some secret reason, which would not admit of being divulged. He says in his Tristia, Lib. ii. 1—
Perdiderent cum me duo crimina, carmen et errors. 278
It appears from another passage in the same work, that this inviolable arcanum was something which Ovid had seen, and, as 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