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. 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