e in respect of her mother,
though in both cases unsuccessfully; and this consideration, joined to
the enormity of the supposed crime, and the great sensibility which
Augustus had discovered with regard to the infamy of his daughter, seems
sufficient to exonerate his memory from so odious a charge. Besides, is
it possible that he could have sent her into banishment for the infamy of
her prostitution, while (upon the supposition of incest) she was mistress
of so important a secret, as that he himself had been more criminal with
her than any other man in the empire?

Some writers, giving a wider scope to conjecture, have supposed the
transaction to be of a nature still more detestable, and have even
dragged Mecaenas, the minister, into a participation of the crime.
Fortunately, however, for the reputation of the illustrious patron of
polite learning, as well as for that of the emperor, this crude
conjecture may be refuted upon the evidence of chronology. The
commencement of Ovid's exile happened in the ninth year of the Christian
aera, and the death of Mecaenas, eight years before that period. Between
this and other calculations, we find a difference of three or four years;
but allowing the utmost latitude of variation, there intervened, from the
death of Mecaenas to the banishment of Ovid, a period of eleven years; an
observation which fully invalidates the conjecture above-mentioned.

Having now refuted, as it is presumed, the opinions of the different
commentators on this subject, we shall proceed to offer a new conjecture,
which seems to have a greater claim to probability than any that has
hitherto been suggested.

Suetonius informs us, that Augustus, in the latter part of his life,
contracted a vicious inclination for the enjoyment of young virgins, who
were procured for him from all parts, not only with the connivance, but
by the clandestine management of his consort Livia. It was therefore
probably with one of those victims that he was discovered by Ovid.
Augustus had for many years affected a decency of behaviour, and he
would, therefore, naturally be not a little disconcerted at the
unseasonable intrusion of the poet. That Ovid knew not of Augustus's
being in the place, is beyond all doubt: and Augustus's consciousness
(182) of this circumstance, together with the character of Ovid, would
suggest an unfavourable suspicion of the motive which had brought the
latter thither. Abstracted from the immorality