the esteem and affection of a severe critic, and a man whose friendship
was not lightly won or lavishly expressed. He stands easily at the head
of Latin poets of the second order. In delicacy, in refinement, in grace
of rhythm and diction, he cannot be easily surpassed; he only wants the
final and incommunicable touch of genius which separates really great
artists from the rest of the world.




IV.

OVID.


The Peace of the Empire, secured by the victory of Actium, and fully
established during the years which followed by Augustus and his
lieutenants, inaugurated a new era of social life in the capital. The
saying of Augustus, that he found Rome brick and left it marble, may be
applied beyond the sphere of mere architectural decoration. A French
critic has well observed that now, for the first time in European
history, the Court and the City existed in their full meaning. Both had
an organised life and a glittering external ease such as was hardly known
again in Europe till the reign of the Grand Monarque. The enormous wealth
of the aristocracy was in the mass hardly touched by all the waste and
confiscations of the civil wars; and, in spite of a more rigorous
administration, fresh accumulations were continually made by the new
official hierarchy, and flowed in from all parts of the Empire to feed
the luxury and splendour of the capital. Wealth and peace, the increasing
influence of Greek culture, and the absence of political excitement,