...

age, and so to anticipate his wants and weaknesses. Py. 94. caelibis .vacet, be left open for a widower's cares to approach him. Pr.96. prole, probably, by the conduct of my offspring. Pe., who considers it one of the most difficult ablatives in this author. Py. understands the force of sic to be, by your being all spared till his old age. May the happiness he feels in you cause him to enjoy his old age.

97. bene habet, are words of resignation. Pe. - 98. tota caterva = omnis turba meorum. – 99. surgite, sc. to testify. testes, her husband and children, probably; though Py. thinks it uncertain who are meant. — 100. dum, until the judges are satisfied and give judgment in her favor and the reward her life has earned. So Pe., who interprets humus, the earth, as including the under world. Py. explains the line, "while my memory is even now cherished on earth. She regards the reward bestowed upon her by the grateful earth as conferred at once, even while the witnesses are lamenting her loss to those above." IOI. moribus... patuit, some have even ascended to the gods by their virtue: all that I aspire to is, that my shade may have a triumphal entry into rest. Py. merendo, by my deserts. 102. equis. So Hertzb. and Py. after the Mss., and the verb vehantur is very strongly in favor of this. "The idea of a triumphal procession and a car of honor, so familiar to the Roman mind, is borrowed to express Cornelia's joyful conveyance to the regions of Elysium." Lachm., Müller, Kuinoel, and Pe. accept the emendation avis, a dative of the motion towards, to the abode of my distinguished ancestors, and take vehantur as used of the boat which conveys the good.

"No one can read this last elegy- the sweet swan-song of the bard-or listen to the solemn grandeur of its transmundane music, without acknowledging his lively sympathy with human suffering and human sorrow; his lofty appreciation of stainless purity; his almost Christian tenderness; and that deep wisdom that is born of a realization of the worthlessness of transient pleasures and the vanity of voluptuous dreams."-CRANSTOUN.

NOTES TO OVID.

P.

INTRODUCTION.

OVIDIUS NASO, of a wealthy equestrian family, was born in Sulmo, a city of the Peligni, in 43 B.C., the year of the death of Cicero. After a course of study in rhetoric, in preparation for practice at the bar, a tour to Athens and Asia Minor, and the holding of several unimportant judicial offices, he devoted himself exclusively to poetry, residing a portion of the time on his Pelignian estate, about ninety miles from Rome, but chiefly at the capital itself.

As a member of the literary circle of Messala, who had directed his early studies, he was on intimate terms with the poets and scholars of his time, particularly Horace, Propertius, Aem. Macer, and Bassus, and was held in high esteem in the court of Augustus, one of whose personal friends, Q. Fabius Maximus, was a generous patron of the poet. But for some unknown cause, respecting which there has been much speculation, he was, by a sentence of relegatio, in A.D. 8, compelled to remove to Tomi in lower Moesia on the Euxine, and to spend the rest of his life there in exile. His death occurred in A.D. 18, the same year as that of Livy.

The poems of Ovid, who was the fourth in the series of elegiac writers, and the most voluminous of Roman poets, may be arranged in three classes: Ist, those of his early life, which include the Heroides and his other amatory poems, in elegiac verse; 2d, those of his middle life, in which period he wrote on subjects of Greek mythology and Italian legends - the Metamorphoses and the Fasti; 3d, those written at Tomi, the most important of which are the five books of Tristia and the four books of Epistles from Pontus — ninety-six poems in elegiac verse. These last are chiefly occupied with descriptions of his experiences in exile, lamentations over the hardships of his lot, entreaties for a remission of his sentence, and appeals to influential persons in Rome to aid in securing this; and

though less perfect in diction and metre than his other writings, they are entirely free from impurity, and contain many passages of great poetic beauty.

The Heroides are imaginary letters from women of the heroic or legendary age to various heroes their husbands or lovers. Of the twenty-one epistles making up this collection, only the first fourteen are now considered certainly genuine, and the authorship of two or three of these is still a matter of dispute. These productions are ingenious in their structure, and are remarkable for their smoothness of versification.

“In the 'Arethusa' of Propertius (XIV) the scenes and incidents are laid in real life. Hence Ovid claims for himself the invention of this species of composition, though it is in fact merely a new form of the elegy. But the epistolary form bestows on it a propriety, interest, and animation, of which the elegy or even a well-conducted soliloquy in Tragedy is scarcely susceptible. The art of the poet is chiefly exhibited by opening the complaint at a period of time which affords scope for a display of the most tender sentiments as well as the most sudden and violent changes of passion." — DUNLOP,

"It was doubtless to his training in the schools of the rhetoricians that Ovid owed the wonderful variety he has been able to introduce into a set of subjects so similar in character, in which the universal passion is made to breathe from the mouths of Sappho or Oenone, Ariadne or Medea. If the poet has failed to catch the simplicity of the best heroic models, he has at least imbibed a portion of their purity and depth of feeling. The Loves of the Heroines is the most elevated and refined in sentiment of all elegiac compositions of the Romans." MERIVALE.

The Fasti, written in elegiac metre, is a poetical year-book or companion to and commentary upon the almanac, on the plan of one book for each month (cf. Fast. III, 57), though only six books (January to June) were finished at the time of Ovid's banishment. This portion of the work he revised at Tomi, but there is no reason to believe that he ever completed his original design. But cf. Trist. II, 549, et seqq. In correspondence with the contents of the Calendar, this work of Ovid consists of (a) a mention of the annual religious festivals (to the number of about forty), on the day of the month of the occurrence of each, with an account of their origin, their nature, significance, rites and ceremonies; (b) a mention of the time of the rising and setting of about thirty-five of the most important constellations, and of the passage of the sun through the signs of the zodiac, with an account of the myths explaining the

names and forms of these constellations and of the signs of the zodiac, also the legends accounting for the name of each of the months; (c) a mention of noted anniversaries on the day of their occurrence, such as, those of the dedication of many of the most celebrated temples and altars, with descriptions of their divinities, and those of memorable historical events, among them the banishment of the kings, the slaughter of the Fabii, the defeat at Trasymenus by Hannibal, the defeat and death of Hasdrubal, of Crassus by the Parthians, Caesar's victory over Juba, Caesar's death, Augustus' victory at Mutina, etc.

Thus the subject-matter, though it includes some of the Grecian myths, is chiefly a collection of legends relating to the primitive, religious, social, and civil institutions and customs of Rome, and of occurrences belonging to the period of its authentic history. And on all these subjects this work of Ovid is a storehouse of information respecting the early Roman character and the religious and civil polity of Rome which could be obtained from no other source.

The successive pieces are richly-colored pictures of the primitive life of the Italian race, of religious observances, social customs, and historic occurrences in the day of austere homely virtues and heroic lives, arranged, however, in an order determined by the successive days of the calendar, and therefore distinct from each other, and having only an artificial bond of union.

"For example: The sixth Book opens with the scene of the three goddesses, Juno, Juventas, and Concordia (jungens dea), presenting in turn their claims to give a name to the month, thus ingeniously bringing out the three theories of the etymology of June. Among the rest of its contents are accounts of the dedication of the temple of Juno Moneta and the career of Marcus Manlius (the first to drive the Gauls from the citadel), near whose house it stood, on the calends; the rising of the Hyades on the 2nd; the dedication of a temple to Fidius on the nones, and one to Mens (after the early defeats in the second Punic war) on the 8th; on the 9th the observance of the Vestalia with an account of Vesta and her worship, associated by the poet with tellus, and suggesting a description of the celebrated sphaera of Archimedes; the victory of Brutus in Spain and the destruction of Crassus by the Parthians on the same day. Later on a festival of Minerva on the ides; the rising of Orion on the 16th, the defeat of the Roman army at lake Trasymenus on the 23d; the gloomy picture relieved by the account of the defeat and death of Hasdrubal on the 24th; the occurrence of the Summer solstice on the 26th; and a concluding address to the Muses, whose statues were in a temple of Hercules dedicated on the 30th.

"By the dignity and beauty with which the time-honored and sacred festivals were described in this poem, a new charm was thrown around them. And its exhibition of the childlike faith, reverence, and sincerity of worship of the olden time, in so attractive a form, the greater impressiveness given to the religious rites by the historical setting in which they were placed and the information imparted about them, the portraits of patriotism and of private virtue, embodied in real life, drawn from the national history, combined to make the Fasti a didactic poem, of a very profitable kind. Never rising to the heights of heroic strains, this poem is 'the perfection of story-telling' in verse. Many parts of it are among the finest specimens of Ovid's composition."

Quintilian's comments upon this poet are as follows: Lascivus quidem in herois quoque Ovidius et nimium amator ingenii sui, laudandus tamen in partibus. Ovidii Medea videtur mihi ostendere, quantum ille vir praestare potuerit, si ingenio suo imperare quam indulgere maluisset. X, i, 88, 98. See also p. 196.

By modern scholars also, Ovid has been censured for failing to "prune the growths of his too luxuriant fancy," and criticised as too prolix, repetitious, and redundant, as deficient in masculine vigor and as aiming too much at mere rhetorical effect. These criticisms, however, apply chiefly to his earlier and his latest pieces. Such departures from the requirements of a pure and correct taste are found in a less degree in the Fasti than in his other works, partly because of the nature of its plan, partly because his judgment and taste, when he wrote it, were mature and at their best.

Notwithstanding his defects, all concede to him an unlabored gracefulness of style, a wealth of choice diction, a harmony and ease of versification, unequalled by any other Roman poet. Niebuhr considers him a master of language and rhythm, and the only Roman poet who attained complete facility of versification; and asserts that in Ovid's hands the elegiac metre reached its highest point of excellence.

"In point of originality, variety, and ease, he may be called the greatest of the Roman poets. His characteristics as a poet are exuberance of imagination, an overfondness for description, gracefulness, and taste rather than natural warmth and sensibility, a luxuriant fulness and freedom of clear picturesque diction, often marred by the excess of contrast, antithesis, and point, a perfect smoothness and simplicity of construction, and a faultless flow of easy, harmonious versification, especially in the elegiac metre, which in his hands reached its highest point of perfection." PINDER.