exile, making only rare allusions to it, which may
be summed up in his famous words, _carmen et error_. It is for this
reason that posterity has for twenty centuries been asking itself what
was this error which sent the exquisite poet away to die among the
barbarous Getae on the frozen banks of the Danube; and naturally they
have never compassed his secret. But if, therefore, it is impossible
to say exactly what the error was which cost Ovid so dearly, it is
possible, on the other hand, to explain that unique and famous episode
in the history of Rome to which, after all, Ovid owes a great part of
his immortality. He was not the victim, as has been too often
repeated, of a caprice of despotism; and therefore he cannot be
compared with any of the many Russian writers whom the administration,
through fear and hatred, deports to Siberia without definite reason.
Certainly the error of Ovid lay in his having violated some clause of
the _Lex Julia de adulteriis_, which, as we know, was so comprehensive
in its provisions that it considered as accessories to the crime those
guilty of various acts and deeds which, judged even with modern rigor
and severity, would seem reprehensible, to be sure, but not deserving
of such terrible punishment. Ovid was certainly involved under one of
these clauses,--which one we do not, and never shall, know,--but his
error, whether serious or light, was not the true cause of his
condemnation. It was the pretext used by the more conservative and
puritanical part of Roman society to vent upon him a long-standing
grudge the true motives of which lay much deeper.

What was the standing of this poet of the gay, frivolous, exquisite
ladies whom they wished to send into exile? He was the author of that
graceful, erotic poetry who, through the themes which he chose for his
elegant verses, had encouraged the tendencies toward luxury, diversion,
and the pleasures which had transformed the austere matron of a former
day into an extravagant and undisciplined creature given to
voluptuousness; the poet who had gained the admiration of women
especially by flattering their most dangerous and perverse tendencies.
The puritanical party hated and combatted this trend of the newer
generations, and therefore, also, the poetry of Ovid on account of its
disastrous effects upon the women, whom it weaned from the virtues most
prized in former days--frugality, simplicity, family affection, and
purity of life. The Rom