OUR debt to Ovid! What, save the
warning of an awful example, does
our age owe to a professed roué, the
author of a monument so dangerously typical
of his degenerate society that the ruler of Rome
banished him to a frozen land and excluded
his book from the libraries? It would seem as
if Ovid's influence ended and ought to have
ended then and there. Somehow it has sur-
vived. In certain momentous periods of human
history, Ovid's name has shone brightly among
the immortals. Part of his fame, of course, is
due to other works besides the Art of Love.
It may be, further, that Augustus and the
Puritans of his time, and the Puritans of other
times, did not quite understand the qualities
of that poem or the character of its author.
Ovid is nothing if not subtle, nor had he any
desire to present his apologies to those who
could not see what he was about. Moralists
have put him on their black list again and
again. His art, too, has seemed to many steeped

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