OVID: THE ART OF
LOVE
(ARS AMATORIA)
Translated by A. S.
Kline ã2001 All Rights Reserved
This work may be freely
reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any
non-commercial purpose.
Contents
Book II Part II: You Need Gifts of Mind
Book II Part III: Be Gentle and Good Tempered
Book II Part IV: Be Patient and Comply
Book II Part V: Don’t be Faint-Hearted
Book II Part VI: Win Over the Servants
Book II Part VII: Give Her Little Tasteful
Gifts
Book II Part VIII: Favour Her and Compliment
Her
Book II Part IX: Comfort Her in Sickness
Book II Part X: Let Her Miss You: But Not For
Long
Book II Part XI: Have Other Friends: But Be
Careful
Book II Part XII: Aphrodisiacs?
Book II Part XIII: Stir her Jealousy
Book II Part XIV: Be Wise and Suffer
Book II Part XV: Respect Her Freedom
Book II Part XVI: Keep It Secret
Book II Part XVII: Don’t Mention Her Faults
Book II Part XVIII: Don’t Ask About Her Age
Book II Part XX: The Task’s Complete...But
Now...
Book II
Sing out the Paean:
sing out the Paean twice!
The prize I searched
for falls into my net.
Delighted lovers grant
my songs the palm,
I’m preferred to
Hesiod and old Homer.
So Paris the stranger
sailed, from hostile Amyclae’s shore,
under white sheets,
with his ravished bride:
such was Pelops who
brought you home Hippodamia,
borne on the foreign
wheels of his conquering car.
What’s your hurry,
young man? Your boat’s mid ocean,
and the harbour I
search for is far away.
It’s not enough the
girl’s come to you, through me, the poet:
she’s captured by my
art, she’s to be kept by my art too.
There’s no less virtue
in keeping than in finding.
There’s chance in the
latter: the first’s a work of art.
Now aid me, your
follower, Venus, and the Boy,
and Erato, Muse, now
you have love’s name too.
Great my task as I try
to tell what arts can make Love stay:
that boy who wanders
so, through the vast world.
And he’s flighty, and
has two wings on which he vanishes:
it’s a tricky job to
pin him down.
Minos blocked every
road of flight for his guest:
but Daedalus devised a
bold winged path.
When he’d imprisoned
the offspring of its mother’s sin,
the man half-bull, the
bull who was half-man,
he said: ‘Minos, the
Just, let my exile end:
let my native land
receive my ashes.
And since I couldn’t
live in my own country,
driven from it by
cruel fate, still let me die there.
Give my boy freedom,
if the father’s service was worthless:
or if power will not
spare the child, let it spare the old.’
He spoke the words,
but they, and so many others, were in vain:
his freedom was still
denied him by the king.
When he realised this,
he said: ‘Now, now, O Daedalus,
you have an object for
your skilfulness.
Minos rules the earth
and the waves:
neither land or sea is
open for my flight.
The sky road still
remains: we’ll try the heavens.
Jupiter, on high,
favour my plan:
I don’t aspire to
touch the starry spheres:
there is no way to
flee the king but this.
I’d swim the Stygian
waves, if Styx offered me a path:
through my nature new
laws are mine.’
Trouble often sharpens
the wits: who would think
any man could travel
by the air-roads?
He lays out oar-like
wings with lines of feathers,
and ties the fragile
work with fastenings of string,
and glues the ends
with beeswax melted in the flames,
and now the work of
this new art’s complete.
Laughing, his son
handled the wax and feathers
not knowing they were
being readied for his own shoulders.
His father said of
them: ‘This is the art that will take us home,
by this creation we’ll
escape from Minos.
Minos bars all other
ways but cannot close the skies:
as is fitting, my
invention cleaves the air.
But don’t gaze at the
Bear, that Arcadian girl,
or Bootes’s companion,
Orion with his sword:
Fly behind me with the
wings I give you: I’ll go in front:
your job’s to follow:
you’ll be safe where I lead.
For if we go near the
sun through the airy aether,
the wax will not
endure the heat:
if our humble wings
glide close to ocean,
the breaking salt
waves will drench our feathers.
Fly between the two:
and fear the breeze as well,
spread your wings and
follow, as the winds allow.’
As he warns, he fits
the wings to his child, shows
how they move, as a
bird teaches her young nestlings.
Then he fastened the
wings he’d fashioned to his own shoulders,
and poised his anxious
body for the strange path.
Now, about to fly, he
gave the small boy a kiss,
and the tears ran down
the father’s cheeks.
A small hill, no
mountain, higher than the level plain:
there their two bodies
were given to the luckless flight.
And Daedalus moved his
wings, and watched his son’s,
and all the time kept
to his own course.
Now Icarus delights in
the strange journey,
and, fear forgotten,
he flies more swiftly, with daring art.
A man catching fish,
with quivering rod, saw them,
and the task he’d
started dropped from his hand.
Now Samos was to the
left (Naxos was far behind
and Paros, and Delos
beloved by Phoebus the god)
Lebinthos lay to the
right, and shady-wooded Calymne,
and Astypalaea ringed
by rich fishing grounds,
when the boy, too
rash, with youth’s carelessness,
soared higher, and
left his father far behind.
The knots give way,
and the wax melts near the sun,
his flailing arms
can’t clutch at thin air.
Fearful, from heaven’s
heights he gazes at the deep:
terrified, darkness,
born of fear, clouds his eyes.
The wax dissolves: he
thrashes with naked arms,
and flutters there
with nothing to support him.
He falls, and falling
cries: ‘Father, O father, I’m lost!’
the salt-green sea
closes over his open lips.
But now the unhappy
father, his father, calls, ‘Icarus!
Where are you Icarus,
where under the sky?
Calling ‘Icarus’, he
saw the feathers on the waves.
Earth holds his bones:
the waters take his name.
Minos could not hold
back those mortal wings:
I’m setting out to
check the winged god himself.
He who has recourse to
Thracian magic, fails,
to what the foal
yields, torn from its new-born brow,
Medea’s herbs can’t
keep love alive,
nor Marsian dirges
mingled with magic chants.
If incantations only
could enslave love, Ulysses
would have been tied
to Circe, Jason to the Colchian.
It’s no use giving
girls pale drugs:
drugs hurt the mind,
have power to cause madness.
Away with such evils:
to be loved be lovable:
something face and
form alone won’t give you.
Though you’re Nireus
loved by Homer of old,
or sweet Hylas
ravished by the Naiades’ crime,
to keep your love, and
not to find her leave you,
add gifts of mind to
grace of body.
A sweet form is
fragile, what’s added to its years
lessen it, and time
itself eats it away.
Violets and open
lilies do not flower forever,
and thorns are left
stiffening on the blown rose.
And white hair will
come to find you, lovely lad,
soon wrinkles will
come, furrowing your skin.
Then nourish mind,
which lasts, and adds to beauty:
it alone will stay
till the funeral pyre.
Cultivate your
thoughts with the noble arts,
more than a little,
and learn two languages.
Ulysses wasn’t
handsome, but he was eloquent,
and still racked the
sea-goddesses with love.
How often Calypso
mourned his haste,
and denied the waves
were fit for oars!
She asked him again
and again about the fall of Troy:
He grew used to retelling
it often, differently.
They walked the beach:
there, lovely Calypso too
demanded the gory tale
of King Rhesus’s fate.
He, with a rod (a rod
perhaps he already had)
illustrated what she
asked in the thick sand.
‘This’ he said, ‘is
Troy’ (drawing the walls in the sand):
‘This your Simois:
imagine this is our camp.
This is the field,’
(he drew the field), ‘that was dyed
with Dolon’s blood,
while he spied on Achilles’s horses.
here were the tents of
Thracian Rhesus:
here am I riding back
the captured horses at night.’
And he was drawing
more, when suddenly a wave
washed away Troy, and
Rhesus, and his camp.
Then the goddess said
‘Do you see what you place your trust in
for your voyage, waves
that have destroyed such mighty names?’
So listen, whoever you
are, fear to rely on treacherous beauty
or own to something
more than just the flesh.
Gentleness especially
impresses minds favourably:
harshness creates
hatred and fierce wars.
We hate the hawk that
lives its life in battle,
and the wolf whose
custom is to raid the timid flocks.
But the swallow, for
its gentleness, is free from human snares,
and Chaonian doves
have dovecotes to live in.
Away with disputes and
the battle of bitter tongues:
sweet love must feed
on gentle words.
Let married men and
married women be checked by rebuffs,
and think in turn
things always are against them:
that’s proper for
wives: quarrelling’s the marriage dowry:
but a mistress should
always hear the longed-for cooing.
No law orders you to
come together in one bed:
in your rules it’s
love provides the entertainment.
Approach her with
gentle flatteries and words to delight
her ear, so that your
arrival makes her glad.
I don’t come as a
teacher of love for the rich:
he who can give has no
need of my art:
He has genius who can
say: ‘Take this’ when he pleases:
I submit: he delights
more than my inventions.
I’m the poor man’s
poet, who was poor when I loved:
when I could give no
gifts, I gave them words.
The poor must love
warily: the poor fear to speak amiss,
and suffer much that
the rich would not.
I remember mussing my
lady’s hair in anger:
how many days that
anger cost me!
I don’t think I tore
her dress, I didn’t feel it: but she
said so, and my reward
was to replace it.
But you, if you’re wise,
avoid your teacher’s faults,
and fear the harm that
came from my offence.
Make war with the
Parthians, peace with a civilised friend,
and laughter, and
whatever engenders love.
If she’s not charming
or courteous enough, at your loving,
endure it and persist:
she’ll soon be kinder.
You can get a curved
branch to bend on the tree by patience:
you’ll break it, if
you try out your full strength.
With patience you can
cross the water: you’ll not
conquer the river by sailing
against the flow.
Patience tames tigers
and Numidian lions:
the farmer in time
bows the ox to the plough.
Who was fiercer than
Arcadian Atalanta?
Wild as she was she
still surrendered to male kindness.
Often Milanion wept
among the trees
at his plight and at
the girl’s harsh acts:
often at her orders
his shoulders carried the nets,
often he pierced wild
boars with his deadly spear:
and he felt the pain
of Hylaeus’s tense bow:
but that of another
bow was still more familiar.
I don’t order you to
climb in Maenalian woods,
holding a weapon, or
carrying nets on your back:
I don’t order you to
bare your chest to flying darts:
the tender commands of
my arts are safe.
Yield to opposition:
by yielding you’ll end as victor:
Only play the part she
commands you to.
Condemn what she
condemns: what she approves, approve:
say what she says:
deny what she denies.
She laughs, you laugh:
remember to cry, if she cries:
she’ll set the rules
according to your expression.
If she plays, tossing
the ivory dice in her hand,
throw them wrong, and
concede on your bad throw:
If you play
knucklebones, no prize if you win,
make out that often
the ruinous low Dogs fell to you.
And if it’s draughts,
the draughtsmen mercenaries,
let your champion be
swept away by your glass foe.
Yourself, hold your
girl’s sunshade outspread,
yourself, make a place
for her in the crowd.
Quickly bring up a
footstool to her elegant couch,
and slip the sandal on
or off her sweet foot.
Often, even though
you’re shivering yourself,
her hand must be
warmed at your neglected breast.
Don’t think it
shameful (though it’s shameful, you’ll like it),
to hold the mirror for
her in your noble hands.
When his stepmother,
Juno, was tired of sending him monsters,
Hercules, it’s said,
who reached the heavens he’d shouldered,
held a basket, among
the Lydian girls, and spun raw wool.
The hero of Tiryns
complied with his girl’s orders:
go now, and endure the
misgivings he endured.
Ordered to appear in
town, make sure you arrive
before time, and don’t
leave unless it’s late.
She tells you to be elsewhere: drop everything,
run,
don’t let the crowd in
the way stop you trying.
She’s returning home
from another party at night:
when she calls for her
slave you come too.
She’s in the country,
says: ‘come’: Love hates a laggard:
if you’ve no wheels,
travel the road on foot.
Don’t let bad weather,
or parching Dog-days, stall you,
or the roads whitened
by falling snow.
Love is a kind of
warfare. Slackers, dismiss!
There are no cowards
guarding this standard.
Night and winter, long
roads and cruel sorrows,
and every kind of
labour are found on love’s campaigns.
You’ll often endure
rain pouring from heavenly clouds,
and frozen, lie there
on the naked earth.
They say that Phoebus
grazed Admetus’s cattle,
and found shelter in a
humble hut.
Who can’t suit what
suited Phoebus? Lose your pride,
you who’d have love’s
sorrows tamed.
If you’re denied a
safe and level road,
and the door barred
with a bolt against you,
then drop down
head-first through the open roof:
a high window too
offers a secret way.
She’ll be glad,
knowing the chase itself is risky for you:
that will be sure
proof to the lady of your love.
You might often have
been parted from your girl, Leander:
you swam across so she
could know your heart.
Nor is it shameful to
you to cultivate her maids,
according to their
grades, and the serving men.
Greet them by their
names (it costs you nothing)
clasp humble hands
with yours, in your ambition.
And even offer the
servant, who asks, a little something
on Fortune’s Day (it’s
little enough to pay):
and the maid, on that
day when the hand of punishment fell
on the Gauls, they
deluded by maids in mistress’s clothes.
Trust me, make the
people yours: especially the gatekeeper,
and whoever lies in
front of her bedroom doors.
I don’t tell you to
give your mistress expensive gifts:
give little but of
that little, skilfully, give what’s fitting.
When the field is full
of riches, when the branches bend
with the weight, let
the boy bring a gift in a rustic basket.
You can say it was
sent from your country villa,
even though it was
bought on the Via Sacra.
Send grapes, or those
nuts Amaryllis loved,
chestnuts, but she
doesn’t love them now.
Why even thrushes are
fine, and the gift of a dove,
to witness your
remembrance of your mistress.
Shameful to send them
hoping for the death of some childless
old man. Ah, perish
those who make giving a crime!
Do I also teach that
you send tender verses?
Ah me, poems are not
honoured much.
Songs are praised, but
its gifts they really want:
barbarians themselves
are pleasing, so long as they’re rich.
Truly now it is
the Age of Gold: the greatest honours
come with gold: love’s
won by gold.
Even if you came,
Homer, with the Muses as companions,
if you brought nothing
with you, Homer, you’d be out.
Still there are
cultured girls, the rarest set:
and another set who
aren’t, but would like to be.
Praise either in song:
and they’ll commend
the reader whatever
his voice’s sweetness:
So sing your midnight
song to one and the other,
perhaps it will figure
as a trifling gift.
Then what you’re about
to do, and think is useful,
always get your lover
to ask you to do it.
You promised liberty
to one of your slaves:
still let him seek the
fact of it from your girl:
if you stay a
punishment, forgo the use of cruel chains,
let her be thankful to
you, for what you did:
the advantage is
yours: the title ‘giver’ is your lover’s:
you lose nothing, she
plays the mistress’s part.
But whoever you are,
who want to keep your girl,
she must think that
you’re inspired by her beauty.
If she’s dressed in
Tyrian robes, praise Tyrian:
if she’s in Coan silk,
consider Coan fitting.
She’s in gold-thread?
She’s more precious than gold:
She wears wool,
approve the wool she’s wearing.
She leaves off her
tunic, cry: ‘You set me on fire’,
but request her
anxiously to beware of chills.
She’s parted her hair:
praise the parting:
she waves her hair: be
pleased with the waves.
Admire her limbs as
she dances, her voice when she sings,
and when it finishes,
grieve that it’s finished in words.
It’s fine if you tell
her what delights, and what gives joy
about her lovemaking,
her skill in bed.
Though she’s more
violent than fierce Medusa,
she’ll be ‘kind and
gentle’ to her lover.
But make sure of this:
don’t let your expression
give your speech the
lie, lest you seem a deceiver with words.
Art works when its
hidden: discovery brings shame,
and time destroys
faith in everything of merit.
Often in autumn, when
the season’s loveliest,
and the ripe grape’s
dyed with purple juice,
when now we’re frozen
solid, now drenched with heat,
the body’s listless in
the changing air.
Your girl’s well in
fact: but if she’s lying sick,
feels ill because of
the unhealthy weather,
then let love and
devotion be obvious to your girl,
then sow what you’ll
reap later with full sickle.
Don’t be put off by
the fretfulness of the patient,
let yours be the hand
that does what she allows.
And be seen weeping,
and don’t shrink from kisses,
let her parched mouth
drink from your tears.
Pray a lot, but all
aloud: and, as often as she lets you,
tell her happy dreams
that you remembered.
And let the old woman
come who cleanses room and bed,
bringing sulphur and
eggs in her trembling hands.
The signs of a welcome
devotion are in all this:
by these means into
wills many have made their way.
But don’t let dislike
for your attentions rise from illness,
only be charming, in
your earnestness:
don’t prohibit food,
or hand her cups of bitter stuff:
let your rival mix all
that for her.
But the winds that
filled your sails and blew offshore,
are no use when you’re
in the open sea.
While young love’s
wandering, it gathers strength by use:
if you nourish it
well, it will be strong in time.
The bull you fear’s
the calf you used to stroke:
the tree you lie
beneath was a sapling:
the river’s tiny when
born, but gathers riches in its flow,
and collects the many
waters that come to it.
Make her accustomed to
you: nothing’s greater than habit:
while you’re
captivating her, avoid no boredom.
Let her always be
seeing you: always giving you ear:
show your face, at
night and in the day.
When you’ve more
confidence that you’ll be missed,
when your absence far
away will cause her worry,
give her a rest: the
fields when rested repay the loan,
and parched earth
drinks the heavenly rain.
Phyllis burnt less for
Demophoon in his presence:
she blazed more
fiercely when he sailed away.
Penelope was tormented
by the loss of cunning Ulysses:
you, Laodamia, by
absent Protesilaus.
But brief delays are
best: fondness fades with time,
love vanishes with
absence, and new love appears.
When Menelaus left,
Helen did not lie alone,
Paris, the guest, at
night, was taken to her warm breast.
What craziness was
that, Menelaus? You left
wife and guest alone
under the same roof.
Madman, would you
trust timid doves to a hawk?
Would you trust the
full fold to a mountain wolf?
Helen did not sin: her
lover committed none:
what you, what anyone
would do, he did.
You forced adultery by
giving time and place:
What did the girl
employ but your counsel?
What should she do?
Her man away, a cultivated guest,
and she afraid to
sleep alone in an empty bed.
Let Atrides appear: I
acquit Helen of crime:
she took advantage of
her husband’s courtesy.
But the red-haired
boar is not so fierce in mid-anger.
when he turns and
threatens the rabid pack,
or the lioness giving
suck to un-weaned cubs,
or the tiny viper
crushed by a careless foot,
as a woman when a
rival’s caught in her lover’s bed:
she blazes, her face
the colour of her heart.
She storms with fire
and flame, all restraint forgot,
as if struck, as they
say, by the horns of the Boeotian god.
Wronged by her
husband, her marriage violated,
savage Medea avenged
herself through her children.
Another fatal mother
was that swallow, you see there:
look, her breast
carries the stain of blood.
Well-founded and firm
loves have been dissolved so:
these are crimes to
make cautious men afraid.
Not that my censure
condemns you to only one girl:
the gods forbid! A
wife could hardly expect that.
Indulge, but secretly
veil your sins, with restraint:
it’s no glory to you
to be seeking out wrongdoing.
Don’t give gifts
another girl could spot,
or have set times for
your assignations.
And lest a girl catch
you out in your favourite haunts
don’t meet all of them
in one place.
And always look
closely at your wax tablets, whenever you write:
lest much more is read
there than you sent.
Wounded, Venus takes
up just arms, and hurls her dart,
and makes you lament,
as she is lamenting.
While Agamemnon was
satisfied with one woman, Clytemnestra
was chaste: evil was
done through the man’s fault.
She had heard how
Chryses, with sacred head-bands,
and laurel in his
hand, failed to win back his daughter:
she had heard of your
sorrows, captive Briseis,
and how scandalous
delays had prolonged the war.
She heard all this:
She saw Cassandra for herself:
the victor the
shameful prize of his own prize.
Then she took Thyestes
to her heart and bed,
and wrongfully avenged
the Atrides’s crime.
Even if the acts,
you’ve well hidden, become known,
though they’re known,
still always deny them.
Don’t be subdued, or
more fond than usual:
those are the signs of
many guilty thoughts.
But don’t forgo sex:
all peace is in that one thing.
The act it is that
disproves a prior union.
There are those who
prescribe eating a dish of savory,
a noxious herb, my
judgement is its poisonous:
or mix pepper with the
seeds of stinging nettles,
or crush yellow
camomile in well-aged wine:
But the goddess who
holds high Eryx, beneath the shaded hill,
doesn’t force you to
suffer like this for her delights.
White onions brought
from Megara, Alcathous’s city,
and rocket, herba
salax, the kind that comes from gardens,
eat those, and eggs,
eat honey from Hymettus,
and seeds from the
cones of sharp-needled pines.
Wise Erato, why turn
to magic arts?
My chariot’s scraping
the inside post.
You who just hid your
crimes on my advice,
change course, and on
my advice reveal your secrets.
I’m not guilty of
fickleness: the curved prow
is not always blown
onwards by the same wind.
Now we run to a
Thracian northerly, an easterly now,
sometimes a west wind
fills our sails, sometimes a south.
Look how the
charioteer now slacks the reins,
then skilfully
restrains the galloping team.
There are those who
don’t like being served with shy kindness:
while love fades if
there’s no rival around.
Generally heads are
swollen with success,
it’s not easy to be
content with the good times.
As a fire with little
power, gradually consumed,
hides itself, ashes
whitening on its surface,
but the doused flames
will flare with a pinch of sulphur,
and the brightness,
that was there before, returns:
so when hearts are
numbed by slack dullness and security,
love is aroused by
some sharp stimulus.
Make her fearful for
you: warm her tepid mind:
let her grow pale at
evidence of your guilt:
O four times happy,
times impossible to count,
is he for whom his
wounded girl grieves.
That, when his sins
reach her unwilling ears, she’s lost,
and voice and colour flee
the unhappy girl.
Let me be him, whose
hair the angry woman tears:
let me be him, whose
tender cheeks nails seek,
him whom she sees with
tears, turns on him tortured eyes,
whom though she can’t
live without, she wishes she could.
If you ask how long you
should let her lament her hurt,
keep it brief, lest a
long delay kindles anger’s force:
Throw your arms
straightaway around her snow-white neck,
and let the weeping
girl fall on your chest.
Kiss her who weeps,
make sweet love to her who weeps,
there’ll be peace:
this is the one way anger’s dissolved.
When she’s truly
raging, when she seems fixed on war,
then sue for peace in
bed, she’ll be gentle.
There Harmony dwells
with grounded arms:
there, trust me, is
the place where grace is born.
Doves that once fought,
now bill and coo,
whose murmur is of
caressing words.
At first all things
were confused mass without form,
heaven and earth and
sea were created one:
soon sky was set above
land, earth circled by water,
and random chaos split
into its parts:
Forests allowed the
creatures a home: air the birds:
fish took shelter in
the running streams.
Then the human race
wandered the empty wilds,
a thing of naked
strength and brutish body:
woods were its home,
grass its food, leaves its bed:
and for a long time no
man knew another.
They say sweet
delights softened savage spirits:
when man and woman
rested in one place:
they had no teacher to
show them what to do:
Venus did her work
without sweet art.
Birds have mates to
love: in the midst of waters
a fish will find another
to share her joy:
hind follows stag,
snake will bind with snake,
bitch clings entwined
with some adulterous dog:
ewes delight in being
covered: bulls delight in heifers, too,
the snub-nosed
she-goat supports her rank mate:
Mares driven to frenzy
follow their stallion,
through distant places
beyond the branching river.
So act, and offer
strong medicine to your angry one:
only this will bring
peace to her unhappiness:
this medicine beats
Machaon’s drugs:
this will reinstate
you when you’ve sinned.
While I was writing
this, Apollo suddenly appeared
plucking the strings
of his lyre with his thumb.
Laurel was in his
hand, laurel wreathing his hair:
he appears to poets
looking like that.
‘Professor of Wanton
Love,’ he said to me,
‘go lead your
disciples to my temple,
it’s where the famous
words, celebrated throughout the world,
command everyone to
“Know Yourself”.
He alone will be wise,
who’s well-known to himself,
and carries out each
work that suits his powers.
Whom nature’s given
beauty, let it be seen by her:
whose skin is
lustrous, lie there often with bare shoulders:
who delights by
talking, avoid taciturn silence:
who sings with art,
then sing: who drinks with art, then drink.
but the eloquent
should never declaim mid-speech
nor the crazy poet
ever read his poems!’
So Phoebus warned:
take note of Phoebus’s warning:
truth’s surely on the
sacred lips of that god.
To bring us back to
earth: who loves wisely wins,
and by my skill will
bring off what he seeks.
It’s not often the
furrow repays the loan with interest,
not often the winds
aid the boat in trouble:
What delights a lover
is little, what pains him more:
many sufferings
declare themselves to his heart.
As many as hares on
Athos, the bees that graze on Hybla,
as many as the olives
the grey-green branches carry,
or the sea-shells on
the shore, are the pains of love:
the thorns we suffer
from are drenched in gall.
They’ll say she’s gone
out: very likely she’s to be seen inside:
think that she has
gone out, and your vision lied.
The door will be shut
the night she promised you:
endure it, lay your
body on the dusty ground.
And perhaps the lying
maid with scornful face,
will say: ‘Why’s he
hanging round our door?’
Still, a suppliant,
coax the doorposts, and your harsh mistress,
and hang the roses,
from your head, outside.
Come if she wishes:
when she shuns you, go:
it’s unbecoming to a
noble man to bore her.
Why let your lover
say: ‘There’s no escaping him’?
Her feelings won’t
always be against you.
Don’t think it a disgrace
to suffer curses or blows
from the girl, or
plant kisses on her tender feet.
Why waste time on
trifles? Greater themes arise:
I sing great things:
pay attention, people.
We labour hard, but
virtue’s nothing if not hard:
hard labour’s what my
art demands.
Be patient with your
rival, victory rests with you:
you’ll be victor on
Great Jupiter’s hill.
Believe me, it’s no
man says this, but Chaonia’s sacred oaks:
my art contains
nothing more profound than this.
If she flirts, endure
it: if she writes, don’t touch the wax:
let her come from
where she wishes: and go where she pleases, too.
This husbands allow
their lawfully married wives,
when you come, gentle
sleep, to play your part, as well.
I’m not perfect in
this art, I confess:
What can I do? I’m
less than my own instructions.
What, shall I let some
man signal openly to my girl,
and bear it, and not
show anger if I wish?
I remember her husband
kissed her: I grieved
at the kiss he gave:
my love’s full of barbarities.
Not a few times this
fault has hurt me: he’s wiser
who’s reconciled to
other mens’ coming.
But it was better to
know nothing: let intrigues
be hidden, lest her
shameless mouth revealed untruths.
How much better, O
young men, to avoid surprising them:
let girls sin, and
think, while sinning, that they’ve fooled you.
Love grows with being
caught: who are twinned by fortune
persist to the end in
the cause that ruined them.
The story’s well known
through all the heavens,
of Mars and Venus
caught by Vulcan’s craft.
Mars stirred by mad
desire for Venus
was turned from grim
warrior to lover.
And Venus was not coy
or resistant to Mar’s pleas
(for there’s no more
loving goddess than her).
Ah how often the
wanton laughed at her husband’s limp,
they say, or his hands
hardened by his fiery art.
She’d openly imitate
Vulcan then, to Mars: it became her:
great beauty was
mingled there with charm.
But they used to hide
their adultery at first.
It was a sin, filled
with the blush of shame.
The Sun’s tale (who
can evade the Sun?)
made known to Vulcan
what his spouse had done.
What a poor example,
Sun, you set! Seek a gift from her,
and you, if you’re
quiet, can have what she can give.
Vulcan set a hidden
net, over and round the bed:
it’s a piece of work
that deceives the eye.
Pretends he’s off to
Lemnos: the lovers come
to their assignation:
and both lie naked in the net.
He calls the gods: the
captives are displayed:
Venus they think can
scarcely restrain her tears.
They can’t hide their
faces, are even unable
to cover their sexes
with their hands.
Then someone laughed
and said: ‘Let me have the chains,
Mars, if they’re an
embarrassment to you!’
Their captive bodies
are, with difficulty, freed, at your plea,
Neptune: Venus runs to
Paphos: Mars heads for Thrace.
This you achieved,
Vulcan: what they hid before,
now all shame is gone,
they indulge in freely:
Now maddened you often
confess the thing was foolish,
and suffer regret for
your cunning.
It’s forbidden you:
Venus once tricked forbids
traps to be set, like
the one that she endured.
Lay out no snares for
rivals: don’t intercept
those secret
hand-written messages.
Let husbands trap
them, if they think they indeed need trapping,
husbands to whom the
ceremony of fire and water gives the right.
Look, I swear again:
there’s nothing here except what’s played within the law: no virtuous woman’s
caught up in my jests.
Who’d dare reveal to
the impious the secret rites of Ceres,
or uncover the high
mysteries of Samothrace?
There’s little virtue
in keeping silent:
but speaking of what’s
kept secret’s a heinous crime.
O it’s good if that
babbler Tantalus, clutching at fruit in vain,
thirsts in the very
middle of the waters!
Venus, above all,
orders you to be silent about her rites:
I warn you, let no idle
chatterers come near her.
Though the mysteries
of Venus are not buried in a box,
nor echo in the wide
air to the clash of cymbals,
but are busily enjoyed
so, by us all,
they still wish to be
concealed among us.
Venus, herself, when
she takes off her clothes,