The “Fasti” is an antiquarian poem on the Roman calendar. Originally it was intended to have formed twelve books, one for each month of the year, but only the first six were completed:[762]—— Sex ego Fastorum scripsi totidemque libellos Cumque suo finem mense volumen habet. It is a beautiful specimen of simple narrative in verse, and displays more than any of his works, his power of telling a story, without the slightest effort, in poetry as well as prose. As a profound study of Greek mythology and poetry had furnished the materials for his Metamorphoses and other poems, so in this he drew principally from the legends which had been preserved by the old poets and annalists of his own country. The five books of the Tristia and the four books of the Epistles from Pontus were the outpourings of his sorrowful heart during the gloomy evening of his days. Without the brilliancy, the wit, and the genius, which beamed forth from his joyous spirit in the time of his prosperity, without the graceful and inspired querulousness of the ancient models, they are, nevertheless, conceived in the spirit of the Greek elegy—they utter the voice of complaining, and deserve the Horatian epithet of _miserabiles_.[763] It was natural to him to give utterance to his hope and despair in song: he had sported like a gay insect in the sunshine of prosperity. He was too fragile, delicate, and effeminate to bear the storm of adversity—his butterfly spirit was broken; but, with all his faults, that broken heart was capable of the tenderest emotions, and his letter to his daughter Perilla[764] is full of purity and sweetness. The carelessness of one who would not take the trouble to correct, and who was conscious of his dangerous facility, is compensated for by the commiseration which his natural complaints excite, and for the powerful descriptions which occasionally enliven the monotony inseparable from grief.