And so he moves from one lovely myth to another, preserving them indeed for our archæologists, but delicately with the breath of his profanity defiling them for ever.
Now Ovid is far more typical of the civilisation of his day than either Vergil or Horace. For Ovid was a Roman noble, rich and gifted, who in earlier days would have passed creditably from one high office to another in the state, humorously plundering a province or two, gracefully collecting objects of art in Asia and possibly losing a battle or two through negligence. He actually started on a public career as a brilliant barrister, and enjoyed the ancient office of decemvir stlitibus iudicandis, something like our Masters in Chancery. But the Roman drawing-rooms soon swallowed him up in their silken entanglements, and he spent the greater part of his life whispering his poisonous little pentameters to ladies like Julia. Of course a single poet with Ovid’s sinister gifts was doing far more to corrupt Rome than all the Julian legislation could do to reform it, and we may fairly conclude that Ovid with his attacks on the traditional Roman morality and religion, together with effeminate bards like Tibullus who sang of the horrors of war, were more than undoing the patriotic work of Vergil and Horace. The plain fact is that though you may hire writers you cannot purchase the spirit of a people, and so Augustus and Mæcenas found, to the great misfortune of the Roman Empire. They failed in their attempt to capture literature. Oppression failed even more signally than corruption. Henceforth all the literary talent of Rome is on the opposition side. Lucan extols republicanism, Tacitus assails the emperors with satirical history, Petronius pillories Nero with satirical romance, Juvenal with satirical poetry. Only the younger Pliny is loyal, and to be praised by Pliny is a very doubtful recommendation. Roman literature had imbibed the republican ideals from its Greek foster-mother. The schoolmasters of Rome continued to teach their pupils to declaim against tyrants.
But Ovid himself was not permitted to flourish in his wickedness. A sudden decree from Cæsar Augustus fell upon him like a thunderbolt. He was banished for ever and bidden to betake himself to Tomi, on the Black Sea, near the mouth of the Danube. From that inhospitable region he continued to pour forth elegiacs, Epistles and Tristia, wherein he protests his innocence, recants anything and everything he has ever said, and bewails the horrors of arctic existence among the barbarians. The actual cause of his banishment is one of the most piquant mysteries in literary history. He has seen something which he ought not to have seen: his eyes have destroyed him. It is fairly clear that his banishment synchronised with the banishment of the younger Julia, and we may well believe that the old emperor, shocked and horrified by this second scandal in his own house, attributed it to the corrupting influence of that singer of gilded sins. The banishment was certainly well merited and the only pity is that it came too late to effect its purpose. The unmanly tone of the Tristia, the effeminate appeals to everybody in Rome including a hitherto forgotten wife, reveal Ovid in his true character. It is a little strange that generations of British youth have been trained not only in the study but even in the imitation of this author.
Plate LXV. POMPEII: THERMOPOLION, STREET OF ABUNDANCE
When we term the Golden Age of Roman literature “Augustan” we ought to remember that it began long before Augustus and ended before his death. Thus with all his patronage he may more justly be called the finisher than the author of it. Of all the great writers, only Ovid, to whom the simple life and bracing air of the Sarmatians afforded an unusual longevity, outlived Augustus. Summing up the characteristics of the literature of this day, we may say that courtliness and artificiality were its most prominent characteristics. The freshness of Catullus, the stern conviction of Lucretius, the fire of Cicero were extinct. Nearly all that was native in Roman letters had perished; only the crispness of epigram, the bite of satire and the dignified music of the language itself remained as the Italian heritage. Greece had quite definitely triumphed over Rome. Technical excellence continued, for this has always been the mark of “Augustan” periods. But the well-meant efforts of the state to capture literature for its own service had failed. The horrors of the civil war outweighed the glories of the new regime and with all his benevolence the emperor could never outlive the memory of his proscriptions. Literature never forgave the murder of Cicero though the author of Thyestes might be loaded with treasure. Indeed the widespread misery of those terrible days in 40 B.C. came home personally to most of our middle-class writers. Vergil, Horace, Tibullus, and Propertius had each and all received ineffaceable memories in the loss of their patrimonies. It was little wonder that even though they sang of wars and victories when “Cynthius plucked their ear” their natural instinct was to compare Mars and Venus very much to the disadvantage of the former.
When we turn to consider the Art of the period, we must not forget to carry with us the light that we have obtained from the study of its literature. For Augustus and his assistants were attempting precisely similar ends in both regions. With temples, baths, circuses, amphitheatres, colonnades, libraries, and statues the new regime was to flourish its magnificence in the eyes of the world and, above all, to dazzle the citizens of Rome, fill up the emptiness of their lives, and make them forget, if it were possible, the magnitude of their loss. Money was lavished upon this object by the emperor and all his friends, and the building activity which transformed Rome from a city of brick into a city of marble must have given work and pay to vast numbers of the poor. But the magnificence has all perished, as all magnificence must, and it is left for us by the study of a few ruined monuments, a few statues and busts, an altar here, a cornice there, to estimate the spirit of Rome in conformity with its literature.
Roman art supplied much of their inspiration to the artists of the Renaissance. Michael Angelo and Raphael learnt their art by copying the antiquities, and much of the Renaissance architecture was direct imitation of the Augustan age. But with the birth of archæology as a science in the nineteenth century, scholars became accustomed to leap straight over the Roman era, or to regard it merely as a phase of the Hellenistic decline. From that view, undoubtedly erroneous and unjust, there has latterly been an attempt to escape. Wickhoff and Riegl, whose foremost interpreter in this country is Mrs. Strong, have argued that Roman art has an existence per se, not only possessing characteristic excellences of its own, but in many points transcending the limits of Greek art. To such pioneers we owe a deep debt of gratitude. They have undoubtedly drawn our attention to real merits and real steps of progress in the art of the Romans. But on the whole they have failed, as it seems to an onlooker, to prove their case. Partly it is in the long run a question of taste. A convinced Romanist like Mrs. Strong displays for our admiration many works of art which trained eyes, accustomed to Greek and modern art, often refuse to admire. I would take as an instance the well-known “Tellus Group,” a slab from the Augustan Altar of Peace,[49] preserved in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence. To me it seems a laborious composition, executed with care and skill, but wholly without inspiration or imagination. It is purely conventional allegory. How would the designer of an illuminated ticket for an agricultural exhibition depict Mother Earth? He would design a group (would he not?) with a tall and richly bosomed lady for his central figure, he would put