sophy and literature; but he found it no consolation for his banishment from Italy. And the younger Seneca, whom we may almost call a professional philosopher, found nothing to compensate him for enforced absence from the capital in the exquisite scenery and climate of Corsica. But Tomi, if its unfortunate inhabitant is to be believed, combined in itself every horror. It was in the near neighbourhood of savage and barbarous tribes, and was safe from attack only while the broad stream of the Danube flowed between it and the enemy. The climate was terrible; the snow lay often unmelted for two years together. The north wind blew with such fury that it levelled buildings with the ground, or carried away their roofs. The natives went about clad in garments of skin, with their faces only exposed to the air. Their hair, their beards, were covered with icicles. The very wine froze break the jar and it stood a solid lump; men took not draughts but bites of it. The rivers were covered with ice; the Danube itself, though it was as broad as the Nile, was frozen from shore to shore, and became a highway for horses and men.

The sea

itself, incredible as it may seem, is frozen. "I," says the poet, "have myself walked on it."

"Had such, Leander, been the sea

That flowed betwixt thy love and thee,

Never on Helles' narrow strait

Had come the scandal of thy fate.”

The

"The dolphins cannot leap after their wont let the north wind rage as it will, it raises no waves. ships stand firmly fixed as in stone, and the oar can

But

not cleave the waters. You may see the very fish bound fast in the ice, imprisoned but still alive. the worst of all the horrors of winter is the easy access which it gives to the barbarian foe. Their vast troops of cavalry, armed with the far-reaching bow, scour the whole country. The rustics fly for their lives, and leave their scanty provisions to be plundered. Some, more unlucky, are carried off into captivity; some perish by the arrows which this cruel enemy dips in poison. And all that the enemy cannot carry or drive off, he burns."

It is difficult to suppose that some of these statements are not exaggerated. The climate of Bulgaria (the name which Lower Mosia has had since its invasion by the Bulgarians in the seventh century) bears little resemblance to that which Ovid describes. According to Humboldt's maps of the isothermal lines of the world, it should have a temperature not unlike that of northern Spain. Its soil is described as fertile, and the vine is mentioned as one of its chief products. The Danube is not frozen over in the lower as it is in the upper parts of its course; and though the harbours of some of the Black Sea ports— as, for instance, of Odessa- -are sometimes blocked for a part of the winter, the phenomenon is not known in the neighbourhood of Kostendje. On the other hand, Ovid's statements are remarkably precise. He anticipates that they will be disbelieved, and he solemnly avers their truth. And he gives among his descriptions one curious fact which he is not likely to have known except from personal observation, that fish retain their

vitality even when firmly embedded in ice. It is quite possible that the climate may have materially changed since Ovid's time. On more than one occasion the classical poets speak of severities of cold such as are not now experienced in Italy and Greece. If we allow something for such change, and something also for the exaggeration which not only expressed a genuine feeling of disgust, but might possibly have the effect of moving compassion, we shall probably be right.

Ovid's life in exile, the details of which are brought out in the poems which belong to this period, lasted about eight years. He left Rome in the month of December following his fifty-first birthday; he died some time before the beginning of the September after his fifty-ninth.

CHAPTER VII.

THE POEMS OF EXILE: THE TRISTIA, OR THE 'SORROWS.'

OVID's pen was not idle during the melancholy years of exile which closed his life. He probably, as has been said before, revised the Metamorphoses.' It is certain that he added largely to the 'Fasti.' But the special poems of exile are the 'Sorrows,' the 'Letters from the Pontus,' and the 'Ibis.' In the 'Sorrows' and the Letters from the Pontus' Ovid pours forth in an unceasing stream his complaints against the cruelty of fate and the miseries of his exile; his supplications for the removal, or at least the mitigation, of his sentence; and his entreaties to those who had known him in his prosperity, that they would help, or, if help was impossible, would at least remember their fallen friend. It must be confessed that they lack the brilliancy of the earlier poems. The genius of the poet stagnated, as he says himself, in the inclement climate, and amidst the barbarous associations of his place of exile. And the reader is wearied by the garrulous monotony of nearly six thousand verses, in which the absorbing subject of the poet's own sorrows is only exchanged for flattery-all A.C.S.S., vol. ii.

H

the more repulsive, because we know it to have been unavailing—of the ruler from whose fanger or policy he was suffering. Yet there are not wanting points of interest. There are graphic sketches of scenery and character, touches of pathos, here and there even a gleam of humour, and sometimes, when the occasion brings him to speak of his own genius, and of the fame to which he looked forward, an assertion of independence and dignity, which is infinitely refreshing amidst his unmanly repining against his fate, and the yet more unmanly adulations by which he hoped to escape it.

The first book of the ‘Sorrows' was written and despatched to Rome before Ovid had reached his allotted place of banishment. A preface commends to all who still remembered him at Rome the little volume, which would remind them of the banished Ovid. It was to go in the guise that became an exile's book. It was to be without the ornaments which distinguished more fortunate volumes. A characteristic passage tells us what these ornaments were, and gives us as good an idea as we can anywhere get of the appearance of a Roman book. The parchment or paper, on the inner side of which was the writing, was tinted on the outer of a warm and pleasing colour, by means of saffron or cedar-oil. The title of the book was written in vermilion letters. The stick round which the roll was made had bosses of ivory, or some other ornamental material, and the ends of the roll were polished and coloured black. Any erasure was considered to be a great disfigurement: of