by Ovid
Could you seriously prefer
Helen’s daughter, Hermione, to her?
Or Medusa to her mother? If you seek an
Older woman’s love, press on, don’t weaken,
And then, my friend,
You’ll reap a handsome dividend.
Look! Two lovers on a bed which has the air
Of a witness. The door’s shut. Muse, stay outside. The pair
Won’t need your prompting, passion will blurt
The right words, hands won’t lie inert,
Fingers will learn what to do in the secret parts
In which, mysteriously, Love dips his darts.
So Hector made love with Andromache long ago
(War wasn’t his only talent), and so
Did great Achilles with his slave when, battle-spent,
He lay on her soft bed in the tent,
While you, Briseis, let hands still warm
With Trojan blood fondle your naked form—
Or was it rather that your body thrilled
At the touch of a conqueror who’d killed?
I tell you, you should approach the peak of pleasure
Teasingly, lingeringly, at leisure.
Once you’ve discovered the right
Places to touch, the ones which delight
Women most, don’t hold back through shame,
Carry on with the game,
And you’ll see her eyes light up, flash and quiver
Like sunlight on the surface of a river.
Soon she’ll be murmuring, moaning, gasping, saying
Words in tune with the instrument you’re playing.
But take care not to crowd on sail and race
Ahead of her, don’t fall behind her either; matching pace,
Arrive together at the winning-post
In a dead heat. Of all pleasures this is the most
Exquisite, when a man and a woman, satisfied,
Lie in mutual surrender, side by side.
That’s the rhythm to aim at—no hurry,
No furtiveness, no worry.
If dallying means danger, of course
It’s best to raise the stroke of your oars,
Or in other words to spur the galloping horse.
[LATIN: Finis adest operi…]
Here this part of my task ends.
You grateful young friends,
Give me the palm, perfume my hair, bring a myrtle crown.
Among the Greeks Podalirius won renown
For medical skill, Nestor for knowing men’s hearts,
Achilles for strength, Ajax for martial arts,
Calchas as priest and seer,
Automedon as charioteer;
So I, too, have no peer
In my field: love. Praise me, you youngsters, proclaim
Me poet and prophet, broadcast my name
World-wide.
I’ve equipped you for war, just as Vulcan supplied
Achilles with the arms he made.
Go and conquer as he did, and if with the aid
Of my weapons you lay an Amazon low,
Let this inscription on the trophy go:
“Ovid, our master, taught us all we know.”
[LATIN: Ecce, rogant tenerae…]
But now the girls are begging for lessons. Your turn,
Ladies. You’re my next concern.
* * *
* A reference to Virgil’s Eclogues, ii, 52.
BOOK THREE
[LATIN: Arma dedi Danais…]
Having armed Greeks against Amazons, I must now prescribe
Weapons, Penthesilea, for you and your tribe.
You must fight on equal terms. Victory’s won
Through the favour of kind Venus and her son
Who ranges the world on wings. It wouldn’t be fair
If women had to oppose armed troops with bare
Breasts, for victory, then,
Could only shame us men.
“But why give venom to snakes? Why betray
Our sheepfold to wild she-wolves?” you may say.
Don’t smear the whole sex with the disgrace
Of the few who are bad, judge each as a separate case.
It’s true, Helen and Clytemnestra had to face
Charges from both their husbands, and Eriphyle’s crime
Sent Amphiaraus before his time,
Together with his horses, hurled
Still living to the underworld;
But think of Penelope, chaste for ten years of war,
And then for ten years more
While her lord wandered; of Laodamia, who took her life
To be with her husband; of Alcestis, a wife
Who saved Admetus from the dead
By offering to join them in his stead;
Of Evadne’s cry, “Take me, we’ll embrace in the fire,
Capaneus!” as she leapt on to the pyre.
Virtue’s dressed as a woman, she’s feminine in gender—
No wonder her sex’s view of her is tender—
But faced with such paragons, my poetry fails:
Mine’s a light pleasure craft, with small sails.
What you’ll learn through me is only naughtiness;
I’m going to teach you nothing less
Than how you should be loved. Flaming arrows and bows
Aren’t usually used by women, I don’t suppose
I’ve seen many men hurt by those.
Men frequently, girls rarely, cheat:
Ask around—very few are accused of deceit.
Although Medea was by then a mother,
Treacherous Jason dumped his bride and took another.
As for you, Theseus, Ariadne in her solitude
Could have ended up as gulls’ food
For all the shame
You felt. Ask how Nine Ways got its name,
And listen to the falling leaves
Which the wood there sheds when it grieves
For Phyllis who hanged herself beside the sea.
Aeneas was noted for his piety,
And yet, Dido, your guest supplied
Both sword and motive for your suicide.
What ruined you all? I’ll tell you. You all lacked
Know-how, tact,
The art of love that keeps the spark
Of passion alive. And you’d still be in the dark
If Venus hadn’t come to me in a dream
And told me to give you a lecture on this theme.
“What have women done to deserve it?” she said. “Poor,
Defenceless mob, should they be pitted in war
Against armed males? Now that two parts
Of your poem have taught men the erotic arts,
It’s time the opposition
Enjoyed the benefit of your tuition.
The poet who was Helen’s denigrator
Retuned his lyre and sang her praises later
In a happier key. Never say
Bad words about us women! If I know you, you’ll stay
Eager to win their favour till your dying day.”
Then from her myrtle wreath she gave me a few
Berries and a leaf. As I took them, I knew
Her divine power: the air brightened
And my heart lifted, strangely lightened.
While her inspiration’s with me still, now
(If modesty, your morals and the laws allow
You to do so) take some tips, girls, from my page.
Never forget that old age
Will arrive, never let time
Slip from you, wasted. While you’re in your prime,
While you still can, have fun, play,
For the years like water run away,
The river glides, the hour moves on,
And are irrevocably gone.
Youth should be used, it vanishes so fast,
And pleasures to come will be less than pleasures past.
Those grey ghosts I remember as a vio
let-bed,
Those thorns were once a gift, a rose-wreath for my head.
You who now lock your lovers out—grow old,
And you’ll lie alone at night, feeling the cold,
Your door no longer battered
By midnight drunks, your threshold never scattered
With dawn roses. Oh yes, it’s sad
That flab and wrinkles come so soon, too bad
When the radiant complexion you once had
Fades, and the streaks you swear
You always had as a girl are suddenly everywhere—
A whole head of grey hair!
Snakes slough off age with their winter rags,
And shed horns put no extra years on stags,
But our looks go without upkeep. Pluck the flower; unpicked,
It withers, ugly, derelict.
Moreover, having children shortens the stage
Of youth: overcropped fields soon age.
Moon, when over Mount Latmos you had a crush
On Endymion, you felt no need to blush,
Nor was there, Aurora, in your eyes
Any shame in making Cephalus your prize.
Though Venus still mourns Adonis, all the same
She bore two children with a different name.
Follow the role models in the sky,
Earthbound women, and don’t deny
Your pleasures to hungry men. They may abuse
Your trust. So what? What have you got to lose?
Your balance is still safe, there’s been no cost.
Let them take and take and take, nothing is lost.
Though flint and iron get worn down by attrition,
That part remains unscratched, in mint condition.
What’s wrong with taking a light from fire? Who’d be
A miser with the vast, undrainable sea?
If a woman says no, all she’s done is refused
Available water that she might have used.
I’m not saying, Go and get laid
By all comers, but, Don’t be afraid
Of shadows on the wall.
When you give yourselves, you lose nothing at all.
Ahead there are stronger winds, trickier seas;
But I’m still in harbour—give me a light breeze!
[LATIN: Ordior a cultu…]
I’ll start with body care. The best wines
Come from well-tended vines,
And the tallest crops with the best yield
Are grown in a well-dug field.
Beauty’s a gift of the gods. How many of you can boast
That you have it? Frankly, most
Don’t. Attention helps: though you were graced
With the looks of Venus, neglected they’ll go to waste.
In the past girls may not have groomed themselves, but men
Were equally uncultivated then.
Do you wonder that Andromache wore
A rough smock?—she’d married a man of war.
And if you were Ajax’s wife, would you put on your best
For a fellow whose arrow-proof vest
Was a seven-layered ox-hide? In the days of old
Styles were crude and simple. Now Rome has gold,
The huge wealth of the conquered world. Compare
The new with the old Capitol and you’d swear
They belonged to different Jupiters. Who remembers
That our Senate House, now worthy of its members,
Was wattle-built under Tatius, and the Palatine,
Site of Apollo’s shrine
And the imperial palace now,
Once pastured oxen for the plough?
Let others venerate the past, I say
Thank goodness I’m alive today;
This age suits me—not because we mine
Stubborn gold from the earth, or gather fine
Shells from exotic shores, or dig
Marble from shrinking mountains, or thrust big
Villas into the bay’s blue water, but because
We have culture, and the coarse life that was
Natural to our grandfathers didn’t last
To our day, is a thing of the past.
[LATIN: Vos quoque nec…]
Don’t load your ears with expensive pearls that have been
Fished up by dark-skinned Indians from green
Tropical waters, don’t parade
In heavy, gold-embossed brocade—
Money displayed
For applause can have the opposite effect.
What we admire is elegance: don’t neglect
Your hair or let it stray too much;
Chic can be made or marred by a single touch.
There’s more than one way hair can be dressed:
Consult your mirror and choose the best
For you. An oval face prefers
Hair parted plainly (Laodamia did hers
Like that); a round face calls for a different style—
The hair in a neat pile
On top of the head, so the ears show.
One girl should let her tresses flow
Over her shoulders in a cascade,
Like Apollo when he plays the lyre; another should braid
Hers like Diana when, skirt tucked above the knee,
She hunts, and the wild things flee.
Some look good with it loose and tousled by the wind,
Others prefer it tied or pinned;
Some fancy tortoise-shell combs, others elect
To cultivate a wave-effect.
If the number of all acorns on all oak-trees,
If all the fauna of the Alps, if all the bees
On Hybla are beyond computation,
So are hair-styles—every day there’s a new creation.
Take the “careless look,” which suits a lot of girls:
To judge by their wild curls
You’d think they’d been slept on all night, but they’ve just
This moment been carefully mussed!
Art simulates chance effects. Think of the case
Of Hercules, who saw and loved the face
Of his unkempt captive, Iole; or forlorn,
Dishevelled Ariadne, borne
Away by Bacchus in his car
To the satyrs’ loud shouts of “hurrah!”
Nature’s treatment of your beauty’s more
Than kind—you’ve a thousand tricks to restore
The damage. We’re miserably stripped bare—
With age we lose our hair,
Which falls like gale-blown leaves. A woman can dye
Her grey streaks with German lotions, try
To enhance its natural colour, sport a big,
Thick, built-up wig,
New hair for old, which money buys—
There’s no embarrassment or disguise—
From the shop right under Hercules’ and the Muses’ eyes.
Now, what about clothes? I can’t abide
Flounces or Tyrian-purple-dyed
Wool. It’s mad,
When so many cheaper colours can be had,
To load your back with the worth of a whole estate.
There’s the blue you see when the spring winds abate
And stop bringing rain, and the air’s
Cloudless; there’s
Tawny gold, like the ram
On whose back Phrixus and Helle swam
To escape from Ino’s malice; there’s grey-green,
The colour of the waves, which we call “marine”—
I imagine that’s what the sea-nymphs must have worn;
There’s saffron—the dewy goddess of the morn
Wears it when she drives the team that brings us light;
There’s myrtle-green, amethyst-purple, rose-white,
The grey of the Thracian crane,
Almond-pink, chestnut (here come your chestnuts again,
Amaryllis!), the “beeswax” tan of a fleece … Past numbering,
&nb
sp; Like the flowers of the new earth when warm spring
Urges the vines to bud and winter’s gone,
Are the dyes wool takes on.
Choose them with care,
For not every colour suits every woman. A fair
Skin looks attractive with dark grey—
It suited Briseis; even on the day
She was captured and dragged away
She wore it. Dark skins look best
In white—Andromeda, you were ravishing dressed
In white, on your island which the jealous gods oppressed.
[LATIN: Quam paene admonui…]
I was about to devote
A few words to guarding against underarm “goat”
And bristling, hairy legs, but I’m talking to girls finer
Than the peasants in north-west Asia Minor
Or the rocky Caucasus. Why give you needless warnings,
Such as, Don’t forget to wash your hands in the mornings,
Or, Don’t neglect your teeth or they may go black?
You know how to add the bloom you lack
With powder, how to replace
The blood in an anaemic face
With rouge, how to fill in an eyebrow-line that’s weak,
How to stick a patch on one unblemished cheek,
And you’re not shy of using a touch of ash
Or a dash
Of Cilician saffron to enhance your eyelids. Look
At Facial Treatment, my little book—
It may be short, but it was a long slog
Writing it—in which I catalogue
The best cosmetic recipes. Among other lore,
You’ll find tips there on how to restore
Fading looks. Yes, my art
Is no slouch when it comes to taking your part.
But don’t let your lover see the boxes and jars
On your dressing-table—remember, ars
Est celare artem.* The average man feels sick
At the sight of make-up put on so thick
That it melts and runs down a sweaty neck.
As for that facial grease
Extracted from an unwashed fleece,
Even though it’s “from Athens” it will offend
All noses. Nor can I recommend
Dabbing hind’s marrow cream on your face
Or cleaning your teeth in a public place.
It may improve your looks, but it doesn’t make good viewing:
What gives pleasure when done may be ugly in the doing.
A sculpture by Myron, signed, from his own
Workshop, was once a meaningless lump of stone;
To make that beautiful
Gold ring, crude ore was worked; that robe was filthy wool
Originally; the jewel you wear
Was a rough, uncut stone—now a cameo’s there: