by Ovid
This pseudo-medical lore? I must use the rein
To keep my chariot in the inside lane.
If you followed my advice about lapses, “Conceal them,”
You must change tack now, because “Reveal them”
Is my new motto. Don’t blame
Me for inconsistency: the same
Wind doesn’t always drive the ship, we sail
With canvas hauled and set to catch the gale
From north, south, east or west—we veer.
Observe the skill of a charioteer:
How for full speed he lets the reins float slack,
But pulls them taut to hold his horses back.
Some women ill reward
A tame, indulgent lover; they get bored
With lack of competition and grow less
Passionate. Success
Breeds over-confidence; it’s hard to stay
Calm and fair when everything’s going your way.
A fire gradually weakens and dies down
And lies hidden under a crown
Of grey ash, yet sprinkle sulphur and it learns
To revive, and the blaze returns.
So love, grown lazy and self-satisfied,
To be rekindled needs some shock applied.
Heat up her lukewarm heart, alarm her with tales
Of your bad behaviour, so that she pales.
Trebly, incalculably happy is the lover
Whom an injured mistress agonises over.
As soon as she hears what she’d rather not know,
The poor girl faints—her voice, her colour go.
How I’d like to be the man whose hair she tears,
Whose soft cheeks she scratches, at whom she glares
With lovely, tear-filled eyes, the man she would
Cut out of her life, if she only could!
How long should you let her sulk? Not long. The longer
You put off making it up, the stronger
Her anger will grow. To prevent this,
Throw your arms round her neck, give her a kiss,
Pull her sobbing to your breast, hold her there tight,
Keep kissing her, treat her to the delight
Of Venus while she’s weeping. That’ll bring peace:
It’s the one sure way to make the tantrum cease.
When she’s raged her fill but still seems unreconciled,
Then sue for terms in bed, and you’ll find her mild.
Bed is the place, arms laid down, war forsworn,
Where Harmony dwells, where Tenderness was born.
After a fight doves snuggle, beak to beak,
And coo and murmur in bird-speak.
[LATIN: Prima fuit rerum…]
In the beginning the world was inchoate,
There was nothing but a great
Featureless mass, no earth, sea, stars or moon;
But soon
Sky was set above earth, land ringed with sea,
Chaos retired to its own vacancy,
Forest and air gave beasts and birds their living quarters,
And fish lurked deep in the new waters.
Through this lonely, empty place
Wandered the nomadic human race,
Powerful, uncouth brutes
Whose home was the forest, who ate grass and fruits
And bedded on leaves, long shunning one another
Suspiciously, brother ignoring brother.
What softened those fierce natures? Pleasure, they say.
A man and a woman met in a wood one day
And wondered what to do. No need for tuition:
Venus arranged the rough, sweet coition.
Birds have their mates, fish in the cold mid-ocean,
Thrilled by sexual emotion,
Find partners, hinds follow stags, snakes clasp snakes,
Dogs couple, glued together, the ewe takes
Pleasure in her tupping ram, the heifer’s full
Of desire for her covering bull,
The snub-nosed she-goat happily bears
Her stinking billy, and heat-crazed mares,
Though separated
By miles from stallions, swim streams to get mated.
Act, then. Only a strong dose of love will cure
A woman with an angry temperature.
Better than old Machaon’s drugs, my medicine
Will restore you to her favour when you sin.
[LATIN: Haec ego cum…]
While I was writing this, I saw Apollo coming
Towards me with his golden lyre, thumb strumming
The strings, bays in his hand, bays on his head,
Prophet and poet made manifest. “You,” he said,
“Professor of Love’s Affairs,
Lead your pupils to my temple—there’s
A world-famous inscription on it which goes,
Know yourself. Only the man who knows
Himself can be intelligent in love
And use his gifts to best effect to further every move.
If you’re good-looking, then dazzle all beholders;
If your skin’s fine, then lounge back with bare shoulders.
Let the man with a good voice sing, the clever talker break
Awkward silences, the connoisseur take
Pleasure in wine. But one caveat’s vital:
No ‘inspired’ poet should give a recital,
No ‘brilliant’ speaker deliver an oration
In the middle of dinner-table conversation.”
That was Apollo’s advice. I’d heed it if I were you:
What comes from a god’s mouth must be true.
[LATIN: Ad propiora vocor…]
Back to my theme:
The wise lover who follows my scheme
Will win through, achieve his goal. The sown
Furrow doesn’t invariably repay the loan
Of seed with interest,
Or the wind always spring to the help of the distressed
Vessel. Love offers less pleasure than pain;
Lovers must make up their minds to suffer again and again.
Like hares on Athos, shells on the seashore, bees
On Hybla, olives on the grey-green trees
Of Pallas, their pains are innumerable—and all
The shafts that wound us are steeped in gall.
She’s “not at home,” though you’ve glimpsed her indoors? Don’t doubt
The maid’s word but your own eyes: she’s out.
The night’s promised, but the door locked when you come round?
Take it like a man, doss on the filthy ground.
And if one of the cocky, barefaced liars
Among the maidservants enquires,
“What’s this fellow doing besieging the door?”
Use your charm, implore
The hard door to open, the hard heart to unlatch,
Take your wreath off and attach
The roses to the post. If she wants you to, enter; if not, just go.
Why force a mistress to say,
“I can’t escape the pest”? Moods change by the day.
And don’t think it a disgrace to take curses and blows,
Or even to kiss, grovellingly, her toes.
[LATIN: Quid moror in…]
But why waste time on trifles? I must ascend
Higher, treat greater themes. Attend
Closely, reader. Although the task may strain
My powers, nobody can attain
Excellence without difficulty: my art
Demands exacting work on the poet’s part.
Put up with a rival, be patient, and in time
You’ll end up, like the generals who climb
The Capitol, triumphant. This is no secular
Proverb, it’s Jupiter’s oracular
Truth. In all my hanging_eng this
Advice merits the greatest emphasis.
If she flirts, bear it; if she writes on the sly,
Don
’t touch her letters; and never try
To check on where she comes from, where she goes.
Husbands grant wives this freedom—they even doze
While sleep assists the comedy. It must be confessed
That as student in this role I’m not the best;
But what can you do when you fail your own test?
Should I tamely watch while some would-be lover
Makes passes at my girl? No, rage takes over.
I remember, her husband kissed her once and I complained—
My love is savage and untrained
(A failing that has done me in the past a
Great deal of harm). The true Master
Is affable with rivals. Ignorance is better
Than knowledge; tolerate lies, for if you get her
To confess too often, her face may tire
Of blushing and she’ll become an inveterate liar.
And so, young lovers, don’t play the detective;
Let them cheat and think their cover-up’s effective.
Passion, unmasked, grows; a guilty pair
Always persist in a ruinous affair.
The whole world knows the myth:
Venus and Mars caught by Vulcan, the crafty smith,
When Father Mars, in the grip
Of mad passion, resigned his awesome generalship
To join the ranks of lovers. For her part
(For no goddess has a softer heart),
Venus was not averse to being wooed,
She certainly didn’t play the country prude.
Oh, the times the naughty jade
Mocked her husband’s bandy legs and made
Fun of his hands coarsened by fire and trade!
In front of Mars she had but to imitate
Vulcan’s peculiar gait,
And charm lent piquancy to beauty acting lame.
At first, through modesty and shame,
They kept their affair dark, but the game
Was up when the Sun (who can fool that all-viewing
God?) told Vulcan what his wife was doing.
(You’re a bad example, Sun. Just ask her, and she’ll treat
You to it too, if only you’re discreet.)
And so Vulcan set,
All round and over the bed, an invisible net,
And shammed a trip to Lemnos. The lovers met
As arranged, were caught stark naked in the snare,
Vulcan invited the gods round, and the pair
Made a ridiculous spectacle. Venus, they say,
Could hardly restrain her tears. Anyway,
They couldn’t conceal their faces or even move
Their hands away from the private parts of love.
One god laughed: “Brave Mars, I see
Your chains are a nuisance—hand them over to me!”
It took all Neptune’s pleading before Vulcan agreed
Reluctantly to release them. Freed
From their embrace,
Venus rushed off to Paphos, Mars to Thrace.
So what, Vulcan, did you achieve?
The formerly furtive couple leave
And carry on with even less
Shame than before. Word has it that you now confess
You acted like a lunatic
And bitterly regret your clever trick.
Be warned by the fate of Venus, beware
Of setting the sort of snare
She had to suffer. Don’t forge fetters
For rivals, don’t intercept secret letters;
Leave all that for accredited husbands to handle—
If they think the detective game is worth the candle.
I repeat, there’s no sport here the law doesn’t permit:
Married ladies don’t feature in my wit.
[LATIN: Quis Cereris ritus…]
Who’d dare to incur the disgrace
Of publishing the mysteries of Samothrace
Or the rites of Ceres to the common crowd?
One needn’t feel all that proud
Of keeping silence, but to profane
The sacred, the arcane,
Is a grave crime. Tantalus, for breaching
The gods’ secrets, is still reaching
For ungraspable apples on the tree,
Standing thirst-parched in water, and deservedly.
Venus is a stickler in this matter:
I warn you, any man prone to chatter
About her holy mysteries is forbidden
To mix with them. They may not involve things hidden
In caskets, they may forgo
The wild clashing of cymbals, but even so
They’re so much part of our daily life and feeling
That they demand concealing.
Venus herself, when she poses nude,
Stoops, left hand hiding her sex in an attitude
Of modesty. Animals couple all over the place,
In public—indeed, a girl has to avert her face—
But the secret acts of human lovers
Call for bedrooms, locked doors, blankets, covers
For our private parts, and, if not the darkness of night,
We want something less bright
Than the sun’s glare, preferably half-light.
Long ago, when mankind was still not proof
Against sun and rain, before they invented the roof,
Shelter and food were supplied by the oak,
And the sense of shame was so strong in primitive folk
That they made love
Not in the open air, but in a cave or grove.
But with our night sports it’s all “making” and “score”;
We pay too high a price for nothing more
Than the power to boast. Do you really want to comb
The whole female population of Rome
Just to be able to tell friends you meet,
“I’ve had her too,” so that no street
Lacks examples to point at? And will you repeat
Some leering story about each? I complain
About trifles: there are some men so vain
That if their lies were all true they’d have to back down—
They claim they’ve slept with every girl in town!
If they can’t touch a body, they finger a name;
Though flesh escapes, reputation’s smeared with shame.
Get busy, then, doorman, whom we love to hate,
Lock her chamber door, put a hundred bolts on the gate,
For where is security when her name is heard
Bandied by lechers who give their word
To make us believe that what never took place occurred?
For myself, even with facts I’m confessionally mean:
A thick veil protects my private scene.
Don’t blame a woman for her weak points; most men find
It pays here to pretend to be blind.
Wing-footed Perseus found no objection
To Andromeda’s Ethiopian complexion,
And though Andromache was too big in the eyes
Of the world, to Hector she was medium-size.
Habit makes all things bearable: new love’s
Sharp-eyed, and disapproves
Of many faults which a love that’s grown
Mature will readily condone.
While a new graft is growing in the tree’s
Green cortex, any breeze
Can shake it down, but, time-toughened, that shoot
Withstands the wind, bears its adopted fruit.
Time cures all physical blemishes—the blot
That used to bother you dwindles to a spot
You scarcely see. Young nostrils can’t abide
A bull’s hide
In a tannery when it’s being cured,
But the stink fades, the apprentice gets inured.
Euphemisms are great soothers in this matter:
Is she tar-black? Then “dusky” will flatter.
Has
she a cast in one eye? Then observe a
Likeness to Venus. If she’s grey-haired, she’s Minerva.
If she’s half-starved, all bones, tell her she’s “slim.”
If she’s undersized, the word is “trim,”
And “generously built” translates “too fat.”
Bad points are good near-misses—play on that.
[LATIN: Nec quotus annus…]
Don’t ask her age, under which consul her birth
Was registered: leave the stern Censor to unearth
Statistical truth,
Especially if she’s past the prime of youth
And lost her bloom, and begun
To pluck the white hairs one by one.
Young lovers, women at this middle stage
Of life, or even of maturer age,
Are well worth cultivating, there’s a rich yield:
It’s up to you to sow the field.
So, while your years and powers permit,
Endure love’s labour, put up with it;
Soon bent old age, sly-footed, will arrive.
Churn the sea with oars, drive
Ploughshares into the earth, pour
Your manhood and ferocity into war—
Or expend heart, guts, balls, the lot,
On serving women. It’s not
Unlike military service—it takes all you’ve got!
Besides, they’ve been around, they’ve learnt to please—
Only experience brings expertise—
And they work hard to disguise
Age with art, so that anno domini’s
Made up for by finesse. You’ll be embraced
In a thousand ways, according to your taste:
No erotic picture could show
The number of variations that they know.
Their pleasure doesn’t depend on stimulus—
Women should share the pleasure equally with us.
I hate it when both partners don’t enjoy
A climax—that’s why a boy
Doesn’t appeal to me much. But my abomination
Is a girl who does it from a sense of obligation,
Who lies there dry, her thoughts flitting
Back to her wool and her knitting.
For me, that’s service, not pleasure: I’ll have no truck
With a dutiful fuck.
I like to hear her rapturous gasps imploring
Me to take my time, keep boring,
To watch her come with surrendering eyes, then, flaked out,
Insist on a long pause before the next bout.
Nature doesn’t grant youth these joys; they arrive
Quite suddenly, after the age of thirty-five.
Impatient lovers can gulp “nouveau”;
An ancient consul’s vintage, laid down years ago,
Suits me. Only an older plane can shield
Heads from the sun, bare feet are pricked by a new-sown field.