or Publius Ominus Naso, a celebrated Latin poet of the Augustan age, was a Roman knight, born at Sulmo, in the 43rd year before the Christian era. He studied rhetoric under Aurelius Fufius, and for some time frequented the bar. His progress in the study of eloquence was great, but the father's expectations were frustrated; his son was born a poet, and nothing could deter him from pursuing his natural inclination to write poetry, though he was often reminded that Homer lived and died in the greatest poverty. Every thing he wrote was expressed in poetical numbers, as he himself says, "Et quod tentabam ferire verum erat." A lively genius and a fertile imagination soon gained him admirers: the learned became his friends; Virgil, Propertius, Tibullus, and Horace, honoured him with their correspondence, and Augustus patronized him with the most unbounded liberality. These favours, however, were but momentary; for after having obtained the esteem of Augustus, he incurred his displeasure, and was banished to Tomos, a city on the Pontus Euxinus, near the mouth of the Danube, when he was 50 years of age. The true cause of this sudden exile is unknown. Some attribute it to a shameful amour with Livia the wife of Augustus, while others suppose that it arose from the knowledge which Ovid had of the unpardonable incest of the emperor with his daughter Julia. These reasons are indeed merely conjectural; the cause was of a very private and very secret nature, of which Ovid himself is afraid to speak. It was, however, something improper in the family and court of Augustus, as these lines seem to indicate:

Cur aliquid vidi? Cur nosxia lumina feci? Cur imprudenti cognita culpa mibi est?

Inscius Inscius Atheon vidit sine veste Dianam, Preeda fuit canibus non minus ille fuit.

Again, Inscia quod crimenviderunt lumina plector, Peccatunque oculos eft habuisse meum.

And in another place, Perdiderent cum me duo crimina, carmen & error, Alterius fatii culpa flenda mihi eft.

In his banishment, Ovid betrayed his pusillanimity in a great degree; and however affected and distressed his situation was, yet the flattery and impatience which he showed in his writings are a disgrace to his pen, and lay him more open to ridicule than to pity. Though he prostituted his pen and his time to adulation, yet the emperor proved deaf to all intreacies, and refused to listen to his most ardent friends at Rome who wished for his return. Ovid, who really wished for a Brutus to deliver Rome of her tyrannical Augustus, still continued his flattery even to meanest; and when the emperor died, he was so mercenary as to consecrate a small temple to the departed tyrant on the shore of the Euxine, where he regularly offered frankincense every morning. Tiberius proved as regardless as his predecessor to the intreacies which were made for the poet, and he died in the seventh or eighth year of his banishment, in the 57th year of his age. He was buried at Tomos. In the year 1508 of the Christian era, the following epitaph was discovered at Stain, in the modern kingdom of Austria.

Hic fitus eft wates quem Devi Caesaris ira Augusti patria cedere jufuit humo. Sepe miser voluit patriis occumbere terris, Sed frustra! Hunc illi fata decedere locum.

This, however, is an imposition to render celebrated an obscure corner of the world, which never contained the bones of Ovid. The greatest part of his poems are remaining. His Metamorphoses, in 15 books, are extremely curious, on account of the great variety of mythological facts and traditions which they relate, but they can have no claim to epic honours. In composing this the poet was more indebted to the then existing traditions, and to the theogony of the ancients, than the powers of his own imagination. His Fasti were divided into 12 books, like the constellations in the zodiac, but of these six are lost; and the learned world have reason to lament the loss of a poem which must have thrown so much light upon the religious rites and ceremonies, festivals and sacrifices, of the ancient Romans, as we may judge from the six that have survived the ravages of time and barbarity. His Tristia, which are divided into five books, contain much elegance and softness of expression; as also his Elegies on different subjects. The Heroides are nervous, spirited, and diffuse; the poetry is excellent, the language varied, but the expressions are often too wanton and indelicate, a fault which is very common with him. His three books Amorum, and the same number de Arte Amandi, with the other de Remedio Amoris, are written with peculiar elegance, and contain many flowery descriptions; but the doctrine which they hold forth is dangerous, and they are to be read with caution, as they seem to be calculated to corrupt the heart, and to sap the very foundations of virtue and morality. His Ibis, which is written in imitation of a poem of Callimachus of the same name, is a satyrical performance. Besides these, there are extant some fragments of other poems, and among these part of a tragedy called Medea. The talents of Ovid as a dramatic writer have been disputed, and some have remarked that he who is so often void of sentiment was not born to shine as a tragedian. He has attempted, perhaps, too many sorts of poetry at once. On whatever he has written, he has totally exhausted the subject. He everywhere paints nature with a masterly hand, and adds strength even to vulgar expressions. It has been judiciously observed, that his poetry after his banishment from Rome was deficient of that spirit and vivacity which we admire in those which were written before. His Fasti are perhaps the best written of all his poems; and after them we may fairly rank his love verses, his Heroides, and after all his Metamorphoses, which were not totally finished when Augustus banished him. His Epistles from Pontus are the language of a weak and sordid flatterer. However critics may have cause to censure the indelicacy and the inaccuracies of Ovid, it is to be acknowledged that his poetry contains great sweetness and elegance, and, like that of Tibullus, charms the ear and captivates the mind.—Another person of the name of Ovid accompanied his friend Cæsarius, when banished from Rome by Nero.