he insinuates, through his own ignorance and mistake.
Cur aliquid vidi? cur conscia lumina feci?
Cur imprudenti cognita culpa mihi est?—Ibid.
* * * * * *
(180) Inscia quod crimen viderunt lumina, plector:
Peccatumque oculos est habuisse meum. 279 De Trist. iii. 5.
It seems, therefore, to be a fact sufficiently established, that Ovid had seen something of a very indecent nature, in which Augustus was concerned. What this was, is the question. Some authors, conceiving it to have been of a kind extremely atrocious, have gone so far as to suppose, that it must have been an act of criminality between Augustus and his own daughter Julia, who, notwithstanding the strict attention paid to her education by her father, became a woman of the most infamous character; suspected of incontinence during her marriage with Agrippa, and openly profligate after her union with her next husband, Tiberius. This supposition, however, rests entirely upon conjecture, and is not only discredited by its own improbability, but by a yet more forcible argument. It is certain that Julia was at this time in banishment for her scandalous life. She was about the same age