laws had made adultery criminal; he produces a second edition of Ars, and Amores, at about the time when Augustus' own
daughter was banished for adultery (2 B.C.), and when the inefficacy of the laws was only too apparent. We can see that
Ovid's adulterous line fits into a pattern of catholic and non-malicious irreverence-it is not 'anti-Augustan'. But to a gloomy
and disappointed Augustus it might have appeared otherwise. It is perhaps a wonder that he took so long to react, but finally
he did. In A.D. 8 Augustus' grand-daughter was also banished for adultery, and Ovid, guilty of perpetrating some 'mistake' as
well as his poem ('carmen et error'), was banished too, to Tomis, from whence he dispatched book loads of not wholly
laudable laments.
Erotic Scene on a Roman pottery lamp from the Naples area. Cheerful eroticism of a type which Ovid would have approved
was a favourite theme of the Roman decorative arts in imperial times, appearing in media as different as relief-decorated
ceramics and domestic wall-painting.