P.

was born at Sulmo, a town about ninety miles from Rome, in the country of the Peligni. He marks the exact date of his birth in his Tristia (4.10. 5, &c.); from which it appears that the year was that in which the two colnsuls, Hirtius and Pansa, fell in the campaign of Mutina, and the day, the first of the festival of the Quinquatria, on which gladiatorial combats were exhibited. This means that he was born on the 13th Kal. April, A. U. C. 711, or the 20th March, B. C. 43. He was descended from a ancient equestrian family (Trist. 5.10. 7), but possessing only moderate wealth. He, as well as his brother Lucius, who was exactly a year older than himself, was destined to be a pleader, and received a careful education to qualify him for that calling. After acquiring the usual rudiments of knowledge, he studied rhetoric under Arellius Fuscus and Porcius Latro, and attained to considerable proficiency in the art of declamation. But the bent of his genius showed itself very early. The hours which should have been spent in the study of jurisprudence were employed in cultivating his poetical talent; and when he sat down to write a speech he produced a poem instead. (Trist. 4.10. 24.) The elder Seneca, too, who had heard him declaim, and who has preserved a portion of one of his rhetorical compositions, tells us that his oratory resembled a solutum carmen, and that any thing in the way of argument was irksome to him. (Controv. 2.10.) His father, an economical. painstakiing man, denounced his favourite pursuit as leading to inevitable poverty; but, though Ovid listened to this advice, all his attempts to master the ruling passion proved fruitless. The death of his brother, at the early age of twenty, probably served in some degree to mitigate his father's opposition, for the patrimony which would have been scanty for two might amply suffice for one. Ovid's education was completed at Athens, where he made himself thoroughly master of the Greek language. Afterwards he travelled with the poet Macer, in Asia and Sicily; in which latter country he appears to have spent the greater part of a year. It is a disputed point whether He ever actually practised as an advocate after his return to Rome. Bayle asserts the affirmative from Tristia, 2.93. But that verse seems rather to refer to the functions of a judge than of a counsel. The picture Ovid himself draws of his weak constitution and indolent temper prevents us from thinking that he ever followed his profession with ardour and perseverance, if indeed at all; and the latter conclusion seems justified by a passage in the Amores, 1.15. 6. The same causes deterred him from entering the senate, though he had put on the latus clavus when he assumed the toga virilis, as being by birth entitled to aspire to the senatorial dignity. (Trist. 4.10. 29.) He became, however, one of the Triumviri Capitales, a sort of magistrates somewhat akin to our sheriffs, whose office it was to decide petty causes between slaves and persons of inferior rank, and to superintend the prisons, and the execution of criminals. Subsequently He was made one of the Centumviri, or judges who tried testamentary and even criminal causes. In due time he was promoted to be one of the Decemviri, who assembled and presided over the court of the Centumviri; an office which entitled him to a seat in the theatre distinguished above that of the other Equites (Fasti, 4.383).

Such is all the account that can be given of Ovid's business life. As in the case of other writers, however, we are more interested to know the circumstances which fostered and developed his poetical genius, than whether he was a sound lawyer and able judge. Ovid appears to have shown at an early age a marked inclination towards gallantry. It was probably some symptoms of this temperament that induced his parents to provide him with a wife when he was yet a mere boy. The choice, however, was a bad one. She was quite unsuitable to him, and apparently not unimpeachable in character; so that the union was but of short duration. The facility of divorce which then prevailed at Rome rendered the nature of such engagements very different from the solemn one which they possess in modern days. A second wife was soon wedded, and as speedily dismissed, though Ovid himself bears witness to her purity. The secret of this matrimonial fickleness is explained by the fact that Ovid had a mistress. Filial duty dictated his marriages; inclination threw him into the arms of Corinna. This cause may even have been divided with another. Ovid was a poet, and to a poet in those days a mistress was indispensable. What Roman of the Augustan age would have ventured to inscribe an elegy to his wife! The thing was utterly impossible. But elegiac poetry was then all the vogue at Rome, from its comparative novelty. Catullus, who introduced it from the Greek, had left a few rude specimeans ; but Gallus and Tibullus were the first who brought it to any perfection, and appropriated it more exclusively to the theme of licentious love Gallus was followed by Tibullus, and he by Propertius ; so that Ovid claimed to be the fourth who succeeded to the elegiac lyre. In this enumeration Catullus is entirely omitted. In Propertius, who was some years older than himself, Ovid not only found a μουσαγέτης, but also a hierophant very capable of initiating him in all the mysteries of Roman dissipation. (Saepe suos solitus recitare Propertius ignes, Trist. 4.10.) Ovid was an apt scholar; but his views were more ambitious than his master's, whom he was destined to surpass in the quality, not only of the Muse, but of the mistress, that he courted. The Cynthia of Propertius seems to have been merely one of that higher class of accomplished courtezans with which Rome then abounded. If we may believe the testimony of Sidonius Apollinaris, in the following lines, Corinna was no less a personage than Julia, the clever and accomplished, but abandoned daughter of Augustus: -- Et te carmina per libidinosa Notum, Naso tener, Tomosque missum: Quondam Caesareae nimis puellae Ficto nomine subditum Corinnae. Sidonius, Carm. 23.18.

This authority has been rejected on the ground that it ascribes Ovid's banishment to this intrigue, which, for chronological and other reasons, could not have been the case. But, strictly taken, the verses assert no such thing. They merely tell us that he was sent to Tomi "carmina per libidinosa," which was, indeed, the cause set forth in the edict of Augustus; and the connection with Julia is mentioned incidentally as an old affair. but not by any means as having occasioned his banishment. Such hints of antiquity are not to be lightly disregarded; and there are several passages in Ovid's Amores which render the testimony of Sidonius highly probable. Thus it appears that his mistress was a married woman, of high rank, but profligate morals; all which particulars will suit Julia. There are, besides, two or three passages which seem more especially to point her out as belonging to the family of the Caesars; and it is remarkable that in the fourteenth elegy of the first book Ovid alludes to the baldness of his mistress, which agrees with an anecdote of Julia preserved by Macrobius. (Saturn. 2.5.) Nor can the practice of the Roman poets of making the metrical quantity of their mistress's feigned name answer precisely to that of the real one be alleged as an insuperable objection. We have already seen that Sidonius Apollinaris did not so consider it. In Ovid's case the great disparity of rank would have made it dangerous to adopt too close an imitation not to mention that the title of Corinna would convey a compliment to Julia, as comparing her for wit and beauty to the Theban poetess.

Be this as it may, it cannot be doubted that Ovid's mistress was a woman of high rank; and as this circumstance dispensed with those vulgar means of seduction which may be supplied by money, and which the poet's moderate fortune would have prevented him from adopting, even had he been so inclined (Ars Am. 2.165), so it compelled him to study those arts of insinuation which are most agreeable to the fair sex, and to put in practice his own maxim, ut amseris aitabilis esto. It was thus he acquired that intimate knowledge of the female heart, and of all the shades of the amatory passion, which appears in so many parts of his writings, and which he afterwards embodied in his Art of Love, for the benefit of his contemporaries and of posterity. His first attempts in verse seem to have been in the heroic metre, and on the subject of the Gigantomachia, but from this he was soon diverted by his passion for Corinna, to which we owe the greater part of the elegies in his Amores. How much of these is to be set down to poetic invention? How much is to be taken literally ? These are questions which cannot be accurately answered. In his later poems he would have us believe that his life is not to be judged by his writings, and that he did not practise the precepts which he inculcated. (Trist. 1.8. 59, 2.354, &c.) But some of his effusions are addressed to other mistresses besides Corinna; and the warmth, nay the grossness of mere airimal passion, which breathes in several of them, prevents us from believing that his life was so pure as it answered his purpose to affirm in his exile; though we may readily concede that he conducted his amours with sufficient discretion to avoid any open and flagrant scandal (Nomine sub nostro fabula nulla fuit, Trist. 4.10. 68). On the other hand, something may doubtless be ascribed to youthful vanity, to the fashion of the age, and above all to his determination to become a poet. His love for his art was boundless. He sought the acquaintance of the most eminent poets of the day, and when they were assembled together he regarded them as so many divinities. Among his more intimate poetical friends, besides Macer and Propertius, were Ponticus and Bassus. Horace was considerably his senior, yet he had frequently heard him recite his lyric compositions. Virgil, who died when Ovid was twenty-four, he had only once seen ; nor was the life of Tibullus sufficiently prolonged to allow him to cultivate his friendship. It is remarkable that he does not once mention the name of Maecenas. It is possible, however, that that minister, whose literary patronage was in some degree political, and with a view to the interests of his master, had retired from public affairs before Ovid had acquired any considerable reputation.

How long Ovid's connection with Corinna lasted there are no means of deciding. Some of the elegies in the Amores are doubtless his earliest remaining compositions; and He tells us that he began to write when the razor had passed but once or twice over his chin (Trist. 4.10. 58). That work, however, as we now possess it, is a second edition, and evidently extends over a considerable number of years. But some of the elegies may have been mere reminiscences, for we can hardly think that Ovid continned the intrigues after He had married his third wife. His former marriages were matters of duty; this seems to have been one of choice. The lady was one of the Fabian family, and appear to have been every way worthy of the sincere affection which Ovid entertained for her to the day of his death. She had a daughter by a former union, who married Suillius. At what time the poet entered on this third marriage cannot be as certained; but we can hardly place it later than his thirtieth year, since a daughter, Perilla, was the fruit of it (Trist. 3.7. 3), who was grown up and married at the time of his banishment. Perilla was twice married, and had a child by each husband ; one of whom seems to have been Cornelius Fidus. Ovd wat s :3 v :snludfathcr before he lost his father at the age of ninety; soon after whose decease his mother also died.

This is all the account that can be given of Ovid's life, from his birth to the age of fifty; and it has been for the most part drawn from his own writings. It is chiefly misfortune that swells the page of human history. The very dearth of events justifies the inference that his days glided away smoothly and happily, with just enough of employment to give a zest to the pursuits of his leisure, and in sufficient affluence to secure to him all the pleasures of life, without exposing him to its storms and dangers. His residence at Rome, where he had a house near the Capitol, was diversified by an occasional trip to his Pelignan farm, and by the recreation which he derived from his garden, situated between the Flaminian and Clodian ways. His devotion to love and to Corinna had not so wholly engrossed him as to prevent his achieving great reputation in the higher walks of poetry. Besides his love Elegies, his Heroical Epistles, which breathe purer sentiments in language and versification still more refined, and his Art of Love, in which he had embodied the experience of twenty years, he had written his Medea, the finest tragedy that had appeared in the Latin tongue. The Metamorphoses were finished, with the exception of the last corrections; on which account they had been seen only by his private friends. But they were in the state in which we now possess them, and were sufficient of themselves to establish a great poetic fame. He not only enjoyed the friendship of a large circle of distinguished men, but the regard and favour of Augustus and the imperial family. Nothing, in short, seemed wanting, either to his domestic happiness or to his public reputation. But a cloud now rose upon the horizon which was destined to throw a gloom over the evening of his days. Towards the close of the year of Rome, 761 (A. D. 8), Ovid was suddenly commanded by an imperial edict to transport himself to Tomi, or, as he himself calls it, Tomis (sing. fem.), a town on the Euxine, near the mouths of the Danube, on the very border of the empire, and where the Roman dominion was but imperfectly assured. Ovid underwent no trial, and the sole reason for his banishment stated in the edict was his having published his poem on the Art of Love. It was not, however, an exsilium, but a relegatio ; that is, he was not utterly cut off from all hope of return, nor did he lose his citizenship.

What was the real cause of his banishment ? This is a question that has long exercised the ingenuity of scholars, and various are the solutions that have been proposed. The publication of the Ars Amatoria was certainly a mere pretext; and for Augustus, the author of one of the filthiest, but funniest, epigrams in the language, and a systematic adulterer, for reasons of state policy (Suet. Aug. 69), not a very becoming one. The Ars had been published nearly ten years previously; and moreover, whenever Ovid alludes to that, the ostensible cause, he invariably couples with it another which he mysteriously conceals. According to some writers, the latter was his intrigue with Julia. But this, besides that it does not agree with the poet's expressions, is sufficiently refuted by the fact that Julia had been an exile since B. C. 2. (D. C. 55.10; Vell. 2.100.) The same chronological objection may be urged against those who think that Ovid had accidentally discovered an incestuous commerce between Augustus and his daughter. To obviate these objections on the score of chronology, other authors have transferred both these surmises to the younger Julia, the daughter of the eldei one. But with respect to any intrigue with her having been the cause of Ovid's banishment, the expressions alluded to in the former case, and which show that his fault was an involuntary one, are here equally conclusive, and are, too, strengthened by the great disparity of years between the parties, the poet being old enough to be the father of the younger Julia. As regards the other point -- the imputed incest of the emperor with his granddaughter --arguments in refutation can be drawn only from probability, for there is nothing in Ovid's poems that can be said directly to contradict it. But in the first place, it is totally unsupported by any historical authority, though the same imputation on Augustus with regard to his daughter might derive some slight colouring from a passage in Suetonius's life of Caligula (100.23). Again, it is the height of improbability that Ovid, when suing for pardon, would have alluded so frequently to the cause of his offence had it been of a kind so disgracefully to compromise the emperor's character. Nay, Bayle (art. Ovide) has pushed this argument so far as to think that the poet's life would not have been safe had he been in possession of so dangerous a secret, and that silence would have been secured by his assassination. The conjecture that Ovid's offence was his having accidentally seen Livia in the bath is hardly worthy of serious notice. On the common principles of human action we cannot reconcile so severe a punishment with so trivial a fault; and the supposition is, besides, refuted by Ovid's telling us that what he had seen was some crime. One of the most elaborate theories on the subject is that of M. Villenave, in a life of Ovid published in 1809, and subsequently in the Biographie Universelle. He is of opinion that the poet was the victim of a coup d'etat, and that his offence was his having been the political partizan of Posthumus Agrippa; which prompted Livia and Tiberius, whose influence over the senile Augustus was then complete, to procure his banishment. This solution is founded on the assumed coincidence of time in the exiles of Agrippa and Ovid. But the fact is that the former was banished, at least a year before the latter, namely some time in A. D. 7 (D. C. 4.32; Vell. 2.112), whereas Ovid did not leave Rome till December A. D. 8. Nor can Ovid's expressions concerning the cause of his disgrace be at all reconciled with Villenave's supposition. The coincidence of his banishment, however, with that of the younger Julia, who, as we learn from Tacitus (Tac. Ann. 4.71) died in A. D. 28, after twenty years' exile, is a remarkable fact, and leads very strongly to the inference that his fate was in some way connected with hers. This opinion has been adopted by Tiraboschi in his Storia della Letteratura Italiana, and after him by Rosmini, in his Vita d' Ovidio, who, however, has not improved upon Tiraboschi, by making Ovid deliberately seduce Julia for one of his exalted friends. There is no evidence to fix on the poet the detestable character of a procurer. He may more probably have become acquainted with Julia's profligacy by accident, and by his subsequent conduct, perhaps, for instance, by concealing it, have given offence to Livia, or Augustus, or both. But we have not space here to pursue a subject which at best can only end in a plausible conjecture; and therefore the reader who is desirous of seeing it discussed at greater length, is referred to the Classical Museum, vol. iv. No. 13.

Ovid has described in one of his most pathetic elegies ( Trist. 1.3), the last night spent in Rome, and the overwhelming sorrow with which he tore himself from his home and family. To add to his affliction, his daughter was absent with her husband in Africa, and he was thus unable to bid her a last farewell. Accompanied by Maximus, whom he had known from a child, and who was almost the only friend who remained faithful to him in his adversity, he departed for the shores of the Adriatic, which he crossed in the month of December. After experiencing some of the storms common at that season, and which had well nigh shipwrecked him, he at length landed safely on the Corinthian isthmus, and having crossed it, embarked in another vessel at Cenchreae, on the Saronic gulf. Hence his navigation through the Hellespont, and northwards up the Euxine to his destined port, seems to have been tedious, but safe. The greater part of a year was consumed in the voyage; but Ovid beguiled the time by the exercise of his poetical talent, several of his pieces having been written on shipboard. To one like Ovid, accustomed from his youth to all the luxury of Rome, and so ardent a lover of politeness and refinement ( Ars Am. 3.121), painful indeed must have been the contrast presented by his new abode, which offered him an inhospitable soil, a climate so severe as to freeze even the wine, and the society of a horde of semi-barbarians, to whose language he was a stranger. Life itself was hardly safe. When winter had covered the Danube with ice, the barbarous tribes that dwelt beyond, crossed it on their horses, plundering all around, and insulting the very walls of Tomi. Add to all this the want of convenient lodging, of the decent luxuries of the table, and of good medical advice, and we sha scarcely be surprised at the urgency with which the poet solicits, not so much for his recal as for a change in his place of banishment. He has often been reproached with the abjectness of his supplications, and the fulsome flattery towards Augustus by which he sought to render them successful : nor can these charges be denied, or altogether defended. But it seems very unreasonable to require the bearing of a Cato from the tender poet of love under such truly distressing circumstances. To a Roman, who looked upon the metropolis as the seat of all that was worth living for, banishment, even to an agreeable spot, was an evil of great magnitude. In Ovid's case it was aggravated tenfold fold by the remoteness and natural wretchedness of the place. If he deified Augustus it was no more than was done by Virgil, Horace, and the other poets of the age, without a tithe of his inducementss to offer in excuse. But in truth this was nothing more than a part of the manners of the age, for which neither Ovid nor any other writer is to be held individually responsible. Such deifications were public and national acts, formally recognised by the senat. But in the midst of his misfortunes, Ovid felt a noble confidence in his genius and fame; and it is refreshing to read a passage like the following, where he exults in the impotence of the imperial tyrant to hurt them :--

En ego, cum patria caream, vobisque, domoque, Raptaque sint, adimi quæ potuere mihi ; Ingenio tamen ipse meo comitorque fruorque : Caesar in hoe potuit juris habere nihil.

Trist. 3.7. 45.

Nor were his mind and spirit so utterly prostrated as to prevent him from seeking some relief to his misfortunes by the exercise of his poetical talents. Not only did he finish his Fasti, in his exile, besides writing the Ibis, the Tristia, Ex Ponto, &c., but he likewise acquired the language of the Getae, in which he composed some poems in honour of Augustus. These he publicly recited, and they were received with tumultuous applause by the Tomitae. With his new fellow-eitizens, indeed, he had succeeded in rendering himself highly popular, insomuch that they honoured him with a decree, declaring him exempt from all public burthens. (Ex Ponto, 4.9. 101.) From the same passage (5.89, &c.) we learn that the secret of his popularity lay in his unaltered bearing; that he maintained the same tranquillity of mind, the same modesty of demeanour, for which he had been known and esteemed by his friends at Rome. Yet, under all this apparent fortitude, he was a prey to anxiety, which, combined with the effects of a rigorous climate, produced in a few years a declining state of health. He was not afflicted with any acute disorder; but indigestion, loss of appetite, and want of sleep, slowly, but surely, undermined a constitution originally not the most robust. (Ex Ponto,1.10, &c.) He died in the sixtieth year of his age and tenth of his exile, A. D. 18, a year also memorable by the death of the historian, Livy. Two or three pretended discoveries of his tomb have been made in modern times, but they are wholly undeserving of attention Works 1. Amorum Libri III.

Among the earliest of Ovid's works must be placed the Amorum Libri III., which however extends over a considerable number of years. According to the epigram prefixed, the work, as we now possess it, is a second edition, revised and abridged, the former one having consisted of five books. The authenticity of this epigram has been questioned by Jahn, but Ovid himself tells us in another place that he had destroyed many of the elegies dedicated to Corinna. (Multa quidem scripsi, sed quæ vitiosa putavi, Emendaturis ignibus ipse dedi, Trist. 4.10. 61.) Nor can we very well account for the allusion made to the Ars Amatoria in the Amores (2.18, 19), except on the assumption of a second and late edition of the latter, in which the piece containing the allusion was inserted. This second edition must, however, have been published before the third book of the Ars, since the Amores are there mentioned (5.343) as consisting of three books. The elegies of the Amores seem thrown together without any regard to chronological order. Thus from the first elegy of the third book it would seem that Ovid had not yet written tragedy ; whilst in the eighteenth elegy of the preceding book he not only alludes to his Medea (5.13), but, as we have seen, to his Ars Amatoria. This want of sequence is another proof of a later edition. Though the Amores is principally addressed to Corinna, it contains elegies to other mistresses. For instance, the ninth and tenth of the first book point evidently to one of a much inferior station to Corinna; and the seventh and eighth of the second book are addressed to Cypassis, Corinna's maid. 2. Epistolae Heroidum

Twenty-one in number, were an early work of Ovid. By some critics the authenticity of the last six has been doubted, as also that of the fifteenth (Sappho to Phaon). because it is found only in the most recent MSS. But Ovid mentions having written such an epistle ( Amor. 2.18. 26), and the internal evidence is sufficient to vindicate it. From a passage in the Ars Amatoria (3.346--Ignotum hoc allis ille novavit opus) Ovid appears to claim the merit of originating this species of composition; in which case we must consider the epistle of Arethusa to Lycotas, in the fourth book of Propertius, as an imitation. P. Burmann, however, in a note on Properties, disallows this claim, and thinks that Ovid was the imitator. He explains nouavit in the preceding passage of the Ars as follows : -- Ab aliis neglectum et omissum rursus in usum induxit. But this seems very harsh, and is not consistent with Ovid's expression "ignotnm aliis." We do not know the date of Propertius's death but even placing it in B. C. 15, still Ovid was then eight and twenty, and might have composed several, if not all, of his heroical epistles. Answers to several of the Hleroiides were written by Aulus Sabinus, a contemporary poet and friend of Ovid's, viz. Ulysses to Penelope, Hippolytus to Phaedra, Aeneas to Dido, Demophoon to Phillis, Jason to Hypsipyle, and Phaon to Sappho (see Amores, 2.18, 29). Three of these are usually printed with Ovid's works; but their authenticity has been doubted, both on account of their style, and because there are no MSS. of them extant, though they appear in the Editio princeps. From the passage in the Ars Am. before referred to (3.345) it would seem as if the Heroides were intended for musical recitative. ( Vel tibi composita castetur epistola voce. Comp. Alex. ab Alex. Gen. Dies. 2.1.) A translation of these epistles into Greek by Maximus Planudes exists in MS., but has never been published. 3. Ars Amatoria, or De Arte Amandi

This work was written about B. C. 2, as appears from the sham naval combat exhibited by Augustus being alluded to as recent, as well as the expedition of Caius Caesar to the East. (Lib. 1.5.171, &c.) Ovid was now more than forty, and his earlier years having been spent in intrigue, he was fully qualified by experience to give instruction in the art and mystery of the tender passion. The first two books are devoted to the male sex; the third professes to instruct the ladies. This last book was probably published some time after the two preceding ones. Not only does this seem to be borne out by vv. 45, &c., but we may thus account for the Ars (then in two books) being mentioned in the Amores, and also the Amores, in its second edition of three books, in the third book of the Ars. At the time of Ovid's banishment this poem was ejected from the public libraries by command of Augustus 4. Remedia Amoris

In one book. That this piece was subsequent to the Ars Am. appears from 5.9. Its subject, as the title implies, is to suggest remedies for the violence of the amatory passion. Hence Ovid (5.47) compares himself to the spear of Telephus, which was able both to wound and heal. 5. Nux.

The elegiac complaint of a nut-tree respecting the ill-treatment it receives from wayfarers, and even from its own master. This little piece was probably suggested by the fate of a nuttree in Ovid's own garden 6. Metamorphoseon Libri XV.

This, the greatest of Ovid's poems in bulk and pretensions, appears to have been written between the age of forty and fifty. He tells us in his Tristia (1.6) that he had not put the last polishing land to it when he was driven into banishment; and that in the hurry and vexation of his flight, he burnt it, together with other pieces. Copies had, however, got abroad, and it was thus preserved, by no means to the regret of the author ( Trist. 1.6. 25). It consists of such legends or fables as involved a transformation, from the Creation to the time of Julius Caesar, the last being that emperor's change into a star. It is thus a sort of cyclic poem made up of distinct episodes, but connected into one narrative thread, with much skill. Ovid's principal model was, perhaps, the Ἑτεροιούμενα of Nicander. It has been translated into elegant Greek prose by Maximus Planudes, whose version was published by Boissonade (Paris, 1822), and forms the 46th vol. of Lemaire's Bibliotheca Latinat. 7. Fastorum Libri XII.

of which only the first six are extant. This work was incomplete at the time of Ovid's banishment. Indeed he had perhaps done little more than collect the materials for it ; for that the fourth book was written in Pontus appears from ver. 88. Yet he must have finished it before he wrote the second book of Tristia, as he there alludes to it as consisting of twelve books (Sex ego Fastorum scripsi totidemque libellos, 5.549). Masson, indeed, takes this passage to mean that he had only written six, viz. "I have written six of the Fasti and as many books"; and holds that Ovid never did any more. But this interpretation seems contrary to the natural sense of the words, and indeed to the genius of the language The Fasti is a sort of poetical Roman calendar. with its appropriate festivals and mythology, and the substance was probably taken in a great measure from the old Roman annalists. The study of antiquity was tien fashionable at Rome, and Propertius had preceded Ovid in this style of writing in his Origines, in the fourth book. The model of both seems to have been the αλ̓́τλα of Callimachus. The Fasti shows a good deal of learning, but it has been observed that Ovid makes frequent mistakes in his astronomy, from not understanding the books from which he took it 8. Tristium Libri V

The five books of elegies under the title of Tristia were written during the first four years of Ovid's banishment. They are chiefly made up of descriptions of his afflicted condition, and petitions for mercy. The tenth elegy of the fourth book is valuable, as containing many particulars of Ovid's life. 9. Epistolarum ex Ponto Libri IV.

These epistles are also in the elegiac metre, and much the same in substance as the Tristia, to which they were subsequent (see lib i. ep. 1, 5.15, &c). It must be confessed that age and misfortune seem to have damped Ovid's genius both in this and the preceding work. Even the versification is more slovenly, and some of the lines very prosaic. 10. Ibis.

This satire of between six and seven hundred eleiac verses was also written in exile. The poet inveighs in it against an enemy who had traduced him, and who some take to have been Hyginus, the mythologist. Caelius Rhodiginus (Aniq. Lect. 13.1) says, on the authority of Caecilius Minutianus Apuleius, that it was Corvinus. Though the variety of Ovid's imprecations displays learning and fancy, the piece leaves the impression of an impotent explosion of rage. The title and plan were borrowed from Callimachus. 11. Consolatio ad Liviam Augustam.

The authenticity of this elegiac poem has been the subject of much dispute among critics, the majority of whom are against it. The principal names on the other side are Barth, Passerat, and Amar, the recent French editor. However, it is allowed on all hands to be not unworthy of Ovid's genius. Sealiger and others have attributed it to P. Albinovanus. 12. The Medicamina Faciei and Halieuticon

The Medicamina Faciei and Halieuticon are mere fragments, and their genuineness not altogether certain. Yet Ovid in the Ars Am. (3.205) alludes to a poem which he had written in one book on the art of heightening female charms, and which must, therefore, have been prior to the Ars ; and Pliny (Plin. Nat. 32.54) mentions a work of his on fishing, written towards the close of his life. Of his tragedy, medea, only two lines remain. Of this work Quintilian says, "Ovidii Medea videtur mihi ostendere quantum ille vir praestare potuerit si ingenio suo temperare quam indulgere maluisset," 10.98. Lost Works

Ovid seems to have written other works now lost : as, Meuphrusis Phaenomenon Arati, Epigrammata, Liber in males Poetas, or sort of Dunciad (Quint. Inst. 6.3), Triumphus Tiberii de Illyriis, De Bello Aetiaco ad Tiberium, &c. Several spurious pieces have been attributed to him; as the Elegia ad Philomelam, Elegia De Pulice, Elegia Priapeia, &c. That his poems in the Getic language have not been preserved is, perhaps, chiefly to be regretted on the score of their philological value. Assessment

That Ovid possessed a great poetical genius is unquestionable; which makes it the more to be regretted that it was not always under the control of a sound judgment. Niebuhr, in his Lectures, edited by Dr. Schmitz (vol. ii. p. 166), calls him, next to Catullus, the most poetical amongst the Roman poets; in allusion, perhaps, to the vigour of fancy and warmth of colouring displayed in some parts of his works. The same eminent scholar ranks him, in respect of his facility, among the very greatest poets. Of the truth of this remark no doubt can be entertained. Ovid has himself described how spontaneously his verses flowed; and the fact is further attested by the bulk of his productions. But this was a dangerous gift. The facility of composition possessed more charms for him than the irksome, but indispensable labour of correction and retrenchment. Hence those prolix and puerile descriptions which led Quintilian (10.88) to characterise him as nimium acator iuvenii sui, laudandus tamen in partibus ; and of which a notable instance has been pointed out by Seneca (N. Q. 3.27) in the description of the flood (Metam. 1.262, &c.) ; which, though it commences with sublimity, is spoilt by the repetition of too many, and some of them trite and vulgar, images of the same thing. Nor was this his only fault. He was the first to depart from that pure and correct taste which characterises the Greek poets, and their earlier Latin imitators. His writings abound with those false thoughts and frigid conceits which we find so frequently in the Italian poets; and in this respect he must be regarded as unantique. Dryden's indignation at these misplaced witticisms led him to rank Ovid among the second-rate poets (see his Life of Virgil, and Dedication of the Aeneis). But though a just criticism cannot allow these faults to pass without severe reprehension, there are numerous passages which show that Ovid was capable of better things.

The Amores, his earliest work, is less infected with concetti than some of his later ones; and is marked by grossness and indecency, rather than by false wit or overwrought refinement. His fictitious love epistles, or Heroides, as, indeed, might be naturally expected, partake more of the latter qualities; but they are remarkable for terse and polished versifications, and the turns of expression are often highly effective. The Ars Amatoria may be said to contain appropriate precepts, if that be any recommendation, or if love. in the proper sense of the term, requires them; the little god himself being the best instructor, as Boccaccio has so well shown in the tale of Cymon and Iphigenia. In a certain sense it may be didactic poem, and, like most works of that nature, contains but little poetry, though the subject seems more than usually favourable to it. The first two or three books of the Metamorphoses, in spite of their faults, abound with poetical beauties; nor are they wanting, though scattered with a more sparing hand, in the remaining ones; as, among other instances, in the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe; the charming rustic picture of the household of Baucis and Philemon; and the description of the Cave of Sleep, in the eleventh book, which for vigour of fancy is not perhaps surpassed by any thing in Spencer. In the fasti Ovid found a favourable subject from the poetical nature of the mythology and early legends of Rome, which he has treated with great power and effect. His prolixity was here more restricted than in the metamorphoses, partly by the nature of his plan, and partly, perhaps, by the metre; and he has treated his subject in a severer taste. Schiller (Ueber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung) will not allow the Tristia and Ex Ponto to be called poetry, from their being the offspring, not of inspiration but of necessity; and it must be confessed that there is little except the versification to entitle them to the name. As, however, Gibbon has remarked (Decline and Fall, 100.18, note), they are valuable as presenting a picture of the human mind under very singular circumstances; and it may be added, as affording many particulars of the poet's life. But in forming an estimate of Ovid's poetical character, we must never forget that his great poem had not the benefit of his last corrections; and that by the loss of his tragedy, the Medea, we are deprived, according to the testimony of antiquity, of his most perfect work; and that, too, in a species of composition which demands the highest powers of human genius. The loss which we have thus sustained may be in sone measure inferred from the intimate knowledge which Ovid displays of the female heart; as in the story of Byblis in the Metamorphoses, and in the soliloquy of Medea in the same work, in which the alternations of hope and fear, reason and passion, are depicted with the greatest force. Editions

The editions of Ovid's works are very numerous, and the following list contains only the more remarkable : --

Editio Princeps (Balthazar Azoguidi), Bologna, 1471, 2 vols. fol. Also at Rome the same year (Sweynheym and Pannarz), 2 vols. fol. First Aldine edition, Venice, 1502, 3 vols. 8vo. Bersmann's edition, Leipsig, 1582, 3 vols. 8vo. Elzevir edition, by D. Heinsius, Leyden, 1629, 3 vols. 12mo. Variorum edition, by Cnippingius, Leyden, 1670, 3 vols. 8vo. In usum Delphini, Lyons, 1689, 4 vols. 4to. Burmann's edition, Amsterdam, 1727, 4 vols. 4to.; this is reckoned the best edition. By Mitscherlich, Göttingen, 1798, 2 vols. large 8vo. Burmann's text, but no notes. By J. A. Amar, Paris, 1820, 9 vols. 8vo. Part of Le Maire's Biblioteca Latina : cum Notis Variorum, Oxford, 1825, 5 vols. large 8vo., Burmann's text and Bentley's MS. emendations, from his copy of Burmann's edition in the British Museum. These emendations are also printed in an appendix to Le Maire's edition. By J. C. Jahn, Leipsig, 1828, 2 vols. 8vo. Some editions of separate pieces

Metamorphoses, by Gierig, Leip. 1784.

The same, cura Jahn, Leip. 1817, 2 vols. 8vo.; by Loers, Leip. 1843, 8vo.

Fasti, by Merkel, Berlin, 1841, 8vo.

Tristia, by Oberlin, Strasburg, 1778, 8vo.; by Loers, Trev. 1839, 8vo.

Amatoria (including Heroides, Ars Am. &c.) by Wernsdorf, Helmstadt, 1788 and 1802, 2 vols. 8vo.; by Jahn, Leip. 1828.

Heroides, by Loers, Cologn. 1829, 8vo.

There is a learned French commentary on the Heroides, by Bachet de Meziriac, the Hague, 1716, 2 vols. 8vo. (2d ed.) Translations

Ovid has been translated into most of the European languages. Among English metrical versions may be mentioned the Metamorphoses, by Arthur Golding, London, 1567, 4to.; the same, Englished in verse, mythologized, and represented in figures, by G. Sandys, Oxford, 1626, fol.; the same by various hands, viz. Dryden, Addison, Gay, Pope, and others, edited by Dr. Garth, who wrote the preface, London 1717 fol. This translation has gone through several editions. The same in blank verse, by Howard, London, 1807, 8vo. Ouid's Elegies, in three books, by C. Marlowe, 8vo. Middleburg. The Epistles, by G. Turbervile, London, 1569. The Heroical Epistles, and Ex Ponto, by Wye Saltonstall, London, 1626. The Epistles, by several hands, viz. Otway, Settle, Dryden, Earl Mulgrave, and others, with a preface by Dryden, London, 1680 (several subsequent editions). The Fasti, by J. Gower, Cambridge, 1640, 8vo. Sources about the life of Ovid

Besides the two ancient memoirs of Ovid commonly prefixed to his works, several short accounts of his life, by Aldus Manutius, Paulus Marsus, Ciofani, and others, are collected in the 4th vol. of Burmann's edition. In the same place, as well as in Lemaire's edition, will be found Masson's Life, originally published at Amsterdam in 1708. This is one of the most elaborate accounts of Ovid, but too discursive, and not always accurate. There is a short sketch in Crusius' Lives of the Roman Poets. By far the best Life is the Italian one by the Cavaliere Rosmini, Milan, 1821, 2 thin vols. 8vo. (2nd ed.) [T.D]

was the second and the last of the Roman comic poets, of whose works more than fragments are preserved. The few particulars of his life were collected long after his decease, and are of very doubtful authority. It would therefore be to little purpose to repeat them without scrutiny or comment. We shall, in the first place, inquire who were the biographers of Terence, what they relate of him, and the consistency and credibility of their several accounts. We shall next briefly survey the comedies themselves, their reception at the time, their influence on dramatic literature, their translators and imitators, their commentators and bibliography.

Our knowledge of Terence himself is derived principally from the life ascribed to Donatus or Suetonius, and from two scanty memoirs, or collections of Scholia, the one published in the seventeenth century, by Abraham Gronovius, from an Oxford MS., and the other by Angelo Mai, from a MS. in the Vatican. The life of Terence, printed in the Milan edition of Petrarch's works 1476, is merely a comment on Donatus. Of these, the first mentioned is the longest and most particular. It is nevertheless a meagre and incongruous medley, which, for its barrenness, may be ascribed to Donatus, and for its scandal to Suetonius. But it cites still earlier writers,--C. Nepos, Fenestella, Porcius, Santra, Volcatius, and Q. Cosconius. Of these Nepos is the best known, and perhaps the most trustworthy. His contemporaries deemed him a sound antiquarian (Catull. 1.1), and his historical studies had trained him to examine facts and dates. (Gel. 15.48.) Of Fenestella, more voluminous than accurate, we have already given some account [Vol. II. p. 145]. Q. Cosconius was probably the grammarian cited by Varro (L. L. 6.36, 89), Porcius, the Porcius Licinius, a satirical and seemingly libellous versifier, mentioned by Gellius (17.21, 19.19), and Volcatius was the Volcatius Sedigitus quoted by the same author (15.24). Santra is enumerated by St. Jerome (Vit. Script. Eccles.) among the Latin compilers of Memoirs; he wrote also a treatise De Antiquitate Verborum, cited frequently by Festus. Such writers are but indifferent vouchers for either facts or dates, whether from their living so long after the poet's age, or from the character of their testimony. In the following account we interweave our comment with their text.

P. Terentius Afer was born at Carthage B. C. 195, since he was in his 35th year at the performance of his last play, the Adelphi, B. C. 160. By birth or purchase, he became the slave of P. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator. But if he were " civis Carthaginiensis," as the didascalia of Donatas and the biographers style him, his servile condition is difficult to understand. Fenestella remarked that Terence could not have been a prisoner of war, since Carthage was at peace with Rome from B. C. 201 to 149. But in that interim the Carthaginians were involved in wars with their own mercenaries, with the Numidians, and with the southern Iberians, and at least two Roman embassies visited Carthage. So that, although the truce with Rome was unbroken, Terence or his parents may have been exposed in the Punic slavemarkets, and transported to Italy. His cognomen After rests on as good authority as any other circumstance related of him. Yet it is not conclusive. It may have been merely an inference from a popular rumour of his Punic origin; and it was a cognomen of the Gens Domitia at Rome, where it certainly does not imply African descent. Terence is said to have been of an olive complexion, thin person, and middle height. (Donat.) These are not the physical characteristics of the Punic race, but they accord with those of the Liby-phoenician or Celtiberian perioeci, who were planted as colonists in various parts of the Carthaginian territory ; and it is more likely that a perioecus, or the son of a perioecus, should have been enslaved, than that a native Carthaginian should have become the property of a Roman senator, so long as their respective commonwealths were at peace. It is remarkable also that Plautus, an Umbrian, in his comedy of the " Poenulus" should have introduced a Carthaginian among his dramatis personae, and an entire scene in the Punic language, while neither Carthaginian words, names, or allusions, are to be met with in Terence.

We know not at what time Terence came to Rome; but from his proficiency in the language of his masters we infer that he fell early into the hands of Terentius Lucanus, even if he were not a verna, or slave born in the house. A handsome person and promising talents recommended Terence to his patron, who afforded him the best education of the age and finally manumitted him. The condition of slaves was not always unfavourable to intellectual development. More than one eminent writer was born in a servile station * Bentley (Praef: in Terent. Cantabr. 1726) remarks " Hi tres (Terentius, P. Syrus, Phaedrus) pari conditione liberti et peregrini, in non ita dissimili argumento, comoediis mimis et apologis, omnia Italorum ingenia facile superaverunt." For the intellectual opportunities of slaves, see also Nepos (Att. 13, 14). Before his manumission, Terence was probably anagnostes and librarius to Lucanus., and Tiro, Cicero's freedman, was the associate of his patron's literary labours, and his amanuensis. On his manumission, according to the usual practice, Terence assumed his patron's nomen, Terentius, having been previously called Publius or Publipor. From his cognomen, Lucanus, the patron may have been a native or landholder of southern Italy, and the protege, like Livius Andronicus, have acquired in one of the cities of Magna Graecia his taste for the Attic drama. The " Andrian" was the first play offered by Terence for representation The curule aediles, who conducted the theatrical exhibitions, referred the piece to Caecilius, then one of the most popular play-writers at Rome. [Caecilius Statius.] Unknown and meanly clad, Terence began to read from a low stool his opening scene, so often cited by Cicero as a model of narration. (Invent. 1.23, de Orat. 2.40, &c., &c.) A few verses showed the elder poet that no ordinary writer was before him, and the young aspirant, then in his 27th year, was invited to share the couch and supper of his judge. This reading of the Andrian, however, must have preceded its performance nearly two years, for Caecilius died in B. C. 168, and it was not acted till 166. Meanwhile copies were in circulation, envy was awakened, and Luscius Lavinius [Vol. II. p. 842] a veteran, and not very successful play-writer (comp. Pral. in Terent. Corn. ; Gel. 15.24; Hieron. in Genes.), began his unwearied and unrelenting attacks on the dramatic and personal character of the author. The " Andrian" was successful, and, aided by the accomplishments and good address of Terence himself, was the means of introducing him to the most refined and intellectual circles of Rome. In the interval between Plautus and Terence, the great Roman families had more and more assumed the state and character of princely houses. In their town and country seats, the Scipios, the Laelii, the Metelli and the Mucii, formed each a petty court around themselves. Among the patrons or associates of Terence we find the names of L. Furius Philus, of C. Sulpicius Gallus, of Q. Fabius Labeo, and M. Popilius Laenas. But from the comparative youth of the parties, his intercourse with Laelius and the younger Scipio had in it less of dependence on the one side, and more of friendship on the other. Nepos, indeed (Fr. Chron. 1.6), calls them aequales. Both Scipio and Laelius, however, were probably about nine years younger than their protégé. Both treated him as an equal, and this intimacy would open to him, as it formerly opened to Ennius, and subsequently to Lucilius, the houses of the Aemilii, Metelli, and Scaevolae. (Cic. Arch. 7 ; Vet. Schol. in Hor. Serm. 2.1. 71.) Nor is it rash to conjecture that Terence may have conversed with Polybius at Alba or Liternum, or made one of the group immortalised by Horace. (Serm. 2.1. 71, foll.; vet. Schol.)

Calumny did not fail to misrepresent their intercourse. His patrons, it was said, assisted Terence in the composition, nay, were the real authors of his plays, made him their playmate and butt, and let him starve. (Porcius, apud Donat.) C. Memmius [No. 5] mentioned the rumour as notorious, in his speech " Pro Se ;" Valgius wrote in his Actaeon (Bothe, Poet. Lat. Scen. v. p. 201), probably in the Prologue,

" Hae quae vocantur fabulae cujae sunt? Non has, qui jura populis end'ibus (endo-tribs ?) dabat Honore summo affectus, fecit fabulas ;"

Cicero gave it credence (ad Att. 7.3), and Nepos (Fr. Incert. 6), in the following story, ascribes at least one comedy to Laelius. It was, he says, the 1st of March, the festival of the Matronalia, on which, if on no other day of the year, the Roman ladies were absolute in their households. Laelius was spending the holiday at Puteoli; supper was announced, but he begged not to be interrupted, as he had business in hand. When at length he entered the supper-room, he excused his absence by saying he had been writing verses, and had never written any more to his liking. He then recited the opening lines of the 4th scene in the 4th act of the " Self-Tormentor:"

" Satis, pol, proterve me Syri promissa huc induxerunt," &c.

The belief that Terence was aided by his friends in composition, if properly limited, has in it nothing improbable. He was a foreigner, and of a race, to which, whether Libyan or Iberian, the Greek and Latin idioms presented no ordinary difficulties. Of the English, who speak and write French, few attain to precision or purity, and the Punic or Basque dialects diverged more from the languages of Athens and Rome than the speech of London from the speech of Paris. From the purity of Terence's diction we might, without these anecdotes, infer his intimacy with the best society in Rome. Of that society, in that age, the Scipios were the leaders; and the Laelii, both male and female, the models of forensic and conversational eloquence. [Laelia, No. 1.] Nor did Terence deny the charge. He gloried in it, as the test of his proficiency as an artist. (Prol. in Adelph.) Our own dramatic literature furnishes parallel cases. Garrick added a scene to the " West Indian," and revised the " Clandestine Marriage." Pope retouched the songs in the " Beggar's Opera," and the " Medea" was submitted to the critics of Leicester House. Yet no one doubts that Cumberland, Colman, Gay, and Glover, were respectively the authors of those productions. The story of Terence's poverty is less easy to refute, but we disbelieve it equally. He owned an estate of a few acres, contiguous to the Appian road, and, after his decease, his daughter married a man of equestrian rank. Neither of these facts accords with the assertion of Porcius Licinius (Donat.), that he was too poor to hire a house or keep a slave. An eques would scarcely wed a portionless maiden, the daughter of a freedman; and even in that age, land lying near the great highway of Italy must have been valuable as pasture, arable, or building ground. Avarice, on the other hand. was not the vice of the Scipios. (Plb. 32.14.) If they took freely from kings and tetrarchs (Liv. 38.50), without scrupulously accounting to the treasury, they gave freely to their favourites and dependents. Ennius, though poor (Hieron. Chron. Ol. 135), did not starve under their roof, and was buried in their tomb; Polybius and Panaetius lightened the privations of exile in their camp and their villas, and Lucilins, who succeeded Terence in the friendship of Scipio and Laelius, could afford to make literature his profession. But. if by poverty be meant indigence, the tenour of Terence's history contradicts the rumour of his poverty. After the representation of his six comedies, for one of which, the Eunuch, he received the unprecedented sum of nearly 60l., he travelled in Greece. Now a journey in Greece could not be performed in those days any more than in our own without cost, even if his patrons lightened his charges by their tesserae hospitals (Plant. Poen. 5.1. 25), to their various clients and friends. And Terence resided, as well as travelled in Greece, since while there he translated 108 of Menander's comedies nor as an alien could he hold a libera legatio, or commission to live at the public expense while transacting his private business. These facts, gleaned from his biographers themselves, render the neglect of the patrons and the indigence of the client very doubtful. The hostility to Terence was perhaps owing partly to professional causes, and partly to his popularity with the great. Terence was a foreigner, a freedman, and the adherent of a party. Even Horace was taunted with being libertino patre natus ; and in Horace's days the long civil wars and the influx of strangers into the senate and the tribes had melted down many of the old Italian prejudices. In Terence's age there were two strongly opposed parties in literature, as well as in politics,--the Latin party, of which Cato and the Fabii were the representatives, and the Greek, or movement-party, of which the Scipios were the leaders and Terence the favourite. Here was plentiful matter for libel. Whether the attacks of Lavinius drove him from Italy, or whether he went to Greece as to a university, is uncertain. Before his departure his detractors had affirmed that from his ignorance of Attic manners and idiom his versions of Menander and Apollodorus were caricatures. (Prol. in Andr. Hcautont. Phorm.) He never returned, and the accounts of his death are as various as the records of his life. According to one story, after embarking at Brundisium, he was never heard of more; according to others, he died at Stymphalus, in Arcadia (Auson. Epist. xviii.), in Letucadia, or at Patrae, in Achaia. One of his biographers said he was drowned, with all the fruits of his sojourn in Greece, on his home-passage. But the prevailing report was, that his translations of Menander were lost at sea, and that grief for their loss caused his death. He died in the 36th year of his age, in B. C. 159, or, according to St. Jerome (Chron. Ol. 155, 3), in the year following. He left a daughter, but nothing is known of his family. Works

Six comedies, all belonging to the Fabula Palliata, are all that remain to us; and since in these we can verify the citations from him in the grammarians, they are probably all that Terence produced. His later versions of Menander were, in all likelihood, from their number and the short time in which they were made, merely studies for future dramas of his own, and therefore are not to be ranked as deperdita. For Terence's exemption from the neglect or ravages of time various causes may be assigned. His works were few in number, and small in bulk. From their purity of diction, they became the text-books of the grammatical and rhetorical schools; they found favour with St. Jerome, and escaped the censures of the church. They were brought forward at the following seasons and under the following circumstances. 1. Andria

Andria, " the Woman of Andros," so called from the birth-place of Glycerium, its heroine, was first represented at the Megalesian Games, on the 4th of April, B. C. 166. It was, according to Donatus, the first in order of time of Terence's plays. This has been disputed by subsequent critics (Petitus, de Ord. Com. P. Ter.), but seems warranted by the poet's age -- 27 -- at his interview with Caecilius (suprà), and by the original title, Andria Terentii. For in the didascalia it was the custom to put the name of the play foremost, if by an author hitherto unknown; whereas Terentii Andria would import that it was a new piece by a known writer. From the anecdote of Caecilius above related, it appears that the Andria circulated in manuscript nearly two years before it was acted. For the prologue refers to critical objections to the play, and says that the carpings of a malignant hacknied writer -- malevolus vetus poeta -- compelled the author to bring forward matters personal to himself, instead of confining himself to the argument of his piece The Andria is made up of two of Menander's comedies, the Andria and Perinthia, and Luscius Lavinius said that Terence had marred two good plays to make one bad one. Terence replies that if he were a compiler, so were Naevius, Plautus, and Ennius before him, and that he would rather err with them than be right with Lavinius. He ends by warning his assailant not to moot the question of piracy again, since his own offences in that way were notorious, and he begs the audience to give his play a patient hearing, for upon its reception would depend whether he wrote others.

The Roman theatre was ill suited to the representation of the Comoedia Palliata. The bustle and buffoons of Plautus required no better appointment than the wooden booths which that age afforded. The masks and the unities encumbered Menander as well as Terence; but the Roman play-writer had to contend with worse obstacles than the common conventionalities of his art. The manners he pourtrayed were exotic: his audience was gross and noisy (Prol. in Hecyr., comp. Prol. to B. Jonson's " The Case is altered"); and if Valerius Antias be correct in dating the introduction of the Ludi Scenici in B. C. 193 or 191, the Comoedia Palliata, or Genteel Comedy, was hardly a quarter of a century old at Rome. We find Terence, in his prologues, continually supplicating the spectators to sit still and be silent, and their rudeness and apathy must have formed a singular contrast to his subtle humour and refined pictures of life. Four of his six comedies, indeed, were played at the Megalesia, which were more decorous and orderly than the games of the circus, and are therefore described by Cicero (Harusp. Resp. 12) as maxime casti, sollemnes, religiosi. But at best the comedy of Terence was caviare to the Romans -- an Italian opera performed at Bartholomew fair.

The Andrian has been often translated and imitated. The earliest English version was made in the reign of Edward VI. It is in rhymed stanzas of seven lines each, was probably performed as an exercise at one of the universities, and is in some degree adapted to the manners of the times. Baron, the celebrated French actor, imitated Terence closely in his Andrienne. Even the Latin names of the Dramatis Personae are retained, and in the third and fourth acts alone has he deviated, and then not for the better, from his original. The Andria has also suggested a portion of Moore's Foundling. But the most elaborate copy of this play is Sir Richard Steele's Conscious Lovers. The Latin names of the characters, indeed, are not preserved, but their English representatives, as the following list shows, exhibit a close parallelism. Sir John Bevil=Simo; young Bevil = Pamphilus ; Indiana =Glycerium; Sealand=Chremes; Myrtle = Charinus; Humphrey = Sosia; Phillis = Mysis ; and Tom = Davus, the " currens servus qui fallit senem," the prototype of Molière's Scapin. Steele's underplot is, on the whole, conducted more skilfully than Terence's; but for the management of the principal story, for consistency in the characters, for humour, and elegance of diction, the Conscious Lovers will bear no comparison with the Andrian. 2. Hecyra

Hecyra, " the Step-Mother," was produced at the Megalesian Games, in B. C. 165. It was a version of a play, bearing the same name, by Apollodorus (Meineke, Comic. Graec. Hist. vol. i. p. 464), and is an ancient specimen of the comédie larmoyante. The Hecyra was twice rejected: the first time the spectators hurried out of the theatre to see a boxing match and rope-dancers; the second time, when it was played at the funeral games of Aemilius Paullus, B. C. 160, it was interrupted by a combat of gladiators. It owed its success, on a third trial, to the intercessions of Ambivius Turpio, the manager, with the audience. The Prologue to the Hecyra throws some light on the Roman theatrical system. It appears that the managers of the grex or company, in accepting a new piece, incurred no slight responsibility. Their judgment on the MSS. determined the aediles to purchase or refuse it. But if the public, after all, rejected it, the aediles looked to the manager to indemnify them for the outlay. Ambivius, by his appeals to the spectators, had more than once rescued the plays of Caecilius from rejection, and Terence, in his Prologue to the Phormio, acknow-ledges his exertions on the third representation of the Hecyra. The comedy, however, never was a favourite. It was acted quinto loco, fifth on the list, and Volcatius Sedigitus (Gel. 15.24) pronounces it the worst of the author's plays. The plot, which is single, and which Hurd (Dial. ii.) somewhat magisterially calls " the true Greek plot," was too simple for Roman taste, and the long narrations and general paucity of action in this comedy will alone account for its bad recep tion. " Tous les genres," says Voltaire, " sent bons, hors le genre ennuyeux." The Hecyra has never been modernised. 3. ἑεαυτὸν τιμωρουμένος

ἑεαυτὸν τιμωρουμένος, the Self-Tormentor, was performed at the Megalesian Games, B. C. 163. It was borrowed from Menander, and, like the Hecyra, belongs to the Comédie larmonyante. (Comp. Spectator, No. 502.) Its plot is twofold, and the parts are not better connected than the two stories in Vanbrugh's and Cibber's Provoked Husband. From the Prologue it appears that the critics had opened a new battery on Terence; they charged him with being a late learner of his art, and hinted what they afterwards expressed openly (comp. Prol. in Heaut. with Prol. in Adelph.) that his friends helped him in composition. He retorts upon them the grossness and impropriety of their scenes. Ambivius again pleaded the author's cause, and complained of the spectator's preference for such parts as exhausted the actor--the servus currens, the boisterous old man, and the parasite. The observation or neglect of the unities in the Heauton-timoroumenos was the subject of a fierce controversy among the French critics between 1640 and 1655. The principal combatants were Ménage and Hédelin (l'Abbé d'Aubignac); and Madam Dacier acted as moderator. Of the Terentian diction the Self-tormentor is the most perfect example, and the poet seems anxious to veil the anomalies of his plot beneath the dignity of his apophthegms and the splendour of his language. The part of Menedemus, the self-tormentor, rises to almost tragic earnestness, and reminds the reader occasionally of Shakspeare's Timon. But as none of Terence's plays are so remote from modern manners, the Heauton-timoroumenos has not retained its ancient reputation. Chapman's All Fools, printed in 1605, owes a portion of its plot to the Self-tormentor. (Collier, Annals of the Stage, 3.95.) Colman (Terence, p. 160) notices the resemblance between Menedemus and Laertes in the Odyssey (15.354), 16.139.) Some of the lines of Menander's Heauton-timoroumenos are preserved. (Meinek. Hist. Graec. Com.) 4. Eunuchus

Eunuchus, " the Eunuch," was at the time the most popular of Terence's comedies. It was played at the Megalesian Games, B. C. 162, and so highly applauded that it was repeated at the same festival, and the poet received from the aediles the unusual sum of 8000 sesterces, a fact so memorable as to be recorded in the Didascalia. It is an adaptation of Menander's Εὐνοῦχος, but Thraso and Gnatho, the swaggering captain and the parasite, are taken from that author's Κόλαξ, " the Flatterer." There was also a " Colax" by Naevius, which Terence's enemies accused him of appropriating, but which he denies having ever seen. Lavinius (Prol. in Eunuch.) managed to get sight of the Eunuch before it was acted, and told the aediles they had bought stolen goods. Terence replied, that if stock-characters -- currentes servos, bonas matronas, meretrices malas, parasitum edacem, gloriosum militem -- were to be prohibited, there was an end of play-writing. He bids his censor mind the blunders in his own " Thesaurus," and remember that his Phasma was all Menander's, except the faults. As the manners of the Self-tormentor are obsolete, so the subject of the Eunuch is unsuitable to modern feelings, yet of all Terence's plays it is the most varied in action and the most vivacious in dialogue, and makes the received censure of his being deficient in vis comica scarcely intelligible.

Baif, a poet in the reign of Charles IX., translated the Eunuch into French verse. The modern imitations of it are Aretine's La Talanta, La-Fontaine's L'Eunuque, which is in fact a translation, retaining the names, scenes, and manners of the original; and Sir Charles Sedley's Bellamira 1687. It is also the source of Le Muet, by Bruyés and Palaprat, first acted in 1691. 5. Phormio

Phormio, was performed in the same year with the preceding, at the Roman Games on the 1st of October. (Comp. Drakenborch. ad Liv. 45.1, 6.) This year (161) may therefore be regarded as the " annus mirabilis" of his reputation. It is borrowed from the Ἐπιδικαζόμενος, " Plaintiff" or " Heir-at-Law" of Apollodorus, and is named " Phormio" from the parasite whose devices connect the double-plot. Phormio, however, is not a parasite of the Gnatho stamp, but an accommodating gentleman who reconciles all parties, somewhat after the fashion of Mr. Harmony in Mrs. Inchbald's Every One has his Fault. It would seem from the Prologue, that Terence wearied out, if not convinced, by his censors iterating that his plays were " tenui oratione et scripture levi," attempted in the present a loftier style, and, as Donatius says, dealt with passions too earnest for mirth. It is therefore the more strange that this comedy should have suggested to Molière one of his most extravagant farces, Les Fourberies de Scapin. Molière, however, borrowed from other sources as well. 6. Adelphi

Adelphi, " the Brothers," was acted for the first time at the funeral games of L. Aemilius Paullus, B. C. 160. The Greek stage possessed no less than seven dramas with this title. (Meineke, Comic. Graec. Hist.) But Terence took the greater part of his plot from Menander's Ἀδελφοί. One scene, however (Prol.), was borrowed from the Συναποθνήοκοντες of Diphilus, which Plautus had already reproduced under the title of Commorientes. A full and lively analysis of this play, to the modern reader the most delightful of all Terence's comedies, is given by Mr. Dunlop (Hist. of Rom. Lit. I. pp. 302-317). In its Prologue the charge, implied before (Prol. in Heautont.), is expressed of the poet's being not merely helped in composition by his friends, but that the plays themselves were really written by Scipio or Laelius. We have already examined the validity of this accusation. The Prologue shows that the hostility of the critics increased with the success of Terence.

The modern imitations of this comedy are very numerous. Baron copied it in his Ecole des Pères, and it furnished Molière with more than hints for his Ecole des Maris. It is the original of Fagan's La Pupile, and of Garrick's Farce of the Guardian. Diderot in his comedie larmoyante Le Père de Famille, in his characters of M. d'Orbesson and Le Commandeur had evidently Micio and Demea before him, and Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia is from the same source. Manlove and Nightshade in Cumberland's Choleric Man are repetitions of Micio and Demea, and Know'ell in Every Man in his Humour is Micio. Even so recently as 1826-7 the " Brothers of Terence" in its essential parts of contrast, was brought upon the English stage as the Rose-Feast.

The comedies of Terence have been translated into most of the languages of modern Europe, and in conjunction with Plautus were, on the revival of the drama, the models of the most refined, if not the most genial play-writers. In Italy the Terentian Comedy was opposed in the 15th and 16th centuries to the Commédie dell' Arte, and Ariosto, Aretine, Lodovico Dolce, and Battista Porta drew deeply from " this well of" Lutin " undefiled." The Pedante was substituted for the Currens Servus, but the swaggering captain and the parasite were retained with little alteration. In Spain Pedro Simon de Abril, about the middle of the 16th century, published a complete translation of Terence, which is still much esteemed. (Bouterwek, Spanish Lit. p. 198, Eng. trans. Bogue.) The English versions of Bernard, Hoole, and Echard (see Tytler's Essay on the Principles of Translate. p. 244, &c.) have been long superseded by that of Colman, one of the most faithful and spirited translations of an ancient writer. Besides Baif's Eunuchus Menage mentions a very old French version of the whole of Terence, partly in prose; but the most accurate and useful of the French translations is the prose version by the Daciers. Politian was the first to divide the scenes into metrical lines, but Erasmus greatly improved upon his arrangement.

The Didascalia preserve the names of the principal actors of Terence's plays, when originally produced. They were Ambivius Turpio, L. Atilius Praenestinus, and Minutius Prothimus; and Flaccus, son of Claudius, furnished the musical accompaniments to all six comedies. The Periochae or summaries in Iambic verse of the plot of each comedy were drawn up by C. Sulpicius Apollinaris.

In closing this summary of Terence's comedies, we may remark that Terence added no new characters to the repertoire of the Attic drama (comp. Prol. in Heautont. with Hor. A. P. 114), and that, even in Horace's time, in spite of the passion for spectacle and melodrama, his plays attracted crowded audiences, and were as familiarly known to the Roman populace, as the stanzas of Tasso's " Gierusalemme" to the Venetian gondoliers. (Hor. Ep. 2.1. 60.) Ancient Commentators

An account of the principal ancient commentators on Terence will be found under the names Calliopius, Donatus, Eugraphius, and Evanthius. The earliest treatise on the Terentian metres is that of Rufinus of Antioch. Bentley, in his edition of the poet (Cambridge, 1726, 4to.), was the first to arrange them on a scientific principle: since that time no material improvement has been made either in the text or the metrical system of these comedies. For an account of Bentley's edition, see his Life by Monk (ii. pp. 225-231, 8vo. ed). Mr. Hallam (Mid. Ages, ii. p. 342, 8th ed.) has some very ingenious and instructive remarks on the versification of Terence, and there is a satisfactory article on the same subject in the Penny Cyclopaedia (Terentian Metres). A selection of Prolegomena to Terence is prefixed to the edition of Terence by Mr. Giles, London, 8vo. 1837.

The ancient critics on Terence were very numerous. We cite the principal of them chronologically before offering any remarks of our own.

Nearest in time, afranius wrote in his Compitalia that Terence was sui generis, really incomparable,

" Terenti non similem dices quempiam."

Varro (Parmenio, Nonius, s. v. Poscere) says he was surpassing in the portraiture of character, " in ethesin Terentius poscit palmam." Cicero (Opt. Gen. Or. 1. § 3) said that he differed from his brother-artists in genere, " unum vero est genus perfecti, a quo qui absunt, genere differunt, ut ab Attio Terentius," and in a fragment of his Limo, probably a critical miscellany in verse, commends him as the interpreter of Menander,

" Quicquid come loquens, ac omnia dulcia dicens."

Volcatius Sedigitus (de Poet. Corn. ap. Gell. 15.24) assigns Terence only the sixth place among the Roman comic poets, an opinion deeply resented by many modern scholars. (Rutger's Var. Lect. 4.19; Francis. Asulanus, Ep. &c.) Horace awards him the palm of art (Ep. 2.1. 59, " sincere Caecilius gravitate, Terentius arte "), and Ovid distinguishes his festive humour (Trist. 2.357),

" Nec liber est judicium animi; sed honesta voluntas, Plurima mulcendis auribus apta refert. Accius esset atrox, conviva Terentius esset."

Quintilian (10.1) depreciates Roman comedy generally, " in comoedia maxime claudicamus," and thinks that Terence erred in not adhering to the Senarian measure of his Greek originals; and Servius (Serv. ad Aen. 1.414) says " sciendum est Terentium, propter solam proprietatem, omnibus comicis esse praepositum; quibus est, quantum ad caetera spectat, inferior." We cite Caesar's famous epigram last, both on account of its author and of the verdict he delivers.

" Tu quoque tu in summis, O dimidiate Menander, Poneris, et merito, puri sermonis amator, Lenibus atque utinam scriptis adjunct foret vis Comica, ut aequato virtus polleret honore Cum Graecis, neque in hac despectus parte jaceres. Unum hoc maceror et doleo tibi deesse, Terenti."

The preceding extracts show the ancient critics unanimous in ascribing to Terence immaculate purity and elegance of language, and nearly so in denying him vis comica. Their opinion is entitled to the more respect from their having had the entire Menander before them, and from its confirmation by modern censors from Erasmus to Colman. Yet we are not inclined to let their verdict pass unquestioned. In the first place, four of Terence's six plays are more or less comédies larmoyantes -- sentimental comedies -- in which vis comica is not a primary element. In the next, Terence is generally contrasted with Plautus, with whom he had so little in common that we might as justly compare Addison with Moliére. Granting to the elder poet the highest genius for exciting laughter, and the eloquence which Aelius Stilo ascribed to him (Varr. ap. Quinct. 10.1.99), and a natural force -- " virtus " -- which his rival wanted, there will remain to Terence greater consistency of plot and character, closer observation of generic and individual distinctions, deeper pathos, subtler wit, more skill and variety in metre, and in rhythm, and a wider command of the middle region between sport and earnest. It may be objected that Terence's superiority in these points arises from his copying his Greek originals more servilely. But no servile copy is an animated copy, and we have corresponding fragments enough of Menander to prove that Terence retouched and sometimes improved his model. (Zimmerman, Terenz. u. Menand. 1842.) He cannot, indeed, be ranked with the dramatic poets who exert a deep or permanent influence on the passions of men or the art of representation -- with Sophocles and Aristophanes, with Shakspere or Lope de Vega, with Moliére or Schiller. But we incline to class him with Massinger, Racine, and Alfieri -- writers in whom the form is more perfectly elaborated than the matter is genially conceived. Nor in summing up his merits should we omit the praise which has been universally accorded him -- that, although a foreigner and a freedman, he divides with Cicero and Caesar the palm of pure Latinity. Editions

The principal editions of Terence are, "princeps," Mediol. 1470, fol.; Mureti, 1555, 1558, 8vo. frequently reprinted; Faerni, Florent. 1565, 8vo.; Lindenbrogii, Paris, 1602, 4to., Francofurt, 1623; Parei et Riccii. Neap. Nemet. 1619, 2 vols. 4to.; Bentleii, an epoch in Terentian text and metres, Cantab. 1726, 4to., Amstel. 1727, 4to., Lips. 1791, 8vo.; Westerhovii. Hagae Com. 1727, 2 vols. 4to.; Stallbaum, Lips. 1830, 8vo. and Zeune, I. K. 1774, which contains nearly every thing good in its predecessors, and ample prolegomena. There are also numerous editions of single plays. MSS

The principal Codices of Terence are, the Vatican Bembinus, written about the fifth century, A.D., and the Cambridge. A second Vatican Codex dates from the ninth century, A.D., and contains drawings of the masks worn by the actors. (Boettig. Spec. ed. Terent. Lips. 1795.) Further information

Besides the authorities already cited, see Crinit. de Poet. 100.8 ; Dunlop, Hist. Rom. Lit. vol. i. p. 110, foll.; Dryden's " Essay on Dramatic Poesie " (works, vol. xv. p. 263. Scott. ed.); Hurd's (Bp.) Dialogues on " Poetical Imitation," " Provinces of the Drama," &c.; Diderot, " Essai sur la Poesie Dramatique " (oeuvres); Spectator, No. 502; Colman's " Terence," &c. [W.B.D]

or Vergi'lius MARO, was born on the 15th of October, B. C. 70 in the first consulship of Cn. Pompeius Magnus and M. Licinius Crassus, at Andes, a small village near Mantua in Cisalpine Gaul. The tradition, though an old one, which identifies Andes with the modern village of Pietola, may be accepted as a tradition, without being accepted as a truth. The poet Horace, afterwards one of his friends, was born B. C. 65; and Octavianus Caesar, afterwards the emperor Augustus, and his patron, in B. C. 63, in the consulship of M. Tullius Cicero. Virgil's father probably had a small estate which he cultivated : his mother's name was Maia. The son was educated at Cremona and Mediolanum (Milan), and he took the toga virilis at Cremona on the day on which he commenced his sixteenth year in B. C. 55, which was the second consulship of Cn. Pompeius Magnus and M. Licinius Crassus. On the same day, according to Donatus, the poet Lucretius died, in his forty-first year. It is said that Virgil subsequently studied at Neapolis (Naples) under Parthenius, a native of Bithynia, from whom he learned Greek (Macr. 5.17); and the minute industry of the grammarians has pointed out the following line (Georg. 1.437) as borrowed from his master :

Glauco et Panopeae et Inoo Melicertae.

(Compare Gellius 13.26; and Parthenius).

He was also instructed by Syron an Epicurean, and probably at Rome. Virgil's writings prove that he received a learned education, and traces of Epicurean opinions are apparent in them. The health of Virgilius was always feeble, and there is no evidence of his attempting to rise by those means by which a Roman gained distinction, oratory and the practice of arms. Indeed at the time when he was born, Cisalpine Gaul was not included within the term " Italy," and it was not till B. C. 89 that a Lex Pompeia gave even the Jus Latii to the inhabitants of Gallia Transpadana, and the privilege of obtaining the Roman civitas by filling a magistratus in their own cities. The Roman civitas was not given to the Transpadani till B. C. 49. Virgil therefore was not a Roman citizen by birth, and he was above twenty years of age before the civitas was extended to Gallia Transpadana.

It is merely a conjecture, though it is probable that Virgilius retired to his paternal farm, and here he may have written some of the small pieces, which are attributed to him. the Culex, Ciris, Moretum, and others. The defeat of Brutus and Cassius by M. Antonius and Octavianus Caesar at Philippi B. C. 42, gave the supreme power to the two victorious generals, and when Octavianus returned to Italy, he began to assign to his soldiers lands which had been promised them for their services (D. C. 48.5, &c.). But the soldiers could only be provided with land by turning out many of the occupiers, and the neighbourhood of Cremona and Mantua was one of the districts in which the soldiers were planted, and front which the former possessors were dislodged. (Appian, App. BC 5.12, &c.) There is little evidence as to the circumstances under which Virgil was deprived of his property. It is said that it was seized by a veteran named Claudius or Clodius, and that Asinius Pollio, who was then governor of Gallia Transpadana, advised Virgil to apply to Octavianus at Rome for the restitution of his land, and that Octavianus granted his request. It is supposed that Virgilius wrote the Eclogue which stands first in our editions, to commemorate his gratitude to Octavianus Caesar. Whether the poet was subsequently disturbed in his possession and again restored, and whether he was not firmly secured in his patrimonial farm till after the peace of Brundusium B. C. 40 between Octavianus Caesar and M. Antonius, is a matter which no extant authority is sufficient to determine.

Virgil became acquainted with Maecenas before Horace was, and Horace (Sat. 1.5, and 6. 55, &c.) was introduced to Maecenas by Virgil. Whether this introduction was in the year B. C. 41 or a little later is uncertain; but we may perhaps conclude from the name of Maecenas not being mentioned in the Eclogues of Virgil, that he himself was not on those intimate terms with Maecenas which ripened into friendship, until after they were written. Horace, in one of his Satires (Sat. 1.5), in which he describes the journey from Rome to Brundusium, mentions Virgil as one of the party, and in language which shows that they were then in the closest intimacy. The time to which this journey relates is a matter of some difficulty, but there are perhaps only two times to which it can be referred, either the events recorded in Appian (App. BC 5.64), which preceded the peace of Brundusium B. C. 40, or to the events recorded by Appian (App. BC 5.78), which belong to the year B. C. 38. But it is not easy to decide to which of these two years, B. C. 40 or B. C. 38, the journey of Horace refers. It can hardly refer to the events mentioned in Appian (App. BC 5.93, &c.) which belong to the year B. C. 37, though even this opinion has been maintained. [Horatius Flaccus.]

The most finished work of Virgil, his Georgica, an agricultural poem, was undertaken at the suggestion of Maecenas (Georg. 3.41), and it was probably not commenced earlier than B. C. 37. The supposition that it was written to revive the languishing condition of agriculture in Italy after the civil war, and to point out the best method, may take its place with other exploded notions. The idea of reviving the industry of a country by an elaborate poem, which few farmers would read and still fewer would understand, requires no refutation. Agriculture is not quickened by a book, still less by a poem. It requires security of property, light taxation, and freedom of commerce. Maecenas may have wished Virgil to try his strength on something better than his Eclogues; and though the subject does not appear inviting, the poet has contrived to give it such embellishment that his fame rests in a great degree on this work. The concluding lines of the Georgica were written at Naples (Georg. 4.559), but we can hardly infer that the whole poem was written there, though this is the literal meaning of the words, Haec super arvorum cult pecorumque canebam.

We may however conclude that it was completed after the battle of Actium B. C. 31, while Caesar was in the East. (Compare Georg. 4.560, and 2.171, and the remarks of the critics.) His Eclogues had all been completed, and probably before the Georgica were begun (Georg. 4.565).

The epic poem of Virgil, the Aeneid, was probably long contemplated by the poet. While Augustus was in Spain B. C. 27, he wrote to Virgil to express his wish to have some monument of his poetical talent; perhaps he desired that the poet should dedicate his labours to his glory as he had done to that of Maecenas. A short reply of Virgil is preserved (Macr. 1.24), in which he says, " with respect to my Aeneas, if it were in a fit shape for your reading, I would gladly send the poem; but the thing is only just begun; and indeed it seems something like folly to have undertaken so great a work, especially when, as you know, I am applying to it other studies, and those of much greater importance." The inference that may be derived from a passage of Propertius (Eleg. 2.34, 5.61), in which he speaks of the Iliad as begun and in progress, and from the recent death of Gallus, also mentioned in the same elegy, is that Virgil was engaged on his work in B. C. 24 (Clinton, Fast. B. C. 24). An allusion to the victory of Actium in the same elegy, compared with the passage in Virgil (Aeneid, 8.675 and 704) seems to show that Propertius was acquainted with the poem of Virgil in its progress; and he may have heard parts of it read. III B. C. 23 died Marcellus, the son of Octavia, Caesar's sister, by her first husband; and as Virgil lost no opportunity of gratifying his patron, he introduced into his sixth book of the Aeneid (5.883) the well-known allusion to the virtues of this youth, who was cut off by a premature death. Heu miserande puer, si qua fata aspera rumpas, Tu Marcellus eris.

Octavia is said to have been present when the poet was reciting this allusion to her son and to have fainted from her emotions. She rewarded the poet munificently for his excusable flattery. As Marcellus did not die till B. C. 23, these lines were of course written after his death, but that does not prove that the whole of the sixth book was written so late. Indeed the attempts which modern critics make to settle many points in ancient literary history, are not always mauaged with due regard to the nature of the evidence. This passage in the sixth book was certainly written after the death of Marcellus, but Virgil may have sketched his whole poem and even finished in a way many parts in the later books before he elaborated the whole of his sixth book. A passage in the seventh book (5.606), Auroramque sequi Parthosque reposcere signa, appears to allude to Augustus receiving back the standards taken by the Parthians from M. Licinius Crassus B. C. 53. This event belongs to B. C. 20 (D. C. 54.8); and if the passage of Virgil refers to it, the poet must have been working at his seventh book in B. C. 20.

When Augustus was returning from Samos, where he had spent the winter of B. C. 20, he met Virgil at Athens. The poet it is said had intended to make a tour of Greece, but he accompanied the emperor to Megara and thence to Italy. His health, which had been long declining, was now completely broken, and he died soon after his arrival at Brundusium on the 22d of September B. C. 19, not having quite completed his fifty-first year. His remains were transferred to Naples, which had been his favourite residence, and placed on the road (Via Puteolana) from Naples to Puteoli (Pozzuoli) between the first and second milestone from Naples. The monument, now called the tomb of Virgil, is not on the road which passes through the tunnel of Posilipo; but if the Via Puteolana ascended the hill of Posilipo, as it may have done, the situation of the monument would agree very well with the description of Donatus.

The inscription said to have been placed on the tomb, Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces. we cannot suppose to have been written by the poet, though Donatus says that it was.

Virgil named, as heredes in his testament, his half-brother Valerius Proculus, to whom he left one half of his property, and also Augustus, Maecenas, L. Varius and Plotius Tucca. It is said that in his last illness he wished to burn the Aeneid, to which he had not given the finishing touches, but his friends would not allow him. Whatever he may have wished to be done with the Aeneid, it was preserved and published by his friends Varius and Tucca. It seems from different extant testimonies that he did express a wish that the unfinished poem should be destroyed.

The poet had been enriched by the liberality of his patrons, and he left behind him a considerable property and a house on the Esquiline Hill near the gardens of Maecenas. He used his wealth liberally, and his library, which was doubtless a good one, was easy of access. He used to send his parents money every year. His father, who became blind, did not die before his son had attained a mature age. Two brothers of Virgil also died before him. Poetry was not the only study of Virgil; he applied to medicine and to agriculture, as the Georgica show, and also to what Donatus calls Mathematica, perhaps a jumble of astrology and astronomy. His stature was tall, his complexion dark, and his appearance that of a rustic. He was modest and retiring, and his character is free from reproach, if we except one scandalous passage in Donatus, which may not tell the truth.

In his fortunes and his friends Virgil was a happy man. Munificent patronage gave him ample means of enjoyment and of leisure, and he had the friendship of all the most accomplished men of the day, among whom Horace entertained a strong affection for him. He was an amiable good-tempered man, free from the mean passions of envy and jealousy; and in all but health he was prosperous. His fame, which was established in his life time, was cherished after his death, as an inheritance in which every Roman had a share; and his works became school-books even before the death of Augustus, and continued such for centuries after. The learned poems of Virgil soon gave employment to commentators and critics. Aulus Gellius has numerous remarks on Virgil, and Macrobius, in his Saturnalia, has filled four books (iii--vi.) with His critical remarks on Virgil's poems. One of the most valuable commentaries of Virgil, in which a great amount of curious and instructive matter has been preserved, is that of Servius [Servius]. Virgil is one of the most difficult of the Latin authors, not so much for the form of the expression, though that is sometimes ambiguous enough, but front the great variety of knowledge that is required to attain his meaning in all its fulness. To understand the Aeneid fully requires great labour and every aid that call be called in from the old commentators to those of the present day.

Virgil was the great poet of the middle ages too. To him Dante paid the homage of his superior genius, and owned him for his master and his model. Among the vulgar he had the reputation of a conjurer, a necromancer a worker of miracles ; it is the fate of a great name to be embalmed in fable. Works Bucolica

The ten short poems called Bucolica were the earliest works of Virgil, and probably all written between B. C. 41 and B. C. 37. These Bucolica are not Bucolica in the same sense as the poems of Theocritus, which have the same title. They have all a Bucolic form and colouring, but some of them have nothing snore. They are also called Eelogae or Selections, but this same may not have originated with the poet. Their merit consists in their versification, which was smoother and more polished than the hexameters which the Romans had yet seen, and in many natural and simple touches. But as an attempt to transfer the Syracusan muse into Italy, they are certainly a failure, and we read the pastorals of Theocritus and of Virgil with a very different decree of pleasure. The fourth Eclogue, entitled Pollio, which may have been written in B. C. 40 after the peace of Brundusium, has nothing of the pastoral character about it, as the poet himself admits in the first lines, Sicelides Musae paulo majora canamus, Non omnes arbusta juvant humilesque myricae, Si canimus sylvas, silvae sunt console dignae.

Virgil was aware that he was not following his professed model, and that the poem was Bucolic only in name. It is allegorical, mystical, half historical and prophetical, aenigmatical, anything in fact but Bucolic. Pope's Messiah, a kind of imitation of Virgil, is also not an Eclogue. The first Eclogue is Bucolic in form and in treatment, with an historical basis. The second Eclogue, the Alexis, which the critics suppose to have been written before the first, is an amatory poem, with a Bucolic colouring, which indeed is the characteristic of all Virgil's Eclogues, whatever they may be in substance. The third, the fifth, the seventh, and the ninth are more clearly modelled on the form of the poems of his Sicilian prototype : and the eighth, the Pharmaceutria, is a direct imitation of the original Greek. The tenth, entitled Gallus, perhaps written the last of all, is a love poem, which, if written in elegiac verse, would be more appropriately called an elegy than a Bucolic. All the Eclogues of Virgil abound in allusions to the circumstances and persons of the time; but these allusions are often obscure. Though the Eclogues contain many pleasing lines, they present very great difficulties arising both from the construction of the poems, and the language. Those who find them easy are not persons who are much alive to the perception of difficulties ; and those who bestow upon them very liberal praise, have the merit at least of being easily satisfied. Virgil borrowed many lines from Theocritus; but the adaptation of a few lines does not give to his poems the genuine rustic cast of some of the best pieces of Theocritus. We do not feel that the Eclogues of Virgil represent rural life or rural manners in Italy; and such a representation, even if Virgil could have given it, is incompatible with the leading idea that pervades some of the Eclogues. Julius Caesar Scaliger preferred Virgil's Eclogues to those of Theocritus, a curious instance of perverted judgment. Georgica

The " Georgica" or " Agricultual Poem " in four books is a didactic poem, which Virgil dedicated to his patron Maecenas. He treats of the cultivation of the soil in the first book, of fruit trees in the second, of horses and other cattle in the third, and of bees in the fourth. In this poem Virgil shows a great improvement both in his taste and in his versification. If he began this poem before he had finished the Eclogues, he went on working at it and correcting it after he had laid his Eclogues aside. It has been attempted to show that the first book was written before B. C. 35, but there is no conclusive evidence on this point. It has been stated when it was finished. Neither in the Georgics nor elsewhere has Virgil the merit of striking originality; his chief merit consists in the skilful handling of borrowed materials. His subject, which was by no means promising, he treated in a manner both instructive and pleasing ; for he has given many useful remarks on agriculture and diversified the dryness of didactic poetry by numerous allusions and apt embellishments, and some occasional digressions without wandering too far from his main matter. In the first book (5.1, &c.) he enumerates the subjects of his poem, among which is the treatment of bees; yet the management of bees seems but meagre material for one fourth of the whole poem, and the author accordingly had to complete the fourth book with matter somewhat extraneous -- the long story of Aristaeus. The Georgica is the most finished specimen of the Latin hexameter which we have ; and the rude vigor of Lucretius, and the antiquated rudeness of Ennius are here replaced by a versification, which in its kind cannot be surpassed. The Georgica are also the most original poem of Virgil, for he found little in the Works and Days of Hesiod that could furnish him with hints for the treatment of his subject, and we are not aware that there was any work which he could exactly follow as a whole. For numerous single lines he was indebted to his extensive reading of the Greek poets. Aeneis

The Aeneid, or adventures of Aeneas after the fall of Troy, is an epic poem on the model of the Homeric poems. It was founded upon an old Roman tradition that Aeneas and his Trojans settled in Italy, and were the founders of the Roman name. In the first books we have the story of Aeneas being driven by a storm on the coast of Africa, and being hospitably received by Dido queen of Carthage, to whom he relates in the episode of the second and third books the fall of Troy and his wanderings. In the fourth book the poet has elaborated the story of the attachment of Dido and Aeneas, the departure of Aeneas in obedience to the will of the gods and the suicide of the Carthaginian queen. The fifth book contains the visit to Sicily, and the sixth the landing of Aeneas at Cumae in Italy, and his descent to the infernal regions, where he sees his father Anchises, and has a prophetic vision of the glorious destinies of his race and of the future heroes of Rome. In the first six books the adventures of Ulysses in the Odyssey are the model, and these books contain more variety of incident and situation than those which follow. The critics have discovered an anachronism in the visit of Aeneas to Carthage, which is supposed not to have been founded until two centuries after the fall of Troy, but this is a matter which we may leave without discussion, or admit without allowing it to be a poetical defect. The last six books, the history of the struggles of Aeneas in Italy, are founded on the model of the battles of the Iliad. Latinus, the king of the Latini, offers the Trojan hero his daughter Lavinia in marriage, who had been betrothed to Turnus, the warlike king of the Rutuli. The contest is ended by the death of Turnus, who falls by the hand of Aeneas. The fortunes of Aeneas and his final settlement in Italy are the subject of the Aeneid, but the glories of Rome and of the Julian house, to which Augustus belonged, are indirectly the poet's theme. In the first book the foundation of Alba Longa is promised by Jupiter to Venus (Aeneid, 1.254), and the transfer of empire from Alba to Rome; from the line of Aeneas will descend the " Trojan Caesar," whose empire will only be limited by the ocean, and whose glory by the heavens. The future rivalry between Rome and Carthage, and the ultimate triumphs of Rome are predicted. The poem abounds in allusions to the history of Rome ; and the aim of the poet to confirm and embellish the popular tradition of the Trojan origin of the Roman state, and the descent of the Julii from Venus, is apparent all through the poem. It is objected to the Aeneid that it has not the unity of construction either of the Iliad or of the Odyssey, and that it is deficient in that antique simplicity which characterises these two poems. Aeneas, the hero, is an insipid kind of personage, and a much superior interest is excited by the savage Mezentius, and also by Turnus, the unfortunate rival of Aeneas. Virgil imitated other poets besides Homer, and he has occasionally borrowed from them, especially from Apollonius of Rhodes. If Virgil's subject was difficult to invest with interest, that is his apology; but it cannot be denied that many parts of his poem are successfully elaborated, and that particular scenes and incidents are treated with true poetic spirit. The historical colouring which pervades it, and the great amount of antiquarian learning which he has scattered through it, make the Aeneid a study for the historian of Rome. Virgil's good sense and taste are always conspicuous, and make up for the defect of originality. As a whole, the Aeneid leaves no strong impression, which arises from the fact that it is not really a national poem, like the Iliad or the Odyssey, the monument of an age of which we have no other literary monument; it is a learned poem, the production of an age in which it does not appear as an embodiment of the national feeling, but as a monument of the talent and industry of an individual. The Aeneid contains many obscure passages, which a long series of commentators have laboured to elucidate. Virgil has the merit of being the best of the Roman epic poets, superior both to Ennius who preceded him, and on whom he levied contributions, and to Lucan, Silius Italicus, and Valerius Flaccus, who belong to a later age. The passion for rhetorical display, which characterises all the literature of Rome, is much less offensive in Virgil than in those who followed him in the line of epic poetry. Appendix Vergiliana

The larger editions of Virgil contain some short poems, which are attributed to him, and may have been among his earlier works. Culex

The Culex or Gnat is a kind of Bucolic poem in 413 hexameters, often very obscure; the Ciris, or the mythus of Scylla the daughter of Nisus, king of Megara, in 541 hexameters, has been attributed to Cornelius Gallus and others, but Scaliger maintains that it is by Virgil. Moretum

The Moretum, in 123 verses, the name of a compound mess, is a poem in hexameters, on the daily labour of a cultivator, but it contains only the description of the labours of the first part of the day, which consist in preparing the Moretum : the female servant of the rustic Simulus is a negress; none was ever better described, Afra genus, tota patriam testante figura, Torta comam, labroque tumens et fusca colorem, Pectore lata, jacens mammis, compressior alvo, Cruribus exilis, spatiosa prodiga planta. Copa

The Copa, in elegiac verse, is an invitation by a female tavern keeper or servant attached to a Caupona, to passengers to come in and enjoy themselves. Catalecta

There are also fourteen short pieces in various metres, classed under the general name of Catalecta. That addressed " Ad Venerem," shows that the writer, whoever he was, had a talent for elegiac poetry. Editions

The first edition of Virgil, a small folio, was printed at Rome about A. D. 1469 by Sweynheym and Pannartz, and dedicated to Pope Paul II. This rare edition was reprinted in 1471, but it is of no great value. The Virgil printed by Aldus at Venice in 1501, 8vo, is also very scarce. At the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries there were many prints of Virgil, with the commentary of Servius and others. The edition of J. L. de la Cerda, which is valued for the commentary, appeared at Madrid in 3 vols. folio, 1608-1617. The valuable edition of Nic. Heinsius was published at Amsterdam in 1676. The well printed edition of P. Masvicius, Leeuwarden, 1727, 2 vols. 4to, contains the complete commentaries of Servius, Philargyrius, and Pierius, with the " Index Erythraei," the Life of Virgil by Tib. Claudius Donatus, an " Index absolutissimus in Mauri Servii Honorati Commentarios in Virgilium," and an " Index Auctorum in Servii Commentariis citatorum." All these matters make the edition of Masvicius very useful. P. Burmann's edition appeared at Amsterdam, 1746, 4 vols. 4to. C. G. Heyne bestowed great labour on his edition of Virgil, 1767-1775, Leipzig, 4 vols. 8vo, with a copious index : it was reprinted with improvements in 1788. In the fourth edition of Heyne's Virgil, by G. P. E. Wagner, Leipzig, 1830, 4 vols. 8vo, the text has been corrected after the best MSS., the punctuation improved, and the orthography altered or amended. The text of this edition is also published separately in a single volume with the title " Publii Vergilii Maronis Carmina ad pristinam Orthographiam quoad ejus fieri potuit revocata, edidit P. Wagner, Leipzig, 1831, 8vo." It also contains the " Orthographia Vergiliana," or remarks on the orthography of many words in Virgil, arranged in alphabetical order. Textual Transmission

The works of Virgil have been more fortunate than those of most of the writers of antiquity, for there are many very old MSS. of his poems. That which is called the Medicean, may probably have been written before the downfal of the Roman empire. An exact fac-simile of it was published by Foggini at Florence, 1741, 4to. The Codex Vaticanus, which is also of great antiquity, was published by Bottari, Rome, 1741, folio; but it is said not to be so accurate a copy as the fac-simile of Foggini. Wagner in his Praefatio has briefly discussed the relative ages of these two MSS. ; but there seem to be no grounds for deciding the question. They are both undoubtedly very old. Editions of individual works

The editions of the several parts of Virgil and the school editions are very numerous. The " Hand-buch der Classischen Bibliographie" of Schweigger, ii. pp. 1145-1258, contains a long list. The edition of A. Forbiger, 3 vols. 8vo, Leipzig, 1836, and a second edition, 1845-1846, contains a sufficiently copious commentary for ordinary use, which is composed of selections from the commentators and his own notes. Translations

The Bucolica were translated into German verse by J. H. Voss with useful notes; and a second edition by A. Voss, appeared at Altona, 1830. J. H. Voss's poetical translation of the Georgies is highly esteemed. His complete translation of Virgil appeared at Brunswick in 3 vols. 8vo, 1799. Martyn, professor of Botany at Cambridge, published a prose version of the Georgica, London, 1741, and of the Georgica, 1749, with many valuable notes. The commentary of Martyn on the Georgica is perhaps the best that has appeared for the elucidation of the matter of the poem. Gawin Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld, translated the Aeneid into Scottish verse, London, 1553. Ogilby's verse translation was published at London, 1649 and 1650; and Dryden's was published by Tonson, London, 1697. The blank verse translation of Dr. J. Trapp is very poor. The Aeneid translated by C. Pitt, and the Bucolica and Georgica by Joseph Warton, were published by Dodsley, London, 1783, 4 vols. 8vo. Sotheby's poetic version of the Georgica contains the original text and the versions of De Lille, Soave, Guzman, and Voss. Sources

The chief authority for the Life of Virgil is the Life by Donatus, which, though not a critical performance, is undoubtedly founded on good materials. It is printed in Wagner's edition of Virgil with notes. The editions, translations, commentaries, and essays on Virgil form an enormous mass of literature, in which the poet is rather buried than embalmed. [G.L]