INTRODUCTION
ment of the gay social life of Rome. He soon gained admission to the choice circle of the poets of his day, paying unlimited devotion to the masters of his art, and quickly becoming himself the object of no small admiration on the part of younger poets. His youthful poems soon gained fame among the people also, and his love poems became the popular lyrics of the town.
Though extremely susceptible to the influences of love, he proudly boasts that his private life was above reproach. He contracted two unhappy marriages in his youth, but his third marriage was a lasting joy to him.
And now his father and his mother died. The poet, while deeply mourning their loss with true filial devotion, still cannot but rejoice that they died before that disgrace came upon him which was to darken his own life and the lives of all whom he loved. For now, as the early frosts of age were beginning to whiten his looks, in the year 8 of our era, a sudden calamity fell upon him, no less than an imperial decree against him of perpetual banishment to the far-off shores of the Euxine Sea. The cause of this decree he only hints at; but he gives us to understand that it was an error of his judgment and not of his heart.[1]
Exiled to savage Tomi, far from home and friends and the delights of his beloved Rome, he was forced to live in a rigorous climate, an unlovely land, midst a society of uncultured semi—savages. His chief solace was the cultivation of his art, and in this he spent the tiresome days. He ends his autobiography
- ↑ Augustus, indeed, gave as his reason the immorality of Ovid's love poems, but this is generally supposed to be only a cloak for a more personal and private reason.
viii
