The Love Books

Ovid

• Publisher: Youcanprint
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9788827809297
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

'The Love Books of Ovid' is a combination of four books of the Roman poet's verse translated into prose. This volume includes 'Amores' or 'The Loves', 'Ars Amatoria' or 'The Art of Love', 'Remedia Amoris' or 'Love's Cure', and 'Medicamina Faciei Feminae' or 'The Art of Beauty'. Considered to be a master of the elegy form of poetry, Ovid, is faithfully represented here in this English prose translation. Students of classical literature and fans of romantic poetry will both delight in this volume of works by Ovid. This is Julian May's translation of Ovid's 'erotic' works: The Amores (the Loves), Ars Amatoria (the Art of Love), Remedia Amoris (The Cure for Love) and the fragmentary Medicamina Faciei Feminae (Women's Facial Cosmetics). This version was published in 1930 in a 'limited' edition with sensual art deco illustrations by Jean de Bosschere. In the Amores, published about 18 BCE, Ovid portrays the evolution of an affair with a married woman named Corinna. It is unclear as to whether this is fictional or autobiographical, but it is obviously based on the experiences of a sophisticated lover. The Ars Amatoria, published about 1 BCE, is a guidebook for seduction; it includes many tips and tricks which would not be out of place in a modern dating manual, while giving intimate vignettes of daily life in Ancient Rome. The first two books are written from a male point of view; the last book, which was probably written at a later date, is addressed to women. It is believed that this work, which celebrates extramarital sex, was one of the reasons that Ovid was banished by the Emperor Augustus, who was attempting to promote a more austere morality.

Introduction 1

PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO was born at Sulmo--the modern Sulmona--on March the 20th, 43 B.C. He was fortunate in his birthplace, and it may not perhaps be over fanciful to ascribe the airy charm, the delicate grace, which his Muse so plentifully displays, at least as much to his early environment as to heredity. Sulmo, indeed, lies amid a region of great natural beauty. Its pastures, as Ovid himself tells us, were cool and rich, it produced abundant crops of corn, and yet so light and fine was the soil that the vine and the olive flourished there in profusion. It was a land of streams, of streams that hurried down from the mountains so clear and cold that the place is called by the poets"gelidus Sulmo." Even in the hottest of Italian summers, when the canicular is at its height, its meadows are fresh and green and its atmosphere sparkling and salubrious.

Ovid's family was of hereditary equestrian rank and possessed a sufficiency if not anabundance of wealth. The poet was proud of his ancestry and his family traditions, and he is careful to impress upon us that he is no upstart, no parvenu, emphatically not one of the postwar rich, as we are wont to say nowadays. At an early age he and hisonly brother--his elder by exactly a year--brought up in their father's house with the care and attention that would naturally be bestowed on the sons of well-to-do and aristocratic parents, were sent to continue their education in Rome. It was their father's intention that they should both follow the profession of advocate, and with this purpose in view they were sent to study rhetoric under two of the most celebrated professors of that art--Porcius Latro and Arellius Fuscus. For in the Rome of Ovid's time, though the days of the great political orators were gone for ever, oratory, the lucrative and harmless oratory of the schools or the bar, was a highly popular pursuit. The elder brother, Lucius, appears to have devoted himself to his studies with a will. Ovid's tastes, however, lay in a very different direction. He tried hard to follow the parental injunctions and to make himself an effective advocate, but he achieved only indifferent success. The elder Seneca tells us that he once heard Ovid deliveringa speech before his master Fuscus, and he gives us to understand that the effort was more remarkable for the beauty of its phrasing than for its argumentative power. Indeed he describes the speech as nothing more or less than poetry without metre. Ovid himself confesses that, try as he would to declaim in prose, he constantly found himself gliding into poetry. He "lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." His heart was with the Muses. He wanted to be, not a barrister, but a poet. One can imagine the paternal chagrin when the boy made known his ambitions. A country gentleman with family traditions, and not too much money to throw away, could hardly be expected to look with favour on poetry. As a pastime, well enough perhaps, but rather effeminate. As a profession, mere starvation. Naso père seems to have entertained the typical country squire's contempt for "those writing fellows" and to have given expression to it in no ambiguous terms. So for a time, at least, our poet had to stick to his declamatory exercises and turn his back on the Muses. It is clear that had his father remained obdurate, Ovid might well have achieved no more than mediocrityas a professional barrister, have filled with tolerable credit a few minor offices of State and, in course of time,have gone back to Sulmo to wear out the evening of his days in such innocent pursuits as usually fall to the lot of retired Civil servants with landed interests and a private income. The prudent and level-headed father would have had his way; the world would have lost one of its most delightful poets, and the literatures of Italy, France and England would have been immeasurably the poorer. But when Ovid had attained the age of nineteen or thereabouts, an event occurred which averted the threatened triumph of parental common-sense. That event was the death of Ovid's elder brother Lucius. His removal from the scene, though we have no reason to doubt that Ovid sincerely regretted it, went a long way to disarm the parental opposition, which had always been basedon practical grounds of finance, for obviously what would have provided a bare sufficiency for two would furnish an easy if not abundant competence for one. Ovid doubtless returned to the charge and pressed his suit with the persuasive eloquence which hisgenius and his training would have placed at his command. His father, realising, like the good sensible man he was, that it is useless trying to drive a nail where it won't go, and wisely concluding that a willing poet is better than a reluctant advocate,"sealed his hard consent." Whether Ovid would have gone to Athens had he followed the forensic career designed for him by his father is perhaps doubtful, but, for the man of letters, and above all for the poet, such a crown to his education was in the highest degree desirable; so to Athens he went, much in the same way that a public school boy of to-day goes up to Oxford or Cambridge. What he did there we do not know. He himself, usually so communicative about his own affairs, contents himself with informing us that he went there for purposes of study. He would, at all events, have learned to read Homer, Euripides and Sophocles. A knowledge of Greek was in those days a mark of a superior education, and Greek he certainly acquired; but whatever he learned ordid not learn--and we can scarcely picture this child of the Muses as a fort-en-thème, a determined reading man--we may be quite sure that he was not insensible to the beauty of the incomparable city to which his good fortune had sent him, or to the charmof the region in which it was set, and Attica, with its delicate and brilliant atmosphere, with its soil so favourable to the vine and olive, may well have reminded him of his native Sulmo.

His sojourn in Athens was followed by a tour which he made in company with Pompeius Macer, another youthful aspirant to poetic fame. In the course of these leisurely wanderings the two young men visited Sicily and the famous Greek cities of Western Asia Minor, bathing their spirits in the perennial springs from which Anacreon and Theocritus derived their inspiration. Altogether Ovid was away from Rome about three years. When he returned he sought, probably at his father's instigation, and obtained, certain public appointments, which, though not in themselves of great importance, were stepping-stones to the quæstor-ship, an office which, under the Empire, was shorn of much of its ancient importance, notably the care of the treasury, but which nevertheless carried with it the right to a seat in the Senate. He successively discharged the duties of Triumvir Capitalis, whose functions largely corresponded with those of a modern police magistrate, and Decemvir Stlitibus Judicandis, a member of a tribunal for the trial of private causes, representing the prætor. If, however, thefather had entertainedthe hope that the fulfilment of these offices would divert his son from his poetic ambitions, that hope was doomed to disappointment, for, though Ovid appears to have filled these preliminary positions with credit, he made what his father at least must have considered il gran rifiuto. He declined the quæstorship, and exchanged the broad purple band which he had worn as a future member of the Senate for the narrower stripe to which he was entitled as a member of the equestrian order. In other words, he decided to retire into private life, preferring, it would seem, to indulge his dilettantism and to enjoy the distractions of society, as the fancy took him, rather than to incur the diminution of his freedom which the adoption of a publiccareer would have necessarily involved.

When he was very young, scarcely more than a boy, Ovid was married, to a wife who was probably chosen for him by his parents. All we know about this union is that it was speedily dissolved. Another wife was promptlydiscovered, the bride on this occasion being a native of Falisci in Etruria and a woman of some social standing. Ovid's attitude towards her appears to have been dictated by respect rather than affection--he confesses that her conduct gave him nothing tocomplain of, yet the second marriage lasted but little, if any, longer than the first. All his devotion, in those early days, seems to have been reserved for the mistress whom he celebrates in his earliest poem, "The Loves," under the name of Corinna. WhoCorinna was we do not know. That she was not Julia, as Sidonius Apollinaris would have us believe, is as certain as that she was a real and not an imaginary personage. How long Corinna continued to reign supreme in Ovid's heart is a matter of conjecture. Her dominion had probably come to an end some considerable time before his marriage with his third wife, to whom he appears to have been sincerely attached. Since his daughter, Perilla, the fruit of this third union, had attained the age of twenty and was herself married when Ovid was banished., A.D. 8, the marriage could scarcely have taken place later than 12 B.C. Until his fiftieth year Ovid lived at Rome in a house near the Capitol, whence, from time to time, he would go to seek refreshment and repose onhis country estate at Sulmo. It seemed as though everything had combined to make Ovid's lot a happy one. Endowed with talents that shone with special lustre even among the brilliant society of the day, blest with sufficient but not burdensome wealth, popular with the men, idolized by the women, smiled on by Augustus himself, Ovid seemed to be indeed a favourite of the gods. But suddenly, when the barometer of his fortune was at its height, this brilliant and fascinating child of the age, this refined and delicate voluptuary, was commanded by an Imperial edict to quit Rome and to take himself to Tomi, a town on the Euxine, by the mouths of the Danube and on the very confines of the Empire. Though the sentence which thus fell upon him was harsh enough, it wasnot as terrible as it might have been. It was not an exsilium, but arelegatio. He did not lose his citizenship, he was permitted to enjoy the income of his property, to correspond with his friends and to indulge in the hope (alas, illusory!) of ultimatepardon. Still, even with all these mitigating circumstances, such a fate would have been hard enough on any man. On a man of Ovid's habits and disposition it was peculiarly so. The place of his banishment was surrounded and continually threatened by hostile and barbarous tribes. The cold was so intense that the snow would sometimes remain unmelted from one winter to another. The wine turned to ice in the jar; thebroad waters of the Danube were often frozen completely over, and afforded but too easy a viaduct to the men and horses of the barbarian foe, when they came to murder, outrage and destroy.

Probably Ovid exaggerated the horrors of his situation in the hopes of moving the Emperor's pity. Those hopes, to which he clung with despairing tenacity, were destined never to be fulfilled, and he died in exile, A.D. 18, in the sixtieth year of his age.

What was the real cause of his banishment is, and will probably always remain, a mystery, for the publication of the Ars Amatoria was obviously but a mere pretextand could have deceived nobody. It certainly did not deceive Ovid, for whenever he mentions the ostensible cause of his misfortune,, he darkly alludes to another which he never discloses. He is continually harping on a "Carmen" and an "Error." The "Carmen" was the Ars Amatoria; what the "Error" was he never reveals. It is commonly supposed that, in some way or another, he had given serious offence to Livia and that the poet's banishment was due to the machinations of that redoubtable woman.

It may have been so, or it may merely have been that Augustus, with the shadows of oncoming age descending upon him, viewed with misgiving the increasing licentiousness of the times, the growing corruption, which had not spared even the members of his own household, andwhich the sternest legislation seemed unable to repress, and that he therefore determined to make an example of those who were most conspicuously identified with the dissolute society he thought it his duty to castigate, foremost amongst whom was the unhappy Ovid. If, as is not improbable, Ovid was privy to the adulterous intercourse of the younger Julia with Silanus, he, as well as the erring lovers, would, by the lex de adulteriis, have been liable to the capital sentence, so that in suffering a mere relegatio, the milder form of exile, he may be considered to have got off lightly.

Introduction 2

The society into which Ovid was received after his refusal ofthe quæstorship, and in which he gained that intimateknowledge of women which make his love poemssuch masterpieces offeminine psychology, was one of the most brilliant that the worldhas ever known.

Out of the welter of conflicting forces and rival ambitionswhich had so long distracted the Roman State, the crafty andpatient Augustus had emerged triumphant. The era of bloodshed, ofpolitical strife and social insecurity was over. The shadow ofcivil conflict which had so long oppressed men's minds had atlength departed, and, even if the last vestiges of politicalfreedom had vanished with it, the loss was forgotten, at leasttemporarily, in the joyfulness with which the dawning of whatpromised, and indeed proved, to be a long era of peace and settledgovernment was universally acclaimed.

The age in which Ovid flourished was singularly favourable tothecultivation of the arts. It was a luxurious, pleasure-loving age ifyou will, but at the same time it was an age of extraordinaryelegance and refinement, and Ovid was one of the choicest and mosttypical of its products. He flung himself with zest into thisbrilliant and witty society, a society which he was destined toimmortalize in his verse, and its members, recognizing in him arare and congenial spirit, welcomed him with open arms. He was, infact, an immediate and an immense success. Being a man of breedingand education, as well as the possessor of brilliant natural gifts,no door, however exclusive, was closed against him. He was adelightful companion, a brilliant talker, a tremendous favouritewith the women, as well as a most observant andpenetrating studentof their psychology. "The Loves," the first of the three poemsincluded in this volume, was also the first work published by Ovid.Originally, as the poet himself tells us, it consisted of fivebooks, subsequently compressed into three,and the "elegies" ofwhich it is made up are for the most part written to or concernedwith his mistress. Who the Corinna was whom he celebrates in his"Loves" is, as we have stated, unknown. She was clearly a woman ofsome social standing. In an early elegy he commends himself to herfavour by the merits of his poetry the purity of his morals, and bythe vow he makes to her of his unchangeable fidelity. "I am none ofthese," he avers, "who love a hundred women at a time; I am nofickle philanderer. Whatsoever the tale of years the fates may spinfor me, I will pass them at thy side, and dying be lamented bythee." At length, after a long siege, she surrenders, and Ovid isin the seventh heaven. Alas for the frailty of lovers' vows! Weturn but a page or two, and we find him cursing himself for layingviolent hands upon her in a fit of rage. But amantiumiræ! It's soon made up; they are fast friends again, andin a poem of singular beauty he upbraids the Dawn for hastening hercoming, and so tearing him fromher side.

Women in Ovid's time were no less slaves to fashion than theyare in ours. In these days of bobbing and shingling and permanentwaving and henna dyeing, what a note ofactuality rings in thereproaches he addresses to Corinna for dyeing andcrimping her hairtill she has nearly lost it all, and is compelled to conceal herbaldness with a toupet made from the tresses of a Germanslave-girl! How many a lover in these days has had to deplore thathis Corinna, or his Neobule, or his Cynara has wilfully deprivedherself of the aureole with which the gods had endowed her.

A little while ago he was vowing eternal fidelity to Corinna,yet a few pages further on, incorrigible rogue, he is confessingthat every type of beauty sets his heart on fire. Here is a girlwho is shy and demure. That's enough, the flame's alight. Here'sone that's out for prey. Good! She's bound to be an adept at theart of love. Here's one that's learned. He loves her because she'sclever. And this one's quite unlearned. Her naïvetéenthrals him. This girl tells him he's a better poet thanCallimachus. How nice of her! This one says he's no poet at all.Yet he longs to have her in his arms. And so, dark or fair, shortor tall, slim or plump, the girlish novice, the woman of experiencehe adores them all. "In a word, of all the beauties they rave aboutin Rome, there's none whose lover I am not fain to be."

But if men were deceivers ever, it is no less certain that

"Souvent femme varie,Bien fol qui s'y fie,"

for in the very next elegy we find him upbraiding his mistress,whom he has detected acting falsely towards him. "I saw you makingeyes at him. I saw what you wrote in wine on the table. I saw youkiss him, when you thought I was asleep. And what a kiss it was!Not the sort ofkiss a girl gives her brother, but such as a lovingmistress might bestow upon her eager lover." And then they make itup and she kisses him; kisses him so voluptuously that all his oldsuspicions are aroused again, for he wonders where she learnt theartto such perfection. "Was it that fellow who taught her?--And inbed too, perhaps!"

And now Corinna accuses him of carrying on an intrigue with hermaid Cypassis. He is very indignant and swears by all that's holythat he's innocent of the charge. How couldshe imagine he would dosuch a thing, with a mere servant-girl too! And then, no sooner ishe alone with Cypassis than he asks her in tones of amazement: "However did she find out? Who, or what, could have given us away?Anyhow, I satisfied her and she thinks it's all right. I got youout of a nice scrape, and now in payment for that good deed, mydusky Cypassis, grant me your favours to-day. What, you refuse? Naythen, in that case I shall turn King's evidence and tell yourmistress all that we have done, when and where and how." We may besure that Cypassis did not persist in her refusal.

And so it goes on to the end of the chapter. Ovid "could resisteverything except temptation," and temptations were so plentiful inRome. He loved Corinna--in his fashion. But there were manyinterludes--on his part and on hers. She came to consoling herself,and that liberally. He knew, poor fellow; and yet he could not giveher up. "I have had a lot to put up with," he exclaims one day,"and I've put up with it a greatdealtoo long! I am completely outof patience with you. I've done with you. No, no more kisses; it'sno good talking like that any more; your words don't move me now.I'm not the madman I used to be." Brave words these. But no soonerare they out of hismouth than something catches at his heart. Andforthwith he begins to chant his palinode. "Oh, this wavering heartof mine!" he cries. "How it is wrenched this way and that, tornsimultaneously by love and hate. And love, I think, is winning. . .. I can live neither with you nor without you. Helpless, indeed, amI!" And then he surrenders completely. "Forgive me," he imploresher, "by all the gods who lend themselves so often to thy falseoaths; by that face that seems to me a thing divine, and by thineeyes which have made captives of mine."

A striking contrast this with the sane, smiling, softly ironicphilosophy of Horace. "Boy, fetch the unguents and the garlands andthe wine and then go round to Neaera's; tell her I want her and bidher make haste. Butif the janitor's surly and you have any fuss,give it up and come away. Passion grows cool when the hair turnsgrey. I shouldn't have stood such a thing, though, in my youngdays, when Plancus was Consul." Heart-whole Horace had managed toremain, even when jilted by Pyrrha, who, reclining on her couch ofroses, shines down the ages with the clear-cut perfection of thecameo. "Who's the happy youth now, Pyrrha? For whom are youbraiding your fair tresses, you model of simple grace? Poor fellow,he little knows what's in store for him who thinks you will alwaysbe sparkling and lovely as the sunlit sea. He'll find out to hiscost how suddenly the squalls come on. I was nearly done for once,but thank heaven I escaped." For Horace women were an interlude, apastime. If he felt inclined for Lydia, or Glycera, or Neobule, andshe was free to come, so much the better. If not, he just shruggedhis shoulders and thought of other things.

But Ovid, despite his own peccadilloes, and her passades,could not live without his Corinna. He had not yet acquired thewisdom which came with later years and which he set forth in suchmasterly fashion in his Remedia Amoris. Home is not homewithout her. "Behold me," he writes to her from the land of hisbirth, "behold me at Sulmo, in the land of the Peligni. It is alittle spot, but bright and clear with its streams of sparklingwater. Though the scorching sun may crack the earth, though thedog-star shines its fiercest, limpid streamlets wind their wayacross the fields of the Peligni, and there the grass is alwaysgreen. The land with corn is rich and with the vine is richerstill. The olive, too, flourishes in profusion on the light, loosesoil. The rivulets, meandering among, the meadows, clothe the moistearth with shadowy verdure.

"But here my love is not. Or stay--my love is here, but not theobject of my love. I would not live in heaven itself without you."He seems, he tells her, to be dwelling not in the fair land of thePeligni, not in the familiar home of his ancestors,but in the heartof Scythia, or among the grim Cilicians, or the Britons who smearthemselves with green stain--and all because she is not therebeside him. The conclusion is charming: "If thou hast any pity forme in my lonely state, begin to make thy words bear fruit indeeds." She had promised never to quit his side:--"Quick, up withyou into your little chaise, and with your own hands shake thereins about your horses' flying manes. And you, yeswelling hills,abase yourselves before her as she comes; ye paths in the windingvales, be smooth beneath her feet."

Introduction 3

The Art of Love, in which he sets forth the rules ofamatory intrigue, is divided into three parts. Of these, the firstdeals with choosing the woman to whom you intend to lay siege."First catch your hare." The hunter knows where to spread his netsto enmesh the stag; the fowler where to smear his bird-lime; thefisherman what waters most abound in fish. As for the lover, he hasno need to journey far. Here in Rome, beneath his very eyes, he'llfind every type of beauty; ’tis a very embarras derichesses. Let him take astroll through the porticoes of Pompey orof Livia, he'll discover plenty of pretty women to choose from. Andthe theatre! There they abound as thick as the bees that hoveramong the flowers and the thyme. The Circus, too, is another placemost favourableto love, for there you have to sit close, you cannothelp it, and it's so easy to begin a conversation. Then, youarrange a cushion for her and find a place for her to rest herfeet; a speck of dust lights on her bosom: you flick it off. And ifit isn't there, you flick it off just the same. Boldness is theessence of success. It's no use waiting for the woman to make thefirst advance. Enter the fray with a stout heart. Not one woman ina thousand will offer any serious resistance. She may put up afight,but she'll be sorry if she wins, however pleased. She may tryto look. Pay plenty of compliments, unlimited compliments, butdon't start giving costly presents. That's an error, and you'llfind there'll be...