Ovid

“ The temperament of Ovid, as indicated in his writings, has more in common with the suppleness of the later Italian than with the strength and force of the ancient Roman. That stamp of her own character and understanding which Rome impressed on the genius of those other races which she incorporated with herself is fainter in Ovid than in any other great writer. ”

“ The barbarous fellow triumphs, he can scarce postpone his joys, and never turns his eyes from her, as when the ravenous bird of Jove has dropped in his high eyrie some hare caught in his hooked talons; the captive has no chance to escape, the captor gloats over his prize. And now they were at the end of their journey, now, leaving the travel-worn ship, they had landed on their own shores; when the king dragged off Pandion's daughter to a hut deep hidden in the ancient woods: and there, pale and trembling and all fear, begging with tears to know where her sister was, he shut her up. ”

“ Love in the days of Ovid had nothing in it chivalrous or pure—it was carnal, sensual. The age in which he lived was morally polluted, and he was neither better nor worse than his contemporaries. Great and noble as was the character of the Roman matron, the charms of an accomplished female education were almost as rare as at Athens. She had sterling worth; but she had not often the power to fascinate those numbers who considered woman the minister to the pleasures of man. ”

“ Should you have been anxious to find this master of the commemorated art in this aforesaid month of April, you could easily have found him at Louvain, with leisure for printing, on Flint-hill. This I am anxious to say lest, if haply you are in doubt, you should remain ignorant of the fact. “Where he works there will be his wealth,” says Ovid. There also he lives so content with his lot and craft, under such happy auspices, and with so much favor of fortune, that I cannot be induced to believe that any impulse to depart, or even to think about it, can have come to him. ”

“ And while he was pursuing his frightful journey along darkening shades, he said, “Whether thou art a Goddess personally, or whether thou art but a woman most favoured by the Deities, to me shalt thou always be equal to a Divinity; I will confess, too, that I exist through thy kindness, who hast willed that I should visit the abodes of death, and that I should escape those abodes of death when beheld by me. For this kindness, when I have emerged into the breezes of the air, I will erect a temple to thee, and I will give thee the honours of frankincense.” ”

“ Nor is there a lack of sophistication greater than your rank;
It is likely that you too have felt Cupid’s bow:
Defend the standards of your own army in me.
If she asks how I am, say that I live in hope of night;
The soft wax marked by my persuasive hand tells the rest.
While I speak, time flies: deliver the tablets [to her] when she is quite free,
But nonetheless make sure she reads them immediately.
I order you to study her eye and brow as she reads:
Even from a silent countenance one can know the future. ”

“ What, wretched man, art thou about? 'Tis no wild beast; keep still thy weapons. Ah wretched me! by thy dart has the fair been pierced. "Ah me!" she cries aloud, "a loving heart hast thou pierced. That spot has ever retained the wound inflicted by Cephalus. Before my time I die, but injured by no rival; this, O Earth, will make thee light when I am entombed. Now is my breath departing in the breeze that I had thus suspected; I sink, alas! close my eyes with those dear hands."
In his sorrowing bosom he supports the dying body of his spouse, and with his tears he bathes her cruel wounds. ”

“ Ovid is now poor, but can still offer Germanicus his poetry. The second section (43-66) builds on 43-44 'nec tamen officio uatum per carmina facto / principibus res est aptior ulla uiris', and explains how verse brings immortality to great men and their deeds. The third section (67-78) offers culminating evidence for the value of poetry: Germanicus is himself a poet. Ovid moves from this to a final plea that Germanicus help his fellow-poet: once removed from Tomis, he will praise him in verse (79-88) . In the final distich of the poem, he asks Suillius to assist his prayer. ”

“ But while she prayd, for whome she prayd was kild. Then down she sate
Bereft of all hir children quite, and drawing to hir fate,
Among hir daughters and hir sonnes and husband newly dead.
Hir cheekes waxt hard, the Ayre could stirre no haire upon hir head.
The colour of hir face was dim and clearly voide of blood,
And sadly under open lids hir eyes unmoved stood.
In all hir bodie was no life. For even hir verie tung
And palat of hir mouth was hard, and eche to other clung. ”

“ But, imitator as he doubtless was, Ovid had a strong personal individuality, and all his poetry is marked with the genuine sentiment of his age and country. Perhaps we trace more of the real man in his Tristia and Ex Ponto, in which he is thrown entirely on his own resources, though in the depth of his affliction and the decline of his powers, than in the abler and more interesting works in which he owed we know not how much to the Greeks before him. ”

“ In such words as these did her father Jove address her: “Dost thou, my daughter, unaided, attempt to change the insuperable decrees of Fate? Thou, thyself, mayst enter the abode of the three sisters, and there thou wilt behold the register of future events, wrought with vast labour, of brass and of solid iron; these, safe and destined for eternity, fear neither the thundering shock of the heavens, nor the rage of the lightnings, nor any source of destruction. There wilt thou find the destinies of thy descendants engraved in everlasting adamant. ”

“ Michael Drayton, whose acquaintance he had made in London, addressed to him, soon after his arrival in Virginia, an attractive epistle in verse, urging him to ‘go on with Ovid as you have begun with the first five books.’ The completed translation appeared in London—printed by William Stansby—in 1626; it was dedicated to Charles I. William Marshall engraved the title-page; on the back of the dedication is a medallion portrait of Ovid. A biography of the poet with some of the laudations bestowed on him by early critics forms the preface; a full index concludes the volume. ”

“ Tr I viii is addressed to a friend who failed to visit Ovid after his disaster: he can scarcely believe his friend is human. In Tr III xi, Ovid asks his enemy why through his actions he makes his punishment even worse. Tr IV ix is a warning that if Ovid's enemy does not cease attacking him, he will through his poetry make his enemy's name infamous throughout the world. Tr V viii, the poem closest in theme to the present one, is a warning to his enemy that Fortune is changeable and Augustus merciful, so he and Ovid might one day change situations. ”

“ Thou controllest the neck of the lynxes yoked to thy chariot, graced with the painted reins. The Bacchanals and the Satyrs follow thee; the drunken old man, too, Silenus, who supports his reeling limbs with a staff, and sticks by no means very fast to his bending ass. And wherever thou goest, the shouts of youths, and together the voices of women, and tambourines beaten with the hands, and hollow cymbals resound, and the box-wood pipe, with its long bore. The Ismenian matrons ask thee to show thyself mild and propitious, and celebrate thy sacred rites as prescribed. ”

“ Equally interesting was the application of allegory to Ovid's Ars amatoria. The first translators treated this frivolous production as an authoritative treatise upon the art of winning love. So it was perhaps, only Ovid was amusing himself by making a parable of his youthful diversions. Mediaeval imitators changed the habits of the gilded youth of Rome to suit the society of their time. But they did more, being votaries of courtly love. Such love in the Middle Ages had its laws which were prone to deduce their lineage from Ovid's verses. ”

“ And therewith he presented her with the spoils: the skin with its bristling spikes, and the head remarkable for its huge tusks. She rejoiced in the gift and no less in the giver; but the others begrudged it, and an angry murmur rose through the whole company. Then two, the sons of Thestius, stretching out their arms, cried with a loud voice: " Let be, girl, and do not usurp our honours. And be not deceived by trusting in your beauty, lest this lovesick giver be far from helping you." ”

“ Having reached the age of manhood, young Ovid found public life utterly distasteful to him, and now that he was his own master, he gave loose rein to his poetic fancy and abandoned himself to the enjoyment of the gay social life of Rome. ”

“ Neither am I a Goddess, nor do thou honour a human being with the tribute of the holy frankincense. And, that thou mayst not err in ignorance, life eternal and without end was offered me, had my virginity but yielded to Phœbus, in love with me. But while he was hoping for this, while he was desiring to bribe me beforehand with gifts, he said: ‘Maiden of Cumæ, choose whatever thou mayst wish, thou shalt gain thy wish.’ I, pointing to a heap of collected dust, inconsiderately asked that as many birth-days might be my lot, as the dust contained particles. ”

“ Indeed, he read and re-read with an almost morbid interest both the Tristia and the Ex Ponto. 272 Ovid's images seemed applicable to himself. "I, too," he said, "am a neglected book gnawed by the moth," "a stream dammed up with mud," "a Phalaris, clapped, for nothing in particular, into the belly of a brazen bull." Like Ovid, too, he could and did pronounce his invective against the Ibis, the cause of all his troubles, that is to say, Rashid Pasha, whose very name was as gall and wormwood. ”

“ But at last, from immortal the gods shall make thee capable of death, and the three goddesses shall loose thy thread." Still other fates remained to tell; but suddenly she sighed deeply, and with flowing tears said: "The fates forestall me and forbid me to speak more. My power of speech fails me. Not worth the cost were those arts which have brought down the wrath of heaven upon me. I would that I had never known the future. Now my human shape seems to be passing. Now grass pleases as food; now I am eager to race around the broad pastures. I am turning into a mare, my kindred shape. ”

“ Herse is the cause of my coming; I pray thee to favor one in love.” Aglauros looks upon him with the same eyes with which she had lately looked upon the hidden mysteries of the yellow-haired Minerva, and demands for her agency gold of great weight; and, in the meantime, obliges him to go out of the house. The warlike Goddess turned upon her the orbs of her stern eyes, and drew a sigh from the bottom of her heart, with so great a motion, that she heaved both her breast and the Ægis placed before her valiant breast. ”

“ Minerva griev'd to see the Nymph succeed;
And now remembring the late impious Deed,
When, disobedient to her strict Command,
She touched the Chest with an unhallow'd Hand;
In big-swoln Sighs her inward Rage express'd,
That heav'd the rifing Ægis on her Breast;
Then sought out Envy in her dark Abode,
Defil'd with ropy Gore and Clots of Blood:
Shut from the Winds and from the wholesome Skies,
In a deep Vale the gloomy Dungeon lies,
Dismal and Cold, where not a Beam of Light
Invades the Winter, or disturbs the Night. ”

“ It was on this occasion that the poet Ovid learned that there is a limit to the liberties which a man of fashion can allow himself, and was forced to withdraw from his butterfly existence at Rome to the mosquito-haunted swamps at the mouth of the Danube, where he wrote poems more worthy of his dignity than any he had previously composed. ”

“ Thence he went to Rome for his higher education, where he acquired the usual accomplishments of the Roman youth. His studies fitted him for the profession of the advocate, but not so his nature. His one appearance at the bar taught him his utter unfitness for that pursuit, for his natural shyness on that occasion quite overcame him. As Ovid tells us of his own experience, the Muses wooed him irresistibly away from the practical pursuits of the "wordy forum," and claimed him for their own. Nature had marked him for a poet. ”

“ AT is my correction for the manuscripts' ET. The point that Ovid was famous even while alive is made by tum quoque later in the verse; the only meaning that could therefore be given to et mihi nomen is 'even I had a name, even when I was alive', which is inappropriate, since in this poem Ovid is not belittling his poetic talent.
At seems to be the obvious solution, giving the sense 'poets usually become famous after they die; I, however, was famous even while alive'. ”

“ Poetry was his resource during his stormy voyage. Poetry gained him the affection and esteem of his new fellow-citizens, notwithstanding their barbarism, [749] and procured him the honour of a tomb.
All the extant poems of Ovid, with the exception of the Metamorphoses, are elegiac. It was the metre then most in vogue. All the minor poets, his contemporaries, wrote in it. One of his earliest works is the “Amores,” a collection of elegies, most of which are addressed to his favourite mistress Corinna. Some of them, however, were composed subsequently to his Epistles and Art of Love. ”

“ But to return to Ovid; tho' I cannot vindicate him for his Points, I shall endeavour to mollify his Criticks, when they give him no Quarter for his Diction, and attack him so inflexibly for ending his Lines with Monosyllables, as —si quis —si non, &c. and as I think he cannot be excus'd more advantagiously, than by affirming, that where he has done it once, Virgil has twenty times
There are a great many Endings of Lines in this manner, and more indeed than seems consistent with the Majesty of Heroick Verse. ”