Catullus had his "Lesbia;" Tibullus, his "Delia ;" and Propertius, profiting not by the example of his brother bards, lavished his affections on the accomplished but fickle “Cynthia," who played him false as soon as a rich prætor laid a fortune at her feet. Cynthia was the single theme of our poet's love-lays, all rapture or gentle reproach. In an elegy to Maecenas, who had pressed him to attempt an epic, he sings: "You ask me why love-elegy so frequently I follow, And why my little book of tender trifles only sings: If in resplendent purple robe of Cos my darling dresses, In another elegy he describes his Cynthia's charms:- Of Scythia with Iberian vermeil vie; As float in milk the petals of the rose); Nor locks that down her neck of ivory stream, Nor eyes-my stars-twin lamps with love aglow; (I prize not baubles), does she thrill me so, As when she leaves the mantling cup to thread Graceful as blooming Ariadne led The choral revels of the Bacchic crew.” The death of Propertius is supposed to have taken place about 15 BC. Of his elegies, there is none better than LOVE'S DREAM REALIZED. "Not in his Dardan triumph so rejoiced the great Atrides, OVID. As I, when last eve's rosy joys I ruminated over : To me another eve like that were immortality! 379 Awhile before with downcast head I walked a pining loverMore useless I had grown, 'twas said, than water-tank run dry. No more my darling passes me with silent recognition, In vain did others seek my love, in vain they called upon her, Light of my life! say, shall my bark reach shore with gear befitting, Ovid (43 B.C.-17 A.D.).—Publius Ovidius Na'so, the last of the Augustan poets, was a knight of Sulmo, an ancient Samnite town in the eastern part of Italy. Designed for the legal profession, he was sent to Rome to be educated; but the writing of verses was more congenial than rhetorical studies; and an eminent critic of the day, on hearing one of his early declamations, described it as "nothing else than poetry out of metre." After the death of an elder son, his father consented that Publius should follow the bent of his own inclinations, and the poet went abroad to study in Greece and travel in Asia Minor. Returning to Rome, he began his literary career as the glory of the Augustan age was beginning to fade. For twenty-two years Ovid wasted his talents on the composition of licentious love-poems. In the "Loves" (Amo'res), the earliest of his works, one Corinna is addressed throughout. The hearty reception with which these loose songs met at Rome is a sad comment on the degeneracy of the public taste and morals. They were followed by the Hero' ides," a collection of twenty-one imaginary love-letters, inscribed by the heroines of the past to their absent or unfaithful lords-an original idea with Ovid. Penelope indicts an epistle to Ulysses, Medea to Jason, Sappho to Phaon, etc. In the one last named, translated by Pope, the Lesbian poetess informs the youth of her resolve to take the Lover's Leap. "A spring there is, where silver waters show, She stood and cried, 'O you that love in vain, And hope from seas and rocks a milder fate." In the "Art of Love," Ovid again overleaped the bounds. of propriety, and threw so brilliant a coloring into his pictures of vice that his readers were fain to linger over them, to enjoy, and to admire, with manifest danger to their own morals. When even a daughter of the imperial line was corrupted by them, Augustus, the professed defender of virtue, felt. that it was time to stop the dissemination of such principles, and visited the poet with his displeasure. In consequence of a subsequent and more serious offence, in some way connected with the royal family, but the nature of which we can only conjecture, Ovid suddenly received notice to quit the capital forever, and retire to To'mi, a dreary and desolate village on the Black Sea, A.D. 9. Despite his urgent prayers, the decree of banishment was never revoked. The works of his eight years' exile are the "Tristia," or Sorrows, "Letters from Pontus," and some shorter poems; they prove his genius to have been crushed, his spirit broken. Tomi gave Ovid a grave; even his request to be buried in Italy was refused. The best of Ovid's works were the "Fasti," or Roman Calendar, a pleasant almanac in verse, and the "Metamorphoses," ingenious in both conception and expression. While engaged on the Fasti, which he intended to complete in twelve books, one dedicated to each month, the poet was surprised by the decree of banishment, and left his work unfinished. The Metamorphoses, from which modern writers have largely drawn, gives an account of the transformations of ancient mythology, such as the changing of Io into a heifer, Daphne into a laurel, the sisters of Phaëton into the poplars of the Po, and Atlas into a mountain of stone by the gorgon-head of Perseus. One of the prettiest of these poems relates to the metamorphosis of the ivory statue wrought by Pygmalion, into a living bride, by the goddess of beauty, in answer to the sculptor's prayer: PYGMALION'S STATUE. "The sculptor sought His home, and, bending o'er the couch that bore His Maiden's life-like image, to her lips Fond pressed his own--and lo! her lips seemed warm, The ivory seems to yield,—as in the sun The waxen labor of Hymettus' bees, By plastic fingers wrought, to various shape Within throbs answering palpable: 'twas flesh! HENRY KING. With the death of Ovid, the flourishing period of poetry terminated. Among his contemporaries, we may mention, in passing, the epic poets ALBINOVA'NUS author of the These'id, and CORNELIUS SEVE'RUS, who wrote an heroic on the war between Augustus and Sextus Pompey. The didactic poets GRATIUS and MANILIUS also flourished in the Augustan age; the former memorable for his poem on hunting, the latter for his "Astronomica." PROSE WRITERS. Titus Livius.-The last ornament of the Augustan Era is the historian Livy, born at Pata'vium (now Padua) about 59 B.C.—the scion of a noble line that had figured proudly in the annals of the Republic. His was the uneventful life of the scholar, and few particulars of his biography have therefore been preserved. He appears to have begun his career as a rhetorician; to have come to the capital about B.C. 31, for what precise purpose we cannot say, and there to have gained a ready introduction at court. The emperor, already favorably impressed with his ability, is said to have placed at his disposal a suite of rooms in the palace. Perhaps, as his importunities made the reluctant Virgil the great epic poet of Rome, so Augustus may have stirred the ambition of Livy to become its historian; whether he did or not, we find the rhetorician of Patavium, soon after taking up his abode at the imperial city, entering upon the composition. of his "Annals," a work which progressed simultaneously with the Æneid. As the different decades (divisions of ten books) |