Besides the rura paterna at Sulmo, Ovid possessed an estate on the via Clodia, near Rome; Pont. i. 8, 41,
‘Non meus amissos animus desiderat agros
ruraque Paeligno conspicienda solo,
nec quos piniferis positos in collibus hortos
spectat Flaminiae Clodia iuncta viae.’
He cannot have been poor, in spite of his complaints, e.g. Pont. iv. 8, 32,
‘Carpsit opes illa ruina meas.’
(2) WORKS.
1. Amores, at first in five Books, but in a second edition reduced to three; cf. the motto prefixed to the Book,
‘Qui modo Nasonis fueramus quinque libelli,
Tres sumus.’
The poems are nearly all on Corinna, a name which probably does not stand for any real person, but merely for an abstraction around which Ovid groups his own fancies. To suppose, as Sidonius Apollinaris did (23, 157)[69] that Augustus’ daughter Julia was meant, is absurd, for Corinna is a meretrix. The identity of Corinna was unknown; Am. ii. 17, 28,
‘Et multae per me nomen habere volunt.
Novi aliquam, quae se circumferat esse Corinnam’;
and twenty years afterwards Ovid could write (A.A. iii. 538),