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The Art of Love

Page 3

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
/>   By Romans, cowardly Parthian backs,

  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),

 

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