Ovid's Metamorphoses: translated by eminent persons. Published by Sir Samuel Garth.

  • Ovid, 43 B.C.-17 A.D. or 18 A.D.
Date:
1794
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ovid's Metamorphoses: translated by eminent persons. Published by Sir Samuel Garth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    able knowledge of the law, and is said to have evinced great judgment in the determination of several private disputes. After pleading with much reputation in the court of the Centumviri, he was ap- pointed one of the Triumviri, who were magistrates of great authority, and tried capital causes. But notwithstanding his own early celebrity, the sanguine expectations of his friends, and the avowed predilection, and even commands, of his father, Ovid, who had cultivated the Muses from his infan- cy, determined to forsake the bar, and even the bench, in order to give himself up entirely to his favourite study. The poverty of poets then, as now proverbial, did not deter him from this resolution ; and the death of his elder brother, in consequence of which, he became possessed of an easy fortune, enabled him at length to pursue his vocation, with- out danger of experiencing the fate of so many of his predecessors. His talents soon acquired him many admirers ; the most distinguished men of the age became his friends; Virgil, Tibullus, Propertius, and Horace, honoured him with their correspondence ; and Au- gustus, who, soon after he assumed the toga vifilis, had conferred oil him, the privilege of wearing the latus clavus, an ornament used only by persons of quality, patronised him with the most unbounded liberality.