by Ovid
Nude Venus wringing out her spray-wet hair.
We’d like to think that you’re asleep
While you’re at your toilet; women should keep,
Till the work’s perfected, out of sight.
Do I have to know why your complexion’s white?
Shut the boudoir door—why show
A half-finished painting? Men don’t need to know
Too much; most of what you do
Would shock us if it weren’t concealed from view.
The splendid statues in our theatres—you would sneer
If you looked at them closely: wood with gilt veneer.
That’s why the public aren’t allowed near
Until the work’s completed,
And why, too, we men shouldn’t be treated
To the sight of you making up. I don’t ban
Combing your hair out in front of a man
So that it ripples down your back, but take care
Not to lose your temper trying to repair
Knots and tangles. And please spare
Your lady’s-maid: I hate a girl who scratches
Her servant’s face, or snatches
A needle up and jabs her arm. The poor thing curses
The head she’s dressing and meanwhile nurses
A bloody wound, weeping, hating
The very hair she’s titivating.
If your hair’s a problem, either post a guard
At your boudoir door, or have it done where men are barred,
At the Good Goddess’s temple. I once bounced
Into a girl’s room unannounced,
And, flustered, she put her wig on the wrong way round.
I wouldn’t want my enemy to be found
In such a predicament—a disgrace
Fit for a female of the Parthian race.
A hornless bull, a bald field, a leafless bush
And a hairless head all make us wince and blush.
Who are my pupils? Semele, or Leda, or the maid
From Sidon the false bull betrayed
And carried over the sea,
Or Helen, whom Menelaus, sensibly,
Wanted back and Paris, sensibly too,
Kept as his prize? No, it’s not stars like you
Who’ve come to consult me in my guru role,
But women as a whole,
Pretty and plain alike (alas,
Most of them in the latter class).
Real beauty has no need of our
Advice: its dowry is its own unaided power.
When the sea’s face is smooth, the captain lolls on deck,
But it’s “All hands!” when it’s ugly, threatening wreck.
A flawless face is rare:
Mask your blemishes as best you can, take care
To hide your body’s faults. If you’re dumpy, sit in a chair
(You could be taken for seated if on your feet!),
Or stretch yourself, however petite,
On a couch, legs under a wrap, out of sight,
So inquisitive eyes can’t estimate your height;
If you’re scrawny, go in for thick-woven, profuse
Garments, a robe hanging loose
Over the shoulders; if your skin’s pallid, puce
Stripes are the answer; if it’s swarthy, make use
Of white, contrasting linen from the Nile;
If you’ve ugly feet, conceal them in buskin-style
Bootees; if your calves are too lean,
Keep them confined, don’t let them be seen;
Pads help jutting shoulder-blades, and a bra is a must
For a flat bust;
If your nails are rough and your fingers fat,
Don’t gesticulate; if your breath’s bad, never chat
On an empty stomach, and leave a good space
Between your mouth and your lover’s face;
If you’ve a tooth that’s black, protruding, or askew,
To laugh’s a fatal thing to do.
Would you believe it, women study even the act
Of laughing! That, too, calls for tact.
The mouth should be opened only so wide,
The dimples kept small on either side,
And the top teeth at the tip
Just covered by the lower lip—
No interminable, side-splitting
Merriment, but a sort of light trill, as is befitting
To their sex. Whereas one girl will twist her
Face into a grotesque guffaw, her sister
Will stagger about bent double
So you’d think she was weeping in real trouble,
While a third emits a raucous, unpleasing sound
Like the bray of a donkey pushing the millstone round.
Where doesn’t art come in? They learn to cry so that men
Find it attractive, turn the tap where, and when,
And at any pressure they choose.
Damn it, don’t we hear them abuse
The laws of the alphabet, forcing their tongues to misp-
ronounce letters with an artificial lisp?
So a fault acquires chic, and they mangle words and teach
Themselves the power to spoil their power of speech.
Pay attention to all these points, they can do you good.
Learn how to use your body as a woman should:
The walk is a part of sex-appeal at which you can’t scoff—
It turns a stranger on or puts him off.
A. sways her hips skilfully, lets her robe flow and flare
With the welcomed air,
An arrogant, mincing charmer;
While B., like the sun-reddened wife of an Umbrian farmer,
Has a huge, gawky stride.
But here, as in most things, moderation should preside—
One woman moves like a bucolic spouse,
The other more decadently than taste allows.
In spite of which, by all means flaunt the charm
Of a naked upper right arm—
It especially suits you girls whose flesh is white;
Just the sight of a shoulder like that makes me long to kiss and bite!
The Sirens, those bird-women of the main,
With their sweet voices could detain
The swiftest ship. Ulysses, though bound fast,
Almost wrenched himself free of the ropes round the mast
When he heard their song (the rest,
Ears plugged with wax, stayed self-possessed).
Song is a seductive thing:
All women should learn how to sing—
In many cases
The voice is as good a procuress as the face is.
Know the latest hits from the stage,
And the new tune from Egypt that’s all the rage.
An educated (my way) girl won’t lack the skill
To handle both the strings and quill.
When Orpheus touched his lyre, the sound
Moved rocks and beasts, and held spellbound
The rivers of Hell and the three-headed hound;
And when Amphion played
(That noble avenger of his mother’s shade),
Stones leapt gladly to form new walls for his city.
Even a dumb dolphin was moved to pity
By Arion’s lyre—you know the famous fable.
You should also be able
To cope with the Phoenician harp—a very
Suitable instrument when a party’s merry.
Know your poets: Callimachus, Philetas, and the bard
From Teos, that old man who drank so hard,
And Sappho (have you ever read such sexy verse?),
And Menander whose duped fathers always curse
Rascally slaves. Read tender Propertius; read Gallus;
And quote, of course, from you, Tibullus;
Read Varro’s epic tale of ancient Greece,
The Argonauts, about the golden fleece
Which brought poor He
lle little joy;
Read the Aeneid, whose hero fled from Troy
And from whose settlement towering Rome has sprung—
The noblest poem in our Latin tongue.
Who knows, one day my name may rank among
Theirs, and my works succeed
In escaping Lethe; someone will say, “Read
That stylish poem in which our Master provides
Brilliant advice for both sides
In the sex war; take from his Love Poems some choice
Passage and read it aloud in a feeling voice,
Or recite one of his Heroines’ Letters—here
Was a new art-form, he was the pioneer.”
O Apollo, Bacchus, the nine Muses, O you
Spirits of long-dead poets, make it come true!
[LATIN: Quis dubitet, quin…]
Yes, you’ve guessed right, I’d have every girl enhance
Her image by knowing how to dance,
So that when wine’s poured and guests call for an act,
She can oblige. Why not? Stage stars attract
Applause, such are the ballet’s charms,
By the sinuous movements of their hips and arms.
I feel ashamed to offer advice
About trivia, but girls should play knucklebones and dice
And board-games. You have to think ahead. Sacrifice
Or protect a piece? Retreat or attack?
For instance, in tric-trac,
Or the war-game, you mustn’t be rash, but plan
Coolly when under a pincer attack you lose a man,
And your lone king’s driven back to where he began.
Then there’s spillikins—the problem’s lifting
Them one by one without the whole heap shifting;
Backgammon—a twelve-point board with the same
Number of zones as the tricky year; and the game
With a small board and three counters each side—you fill
Three squares in a row for the kill.
There are any number, all sorts
Of games and sports:
It’s a shame when girls won’t learn them, for where they’re played
Friendships are easily made.
Yet cleverly exploiting the dice’s roll
Matters far less than self-control.
In games we’re rash, in our eagerness we reveal
The naked passions we feel:
Rage shows its ugly face, and lust for gain,
There are arguments, brawls, raw nerves, pain,
The air’s thick with accusations and the sound
Of raised voices, angry gods are invoked all round,
Someone’s suspicious—“The slate must be wiped clean!”—
Indeed, I’ve often seen
Tears running down faces.
If you want to stay in men’s good graces,
May Jupiter be your saviour
And keep you from such barbarous behaviour!
[LATIN: Hos ignava iocos…]
These are the pastimes which a
Lazy Nature has given women; men’s scope is richer—
They have ball-games, hoops, javelins, armed combat, horses
To train and manage round the courses.
You women custom bars
From the grounds and the icy baths in the Field of Mars,
And you don’t swim in the Tiber even when it’s flowing
Gently. Still, you have the pleasure of going
For a saunter in the shade,
When August scorches heads, down Pompey’s colonnade,
Or up the Palatine, to the temple where we thank
Laurelled Apollo who sank
Cleopatra’s fleet, to the monuments our revered
Leader’s sister and wife have reared,
And the statue of Agrippa, his great “son,”
With the crown of the naval victory he won.
Savour the incense in the Egyptian shrine
Of the cow-goddess; visit all three theatres and shine
In the best seats; go to the Circus—warm blood on the ground
And chariot-wheels red-hot as they round
The turning-post! Men can’t desire
What isn’t there to admire:
What’s unseen must stay unknown.
A pretty woman’s useless all alone.
Though you may deserve to be ranked among
The greatest divas who’ve ever sung,
You’ll give no pleasure voiceless, lyre unstrung.
If Apelles had never posed her just so
For that painting, Venus would be still below
The foam, invisibly lurking.
What are we dedicated poets working
So hard for but fame? It’s our goal, our prayer.
Both gods and monarchs used to care
For poets in the good old days:
Choirs were richly rewarded, poets reaped praise,
Prestige and titles, not to mention
Regular cash gifts, even a pension.
Though born in Calabria’s mountains, Ennius rose
By merit, and shares a tomb with the Scipios.
But the ivy-wreath’s ignored now, and the bard
Who sits up late labouring hard
For the Muses is called a layabout. All the same,
There is a reward for the sleepless quest for fame.
Who would have heard of Homer unless we had
The published proof, his evergreen Iliad?
Or of Danaë if she’d stayed in the king’s power
And ended up an old maid in her brazen tower?
You pretty girls, a crowd pays—join the group,
Cross your threshold, get around. The she-wolf stalks the troop
To seize one sheep, the eagle aims its swoop
At a flock of birds. A beautiful woman should show
Herself in public: you never know,
Out of the ruck
One man may spot you and be struck.
To be admired, be seen all over the place,
Devote great care to your figure and your face.
Luck plays a big part. Keep your fish-hook dangling—
They’re where you least expect them, when you’re angling.
Hounds can scour mountain woods and draw a blank—
And then a stag, with only himself to thank,
Walks into the nets. Could chained Andromeda have dreamt
She would attract a lover, blubbering, unkempt?
Yet we know that when a man
Dies and the widow’s plan
Is to find a new one, a parade of funeral feeling—
Dishevelled hair, abandoned sobs—is quite appealing.
[LATIN: Sed vitate viros…]
But steer clear of the young professor
Of elegance, the too good-looking, snappy dresser
Who’s always arranging his hair—he’ll tell you a stale,
Thousand-times-told tale;
His heart’s a gypsy, it camps, it moves.
What can a woman do when the man she loves
Is smoother than she is and, for all she can tell, Has more men than she does as well?
It’s hard to believe, but it’s true, Troy would have stayed
Unsacked had Cassandra’s warnings been obeyed.
Some men conduct their siege under a disguise
Of passion in order to lay hands on the prize—
A shameful ploy. Don’t be fooled by his sleek,
Scented hair, tight-laced shoe-tongues, chic,
Fine-textured togas, or the ring
(Single or plural) glittering
On his hand. The best-dressed one of the lot
May well be a thief who’s after what
You’re wearing, not your body. When one pounces,
The mugged girl cries, “That’s mine!” and the echo bounces
Round the piazza: “Give it back, that’s mine!”
While you, Venus, from your daz
zling, golden shrine,
And your fountain nymphs observe the brawl
With no concern at all.
A few men are notorious bad hats,
But there are scores of false, philandering rats.
The sad stories other girls retail
Should teach you to quail
For your own safety: lock your door to a treacherous male.
Girls of Athens, don’t trust Theseus—the vow
He makes by the gods he’s broken before now;
Or you, Demophoön—
Like father, like son,
Once you left Phyllis you resigned all credit.
If a man’s made a fair offer, said it
In so many words, then promise in the same measure
And, if he pays, meet your side of the bargain of pleasure.
The girl who takes a gift and doesn’t honour
The pact could loot the shrine of Isis, give belladonna
And hemlock to a lover, cause the undying fire
Of the Vestal Virgins to expire!
I have the feeling
I’m getting out of hand. The reins, Muse! No free-wheeling!
Love should test the ground with the written word. (You’d better
Be sure the maid who takes his letter
Is trustworthy.) Read it closely, guess
Whether he’s faking or in real distress,
Then after a day or two write back—
Delay, as long as it’s short, keeps men on the rack.
On the one hand, don’t collapse without resistance,
On the other, don’t too harshly snub persistence.
Give him cause to hope and worry, then in each reply
Diminish worry, raise hope high.
You should write elegantly, yet choose
Plain words—the ones we ordinarily use
Are the best. Often a hesitant lover’s set ablaze
By a good letter; equally, a phrase
That’s barbarous or misquoted
Can spoil the image of the pretty girl who wrote it.
Even though you may not have achieved
Married status, you have men you want deceived,
So have your letters penned
By a maid or a slave, don’t trust each new boy-friend
With notes in your own hand. To hoard them, I admit,
He’d have to be a complete shit,
But they’re evidence all the same,
As danger-packed as Etna is with flame.
I’ve seen cases of wretched girls, scared pale,
Made life-slaves through such blackmail.
To me, repelling fraud by fraud makes sense—
Arms against arms are legal in self-defence.
Teach yourself the trick
Of writing in different hands (the men are sick
Who force me to give these tips!); to be safe, smooth over
The wax before use, or someone may discover