a? He called the children to him and
talked low to them of their mother. Again his friends urged him. Three
times he started for the door and three times he came back. At the
end Fabia clung to him and beat upon his shoulders and declared she
must go with him. What was Augustus's command to her? Love was her
Caesar. Rufus came and drew her away. The door opened. The cold night
air swept the atrium. She caught sight of Ovid's face, haggard and
white against the black mass of his dishevelled hair. His shoulders
sagged. He stumbled as he went out. She was conscious of falling,
and knew nothing more.

III

Ovid's second birthday in exile had passed. The hope of an early
release, harboured at first by his family and friends, had died away.
None of them knew what the "blunder" or "crime" was which had aroused
the anger of Augustus, and every effort to bring into high relief
the innocence of Ovid's personal life and his loyalty to the imperial
family simply made them more cognisant of a mystery they could not
fathom. Access to Caesar was easy to some of them, and through Marcia,
Maximus's wife, they had hoped to reach Livia. But these high
personages remained inscrutable and relentless. At times it seemed
as if even Tiberius, although long absent from the city, might be
playing a sinister role in the drama. All that was clear was that
some storm-wind from the fastnesses of the imperial will had swept
through the gaiety of Rome and quenched, like a candle, the bright
life of her favourite poet. It was easy to say that an astonishing
amount of freedom was still Ovid's. His books had been removed from
the public libraries, but the individual's liberty to own or read
them was in no way diminished. Nor was the publication of new work
frowned upon. In the autumn before his banishment Ovid had given out
one or two preliminary copies of his _Metamorphoses_, and his friends
now insisted that a work so full of charm, so characteristic of his
best powers, so innocent of questionable material should be
published, even if it had not undergone a final revision. The author
sent back from Tomi some lines of apology and explanation which he
wished prefixed. He also arranged with the Sosii for the bringing
out of his work on the Roman Calendar when he should have completed
it. And he was at liberty not only to keep up whatever private
correspondence he chose, but to have published a new set of elegiac
poems in the form of frank letters abo