this period belong the _Heroides,_ the later pieces in the _Amores,_ the
elaborate poem on the feminine toilet called _De Medicamine Faciei,_ and
other poems now lost. Finally, in 2 or 1 B.C., he published what is
perhaps on the whole his most remarkable work, the three books _De Arte
Amatoria_.

Just about the time of the publication of the _Art of Love,_ the exile of
the elder Julia fell like a thunderbolt on Roman society. Staggered for a
little under the sudden blow, it soon gathered itself together again, and
a perpetual influx of younger men and women gathered round her daughter
and namesake, the wife of Lucius Aemilius Paulus, into a circle as
corrupt, if not so accomplished, as that of which Ovid had been a chief
ornament. He was himself now forty; though singularly free from literary
ambition, he could not but be conscious of his extraordinary powers, and
willing to employ them on larger work. He had already incidentally proved
that he possessed an instinct for narrative such as no Roman poet had
hitherto had--such, indeed, as it would be difficult to match even in
Greek poetry outside Homer. A born story-teller, and an accomplished
master of easy and melodious verse, he naturally turned for subjects to
the inexhaustible stores of the Graeco-Roman mythology, and formed the
scheme of his _Metamorphoses_ and _Fasti_. Both poems were all but
complete, but only the first half of the latter had been published, when,
at the end of the year 8, his life and work were suddenly shattered by a
mysterious catastrophe. An imperial edict ordered him to leave Rome on a
named day, and take up his residence at the small barbarous town of Tomi,
on the Black Sea, at the extreme outposts of civilisation. No reason was
assigned, and no appeal allowed. The cause of this sudden action on the
part of the Emperor remains insoluble. The only reason ever officially
given, that the publication of the _Art of Love_ (which was already ten
years old) was an offence against public morals, is too flimsy to have