Osci, a people between Campania and the country of the Volsci, who assisted Turnus against Æneas. Some suppose that they are the same as the Opici, the word Osci being a diminutive or abbreviation of the other. The language, the plays, and ludicrous expressions of this nation, are often mentioned by the ancients, and from their indecent tendency some suppose the word obscænum (quasi oscenum) is derived. Tacitus, Annals, bk. 4, ch. 14.—Cicero, Letters to his Friends, bk. 7, ltr. 1.—Livy, bk. 10, ch. 20.—Strabo, bk. 5.—Pliny, bk. 3, ch. 5.—Virgil, Æneid, bk. 7, li. 730.

Oscius, a mountain, with a river of the same name, in Thrace. Thucydides.

Oscus, a general of the fleet of the emperor Otho. Tacitus, bk. 1, Histories, bk. 17.

Osi, a people of Germany. Tacitus, Germania, chs. 28 & 43.

Osinius, a king of Clusium, who assisted Æneas against Turnus. Virgil, Æneid, bk. 10, li. 655.

Osīris, a great deity of the Egyptians, son of Jupiter and Niobe. All the ancients greatly differ in their opinions concerning this celebrated god, but they all agree that, as king of Egypt, he took particular care to civilize his subjects, to polish their morals, to give them good and salutary laws, and to teach them agriculture. After he had accomplished a reform at home, Osiris resolved to go and spread cultivation in the other parts of the earth. He left his kingdom to the care of his wife Isis, and of her faithful minister Hermes or Mercury. The command of his troops at home was left to the trust of Hercules, a warlike officer. In this expedition Osiris was accompanied by his brother Apollo, and by Anubis, Macedo, and Pan. His march was through Æthiopia, where his army was increased by the addition of the Satyrs, a hairy race of monsters, who made dancing and playing on musical instruments their chief study. He afterwards passed through Arabia, and visited the greatest part of the kingdoms of Asia and Europe, where he enlightened the minds of men by introducing among them the worship of the gods, and a reverence for the wisdom of a supreme being. At his return home Osiris found the minds of his subjects roused and agitated. His brother Typhon had raised seditions, and endeavoured to make himself popular. Osiris, whose sentiments were always of the most pacific nature, endeavoured to convince his brother of his ill conduct, but he fell a sacrifice to the attempt. Typhon murdered him in a secret apartment and cut his body to pieces, which were divided among the associates of his guilt. Typhon, according to Plutarch, shut up his brother in a coffer and threw him into the Nile. The inquiries of Isis discovered the body of her husband on the coast of Phœnicia, where it had been conveyed by the waves, but Typhon stole it as it was being carried into Memphis, and he divided it amongst his companions, as was before observed. This cruelty incensed Isis; she revenged her husband’s death, and, with her son Orus, she defeated Typhon and the partisans of his conspiracy. She recovered the mangled pieces of her husband’s body, the genitals excepted, which the murderer had thrown into the sea; and to render him all the honour which his humanity deserved, she made as many statues of wax as there were mangled pieces of his body. Each statue contained a piece of the flesh of the dead monarch; and Isis, after she had summoned in her presence, one by one, the priests of all the different deities in her dominions, gave them each a statue, intimating that in doing that she had preferred them to all the other communities of Egypt, and she bound them by a solemn oath that they would keep secret that mark of her favour, and endeavour to show their sense of it by establishing a form of worship and paying divine honours to their prince. They were further directed to choose whatever animals they pleased to represent the person and the divinity of Osiris, and they were enjoined to pay the greatest reverence to that representative of divinity, and to bury it when dead with the greatest solemnity. To render their establishment more popular, each sacerdotal body had a certain portion of land allotted to them to maintain them, and to defray the expenses which necessarily attended their sacrifices and ceremonial rites. That part of the body of Osiris which had not been recovered was treated with more particular attention by Isis, and she ordered that it should receive honours more solemn, and at the same time more mysterious, than the other members. See: Phallica. As Osiris had particularly instructed his subjects in cultivating the ground, the priests chose the ox to represent him, and paid the most superstitious veneration to that animal. See: Apis. Osiris, according to the opinion of some mythologists, is the same as the sun, and the adoration which is paid by different nations to an Anubis, a Bacchus, a Dionysius, a Jupiter, a Pan, &c., is the same as that which Osiris received in the Egyptian temples. Isis also after death received divine honours as well as her husband, and as the ox was the symbol of the sun, or Osiris, so the cow was the emblem of the moon, or of Isis. Nothing can give a clearer idea of the power and greatness of Osiris than this inscription, which has been found on some ancient monuments: Saturn, the youngest of all the gods, was my father: I am Osiris, who conducted a large and numerous army as far as the deserts of India, and travelled over the greatest part of the world, and visited the streams of the Ister, and the remote shores of the ocean, diffusing benevolence to all the inhabitants of the earth. Osiris was generally represented with a cap on his head like a mitre, with two horns; he held a stick in his left hand, and in his right a whip with three thongs. Sometimes he appears with the head of a hawk, as that bird, from its quick and piercing eyes, is a proper emblem of the sun. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride.—Herodotus, bk. 2, ch. 144.—Diodorus, bk. 1.—Homer, Odyssey, bk. 12, li. 323.—Ælian, de Natura Animalium, bk. 3.—Lucian, de Syria Dea.—Pliny, bk. 8.——A Persian general, who lived 450 B.C.——A friend of Turnus, killed in the Rutulian war. Virgil, Æneid, bk. 12, li. 458.

Osismii, a people of Gaul in Britany. Mela, bk. 3, ch. 2.—Cæsar, Gallic War, bk. 2, ch. 34.

Osphăgus, a river of Macedonia. Livy, bk. 31, ch. 39.

Osrhoēne, a country of Mesopotamia, which received this name from one of its kings called Osrhoes.

Ossa, a lofty mountain of Thessaly, once the residence of the Centaurs. It was formerly joined to mount Olympus, but Hercules, as some report, separated them, and made between them the celebrated valley of Tempe. This separation of the two mountains was more probably effected by an earthquake, which happened, as fabulous accounts represent, about 1885 years before the christian era. Ossa was one of those mountains which the giants, in their wars against the gods, heaped up one on the other to scale the heavens with more facility. Mela, bk. 2, ch. 3.—Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 1, li. 155; bk. 2, li. 225; bk. 7, li. 224; Fasti, bk. 1, li. 307; bk. 3, li. 441.—Strabo, bk. 2.—Lucan, bks. 1 & 6.—Virgil, Georgics, bk. 1, li. 281.——A town of Macedonia.

Osteōdes, an island near the Lipari isles.

Ostia, a town built on the mouth of the river Tiber by Ancus Martius king of Rome, about 16 miles distant from Rome. It had a celebrated harbour, and was so pleasantly situated, that the Romans generally spent a part of the year there as in a country seat. There was a small tower in the port like the Pharos of Alexandria, built upon the wreck of a large ship which had been sunk there, and which contained the obelisks of Egypt, with which the Roman emperors intended to adorn the capital of Italy. In the age of Strabo the sand and mud deposited by the Tiber had choked the harbour, and added much to the size of the small islands, which sheltered the ships at the entrance of the river. Ostia, and her harbour called Portus, became gradually separated, and are now at a considerable distance from the sea. Florus, bk. 1, ch. 4; bk. 3, ch. 21.—Livy, bk. 1, ch. 33.—Mela, bk. 2, ch. 4.—Suetonius.—Pliny.

Ostorius Scapŭla, a man made governor of Britain. He died A.D. 55. Tacitus, Annals, bk. 16, ch. 23.——Another, who put himself to death when accused before Nero, &c. Tacitus, Annals, bk. 14, ch. 48.——Sabinus, a man who accused Soranus, in Nero’s reign. Tacitus, Annals, bk. 16, ch. 33.

Ostracine, a town of Egypt on the confines of Palestine. Pliny, bk. 5, ch. 12.

Osymandyas, a magnificent king of Egypt in a remote period.

Otacilius, a Roman consul sent against the Carthaginians, &c.

Otānes, a noble Persian, one of the seven who conspired against the usurper Smerdis. It was through him that the usurpation was first discovered. He was afterwards appointed by Darius over the sea-coast of Asia Minor, and took Byzantium. Herodotus, bk. 3, ch. 70, &c.

Otho Marcus Salvius, a Roman emperor descended from the ancient kings of Etruria. He was one of Nero’s favourites, and as such he was raised to the highest offices of the state, and made governor of Pannonia by the interest of Seneca, who wished to remove him from Rome, lest Nero’s love for Poppæa should prove his ruin. After Nero’s death Otho conciliated the favour of Galba the new emperor; but when he did not gain his point, and when Galba had refused to adopt him as his successor, he resolved to make himself absolute, without any regard to the age and dignity of his friend. The great debts which he had contracted encouraged his avarice, and he caused Galba to be assassinated, and he made himself emperor. He was acknowledged by the senate and the Roman people, but the sudden revolt of Vitellius in Germany rendered his situation precarious, and it was mutually resolved that their respective right to the empire should be decided by arms. Otho obtained three victories over his enemies, but in a general engagement near Brixellum, his forces were defeated, and he stabbed himself when all hopes of success were vanished, after a reign of about three months, on the 20th of April, A.D. 69. It has been justly observed that the last moments of Otho’s life were those of a philosopher. He comforted his soldiers who lamented his fortunes, and he expressed his concern for their safety, when they earnestly solicited to pay him the last friendly offices before he stabbed himself, and he observed that it was better that one man should die, than that all should be involved in ruin for his obstinacy. His nephew was pale and distressed, fearing the anger and haughtiness of the conqueror; but Otho comforted him, and observed that Vitellius would be kind and affectionate to the friends and relations of Otho, since Otho was not ashamed to say, that in the time of their greatest enmity the mother of Vitellius had received every friendly treatment from his hand. He also burnt the letters which, by falling into the hands of Vitellius, might provoke his resentment against those who had favoured the cause of an unfortunate general. These noble and humane sentiments of a man who was the associate of Nero’s shameful pleasures, and who stained his hand in the blood of his master, have appeared to some wonderful, and passed for the features of policy, and not of a naturally virtuous and benevolent heart. Plutarch, Lives.—Suetonius.—Tacitus, Histories, bk. 2, ch. 50, &c.—Juvenal, satire 2, li. 90.——Roscius, a tribune of the people, who, in Cicero’s consulship, made a regulation to permit the Roman knights at public spectacles to have the 14 first rows after the seats of the senators. This was opposed with virulence by some, but Cicero ably defended it, &c. Horace, epode 4, li. 10.——The father of the Roman emperor Otho was the favourite of Claudius.

Othryădes, one of the 300 Spartans who fought against 300 Argives, when those two nations disputed their respective right to Thyrea. Two Argives, Alcinor and Cronius, and Othryades, survived the battle. The Argives went home to carry the news of their victory, but Othryades, who had been reckoned among the number of the slain, on account of his wounds, recovered himself and carried some of the spoils, of which he had stripped the Argives, into the camp of his countrymen; and after he had raised a trophy, and had written with his own blood, the word vici on his shield, he killed himself, unwilling to survive the death of his countrymen. Valerius Maximus, bk. 3, ch. 2.—Plutarch, Parallela Minora.——A patronymic given to Pantheus the Trojan priest of Apollo, from his father Othryas. Virgil, Æneid, bk. 2, li. 319.

Othryoneus, a Thracian who came to the Trojan war in hopes of marrying Cassandra. He was killed by Idomeneus. Homer, Iliad, bk. 13.

Othrys, a mountain, or rather a chain of mountains, in Thessaly, the residence of the Centaurs. Strabo, bk. 9.—Herodotus, bk. 7, ch. 129.—Virgil, Æneid, bk. 7, li. 675.

Otreus, a king of Phrygia, son of Cisseus and brother to Hecuba.

Otrœda, a small town on the confines of Bithynia.

Otus and Ephialtes, sons of Neptune. See: Aloides.

Otys, a prince of Paphlagonia, who revolted from the Persians to Agesilaus. Xenophon.

Ovia, a Roman lady, wife of Cneaus Lollius. Cicero, Letters to Atticus, bk. 12, ltr. 21.

Publius Ovīdius Naso, a celebrated Roman poet, born at Sulmo on the 20th of March, about 43 B.C. As he was intended for the bar, his father sent him early to Rome, and removed him to Athens in the 16th year of his age. The progress of Ovid in the study of eloquence was great, but the father’s expectations were frustrated; his son was born a poet, and nothing could deter him from pursuing his natural inclination, though he was often reminded that Homer lived and died in the greatest poverty. Everything he wrote was expressed in poetical numbers, as he himself says, et quod tentabam scribere versus erat. A lively genius and a fertile imagination soon gained him admirers; the learned became his friends; Virgil, Propertius, Tibullus, and Horace, honoured him with their correspondence, and Augustus patronized him with the most unbounded liberality. These favours, however, were but momentary, and the poet was soon after banished to Tomos, on the Euxine sea, by the emperor. The true cause of this sudden exile is unknown. Some attribute it to a shameful amour with Livia the wife of Augustus, while others support that it arose from the knowledge which Ovid had of the unpardonable incest of the emperor with his daughter Julia. These reasons are, indeed, merely conjectural; the cause was of a very private and very secret nature, of which Ovid himself is afraid to speak, as it arose from error and not from criminality. It was, however, something improper in the family and court of Augustus, as these lines seem to indicate.

Again,

And in another place,

In his banishment, Ovid betrayed his pusillanimity, and however afflicted and distressed his situation was, yet the flattery and impatience which he showed in his writings are a disgrace to his pen, and expose him more to ridicule than pity. Though he prostituted his pen and his time to adulation, yet the emperor proved deaf to all entreaties, and refused to listen to his most ardent friends at Rome who wished for the return of the poet. Ovid, who undoubtedly wished for a Brutus to deliver Rome of her tyrannical Augustus, continued his flattery even to meanness; and, when the emperor died, he was so mercenary as to consecrate a temple to the departed tyrant on the shores of the Euxine, where he regularly offered frankincense every morning. Tiberius proved as regardless as his predecessor to the entreaties which were made for Ovid, and the poet died in the seventh or eighth year of his banishment, in the 59th year of his age, A.D. 17, and was buried at Tomos. In the year 1508 of the christian era, the following epitaph was found at Stain, in the modern kingdom of Austria:

This, however, is an imposition, to render celebrated an obscure corner of the world, which never contained the bones of Ovid. The greatest part of Ovid’s poems are remaining. His Metamorphoses, in 15 books, are extremely curious, on account of the many different mythological facts and traditions which they relate, but they can have no claim to an epic poem. In composing this the poet was more indebted to the then existing traditions, and to the theogony of the ancients, than to the powers of his own imagination. His Fasti were divided into 12 books, the same number as the constellations in the zodiac; but of these, six have perished, and the learned world have reason to lament the loss of a poem which must have thrown so much light upon the religious rites and ceremonies, festivals and sacrifices, of the ancient Romans, as we may judge from the six that have survived the ravages of time and barbarity. His Tristia, which are divided into five books, contain much elegance and softness of expression, as also his Elegies on different subjects. The Heroides are nervous, spirited, and diffuse, the poetry is excellent, the language varied, but the expressions are often too wanton and indelicate, a fault which is common in his compositions. His three books of Amorum, and the same number de Arte Amandi, with the other de Remedio Amoris, are written with great elegance, and contain many flowery descriptions; but the doctrine which they hold forth is dangerous, and they are to be read with caution, as they seem to be calculated to corrupt the heart, and sap the foundations of virtue and morality. His Ibis, which is written in imitation of a poem of Callimachus, of the same name, is a satirical performance. Besides these, there are extant some fragments of other poems, and among these some of a tragedy called Medea. The talents of Ovid as a dramatic writer have been disputed, and some have observed that he, who is so often void of sentiment, was not born to shine as a tragedian. Ovid has attempted perhaps too many sorts of poetry at once. On whatever he has written, he has totally exhausted the subject, and left nothing unsaid. He everywhere paints nature with a masterly hand, and gives strength to the most vulgar expressions. It has been judiciously observed, that his poetry, after his banishment from Rome, was destitute of that spirit and vivacity which we admire in his other compositions. His Fasti are perhaps the best written of all his poems, and after them we may fairly rank his love verses, his Heroides, and, after all, his Metamorphoses, which were not totally finished when Augustus sent him into banishment. His Epistles from Pontus are the language of an abject and pusillanimous flatterer. However critics may censure the indelicacy and the inaccuracies of Ovid, it is to be acknowledged that his poetry contains great sweetness and elegance, and, like that of Tibullus, charms the ear and captivates the mind. Ovid married three wives, but of the last alone he speaks with fondness and affection. He had only one daughter, but by which of his wives is unknown; and she herself became mother of two children, by two husbands. The best editions of Ovid’s works are those of Burman, 4 vols., 4to, Amsterdam, 1727; of Leiden, 1670, in 8vo, and of Utrecht, in 12mo, 4 vols., 1713. Ovid, Tristia, bks. 3 & 4, &c.—Paterculus, bk. 2.—Martial, bks. 3 & 8.——A man who accompanied his friend Cæsonius when banished from Rome by Nero. Martial, bk. 7, ltr. 43.

Ovinia lex was enacted to permit the censors to elect and admit among the number of the senators the best and the worthiest of the people.

Ovinius, a freedman of Vatinius, the friend of Cicero, &c. Quintilian, bk. 3, ch. 4.——Quintus, a Roman senator, punished by Augustus for disgracing his rank in the court of Cleopatra. Eutropius, bk. 1.

Oxathres, a brother of Darius, greatly honoured by Alexander, and made one of his generals. Curtius, bk. 7, ch. 5.——Another Persian, who favoured the cause of Alexander. Curtius.

Oxidătes, a Persian whom Darius condemned to death. Alexander took him prisoner, and some time after made him governor of Media. He became oppressive, and was removed. Curtius, bk. 8, ch. 3; bk. 9, ch. 8.

Oximes, a people of European Sarmatia.

Oxionæ, a nation of Germans, whom superstitious traditions represented as having the countenance human, and the rest of the body like that of beasts. Tacitus, Germania, ch. 46.

Oxus, a large river of Bactriana, now Gihon, falling into the east of the Caspian sea. Pliny, bk. 16, ch. 6.——Another in Scythia.

Oxyares, a king of Bactriana, who surrendered to Alexander.

Oxycānus, an Indian prince in the age of Alexander, &c.

Oxydrăcæ, a nation of India. Curtius, bk. 9, ch. 4.

Oxy̆lus, a leader of the Heraclidæ, when they recovered the Peloponnesus. He was rewarded with the kingdom of Elis. Pausanias, bk. 5, ch. 4.——A son of Mars and Protogenia. Apollodorus, bk. 1, ch. 7.

Oxynthes, a king of Athens, B.C. 1149. He reigned 12 years.

Oxypŏrus, a son of Cinyras and Metharme. Apollodorus, bk. 3, ch. 14.

Oxyrynchus, a town of Egypt on the Nile. Strabo.

Ozīnes, a Persian imprisoned by Craterus, because he attempted to revolt from Alexander. Curtius, bk. 9, ch. 10.

Ozŏlæ, or Ozŏli, a people who inhabited the eastern parts of Ætolia, which were called Ozolea. This tract of territory lay at the north of the bay of Corinth, and extended about 12 miles northward. They received their name from the bad stench (ὀζη) of their bodies and of their clothing, which was the raw hides of wild beasts, or from the offensive smell of the body of Nessus the Centaur, which after death was left to putrefy in the country without the honours of a burial. Some derive it with more propriety from the stench of the stagnated waters in the neighbouring lakes and marshes. According to a fabulous tradition, they received their name from a very different circumstance. During the reign of a son of Deucalion, a bitch brought into the world a stick instead of whelps. The stick was planted in the ground by the king, and it grew up to a large vine and produced grapes, from which the inhabitants of the country were called Ozolæ, not from ὀζειν, to smell bad, but from ὀζος, a branch or sprout. The name of Ozolæ, on account of its indelicate signification, highly displeased the inhabitants, and they exchanged it soon for that of Ætolians. Pausanias, bk. 10, ch. 38.—Herodotus, bk. 8, ch. 32.