OVIDIUS NASO, P., o-vid-i-us not-so, a celebrated Roman poet, born at Sulmo, 20th March, 43 B.C., of an old wealthy family, was educated for the bar under Arellius Fuscus and Porcius Latro, and afterwards at Athens. After travelling in Asia and Sicily with the poet Macer, Ovid returned to Rome and began to practise the law, and was made one of the Centunzviri, and then one of the presiding Dicenzviri ; but he soon deserted the courts for the cultivation of poetry, and his lively genius and fertile imagination speedily gained him admirers and the friend ship of the literati. He was intimate with Virgil, Horace, Propertius, and Tibullus, and liberally patronized by Augustus. He was divorced from his first and second wives, and had a daughter, Perilla, by his third wife, to whom he was attached ; but he lived in gaiety and licentiousness. He was suddenly banished to Tomi, on the Euxine, among the Getw, by the emperor Augustus, ostensibly on account of the licentiousness of his Ars Anuitoria, but as that had been published ten years before, the real cause must have been different : it is usually supposed to have been some intrigue (which he either was a party to or had accidentally learned) with the debauched Julia, Augustus's daughter. At Tomi, besides
learning the language of his barbarous neigh bours, he wrote several poems, some of which were addressed to Augustus, and full of servile adulation ; but the entreaties of himself and his friends failed to move the emperor to withdraw him from his place of banishment, where he died, A.D. at. His poems consist of Mild ntor,Ohoses (legends of transformations) in fifteen books of hexameters, the Fasti (a poetical calendar) in twelve books, of which six are lost, Feign; and five books of Tristia, Herdides, three books of Anares, three of Ars A mandi, the Anthris, the Ibis (a satire in imitation of Callimachus's poem), Epistola ex Ponta, and fragments of a tragedy, Media, and of other poems. His poetry is dis tinguished by great sweetness and elegance, but marred by frequent indelicacies.
Oxus, ox'-zcs, a great river of central Asia, flowing from Bactriana into the Caspian, sup posed to be the Araxes of Herodotus.
OzoLE, oz'-d-lee (see Locet).
a promontory in the south-east of Sicily.