with Lucretius and closes with him. But the type of genius of which he affords the best example is more familiar in modern Italian than in ancient Roman literature. While the serious spirit of Lucretius and Virgil reappeared in Dante, it is Ariosto who may be said to reproduce the light-hearted gaiety and brilliant fancy of Ovid.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-The

life of Ovid was first treated systematically by J. Masson, Ovidii vita ordine chronologico digesta (178o) (often reprinted, e.g., in Burmann's edition). Modern literature on this sub ject will be found in Teuffel's History of Roman Literature (Eng. trans., ed. 2), § 247, and S. G. Owen's edition of Tristia, bk. i. The very numerous manuscripts of Ovid are chiefly of late date, 13th to 'Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxii. 152.

15th century. The earliest and best are: for the Heroides a Paris ms. of the 9th, a Wolfenbiittel ms. of the 12th and an Eton fragmentary ms. of the nth century (the Epistida Sapphus, found in no early ms., is best preserved in a 13th-century Frankfort, and a 15th-century Har leian ms.) ; for the Amores, Ars amatoria, Remedia amoris, two Paris mss. of the 9th and loth century respectively ; for the Medicamina formae a Florence ms. (Marcianus) of the 11th; for the Metamor phoses two Florence mss. (Marcianus and Laurentianus) and a Naples ms., all of the 11th century ; for the Fasti two Vatican mss. of the loth and nth century ; for the Tristia a Florence ms. of the 11th; for the Epistulae ex Ponto a fragmentary Wolfenbiitten ms. of the 6th and a Hamburg and two Munich mss. of the 12th ; for the Ibis a Trinity College, Cambridge, ms. of the 12th ; for the Halieutica a Paris ms. of the 9th or loth, and a Vienna ms. of the 9th century. Important for the text of the Heroides and Metamorphoses is the interesting para phrase written in Greek by the monk Maximus Planudes in the latter half of the 13th century at Constantinople ; that of the Heroides is printed in Palmer's edition of the Heroides (1898) , that of the Meta morphoses in Lemaire's edition of Ovid, vol. v., edited by Boissonade. See also Gudeman, De Heroidum Ovidii codice Planudeo (Berlin, 1888).