OVID: THE ART OF LOVE - Book III (Parts I-X)
(ARS AMATORIA)
Translated by A. S. Kline ã2001 All Rights Reserved
tkline.freeserve.co.uk
Book III
Contents
Book III Part I: It’s Time to Teach You Girls. 3
Book III Part II: Take Care with How You Look. 5
Book III Part III: Taste and Elegance in Hair and Dress. 6
Book III Part IV: Make-Up, but in Private. 8
Book III Part V: Conceal Your Defects. 9
Book III Part VI: Be Modest in Laughter and Movement 10
Book III Part VII: Learn Music and Read the Poets. 11
Book III Part VIII: Learn Dancing, Games. 12
Book III Part IX: Be Seen Around. 13
Book III Part X: Beware of False Lovers. 14
Book III Part XI: Take Care with Letters. 15
Book III Part XII: Avoid the Vices, Favour the Poets. 16
Book III Part XIII: Try Young and Older Lovers. 17
Book III Part XIV: Use Jealousy and Fear 18
Book III Part XV: Play Cloak and Dagger 19
Book III Part XVI: Make Him Believe He’s Loved. 20
Book III Part XVII: Watch How You Eat and Drink. 22
Book III Part XVIII: And So To Bed. 23
Book III
Book III Part I: It’s Time to Teach You Girls
I’ve given the Greeks arms, against Amazons: arms remain,
to give to you Penthesilea, and your Amazon troop.
Go equal to the fight: let them win, those who are favoured
by Venus, and her Boy, who flies through all the world.
It’s not fair for armed men to battle with naked girls:
that would be shameful, men, even if you win.
Someone will say: ‘Why add venom to the snake,
and betray the sheepfold to the rabid she-wolf?’
Beware of loading the crime of the many onto the few:
let the merits of each separate girl be seen.
Though Menelaus has Helen, and Agamemnon
has Clytemnestra, her sister, to charge with crime,
though Amphiarus, and his horses too, came living to the Styx,
through the wickedness of Eriphyle,
Penelope was faithful to her husband for all ten years
of his waging war, and his ten years wandering.
Think of Protesilaus, and Laodameia who they say
followed her marriage partner, died before her time.
Alcestis, his wife, redeemed Admetus’s life with her own:
the wife, for the man, was borne to the husband’s funeral.
‘Capaneus, receive me! Let us mingle our ashes,’
Evadne cried, and leapt into the flames.
Virtue herself is named and worshipped as a woman too:
it’s no wonder that she delights her followers.
Yet their aims are not required for my art,
smaller sails are suited to my boat,
Only playful passions will be learnt from me:
I’ll teach girls the ways of being loved.
Women don’t brandish flames or cruel bows:
I rarely see men harmed by their weapons.
Men often cheat: it’s seldom tender girls,
and, if you check, they’re rarely accused of fraud.
Falsely, Jason left Medea, already a mother:
he took another bride to himself.
As far as you knew, Theseus, the sea birds fed on Ariadne,
left all by herself on an unknown island!
Ask why one road’s called Nine-Times and hear
how the woods, weeping, shed their leaves for Phyllis.
Though he might be famed for piety, Aeneas, your guest,
supplied the sword, Dido, and the reason for your death.
What destroyed you all, I ask? Not knowing how to love:
your art was lacking: love lasts long through art.
You still might lack it now: but, before my eyes,
stood Venus herself, and ordered me to teach you.
She said to me. then: ‘What have the poor girls done,
an unarmed crowd betrayed to well-armed men?
Two books of their tricks have been composed:
let this lot too be instructed by your warnings.
Stesichorus who spoke against Helen’s un-chastity,
soon sang her praises in a happier key.
If I know you well (don’t harm the cultured girls now!)
this favour will always be asked of you while you live.’
She spoke, and she gave me a leaf, and a few myrtle
berries (since her hair was crowned with myrtle):
I felt received power too: purer air
glowed, and a whole weight lifted from my spirit.
While wit works, seek your orders here girls,
those that modesty, principles and your rules allow.
Be mindful first that old age will come to you:
so don’t be timid and waste any of your time.
Have fun while it’s allowed, while your years are in their prime:
the years go by like flowing waters:
The wave that’s past can’t be recalled again,
the hour that’s past never can return.
Life’s to be used: life slips by on swift feet,
what was good at first, nothing as good will follow.
Those stalks that wither I saw as violets:
from that thorn-bush to me a dear garland was given.
There’ll be a time when you, who now shut out your lover,
will lie alone, and aged, in the cold of night,
nor find your entrance damaged by some nocturnal quarrel,
nor your threshold sprinkled with roses at dawn.
How quickly (ah me!) the sagging flesh wrinkles,
and the colour, there, is lost from the bright cheek.
And hairs that you’ll swear were grey from your girlhood
will spring up all over your head overnight.
Snakes shed their old age with their fragile skin,
antlers that are cast make the stag seem young:
un-aided our beauties flee: pluck the flower,
which, if not plucked, will of itself, shamefully, fall.
Add that the time of youth is shortened by childbirth:
the field’s exhausted by continual harvest.
Endymion causes you no blushes, on Latmos, Moon,
nor is Cephalus the rosy goddess of Dawn’s shameful prize.
Though Adonis was given to Venus, whom she mourns to this day,
where did she get Aeneas, and Harmonia, from?
O mortal girls go to the goddesses for your examples,
and don’t deny your delights to loving men.
Even if you’re deceived, what do you lose? It’s all intact:
though a thousand use it, nothing’s destroyed that way.
Iron crumbles, stone’s worn away with use:
that part’s sufficient, and escapes all fear of harm.
Who objects to taking light from a light nearby?
Who hoards the vast waters of the hollow deep?
So why should any woman say: ‘Not now’? Tell me,
why waste the water if you’re not going to use it?
Nor does my voice say sell it, just don’t be afraid
of casual loss: your gifts are freed from loss.
Book III Part II: Take Care with How You Look
But I’m blown about by greater gusts of wind,
while we’re in harbour, may you ride the gentle breeze.
I’ll start with how you look: good wine comes from vines
that are looked after, tall crops stand in cultivated soil.
Beauty’s a gift of the gods: how many can boast it?
The larger number among you lack such gifts.
Taking pains brings beauty: beauty neglected dies,
even though it’s like that of Venus, the Idalian goddess.
If girls of old didn’t cultivate their bodies in that way,
well they had no cultivated men in those days:
if Andromache was dressed in healthy clothes,
what wonder? Her husband was a rough soldier?
Do you suppose Ajax’s wife would come to him all smart,
when his outer layer was seven hides of an ox?
There was crude simplicity before: now Rome is golden,
and owns the vast wealth of the conquered world.
Look what the Capitol is now, and what it was:
you’d say it belonged to a different Jove.
The Senate-House, now worthy of such debates,
was made of wattle when Tatius held the kingship.
Where the Palatine now gleams with Apollo and our leaders,
what was that but pasture for ploughmen’s oxen?
Others may delight in ancient times: I congratulate myself
on having been born just now: this age suits my nature.
Not because stubborn gold’s mined now from the earth,
or choice shells come to us from farthest shores:
nor because mountains shrink as marble’s quarried,
or because blue waters retreat from the piers:
but because civilisation’s here, and no crudity remains,
in our age, that survives from our ancient ancestors.
You too shouldn’t weight your ears with costly stones,
that dusky India gathers in its green waters,
nor show yourself in stiff clothes sewn with gold,
wealth which you court us with, often makes us flee.
Book III Part III: Taste and Elegance in Hair and Dress
We’re captivated by elegance: don’t ignore your hair:
beauty’s granted or denied by a hand’s touch.
There isn’t only one style: choose what suits each one,
and consult your mirror in advance.
An oval-shaped head suggests a plain parting:
that’s how Laodamia arranged her hair.
A round face asks for a small knot on the top,
leaving the forehead free, showing the ears.
One girl should throw her hair over both shoulders:
like Phoebus when he takes up the lyre to sing.
Another tied up behind, in Diana’s usual style,
when, skirts tucked up, she seeks the frightened quarry.
Blown tresses suit this girl, loosely scattered:
that one’s encircled by tight-bound hair.
This one delights in being adorned by tortoiseshell from Cyllene:
that one presents a likeness to the curves of a wave.
But you’ll no more number the acorns on oak branches,
or bees on Hybla, wild beasts on Alpine mountains,
than I can possibly count so many fashions:
every new day adds another new style.
And tangled hair suits many girls: often you’d think
it’s been hanging loose since yesterday: it’s just combed.
Art imitates chance: when Hercules, in captured Oechalia,
saw Iole like that, he said: ‘I love that girl.’
So you Bacchus, lifted forsaken Ariadne,
into your chariot, while the Satyrs gave their cries.
O how kind nature is to your beauty,
how many ways you have to repair the damage!
We’re sadly exposed, and our hair, snatched at by time,
falls like the leaves stripped by the north wind.
A woman dyes the grey with German herbs,
and seeks a better colour by their art:
a woman shows herself in dense bought curls,
instead of her own, pays cash for another’s.
No blushes shown: you can see them coming, openly,
before the eyes of Hercules and the Virgin Muses Choir.
What to say about dress? Don’t ask for brocade,
or wools dyed purple with Tyrian murex.
With so many cheaper colours having appeared,
it’s crazy to bear your fortune on your back!
See, the sky’s colour, when the sky’s without a cloud,
no warm south-westerly threatening heavy rain.
See, what to you, you’ll say, looks similar to that fleece,
on which Phrixus and Helle once escaped fierce Ino:
this resembles the waves, and also takes its name from the waves:
I might have thought the sea-nymphs clothed with this veil.
That’s like saffron-flowers: dressed in saffron robes,
the dew-wet goddess yokes her shining horses:
this, Paphian myrtle: this, purple amethyst,
dawn roses, and the Thracian crane’s grey.
Your chestnuts are not lacking, Amaryllis, and almonds:
and wax gives its name to various wools.
As many as the flowers the new world, in warm spring, bears
when vine-buds wake, and dark winter vanishes,
as many or more dyes the wool drinks: choose, decisively:
since all are not suitable for everyone.
dark-grey suits snow-white skin: dark-grey suited Briseis:
when she was carried off, then she also wore dark-grey.
White suits the dark: you looked pleasing, Andromeda, in white:
so dressed, the island of Seriphos was ruled by you.
Book III Part IV: Make-Up, but in Private
How near I was to warning you, no rankness of the wild goat
under your armpits, no legs bristling with harsh hair!
But I’m not teaching girls from the Caucasian hills,
or those who drink your waters, Mysian Caicus.
So why remind you not to let your teeth get blackened,
be being lazy, and to wash your face each morning in water?
You know how to acquire whiteness with a layer of powder:
she who doesn’t blush by blood, indeed, blushes by art.
You make good the naked edges of your eyebrows,
and hide your natural cheeks with little patches.
It’s no shame to highlight your eyes with thinned ashes,
or saffron grown by your banks, bright Cydnus.
It’s I who spoke of facial treatments for your beauty,
a little book, but one whose labour took great care.
There too you can find protection against faded looks:
my art’s no idle thing in your behalf.
Still, don’t let your lover find cosmetic bottles
on your dressing table: art delights in its hidden face.
Who’s not offended by cream smeared all over your face,
when it runs in fallen drops to your warm breast?
Don’t those ointments smell? Even if they are sent from Athens,
they’re oils extracted from the unwashed fleece of a sheep.
Don’t apply preparations of deer marrow openly,
and I don’t approve of openly cleaning your teeth:
it makes for beauty, but it’s not beautiful to watch:
many things that please when done, are ugly in the doing:
What now carries the signature of busy Myron
was once dumb mass, hard stone:
to make a ring, first crush the golden ore:
the dress you wear, was greasy wool:
That was rough marble, now it forms a famous statue,
naked Venus squeezing water from her wet hair.
We’ll think you too are sleeping while you do your face:
fit to be seen after the final touches.
Why should I know the source of the brightness in your looks?
Close your bedroom door! Why betray unfinished work?
There are many things it’s right men shouldn’t know:
most things offend if you don’t keep them secret.
The golden figures shining from the ornate theatre,
examine them, you’ll despise them: gilding hiding wood:
but the crowd’s not allowed to approach them till they’re done,
and till your beauty’s ready banish men.
But I don’t forbid your hair being freely combed,
so that it falls, loosely spread, across your shoulders.
Beware especially lest you’re irritable then,
or are always loosening your failed hairstyle again.
Leave your maid alone: I hate those who scratch her face
with their nails, or prick the arm they’ve snatched at with a pin.
She’ll curse her mistress’s head at every touch,
as she weeps, bleeding, on the hateful tresses.
If you’re hair’s appalling, set a guard at your threshold,
or always have it done at Bona Dea’s fertile temple.
I was once suddenly announced arriving at some girl’s:
in her confusion she put her hair on wrong way round.
May such cause of cruel shame come to my enemies,
and that disgrace be reserved for Parthian girls.
Hornless cows are ugly, fields are ugly without grass,
and bushes without leaves, and a head without its hair.
Book III Part V: Conceal Your Defects
I’ve not come to teach Semele or Leda, or Sidon’s Europa,
carried through the waves by that deceptive bull,
or Helen, whom Menelaus, being no fool, reclaimed,
and you, Paris, her Trojan captor, also no fool, withheld.
The crowd come to be taught, girls pretty and plain:
and always the greater part are not-so-good.
The beautiful ones don’t seek art and instruction:
they have their dowry, beauty potent without art:
the sailor rests secure when the sea’s calm:
when it’s swollen, he uses every aid.
Still, faultless forms are rare: conceal your faults,
and hide your body’s defects as best you may.
If you’re short sit down, lest, standing, you seem to sit:
and commit your smallness to your couch:
there also, so your measure can’t be taken,
let a shawl drop over your feet to hide them.
If you’re very slender, wear a full dress, and walk about
in clothes that hang loosely from your shoulders.
A pale girl scatters bright stripes across her body,
the darker then have recourse to linen from Alexandria.
Let an ugly foot be hidden in snow-white leather:
and don’t loose the bands from skinny legs.
Thin padding suits those with high shoulder blades:
a good brassiere goes with a meagre chest.
Those with thick fingers and bitten nails,
make sparing use of gestures whenever you speak.
Those with strong breath don’t talk when you’re fasting.
and always keep your mouth a distance from your lover.
Book III Part VI: Be Modest in Laughter and Movement
If you’re teeth are blackened, large, or not in line
from birth, laughing would be a fatal error.
Who’d believe it? Girls must even learn to laugh,
they seek to acquire beauty also in this way.
Laugh modestly, a small dimple either side,
the teeth mostly concealed by the lips.
Don’t strain your lungs with continual laughter,
but let something soft and feminine ring out.
One girl will distort her face perversely by guffawing:
another shakes with laughter, you’d think she’s crying.
That one laughs stridently in a hateful manner,
like a mangy ass braying at the shameful mill.
Where does art not penetrate? They’re taught to cry,
with propriety, they weep when and how they wish.
Why! Aren’t true words cheated by the voice,
and tongues forced to make lisping sounds to order?
Charm’s in a defect: they try to speak badly:
they’re taught, when they can speak, to speak less.
Weigh all this with care, since it’s for you:
learn to carry yourself in a feminine way.
And not the least part of charm is in walking:
it attracts men you don’t know, or sends them running.
One moves her hips with art, catches the breeze
with flowing robes, and points her toes daintily:
another walks like the wife of a red-faced Umbrian,
feet wide apart, and with huge paces.
But there’s measure here as in most things: both the rustic’s stride,
and the more affected step should be foregone.
Still, let the parts of your lower shoulder and upper arm
on the left side, be naked, to be admired.
That suits you pale-skinned girls especially: when I see it,
I want to kiss your shoulder, as far as it’s shown.
Book III Part VII: Learn Music and Read the Poets
The Sirens were sea-monsters, who, with singing voice,
could restrain a ship’s course as they wished.
Ulysses, your body nearly melted hearing them,
while the wax filled your companions’ ears.
Song is a thing of grace: girls, learn to sing:
for many your voice is a better procuress than your looks.
And repeat what you just heard in the marble theatre,
and the latest songs played in the Egyptian style.
No woman taught under my control should fail to know
how to hold her lyre with the left hand, the plectrum with her right.
Thracian Orpheus, with his lute, moved animals and stones,
and Tartarus’s lake and Cerberus, the triple-headed hound.
At your song, Amphion, just avenger of your mother,
the stones obligingly made Thebes’s new walls.
Though dumb, a Dolphin’s thought to have responded
to a human voice, as the tale of Arion’s lyre noted.
And learn to sweep both hands across the genial harp
that too is suitable for our sweet fun.
Let Callimachus, be known to you, Coan Philetas
and the Teian Muse of old drunken Anacreon:
And let Sappho be yours (well what’s more wanton?),
Menander, whose master’s gulled by his Thracian slaves’ cunning.
and be able to recite tender Propertius’s song,
or some of yours Gallus or Tibullus:
and the high-flown speech of Varro’s fleece
of golden wool, Phrixus, your sister Helle’s lament:
and Aeneas the wanderer, the beginnings of mighty Rome,
than which there is no better known work in Latin.
And perhaps my name will be mingled with those,
my works not all given to Lethe’s streams:
and someone will say: ‘Read our master’s cultured song,
in which he teaches both the sexes: or choose
from the three books stamped with the title Amores,
that you recite softly with sweetly-teachable lips:
or let your voice sing those letters he composed, the Heroides:
he invented that form unknown to others.’
O grant it so, Phoebus! And, you, sacred powers of poetry,
great horned Bacchus, and the Nine goddesses!
Book III Part VIII: Learn Dancing, Games
Who doubts I’d wish a girl to know how to dance,
and move her limbs as decreed when the wine goes round?
The body’s artistes, the theatre’s spectacle, are loved:
so great’s the gracefulness of their agility.
A few things shameful to mention, she must know how to call
the throws at knucklebones, and your values, you rolled dice:
sometimes throwing three, sometimes thinking, closely,
how to advance craftily, how to challenge.
She should play the chess match warily not rashly,
where one piece can be lost to two opponents,
and a warrior wars without his companion who’s been taken,
and a rival often has to retrace the journey he began.
Light spills should be poured from the open bag,
nor should a spill be disturbed unless she can raise it.
There’s a kind of game, the board squared-off by as many lines,
with precise calculation, as the fleeting year has months:
a smaller board presents three stones each on either side
where the winner will have made his line up together.
There’s a thousand games to be had: it’s shameful for a girl
not to know how to play: playing often brings on love.
But there’s not much labour in knowing all the moves:
there’s much more work in keeping to your rules.
We’re reckless, and revealed by eagerness itself,
and in a game the naked heart’s exposed:
Anger enters, ugly mischief, desire for gain,
quarrels and fights and anxious pain:
accusations fly, the air echoes with shouts,
and each calls on their outraged deities:
there’s no honour, they seek to cancel their debts at whim:
and often I’ve seen cheeks wet with tears.
Jupiter keep you free from all such vile reproaches,
you who have any anxiety to please men.
Book III Part IX: Be Seen Around
Idle Nature has allotted these games to girls:
men have more opportunity to play.
Theirs the swift ball, the javelin and the hoop,
and arms, and horses made to go in a circle.
You have no Field of Mars, no ice-cold Aqua Virgo,
you don’t swim in the Tiber’s calm waters.
But it’s fine to be seen out walking in the shade of Pompey’s Porch when your head’s on fire with Virgo’s heavenly horses:
visit the holy Palatine of laurel-wreathed Phoebus:
he sank Cleopatra’s galleys in the deep:
the arcades Livia, Caesar’s wife, and his sister, Octavia, started,
and his son-in-law Agrippa’s, crowned with naval honours:
visit the incense-smoking altars of the Egyptian heifer,
visit the three theatres, take some conspicuous seat:
let the sand that’s drenched with warm blood be seen,
and the impetuous wheels rounding the turning-post.
What’s hidden is unknown: nothing unknown’s desired:
there’s no prize for a face that truly lacks a witness.
Though you excel Thamyras and Amoebeus in song,
there’s no great applause for an unknown lyre.
If Apelles of Cos had never sculpted Venus,
she’d be hidden, sunk beneath the waters.
What do sacred poets seek but fame?
It’s the final goal of all our labours.
Poets were once the concern of gods and kings:
and the ancient chorus earned a big reward.
A bard’s dignity was inviolable: his name was honoured,
and he was often granted vast wealth.
Ennius earned it, born in Calabria’s hills,
buried next to you, great Scipio.
Now the ivy wreaths lie without honour, and the painful toil
of the learned Muses, in the night, has the name of idleness.
But he’s delighted to stay awake for fame: who’d know Homer,
if his immortal work the Iliad were unknown?
Who’d know of Danae, if she’d always been imprisoned,
and lay hidden, an old woman, in her tower?
Lovely girls, the crowd is useful to you.
Often lift your feet above the threshold.
The wolf shadows many sheep, to snatch just one,
and Jupiter’s eagle stoops on many birds.
So too a lovely woman must let the people see her:
and perhaps there’ll be one among them she attracts.
Keen to please she’ll linger in all those places,
and apply her whole mind to caring for her beauty.
Chance rules everywhere: always dangle your bait:
the fish will lurk in the least likely pool.
Often hounds wander the wooded hills in vain,
and the deer, un-driven, walks into the net.
What was less hoped for by Andromeda, in chains,
than that her tears could please anyone?
Often a lover’s found at a husband’s funeral: walking
with loosened hair and unchecked weeping suits you.
Book III Part X: Beware of False Lovers
Avoid those men who profess to looks and culture,
who keep their hair carefully in place.
What they tell you they’ve told a thousand girls:
their love wanders and lingers in no one place.
Woman, what can you do with a man more delicate than you,
and one perhaps who has more lovers too?
You’ll scarcely credit it, but credit this: Troy would remain,
if Cassandra’s warnings had been heeded.
Some will attack you with a lying pretence of love,
and through that opening seek a shameful gain.
But don’t be tricked by hair gleaming with liquid nard,
or short tongues pressed into their creases:
don’t be ensnared by a toga of finest threads,
or that there’s a ring on every finger.
Perhaps the best dressed among them all’s a thief,
and burns with love of your finery.
‘Give it me back!’ the girl who’s robbed will often cry,
‘Give it me back!’ at the top of her voice in the cattle-market.
Venus, from your temple, all glittering with gold,
you calmly watch the quarrel, and you, Appian nymphs.
There are names known for a certain sort of reputation too,
they’re guilty of deceiving many lovers.
Learn from other’s grief to fear your own:
don’t let the door be opened to lying men.
Athenian girls, beware of trusting Theseus’s oaths:
those gods he calls to witness, he’s called on before.
And you, Demophoon, heir to Theseus’s crimes,
no honour remains to you, with Phyllis left behind.
If they promise truly, promise in as many words:
and if they give, you give the joys that were agreed.
She might as well put out the sleepless Vestal’s fire,
and snatch the holy relics from your Temple, Ino,
and give her man hemlock and monkshood crushed together,
as deny him sex if she’s received his gifts.
...Book III contd...... |
