though less gross; and he finished his treatment of the subject with the _Medicamina Faciei_, a sparkling and caustic quasi-didactic treatise, of which only a fragment survives. [44] During this period (we know not exactly when) was composed the tragedy of _Medea_, which ancient critics seem to have considered his greatest work. [45] Alone of his writings it showed his genius in restraint, and though _we_ should probably form a lower estimate of its excellence, we may regret that time has not spared it. Among other works written at this time was an elegy on the death of Messala (3. A.D.), as we learn from the letters from Pontus. [46] Soon after he seems, like Prince Henry, to have determined to turn over a new leaf and abandon his old acquaintances. Virgil, Horace, and Tibullus, were dead; there was no poet of eminence to assist the emperor by his pen. Ovid was beyond doubt the best qualified by his talent, but Augustus had not noticed him. He turned to patriotic themes in order to attract favourable notice, and began his great work on the national calendar. Partly after the example of Propertius, partly by his own predilection, he kept to the elegiac metre, though he is conscious of its betraying him into occasional frivolous or amatory passages where he ought to be grave. [47] "Who would have thought (he says) that from a poet of love I should have become a patriotic bard?" [48] While writing the _Fasti_ he seems to have worked also at the _Metamorphoses_, a heroic poem in fifteen books, entirely devoted to mythological stories, mostly of transformations caused by the love or jealousy of divine wooers, or the vengeance of their aggrieved spouses. There are passages in this long work of exceeding beauty, and a prodigal wealth of poetical ornament, which has made it a mine for modern poets. Tasso, Ariosto, Guarini, Spenser, Milton, have all drunk deep of this rich fountain. [49] The skill with which the different legends are woven into the fabric of the composition is as marvellous as the frivolous dilettantism which could treat a long heroic poem in such a way. The _Metamorphoses_ were finished before 7 A.D.; the _Fasti_ were only advanced to the end of the sixth book, when all further prosecution of them was stopped by the terrible news, which struck the poet like a thunderbolt, that he was ordered to leave Rome forever. The cause of his exile has been much debated. The ostensible ground was the immorality of his writings, and especially of the _Art of Love_, but it has generally been taken for granted that a deeper and more personal reason lay behind. Ovid's own hints imply that his eyes had been witness to something that they should not, which he calls a _crimen_ (_i.e._ a crime against the emperor). [50] The most probable theory is that Augustus took advantage of Ovid's complicity in the younger Julia's misconduct to wreak the full measure of his long-standing indignation against the poet, whose evil