for. He gave them lessons in the proper way to address Marius and the senate, and, at the end of forty days, dismissed them delightfully penetrated with the idea that disinterested kindness, if nowhere else at home in this unfriendly world, had at least found refuge with Lucius Sylla. It Bccchus turns traitor to Jugurtha and offers to treat with Sylla. But Jugurtha's man, he says, must be present at their interviews. Sylla replied that before said personage he would speak sparingly, and see Bocchus again apart. was accordingly arranged by Sylla that Bocchus, at the close of the formal interview, should, in the presence of Jugurtha's representative, tell Sylla to come back in ten days and get the king's answer. This was done, and the two withdrew to their respective camps. But, in the middle of the night, Sylla, according to the plan concerted between them, was summoned secretly back by Bocchus, who, to trust Sallust's report of it, made the Roman lieutenant a remarkable speech, profuse in professions of personal attachment and gratitude. Sylla replying told the king in effect that promises from an enemy situated as he, Bocchus, now was, at disadvantage, would signify little to the Roman senate and people. He, Bocchus, would have to do something substantial. It lay in his, Bocchus's, power to put Rome under real obligation. He could betray Jugurtha to her. Bocchus started back. Why, there was the kindred tie, the solemn league, between himself and Jugurtha. Besides, Jugurtha was beloved, and the Romans were hated, by his, Bocchus's, subjects. Sylla pressed, and Bocchus-yielded. An ambush was laid, and the father-in-law delivered up the son-in-law to Sylla. It was a proud feather in young Sylla's cap. But it was before the chariot-wheels of Marius that, afterward, Jugurtha, with his two sons, was driven in triumph at Rome. Sallust's history stops abruptly with Jugurtha's capture. From other sources we learn that the proud captive lost his senses under the dreadful humiliation of the triumph; also that soon after, with much contumelious violence, he was flung naked into the chill under-ground dungeon at Rome called the Tullianum, where after six days he perished of cold and starvation. (One authority says he was strangled.) He is said to have exclaimed shudderingly, as he fell, "Heavens, a cold bath this of yours!" His name Jugurtha is painted black in Sallust's picture. But the artist that painted him, remember, is a foe and a Roman. Jugurtha must have been, indeed, a false and bloody man. Still he had followers that clave to him. Nay, Jugurtha was to all Africans the most beloved of men. He was universally hailed as deliverer of the nation from Rome. long continued a spell of power to his countrymen. It was twenty years after his death-and already his kingdom was. in large part a province of Rome-when a son of his, recognized in the force opposed to the Romans, raised such sentiments in the breasts of a Numidian corps attached to the Roman army, that the whole body had to be immediately sent home to Africa. Jugurtha's bravery, his talent, his endurance redeem him to our admiration, as do his misfortunes to our sympathy. Supposing Jugurtha had been the conqueror, and some Numidian partisan of his, instead of a Roman partisan of Cæsar's, had given us the history! Imagine the difference! Instead of "Punic faith" as now, the phrase, “Roman faith," might then have been the proverbial irony for false dealing. There is, outside of the Bible, no history that is not merely a version of history. III. OVID. Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso is the full Roman name) was born in Northern Italy. It is striking how few, comparatively, of the great Roman writers were natives of Rome. Ovid came of a good family, and he liked to have this known. "In my family," he says, "you will find knights up through an endless line of ancestry." He was born just when the republic died; that is, he and the imperial order came twins into the world together, in 43 B. C. The boy was a natural versifier. Like Pope, he "lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." His youth coincided either with the full maturity, or with the declining age, of the great Augustan writers, Virgil, Livy, Horace, Sallust. Unhappily for himself, he did not come under the sunshine that streamed on literature and art from the face of Augustus's great minister, Mae-ceʼnas. The emperor never extended his favor to Ovid; and in the end, as our readers know, the poet was sent into exile. Ovid was a man of loose character, and his looseness of character leaked into his verse. In fact, much of what he wrote is now unreadable for rank impurity. One of his poems in particular scandalized the moral sense of even his own age, and became the ostensible occasion of his banishment. His "Metamorphoses" must be considered his chief work. The title means, literally, changes of form. Ovid's idea in the poem is to tell in his own way such legends of the teeming Greek mythology as deal with the transformations of men and women into animals, plants, or inanimate things. The inventive ingenuity of the poet is displayed in connecting these separate stories into something like coherence and unity. This poem has been a great treasury of material to subsequent poets. Even Milton has conde scended to be not a little indebted to Ovid for images or allusions, which he dignified by adopting them, with noble metamorphosis, into his own loftier verse. Our first specimen of Ovid's Metamorphoses shall be the story of Pha'e-ton. This we can give in a version which, if it is not quite so closely literal as would be desirable, is excellent art of its kind, and is, at any rate, a classic too in English, for it is from the hand of Joseph Addison. There is, by the way, in Bohn's Classical Library a very good prose translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses entire, accompanied with enlightening notes. First and last, a considerable number of English translations have been made, both in prose and in verse, of Ovid's poetry. Two small volumes, published by Harper & Brothers, compile various partial rhymed versions by different hands, among them Dryden, Pope, Congreve and Addison. These pieces of translation are all of them, perhaps, a little antiquated in tone and style, and they are of exceedingly unequal merit. Our readers will like, by way of introduction to our exemplification of Ovid's Metamorphoses, to see what the poet himself-in one of his most delightfully buoyant moods surely it must have been-thought of his own work as a whole. We give, accordingly, the conclusion of the Metamorphoses in literal prose translation: And now I have completed a work, which neither the anger of Jove, nor fire, nor steel, nor consuming time wil be able to destroy! Let that day, which has no power but over this body of mine, put an end to the time of my uncertain life when it will. Yet, in my better part, I shall be raised immortal above the lofty stars, and indelible shall be my And wherever the Roman power is extended throughout the vanquished earth, I shall be read by the lips of nations, and (if the presages of the poets have aught of truth) throughout all ages shall I survive in fame. name. There is, perhaps, no part of Ovid's poem that constitutes upon the whole a better warrant to the poet for his cheerful anticipation of enduring fame, than that which we now in specimen present. Phoebus (Apollo) is god of the sun. He is applied to by his not universally acknowledged son, Phaeton, with a startling request. Obedient to the straitening demands of space, we omit the brilliant opening which describes the dazzling palace and the richly decorated enthronement of the god. Phaeton has arrived and presents himself. To Phoebus's gracious welcome of his son, "Light of the world," the trembling youth replies, The tender sire was touched with what he said, " The youth, transported, asks without delay, Phoebus is distressed. He begs Phaeton to reconsider and choose more wisely for himself. This at considerable length and with much poetical eloquence. But Phaeton was not to be dissuaded, and the reluctant father has his chariot brought out. Then at daybreak, He bids the nimble Hours, without delay, |