What was the standing of this poet of the gay, frivolous, exquisite ladies whom they wished to send into exile?  He was the author of that graceful, erotic poetry who, through the themes which he chose for his elegant verses, had encouraged the tendencies toward luxury, diversion, and the pleasures which had transformed the austere matron of a former day into an extravagant and undisciplined creature given to voluptuousness; the poet who had gained the admiration of women especially by flattering their most dangerous and perverse tendencies.  The puritanical party hated and combatted this trend of the newer generations, and therefore, also, the poetry of Ovid on account of its disastrous effects upon the women, whom it weaned from the virtues most prized in former days—­frugality, simplicity, family affection, and purity of life.  The Roman aristocracy did not recognize the right of absolute literary freedom which is acknowledged by many modern states, in which writers and men of letters have acquired a strong political influence.  The theory, held by many countries to-day that any publication is justifiable, provided it be a work of art, was not accepted by the Romans in power.  On the contrary, they were convinced that an idea or a sentiment, dangerous in itself, became still more harmful when artistically expressed.  Therefore Rome had always known the existence of a kind of police supervision of ideas and of literary forms, exercised through various means by the ruling aristocracy, and especially in reference to women, who constituted that element of social life in which virtue and purity of customs are of the greatest consequence.  The Roman ladies of the aristocracy, as we have seen, received considerable instruction.  They read the poets and philosophers, and precisely for this reason there was always at Rome a strong aversion to light and immoral literature.  If books had circulated among men only, the poetry of Ovid would perhaps not have enjoyed the good fortune of a persecution which was to focus upon it the attention of posterity.  The greater liberty conceded to women thus placed upon society an even greater reserve in the case of its literature.  This Ovid learned to his cost when he was driven into exile because his books gave too much delight to too many ladies at Rome.  By the order of Augustus these books were removed from the libraries, which did not hinder their coming down to us entire, while many a more serious work—­like Livy’s history, for example—­has been either entirely or in large part lost.

[Illustration:  Drusus, the younger brother of Tiberius.]