These people crowned him with laurel, and gave him privileges, which prevented him not from regretting Rome. It was a great instance of the slavery of the Romans and of the extinction9 of all laws, when a man born of an equestrian10 family, like Octavius, exiled a man of another equestrian family, and when one citizen of Rome with one word sent another among the Scythians. Before this time, it required a “plebiscitum,” a law of the nation, to deprive a Roman of his country. Cicero, although banished by a cabal11, had at least been exiled with the forms of law.
The crime of Ovid was incontestably that of having seen something shameful12 in the family of Octavius:
Cur aliquid vidi, cur noxia lumina feci?
Why saw I aught, or why discover crime?
The learned have not decided13 whether he had seen Augustus with a prettier boy than Mannius, whom he said he would not have because he was too ugly; whether he saw some page in the arms of the empress Livia, whom this Augustus had espoused14, while pregnant by another; whether he had seen the said Augustus occupied with his daughter or granddaughter; or, finally, whether he saw him doing something still worse, “torva tu entibus hircis?” It is most probable that Ovid detected an incestuous correspondence, as an author, almost contemporary, named Minutionus Apuleius, says: “Pulsum quoque in exilium quod Augusti incestum vidisset.”
Octavius made a pretext15 of the innocent book of the “Art of Love,” a book very decently written, and in which there is not an obscene word, to send a Roman knight16 to the Black Sea. The pretence17 was ridiculous. How could Augustus, of whom we have still verses filled with obscenities, banish1 Ovid for having several years before given to his friends some copies of the “Art of Love”? How could he impudently18 reproach Ovid for a work written with decorum, while he approved of Horace, who lavishes19 allusions20 and phrases on the most infamous21 prostitution, and who proposed girls and boys, maid servants and valets indiscriminately? It is nothing less than impudence22 to blame Ovid and tolerate Horace. It is clear that Octavius alleged23 a very insufficient24 reason, because he dared not allude25 to the real one. One proof that it related to some secret adventure of the sacred imperial family is that the goat of Caprea — Tiberius, immortalized by medals for his debaucheries; Tiberius, that monster of lust26 and dissimulation27 — did not recall Ovid, who, rather than demand the favor from the author of the proscriptions and the poisoner of Germanicus, remained on the shores of the Danube.
If a Dutch, Polish, Swedish, English, or Venetian gentleman had by chance seen a stadtholder, or a king of Great Britain, Sweden, or Poland, or a doge of Venice, commit some great sin, even if it was not by chance that he saw it; if he had even sought the occasion, and was so indiscreet as to speak of it, this stadtholder, king, or doge could not legally banish him.
We can reproach Ovid almost as much as Augustus and Tiberius for having praised them. The eulogiums which he lavishes on them are so extravagant28 that at present they would excite indignation if he had even given them to legitimate29 princes, his benefactors30, instead of to tyrants31, and to his tyrants in particular. You may be pardoned for praising a little too much a prince who caresses32 you; but not for treating as a god one who persecutes33 you. It would have been a hundred times better for him to have embarked34 on the Black Sea and retired35 into Persia by the Palus M?otis, than to have written his “Tristia.” He would have learned Persian as easily as Getic, and might have forgotten the master of Rome near the master of Ecbatana. Some strong minds will say that there was still another part to take, which was to go secretly to Rome, address himself to some relations of Brutus and Cassius, and get up a twelfth conspiracy36 against Octavius; but that was not in elegiac taste.
Poetical37 panegyrics38 are strange things! It is very clear that Ovid wished with all his heart, that some Brutus would deliver Rome from that Augustus, to whom in his verses he wished immortality39. I reproach Ovid with his “Tristia” alone. Bayle forms his system on the philosophy of chaos40 so ably exhibited in the commencement of the “Metamorphoses”:
Ante mare41 et terras, et quod tegit omnia c?lum,
Unus erat toto natur? vultus in orbe.
Bayle thus translates these first lines: “Before there was a heaven, an earth, and a sea, nature was all homogeneous.” In Ovid it is, “The face of nature was the same throughout the universe,” which means not that all was homogeneous, but heterogeneous42 — this assemblage of different things appeared the same; “unus vultus.” Bayle criticises chaos throughout. Ovid, who in his verses is only the poet of the ancient philosophy, says that things hard and soft, light and heavy, were mixed together:
Mollia cum duris, sine pondere habentia pondus.
— Ovid’s Met., b. i., l. 20.
And this is the manner in which Bayle reasons against him: “There is nothing more absurd than to suppose a chaos which had been homogeneous from all eternity43, though it had the elementary qualities, at least those which we call alteratives, which are heat, cold, humidity, and dryness, as those which we call matrices, which are lightness and weight, the former the cause of upper motion, the latter of lower. Matter of this nature cannot be homogeneous, and must necessarily contain all sorts of heterogeneousness45. Heat and cold, humidity and dryness, cannot exist together, unless their action and reaction temper and convert them into other qualities which assume the form of mixed bodies; and as this temperament46 can be made according to innumerable diversities of combinations, chaos must contain an incredible number of compound species. The only manner of conceiving matter homogeneous is by saying that the alterative44 qualities of the elements modify all the molecules47 of matter in the same degree in such a way, that throughout there is the same warmth, the same softness, the same odor, etc. But this would be to destroy with one hand that which has been built up with the other; it would be by a contradiction in terms to call chaos the most regular, the most marvellous for its symmetry, and the most admirable in its proportions that it is possible to conceive. I allow that the taste of man approves of a diversified48 rather than of a regular work; but our reason teaches us that the harmony of contrary qualities, uniformly preserved throughout the universe, would be as admirable a perfection as the unequal division of them which has succeeded chaos. What knowledge and power would not the diffusion49 of this uniform harmony throughout nature demand! It would not be sufficient to place in any compound an equal quantity of all the four ingredients; of one there must be more and of another less, according as their force is greater or less for action or resistance; for we know that philosophers bestow50 action and reaction in a different degree on the elementary qualities. All would amount to an opinion that the power which metamorphosed chaos has withdrawn51 it, not from a state of strife53 and confusion as is pretended, but from a state of the most admirable harmony, which by the adjustment of the equilibrium54 of contrary forces, retained it in a repose55 equivalent to peace. It is certain, therefore, that if the poets will insist on the homogeneity of chaos, they must erase56 all which they have added concerning the wild confusion of contrary seeds, of the undigested mass, and of the perpetual combat of conflicting principles.
“Passing over this contradiction we shall find sufficient subject for opposing them in other particulars. Let us recommence the attack on eternity. There is nothing more absurd than to admit, for an infinite time, the mixture of the insensible particles of four elements; for as soon as you suppose in them the activity of heat, the action and reaction of the four primary qualities, and besides these, motion towards the centre in the elements of earth and water, and towards the circumference57 in those of fire and air, you establish a principle which necessarily separates these four kinds of bodies, the one from the other, and for which a definite period alone is necessary. Consider a little, that which is denominated ‘the vial of the four elements.’ There are put into it some small metallic58 particles, and then three liquids, the one much lighter59 than the other. Shake these well together, and you no longer discern any of these component60 parts singly; each is confounded with the other. But leave your vial at rest for a short time, and you will find every one of them resume its pristine61 situation. The metallic particles will reassemble at the bottom of the vial, the lightest liquid will rise to the top, and the others take their stations according to their respective degrees of gravity. Thus a very short time will suffice to restore them to the same relative situation which they occupied before the vial was shaken. In this vial you behold62 the laws which nature has given in this world to the four elements, and, comparing the universe to this vial, we may conclude, that if the earth reduced to powder had been mingled63 with the matter of the stars, and with that of air and of water, in such a way as that the compound exhibited none of the elements by themselves, all would have immediately operated to disengage themselves, and at the end of a certain time, the particles of earth would form one mass, those of fire another; and thus of the others in proportion to the lightness or heaviness of each of them.”
I deny to Bayle, that the experiment of the vial infers a definite period for the duration of chaos. I inform him, that by heavy and light things, Ovid and the philosophers intended those which became so after God had placed His hand on them. I say to him: “You take for granted that nature arranged all, and bestowed64 weight upon herself. You must begin by proving to me that gravity is an essential quality of matter, a position which has never been proved.” Descartes, in his romance has pretended that body never became heavy until his vortices of subtle matter began to push them from the centre. Newton, in his correct philosophy, never says that gravitation or attraction is a quality essential to matter. If Ovid had been able to divine the “Principia” of Newton, he would have said: “Matter was neither heavy nor in motion in my chaos; it was God who endowed it with these properties; my chaos includes not the forces you imagine — “nec quidquam nisi pondus iners”; it was a powerless mass; “pondus” here signifies not weight but mass.
Nothing could possess weight, before God bestowed on matter the principle of gravitation. In whatever degree one body is impelled65 towards the centre of another, would it be drawn52 or impelled by another, if the Supreme66 Power had not bestowed upon it this inexplicable67 virtue68? Therefore Ovid will not only turn out a good philosopher but a passable theologian.
You say: “A scholastic69 theologian will admit without difficulty, that if the four elements had existed independently of God, with all the properties which they now possess, they would have formed of themselves the machine of the world, and have maintained it in the state which we now behold. There are therefore two great faults in the doctrine70 of chaos; the first of which is, that it takes away from God the creation of matter, and the production of the qualities proper to air, fire, earth, and water; the other, that after taking God away, He is made to appear unnecessarily on the theatre of the world, in order to assign their places to the four elements. Our modern philosophers, who have rejected the faculties71 and the qualities of the peripatetician physics, will find the same defects in the description of the chaos of Ovid; for that which they call general laws of motion, mechanical principles, modifications72 of matter, the form, situation, and arrangement of atoms, comprehends nothing beyond the active and passive virtue of nature, which the peripatetics understand by the alterative and formative qualities of the four elements. Seeing, therefore, that, according to the doctrine of this school, these four bodies, separated according to their natural heaviness and lightness, form a principle which suffices for all generation, the Cartesians, Gassendists, and other modern philosophers, ought to maintain that the motion, situation, and form of the particles of matter, are sufficient for the production of all natural effects, without excepting even the general arrangement which has placed the earth, the air, the water, and the stars where we see them. Thus, the true cause of the world, and of the effect which it produces, is not different from the cause which has bestowed motion on particles of matter — whether at the same time that it assigned to each atom a determinate figure, as the Gassendists assert, or that it has only given to particles entirely73 cubic, an impulsion which, by the duration of the motion according to certain laws, makes it ultimately take all sorts of forms — which is the hypothesis of the Cartesians. Both the one and the other consequently agree, that if matter had been, before the generation of the present world, as Ovid describes, it would have been capable of withdrawing itself from chaos by its own necessary operation, without the assistance of God. Ovid may therefore be accused of two oversights74 — having supposed, in the first place, that without the assistance of the Divinity, matter possessed75 the seeds of every compound, heat, motion, etc.; and in the second, that without the same assistance it could extricate76 itself from confusion. This is to give at once too much and too little to both God and matter; it is to pass over assistance when most needed, and to demand it when no longer necessary.”
Ovid may still reply: “You are wrong in supposing that my elements originally possessed all the qualities which they possess at present. They had no qualities; matter existed naked, unformed, and powerless; and when I say, that in my chaos, heat was mingled with cold, and dryness with humidity, I only employ these expressions to signify that there was neither cold, nor heat, nor wet, nor dry, which are qualities that God has placed in our sensations, and not in matter. I have not made the mistakes of which you accuse me. Your Cartesians and your Gassendists commit oversights with their atoms and their cubic particles; and their imaginations deal as little in truth as my “Metamorphoses.” I prefer Daphne changed into a laurel, and Narcissus into a flower, to subtile matter changed into suns, and denser77 matter transformed into earth and water. I have given you fables78 for fables, and your philosophers have given you fables for truth.”
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1
banish
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| vt.放逐，驱逐；消除，排除 | |
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banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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3
savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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latitude
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| n.纬度，行动或言论的自由(范围)，(pl.)地区 | |
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ego
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| n.自我，自己，自尊 | |
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extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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equestrian
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| adj.骑马的；n.马术 | |
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cabal
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| n.政治阴谋小集团 | |
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shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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13
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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espoused
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| v.（决定）支持，拥护（目标、主张等）( espouse的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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impudently
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lavishes
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| v.过分给予，滥施( lavish的第三人称单数 ) | |
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allusions
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| 暗指，间接提到( allusion的名词复数 ) | |
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infamous
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| adj.声名狼藉的，臭名昭著的，邪恶的 | |
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impudence
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| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
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alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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insufficient
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| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
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allude
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| v.提及，暗指 | |
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lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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dissimulation
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| n.掩饰，虚伪，装糊涂 | |
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extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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benefactors
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| n.捐助者，施主( benefactor的名词复数 )；恩人 | |
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tyrants
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| 专制统治者( tyrant的名词复数 )； 暴君似的人； （古希腊的）僭主； 严酷的事物 | |
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caresses
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| 爱抚，抚摸( caress的名词复数 ) | |
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persecutes
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| （尤指宗教或政治信仰的）迫害(~sb. for sth.)( persecute的第三人称单数 )； 烦扰，困扰或骚扰某人 | |
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embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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panegyrics
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| n.赞美( panegyric的名词复数 )；称颂；颂词；颂扬的演讲或文章 | |
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immortality
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| n.不死，不朽 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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mare
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| n.母马，母驴 | |
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heterogeneous
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| adj.庞杂的；异类的 | |
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eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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alterative
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| adj.（趋于）改变的，变质的，使体质逐渐康复的n.变质剂，体质改善疗法 | |
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heterogeneousness
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| n.heterogeneous（混杂的）的变形 | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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molecules
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| 分子( molecule的名词复数 ) | |
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diversified
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| adj.多样化的，多种经营的v.使多样化，多样化( diversify的过去式和过去分词 )；进入新的商业领域 | |
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49
diffusion
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| n.流布；普及；散漫 | |
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50
bestow
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| v.把…赠与，把…授予；花费 | |
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51
withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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52
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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53
strife
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| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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equilibrium
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| n.平衡，均衡，相称，均势，平静 | |
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repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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56
erase
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| v.擦掉；消除某事物的痕迹 | |
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circumference
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| n.圆周，周长，圆周线 | |
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58
metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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59
lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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component
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| n.组成部分，成分，元件；adj.组成的，合成的 | |
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pristine
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| adj.原来的，古时的，原始的，纯净的，无垢的 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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65
impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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66
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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68
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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69
scholastic
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| adj.学校的，学院的，学术上的 | |
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70
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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modifications
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| n.缓和( modification的名词复数 )；限制；更改；改变 | |
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73
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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oversights
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| n.疏忽( oversight的名词复数 )；忽略；失察；负责 | |
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75
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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76
extricate
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| v.拯救，救出；解脱 | |
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denser
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| adj. 不易看透的, 密集的, 浓厚的, 愚钝的 | |
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78
fables
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| n.寓言( fable的名词复数 )；神话，传说 | |
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