any object of jealousy in love, yet by Augustus, now in his sixty-ninth year, he might be deemed a formidable rival. This passion, therefore, concurring with that which arose from the interruption or disappointment of gratification, inflamed the emperor’s resentment, and he resolved on banishing to a distant country a man whom he considered as his rival, and whose presence, from what had happened, he never more could endure.
Augustus having determined on the banishment of Ovid, could find little difficulty in accommodating the ostensible to the secret and real cause of this resolution.
No argument to establish the date of publication, can be drawn from the order in which the various productions of Ovid are placed in the collection of his works: but reasoning from probability, we should suppose that the Ars Amandi was written during the period of his youth; and this seems to be confirmed by the following passage in the second book of