2. Works.
Of his numerous writings on history, chronology, and grammar we possess only a fragment of his De Viris Illustribus (originally in sixteen Books), a collection of Roman and foreign biographies. Of this work there is extant one complete section, De Excellentibus Ducibus Exterarum Gentium, and two lives, those of Atticus and Cato the Younger, from his De Historicis Latinis.
3. Style.
Nepos is a most untrustworthy historian, and his work possesses little independent value. But his style is clear, elegant, and lively, and he did much to make Greek learning popular among his fellow-citizens.
PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO, 43 B.C.-18 A.D.
1. Life.
OVID.
Ovid’s own writings (espec. Tr. IV. x.) supply nearly all the information we possess regarding his life. He was born at Sulmo, a town in the cold, moist hills of the Peligni, one of the Sabine clans, situated near Corfinium, and about ninety miles E. of Rome. He was of an ancient equestrian family, and together with his elder brother received a careful education at Rome, and studied also at Athens. He was trained for the Bar, but in spite of his father’s remonstrances preferred poetry to public life. ‘An easy fortune, a brilliant wit, an inexhaustible memory, and an unfailing social tact soon made him a prominent figure in society; and his genuine love of literature and admiration for genius made him the friend of the whole contemporary world of letters.’—Mackail. Up to his fiftieth year fortune smiled steadily upon Ovid: his works were universally popular, and he enjoyed the favour and patronage of the Emperor himself. But towards the end of 8 A.D. an imperial edict ordered him to leave Rome on a named day and take up his residence at the small barbarous town of Tomi, on the Black Sea, at the extreme outposts of civilisation. Augustus proved deaf to all entreaties to recall him, Tiberius remained alike inexorable, and Ovid died of a broken heart at the ago of sixty, in the tenth year of his banishment.
2. Works.
(1) Amores, in three Books, poems in elegiac verse, nearly all on Corinna, who was probably no real person, but only a name around which Ovid grouped his own fancies, and wrote as the poet of a fashionable, pleasure-loving society. The Mors Psittaci is pleasing and the Mors Tibulli is a noble tribute to a brother poet.