[50] The chief passages bearing on it are, Tr. II. 103; III. v. 49; VI. 27; IV. x. 90. Pont, I. vi. 25; II. ix. 75; III. iii. 75.
[51] Such names as Messala, Graecinus, Pompeius, Cotta, Fabius Maximus, occur in his Epistles.
[52] This continual dwelling on mythological allusions is sometimes quite ludicrous, e.g., when he sees the Hellespont frozen over, his first thought is, "Winter was the time for Leander to have gone to Hero; there would have been no fear of drowning!"
[53] His abject flattery of Augustus hardly needs remark. It was becoming the regular court language to address him as Jupiter or Tonans; when Virgil, at the very time that Octavius's hands were red with the proscriptions, could call him a god (semper erit Deus), we cannot wonder at Ovid fifty years later doing the same.
[54] E.g. 69-90.
[55] We may notice with regard to the Ciris that it is very much in Ovid's manner, though far inferior. I think it may be fixed with certainty to a period succeeding the publication of the Metamorphoses. The address to Messala, v. 54, is a mere blind. The goddess Sophia indicates a later view than Ovid, but not necessarily post-Augustan. The goddess Crataeis (from the eleventh Odyssey), v. 67, is a novelty. The frivolous and pedantic object of the poem (to set right a confusion in the myths), makes it possible that it was produced under the blighting government of Tiberius. Its continual imitations make it almost a Virgilian Cento.
[56] Tac. Ann. vi. 18.
[57] Pont. IV. xvi.
[58] Am. II. xviii. 27.
[59] IV. xvi. 27.