' OVIBUS. See Mustz-Ox, ante.
O'VID (Pvin.rrs Ovintos NAso), the descendant of an old equestrian family, wash. on Mau. 20. 43 tic.. at Sulmo, in the country of the Peligni. lie was educated for the bar, and under his masters, Arellins Fnscus and Porch's Latro, he became highly proficient in the art of declamation. His genius, however, was essentially that of the poet, and the Wrilillg of verses began to absorb the time tint sl.intild have been spent in the study of jorisprodenee. His father, having hut a scanty p-driniony to divide between two tons. discouraged this tendency in the younger, hut in vain. By the death of his elder brother. Ovid inherits 1 all his father's property. and went, for the completion of his education. to Athens, where lie acquired a perfect mastery of the Greek langtiage. Ile afterwards made a tour in Asia and Sicily along with the port Macey. It is uncertain whether, On his return to Home, lie ever practiced as advocate. Although by birth entitled to aspire to the dignity, he never enter( it the senate; his Weakness of body and indolence or habit prevented him from ever rising higher than from the position of triumvir cap:talk to that of a decenivir, who convened and presided over the court of the eentumeiri. While his public life WAS DelillpOrlarlt. his private was that of a gay and Event ions man of letters. The restraint of the matrimonial tic was always distasteful to him; t :vice married in early life, lie soon divorced each of his wives: while he carried on an intrigue with a lady whom he celebrated as Corinna. and who is believed to have Leen no other than Julia, the accomplished daughter of Augustus. Before his thirtieth yenr. he married a third tinge. and became the father of Perilla, of whom he was tenderly fond. Up till his fiftieth year. lie resided chiefly at Route, in a house near the capitol. and occasionally visited his Peligaan estate. His society was much courted, and his large circle of distingnislied friends included Augustus and the imperial family. By an edict of the emperor, however, he was, in 9 A.D., commanded to leave Borne for Tom', a town Dear the delta of the Danube, and on the very limit of the empire. The sentence di not condemn him to an ex.-11;,m. but to a relef,atio—or, in other words, he did not lose his citizenship. nor was he cut oil from all hope of return. The cause of this sodden banish ment has long divided the opinion of reholArS, since the one mentioned in the edict—the publication of In Ara J1ni,n.,rau—was a mere pretext, the poem having been in circula tion for ton year,: before. His intrigue with Julia, or with Julia's daughter, and the eon s' atent displeasure of Ali oisms or of Livia, have been adduced with yrrious degrees of plausibility. as the cause of a sentence to which Ovid himself only rn3 refers. The misery of his life on the inhospitable and barbarous shore of the Euxine is com aneutsrated by the poems in the composition of which lie found his solace. He became
a favorite with the Tomilm, whose language he learned, and before wheat he publicly recited some poems in honor of Augustus. But his devotion to the emperor, and the entreaties addressed to the imperial court by himself and his friends, failed to shorten the term, or to change the scene of his banishment; so he died, an honored citizen of Toni, 18 A.D., DI his sixtieth year. ills works which have conic down to us, either in whole or in part, appeared in the following order: 1. elmoruot Libri ILL, a revised and abridged edition of an early series. 2. Twenty-one .Episto Ile•oittunt. 3. The Ars Aniawria. 4. Remcdia Amoris. 5. iVux, the remonstrance of a against the ill treatment it receives from the wayfarer, and even from its owner. 6. littaueurphoscon Libri X V. This is deservedly Ovid's best-known work. It seems to have been written between the poet's fortieth and fiftieth years, and consists of all the transformations recorded in legend from the creation down to the time of Julius Cwsar, whose change into a star forms the last of the series. 7. lastorunt Libri XII., the first six of which are that remain. The poem is a Boman calendar versitkd, and describes the appropriate festivals and mythic legends from materials supplied by the old annalists. 8. '.1')-istiunk Libri V., written in elegiac meter, during the first four years of the poet's banishment. They are mainly descriptive of his misetabie fate, and ate full of appeals to the clemency of Augustus. 9. Epistolarune ex Polito Libri IV., also written in elegiac meter, and similar in substance to the Triatia. 10. Ibis, a short satire against some traducer of the poet's. 11. Consuiatio ad Liviant Auffustam, held spurious by sonic critics. 12. Medi: camina Iaciei and liaiieuticoo, dubiously genuine, and of which we possess but fragments. Several of his works arc entirely lost, the one best known to antiquity being Attica, a tragedy.
1 lie poetical genius of Ovid has always been admired. A masterly facility of corn position, a fancy vigorous and rarely at Inuit, a fine eye for color, and a versification very musical in its How, are the merits which have made him a favorite of peels from Milton downwards, in spite of his occasional slovenliness and falsity of thought. The Lest editions of Ovid's entire woiles are B111131211111'S (Amsterdam, 1i27), and the recent out of Merkel; while excellent commentaries on one or other of his poems have been published by Haupt, Ramsay, and Paley. A good translation of his iletaineiThoscs is that edited by Garth, with the assistance of Dryden. Addison, Congreve, and others; while special passages of the same poem have been admirably rendered by Mr. D'Arey Thompson.