or Publius OVIDIUS 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 Archias Puteanus, 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. Everything he wrote was expressed in poetical numbers, as he himself says, Et quod tentalam scribere 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 altiquid vidit? Cur noxia lumina feci? Cur imprudente cognita culpa mihi est? Infectus Athenaeo vidit sine septe Dionam, Prada fuit canibus non minus ille fuis.

Again,

Inscia quod crimenviderunt lumina phlebor, Pecuniamque oculos eft habuisse meum.

And in another place,

Perdiderunt cum me duo crimina, carmen et error, Alierius facti culpa filenda mihi est.

In his banishment, Ovid betrayed his puffianimity 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 profited his pen and his time to adulation, yet the emperor proved deaf to all entreaties, 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 shores of the Euxine, where he regularly offered frankincense every morning. Tiberius proved as regardless as his predecessor for the entreaties 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 158 of the Christian era, the following epitaph was discovered at Stain, in the modern kingdom of Austria.

Hic situs est vates quem Divi Caesaris ira, Angusti patria celebre jussit lauro. Sepe miter voluit patris occumbere terris, Sed fruatur! hunc illi fata dedere 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 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 fix that have survived the ravages of time and barbarity. His Tristia,