ke, by terrible measures, the old, prolific, austere
nobility of the aristocratic era. The _lex de maritandis_ _ordinibus_
aimed with a thousand vexatious restrictions to constrain the nobility
to marry and have children; the _lex sumptuaria_ studied to restrain
extravagance; the _lex de adulteriis_ proclaimed martial law in the
family, menacing an unfaithful wife and her accomplice with exile for
life and the confiscation of half their substance; legislation of the
harshest, this, which should scourge Rome to blood, to keep her from
falling anew into the inveterate vices from which the civil wars were
born.

The impression of the civil wars could not last forever. In fact,
in the decade that followed the promulgation of the social laws, the
puritan fervour, which had up to that time heated all Italy, began
to cool. Wealth increased; the confidence that order and peace were
actually re-established, spread everywhere; the generation that had
seen the civil wars, disappeared; peace and growing prosperity stirred
in the next generation a desire for freedom and pleasure that would
not endure the narrow traditionalism and the puritanism of the
preceding generation; consequently also the laws of 18 B.C. became
intolerable.

To understand this change in public spirit which had such serious
consequences, there is no better way than by studying the most
celebrated writer of this new generation, Ovid, who represents it most
admirably both in life and works. Ovid was born at Sulmona in 43 B.C.
He was about the same age as Tiberius,--of a knight's family--that
is, of the wealthy middle class. He was destined by his father to the
study of oratory and jurisprudence, evidently to make a political man
of him, a senator, a future consul or proconsul, and to contribute to
the great national restoration that his generation proposed to itself
and of which Augustus was architect, preparing a new family for the
political aristocracy that was governing the Empire. Ovid's father
had all the requirements demanded by law and custom: a considerable
fortune, the half-nobility of the equestrian order, an intelligent
son, the means to give him the necessary culture--a favourable
combination of circumstances which was wholly undone by a bit of
unforeseen contrariety, the son's invincible inclination for what his
father called, with little respect, a "useless study," literature.
The young man had indifferently studied oratory and law, gone to Rome,