from the point of view of bulk alone, is a matter of nearly twentyfive thousand lines.

In spirit, content or form nearly all of it is more or less clearly related to the elegy. Ovid's first publication was a contribution to this department. In consisted of five books of elegies to which he gave the title of Amores. At that time he may have been about twenty-five. Several years later, he revised the collection, and cut it down to three books. This he tells us himself in the introductory epigram. Doubtless the revision was distinctly an improvement. At any rate, as the three books inform us with their author's characteristic humor:

ut iam nulla tibi nos sit legisse voluptas,
at levior demptis poena duobus erit.

The Amores give Ovid the indisputable right to be called one of the four great elegiac poets of Rome. A few of these elegies which are in his earliest manner and are doubtless a small residuum from the first edition, are addressed to a woman whom he calls Corinna. It is quite likely that she is a mere lay figure, although for centuries she was identified with Julia, the daughter of Augustus.

The remaining elegies were probably written for the most part between the first and second edition, and show how soon he began to develop the traditional type upon his own lines. Two of the most important things by which this development was fostered and directed were his temperament and the fact that he had been a trained rhetorician before he began to write poetry.

Ovid's keen and vivid imagination was interested in the elegy as a department. It is not for him a vehicle of strong personal emotion, of sentiment or of passion. This is one of the principal reasons why in theme, treatment, and point of view, the Amores are so conspicuously Alexandrian. The lightness, the gayety, the delicate irony, the gilded mockery, are all distinctively Ovidian; but in these respects he is most akin to the best Alexandrian poets. For example (1, 2), while discoursing on the power of Cupid over gods and men, the poet says (23):

Go, crown your brows with myrtle, let mother's doves be joined,
Stepfather Mars shall give you a chariot to your mind;
Thence drive your winged coursers, and as you pass along,
'Hail to the conquering hero,' shall echo from the throng.
To grace your glorious pageant shall captive maids and swains
March two by two before you—and everyone in chains!

I, too, your latest captive, in all my humbled pride,
Must march in strange new fetters, with wounds I cannot hide.
Good Sense, and Shame, and Wisdom, and whatsoever may
Oppose the schemes of Cupid shall walk in gyves that day;
Aye, everything shall fear you, and all the surging crowd
Shall wave their hands to Cupid, and cheer him long and loud.
And Flatteries, and Folly, and Madness shall ride there,
Your body-guard and escort, ready to do and dare:
Nor gods nor men withstand them, they follow where you lead;
Were you to lose those troopers, you would be poor indeed!
Your mother from Olympus shall watch her glorious boy,
Shall shower him with red roses, and clap her hands for joy.
With wings begemmed and tresses blazing with gems untold,
And all in golden armour, shalt ride on wheels of gold.
Your shafts will fly then even-you cannot stay their flight,
Your fires will burn-I know you-aye, in your own despite;
The innocent bystanders will, every way you turn,

Be stricken with your arrows and with your torches burn.

Here is a genuine Roman picture entitled, "The Triumph of Cupid." It is also a Hellenistic fresco of the best period. This happy combination of Roman and Greek art is highly characteristic of Ovid's methods and genius.

Equally characteristic and at the same time showing plain traces of his practical training as a rhetorician is 1, 13. In fact, the piece seems to be nothing more nor less than a rhetorical expansion of material already dealt with in Greek epigrams of the Hellenistic period. A few of these epigrams still survive in the Greek Anthology. The theme is the Parting of Lovers at Dawn, a theme which in the Medieval Tagelieder' and in those charming poems of the Troubadours known as Albas' grew to the dignity of an entire department of literature. On the English side the type is echoed more or less distantly by the old ballad of 'Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard.' In the ballad, however, the lovers tarried too long, and this element of tragedy does not seem to be characteristic of the Alba. It might appear at first sight that the Alba was a genuine modern production. But in the way of literary types nothing is modern. Athenæus (15, 697 b), writing in the third century of our era, quotes a Locrian Alba. Scholars are doubtless right in their contention that this song is neither old nor popular in the strict sense of the words. But at all events, it is older than the Troubadours by a thousand years, and the mere existence of it

1

'Chaucer, Troilus III, 1450 ff. is reminiscent of Ovid himself.

is enough in itself to suggest that even in ancient Greece there were popular prototypes of those epigrams of the second and third century B. C., which Ovid had before him. The metre of the Locrian song cannot be reproduced in English, but both metre and language indicate that the speaker, a woman, or rather the woman, is nearly inarticulate with fright and excitement:

Ω τί πάσχεις ; μὴ προδῷς ἄμμ' ἱκετεύω.

πρὶν καὶ μολεῖν κεῖνον, ἀνίστω, μὴ κακὸν
μέγα ποιήσῃ σε κἀμὲ τὴν δειλάκραν.

ἀμέρα δή, τὸ φῶς διὰ τῆς θυρίδος οὐκ εἰσορῇς;

Oh gods, what do you! rise with speed!
Before he comes, or ever you betray

Yourself and me! indeed, indeed,

I am so frightened! go, oh go, I pray!

Look at the window! see, 'tis light, 'tis day!

By way of comparison, I subjoin what seems to me one of the best of the Troubadour Albas:

Quan lo rossinhols escria
Ab sa par la nueg e'l dia
Yeu suy ab ma bell’amia
Ios la flor,

Tro la gaita de la tor
Escria: drutz, al levar!

Qu'ieu vey l'alba e'l iorn clar.'

Whilst the nightingale is crying
To his mate, and night is flying,
Then my love and I are lying

In her bower,

Till the watch cries from his tower:
'Up, thou lover and away!

Lo, the Dawn, 'twill soon be day!'

It will be said perhaps that the Locrian Alba sounds much more modern than does the Troubadour Alba. This is not the fault of my translation, it is because as a matter of fact, we are in many ways much nearer the ancients than were our ancestors of five hundred and a thousand years ago.

Let us now see how this theme sounds when subjected to rhetorical expansion, and presented as an elegy by the greatest master of the art in Roman literature:

The old man's fair-haired consort, whose dewy axle-tree
Brings morning to us mortals, now rises from the Sea.

I pray you, stay, Aurora; and to your Memnon's shade
A sacrifice-I vow it-shall every year be made.
'Tis now my love is by me, her lips are mine to kiss,
Her arms are twined about me-is any hour like this!
'Tis cool and one is sleepy, and from their slender throats
The little feathered songsters pour forth their liquid notes.
Now prithee, Rosy Fingers, why take such parlous pains
To hurry? No one wants you! Then stay those dewy reins.
Ere you arrive the sailor can watch his stars and keep
His course, nor wander blindly amid the vasty deep;
With you, the weary traveller must rise and hie away,
Must rise the cruel soldier and arm him for the fray;
The hind resumes his mattock and grubs the stubborn soil,
The slow and patient oxen begin their day of toil;
Schoolboys you cheat of slumber, to go at your commands
Where pedagogues are waiting to smack their tender hands;
You summon to the courthouse the bailsmen, where they taste
The pain of paying dearly for one word said in haste;
The lawyers find you hateful, i'faith, and always will:
You wake them every morning to new contention still.
That girls cease toiling sometimes, 'twere surely fair to ask,
But no; you rouse the spinners each to her daily task.
All else I might put up with; but who was ever known
To make the girls rise early, who had one of his own?
How oft, I've prayed that Darkness refuse to give you place,
How oft, that Stars might brave you, nor flee before your face,
How oft I've prayed some whirlwind an axletree might twist,
Or that a courser stumble and stick in some thick mist!
Why hurry, spiteful goddess? I see it now, alack,
Why Memnon was so swarthy-his mother's heart was black!
I wish poor old Tithonus had power to testify

To what he knows-'twould make you the scandal of the sky!
Your spouse is old and feeble; that's why you leave your bower,
And mount your hateful chariot at such an early hour!

If Cephalus replaced him, you know you'd clasp him tight,
And cry out, Pray, go slowly, ye coursers of the Night!'
Why pester me, a lover? Your spouse is all but dead,
But did I urge him on you, or ever bid you wed?

How oft, the while he slumbers, our sovereign Lady Moon

And she more fair than you are comes to Endymion!

Jove joined two nights in one; I dare swear the tale is true,
For Jove was then a lover-and tired of seeing you!
You'd know Aurora heard me she turned so rosy red:
The day though came no later, in spite of all I said.

It will be seen that there is no hint of tragedy here, and in fact there was no reason to expect it. In this respect as well as in his general attitude to the theme he is a genuine precursor of the

Albas of the Troubadours, as well as a successor to the spirit of the Hellenistic epigrams dealing with this subject.

It may be observed in passing that Ovid treats Aurora here quite as though she were a social leader in contemporary life, and that he does not hesitate to give one of his characteristic humorous turns to the old tale of Alcmena and the father of gods and men. The attitude is eminently characteristic of Ovid. It indicates, of course, that neither he nor his circle of friends really believed in the Græco-Roman gods any more than we do. But, as we shall see when we come to the Heroides, the attitude also reflects an important principle of conscious poetic art.

A moment ago I mentioned the fact that this elegy was merely the rhetorical expansion of an old theme. One of the earmarks of rhetoric is the examples of those who have to rise betimes. They are all conventional, and come straight from the rhetorical schools. Moreover, this elegy is itself merely a suasoria.

It is not, however, so deliberately and so manifestly a suasoria as I, 9, the famous 'Militat omnis amans et habet sua castra Cupidio.' First of all the orator with mock solemnity formally states his theme:

All lovers are campaigners, and Cupid has his wars:
Yes, Atticus, all lovers are genuine sons of Mars.

Then follow in regular succession the proofs-a series of parallels taken for the most part from the motives familiar to elegiac poetry in general:

Your soldier must be youthful, your lover be the same

Old soldiers are a pity, old lovers are a shame;

Your general chooses soldiers ready to do and dare,
Your pretty girl a lover with strength and pluck to spare;
Both spend all night on duty; the soldier stands before
The quarters of his general, the lover guards her door;
The soldier makes long marches, but whereso'er you send

A girl, be sure her lover will track her to the end;
No mountain peak can stop him, he'll find a way to go
Through roaring winter torrents, through sleet and drifting snow,
Although he be no sailor you'll never hear him say,

'I see a storm is coming,' ''tis quite too rough today.'

A lover or a soldier-what others would you find

Unmoved by cold and darkness, by driving sleet or wind?

Who think of Love as slothful will find 'tis otherwise;

Love is the soul of action, the soul of enterprise.