by Ovid
There you’ll find someone to love, or a playmate, there
You can opt for one night or a solid affair.
As ants in column bustle up and down their lanes,
Jaws clutching their wheat-grains,
As bees in their fragrant glades and pastures hover
Above flowers and thyme and clover,
Our smart women swarm to the games in such numbers my vision
And judgment blur—often I lose my powers of decision.
They come to see and be seen;
Modesty, chastity mean
Nothing there. Romulus, it was all your fault,
It was your games that first featured rape and assault—
Those Sabine women and sex-hungry men.
The theatre had no marble seats or awnings then,
Nor was the stage red-dyed
With sweet-smelling saffron; the Palatine woods supplied
A backdrop of greenery,
And nature without artifice the scenery;
Shaggy-headed, the spectators sat
On tiered turf seats, any old leaves as a hat
To shade the sun. Alert, each man
Brooded silently and formed his plan,
Having marked with a glance his selected girl.
Then, to the skirl
Of Etruscan flutes, the dancers’ feet
Stamped the smooth floor in the triple beat
Until amid loud hoorays
(Applause was pretty crude in the old days)
The king gave the sign they were waiting for
And the Rape began. Up they sprang with a lustful roar
And grabbed the virgins. As eagles scatter a flock
Of timid doves or wolves scare lambs, so the shock
Of this wild male charge spread panic. Colour drained
From every girl’s face; a common terror reigned,
Though its features varied. Some sat there numb
With fear, some tore their hair; one girl, struck dumb,
Simply wept, another
Called ineffectually for her mother;
They shrieked or stared, they froze or fled.
And so, as plunder of the marriage-bed,
They were carried away, and I dare say their alarm
Gave some of them a piquant extra charm.
A girl who struggled and wouldn’t co-operate
Was hoisted up and hauled off by her new mate
With “Why spoil those tender eyes with tears? Never mind,
I’ll be as kind to you as your father was kind
To your mother.” Romulus, you found the right reward
For soldiers—for that I’ll enlist myself, with a sword!
Since then time-honoured custom has made our Roman
Theatres danger spots for pretty women.
And don’t miss the chariot races: the big Circus
Offers lots of chances for smart workers.
No need of finger-language here, no need to guess
That a nod of the head means yes:
You can sit as close to a girl as you please,
So make the most of touching thighs and knees
(The seating arrangements almost force
Physical intimacy as a matter of course).
At this point casually volunteer
An opening remark for anyone to hear.
Ask with keen interest, “Whose team’s that going by?”
And “Who are you backing?” Given a reply,
Add instantly, “So am I!”
When the gods’ ivory statues pass in the grand
Procession, give Venus a big hand,
And if a speck of dust, as it well may,
Falls in her lap, brush it away—
Brush it away even if there’s no dust:
Any gallant excuse in the service of lust.
If her cloak trails on the ground, make a great scene
Of lifting it up to keep it clean,
And if you’ve played it right
You’re rewarded at once—with her permission, the sight
Of her ankles. (Watch out for the man behind—
His knee may be giving the small of her back a grind.)
A frivolous mind
Is won by small attentions. Many a man
Has scored by arranging a cushion or plying a fan
Or slipping a little stool
Under the dainty feet of a sweet fool.
[LATIN: Hos aditus Circusque…]
Such openings the Circus offers for the study
Of the art of the pick-up; so does the grim Forum with its bloody
Arena of sand. Here Cupid has his killing-ground,
And the man who came to see blood himself gets a wound—
In the heart. While he’s touching her hand, bending her ear,
Borrowing her programme, asking if the charioteer
He’s backed will win, he feels
The shock of the arrow, the steel’s
Struck home, he groans—and the spectator
Joins in the show, a dying gladiator.
[LATIN: Quid, modo cum…]
When Caesar staged that naval mock-battle between
Athenians and Persians, what a scene!
From east and west young women and men
Converged, the whole known world was in Rome then.
In such a crowd, in such a push-and-shove,
Who could fail to find someone to love?
That day hundreds of men learnt
How hot a foreign flame is, and got burnt.
[LATIN: Ecce, parat Caesar…]
Now Caesar’s planning to extend his powers
To the rest of the untamed world. You shall be ours,
O farthest East. Parthians, you shall be paid
In full. Exult, standards that they laid
Shaming barbarian hands on! Rejoice, the shade
Of buried Crassus! Now your avenger appears,
A boy who despite his years
Proclaims his generalship
And has strong hands to grip
The reins of a war that no one of that age
But he would dare or be allowed to wage.
Why timidly rely on arithmetic
When it comes to the age of a god? Valour is quick
To show in Caesars. Divine genius tolerates
No hanging back, accelerates
Achievement, and makes nonsense of mere dates.
The infant Hercules strangled two snakes, even
In the cradle earning the applause of heaven.
And you, Bacchus, still a young god,
How old were you when India kissed your rod?
With your father’s authority, under his lucky star,
Boy, you shall fight and win this war.
Your great name calls for a youthful victory:
Today prince of the young, one day you shall be
Prince of the old. You’re a brother, a son—then requite
The wrongs of brothers, uphold a father’s right.
Your country’s father, indeed your own,
Has armed you against a foe who seized his throne
By force from a father. Javelin versus bow,
Good against evil, justice and right shall go
Ahead of your standards. Parthia’s doom is sealed
By her own guilt; may every battlefield
Reflect that truth, and may my prince come home
Bringing the riches of the East to Rome!
O Mars, O Caesar, both fathers, one divine,
One god-to-be, let your numinous powers shine
On his setting forth. Lo, I predict a
Great triumph, and vow to you, the victor,
A celebratory poem to trumpet your name
Resoundingly. Using the same
Words I wrote, you’ll stand and exhort
Your battle-line—and I pray they’ll not fall short
Of your valour’s reach. I’ll describe head-on attacks
And arrows in the sky
Shot by their swivelling horsemen as they fly.
(You Parthians, if, pursuing victory, you retreat,
What meaning’s left for the word “defeat”?
Your war-will’s sapped, it’s an ill omen.)
And so the day will come when you, our Roman
Hero, an adored, resplendent sight,
Will ride in gold, drawn by four snow-white
Horses, behind their chiefs—neck-fettered now for fear
They save their skins by a second flight. A cheer
Will rise from every watching girl and boy
On that day of heart-felt joy.
When some girl asks the names of the kings and foreign parts—
Towns, mountains, rivers etcetera—on the pageant carts,
Answer all her questions. No, don’t wait
To be asked, volunteer (though you’re guessing) with a straight
Face, “Here’s Euphrates, his forehead fringed with reeds,
And that’s Tigris with the long blue hair. There are the Medes,
And, look, the Armenians, I’m positive. There goes
Some Achaemenid valley town. And those
Must be two generals …” Give them each a name—
Right, if you can; if you can’t, give them one just the same.
[LATIN: Dant etiam positis…]
Banquets give openings, too: when the tables are spread,
There’s more than wine to turn your head.
There Love, with soft arms and flushed face,
Has often given the horns of Bacchus an embrace,
And when wine has soaked his thirsty plumage, Love
Stands rooted, torpid, can’t perform or move.
He takes no time to shake his wings dry again,
But for us a few drops of love are intense pain.
Wine rouses the heart, wine makes all men
Lovers, wine undiluted dilutes worry. Then
Laughter arrives, even the poor
Feel as brave as bulls, wrinkles relax, out of the door
Go care and sorrow, into all hearts
Flies truth (rare bird these days), for the god expels the arts
Of the hypocrite. Then girls bewitch men with desire,
And Venus in the wine is a fire within a fire.
On these occasions don’t trust the lamps—they can lie:
Darkness and drink blur the judging eye.
It was in broad daylight, not after dinner,
That Paris made his choice: “You, Venus, are the winner.”
Blemishes are lost in the half-light,
Faults overlooked. Night
Turns any woman into a goddess.
When it comes to judging faces, bodies,
Jewels or clothes, I always say,
Consult the light of day.
[LATIN: Quid tibi femineos…]
But why count grains of sand? How can I list all the places
Where girls go and you can hunt pretty faces?
Take Baiae, its shores fringed with pleasure craft,
Its springs smoking with sulphur—Cupid’s shaft
Does heart damage there. One man came back with the report:
“That’s no health resort!”
The same goes for Diana’s shrine by the lake
In the woods near Rome, where the slave-priests take
Office in turn by murder—she,
Being a virgin, spitefully,
Out of hatred of Love’s darts
Wounds, and will go on wounding, human hearts.
[LATIN: Hactenus, unde legas…]
Having carried you this far
In my Muse’s bumpy, elegiac car
And taught you hunters in which coverts to find
And how to spread nets for the bird you have in mind,
Now for the trickiest, subtlest part: how to get
Your darling well entangled in the net.
Men everywhere, you have something to learn, so attend!
And you, the common people, kindly lend
My enterprise your favour till the end.
[LATIN: Prima tuae menti…]
First and foremost, feel confidence that all
Girls can be caught; just spread your nets, they’ll fall.
Hounds will run from a hare, birds in spring sit dumb,
Cicadas in summer keep mum,
Sooner than a girl, wooed charmingly, will resist:
Even one you think doesn’t want it wants to be kissed.
Women, like men, adore secret affairs,
But our skill in dissembling is less than theirs.
If we males unanimously agreed
Not to move first, females, crushed, would take the lead.
In lush fields the heifer moos to the bull, the mare
Whinnies at stallions in the open air;
Men’s sex-urge is less primitive, less raw,
Our lust is bound by the limits of the law.
But as for women … Byblis was mad for her brother
And bravely atoned for her sin with a suicide’s noose. Another
Was Myrrha, whose love was most undaughterly
And who is now imprisoned in the tree
Whose bark still weeps the tears named after her
Which we use for perfume and call myrrh.
Once in the shady valleys of wooded Ida
There was a white bull, the herd’s pride, a
Single splash of black above the eyes
Marring perfection, milk-white otherwise.
The handsome Cretan heifers longed to bear his weight,
But Pasiphaë eyed them all with envious hate,
For to play the role of adulterous mate
Of the bull inflamed her fancy. (I only repeat
A well-known fact which hundred-citied Crete,
Proverbial home of liars, can’t rebut.)
With her own high-born hands, they say, she cut
Fresh, tender leaves and grass for him and, undeterred
By the thought of her husband, joined the herd.
So King Minos was humbled by a bull!
Queen, why bother with silks and expensive wool?
They won’t impress your lover in the least.
If you want to live like a mountain beast,
Why the mirror, the pointless fussing with your hair?
You can trust the glass, though, for one thing—there
You’re no heifer. But goodness, how
You wish you could be a plump, horned cow!
If you like Minos, then stay at home,
Don’t look elsewhere; if you prefer to roam
And betray your husband, why then, woman,
At least betray him with a fellow human.
But, leaving her palace and bower behind,
Off she goes to the woods and glens, like a maenad out of her mind,
God-intoxicated. Every time she spies
A cow, she looks daggers and cries,
“What can my darling see in her? There, she’s gambolling
In front of him on the grass—does the stupid thing
Think she’s attractive?” And she’d give the word
For the innocent to be culled from the great herd
To be yoked to the plough, or, faking piety, have her killed
At the altar “to appease the gods,” even take the spilled
Guts gleefully in her hands and jeer
At her rival’s corpse, “Now try to please him, dear!”
In her fantasies she’s now Europa, now
Io—riding a bull or changed to a cow.
Yet the herd-leader, fooled by a cow made of wood,
Mounted, and his fatherhood
Showed in the Minotaur. Had Aerope learnt to restrain
Her love for Thyestes (how hard it is to abstain
From the one man you fancy!), the sun’s charioteer,
Appalled in
mid-career,
Would never have reined, turned round and driven
His horses dawnwards across heaven.
Scylla stole from her father his red lock of hair—
Now her loins writhe, a mad dogs’ lair.
Agamemnon escaped with his life
From land battles and sea storms, then fell to his wife.
Who hasn’t been horrified
By the tale of Jason’s wife, who died
In a flaming, poisoned robe, and Medea, red
With her own children’s blood? Of Phoenix, who shed
Tears from eyeless sockets? And Hippolytus—as for him,
Fear-crazed horses tore him limb from limb.
Phineus, why blind
Your innocent sons when you’ll soon find
Yourself sightless? All these crimes were brought about
By woman’s lust, keener and wilder than ours. Why doubt
That you can succeed with any
Woman in the world? Scarcely one out of many
Will say no. Willing or unwilling,
They all find it equally thrilling
To be propositioned. Just chance your arm:
If you make a mistake and get snubbed, where’s the harm?
But why should you be when new pleasures lure and the unknown
Holds more charm than what’s our own?
Our neighbour’s crop hints at a richer yield,
And cows’ udders look fuller in the next field.
[LATIN: Sed prius ancillam…]
But first get to know your quarry’s maid—she’s the key
To smooth, early intimacy.
Make sure she’s her mistress’s confidante, the sort
You can trust with the secret of your private sport.
Corrupt her with promises and prayers, make her your friend:
With her good will you’ll easily gain your end.
She’ll pick a time, just as a doctor would,
When her mistress is in the right mood—
Relaxed, seducible, full of the joy of living,
Exuberant like wheat in a rich soil giving
Promise of harvest; for when hearts are gay
And unshuttered by grief, Venus will find a way
To subtly insinuate herself. It was when the mood of Troy,
After the long, grim siege, lapsed into joy
That she welcomed that enemy-freighted horse.
Pique over a rival is another source
Of vulnerability. In that case supply aid
For her vengeance. Prime the maid
To assist the sails by putting her oar in,
By sighing half to herself, “Would it really be a sin
If you gave him a taste of his own medicine
And had an affair?”
(This in the morning, while she combs her hair),