PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO was born at Sulmo--the modern Sulmona--on March the 20th, 43 B.C. He was fortunate in his birthplace, and it may not perhaps be over fanciful to ascribe the airy charm, the delicate grace, which his Muse so plentifully displays, at least as much to his early environment as to heredity. Sulmo, indeed, lies amid a region of great natural beauty. Its pastures, as Ovid himself tells us, were cool and rich, it produced abundant crops of corn, and yet so light and fine was the soil that the vine and the olive flourished there in profusion. It was a land of streams, of streams that hurried down from the mountains so clear and cold that the place is called by the poets "gelidus Sulmo." Even in the hottest of Italian summers, when the canicular is at its height, its meadows are fresh and green and its atmosphere sparkling and salubrious.
Ovid's family was of hereditary equestrian rank and possessed a sufficiency if not an abundance of wealth. The poet was proud of his ancestry and his family traditions, and he is careful to impress upon us that he is no upstart, no parvenu, emphatically not one of the postwar rich, as we are wont to say nowadays. At an early age he and his only brother--his elder by exactly a year--brought up in their father's house with the care and attention that would naturally be bestowed on the sons of well-to-do and aristocratic parents, were sent to continue their education in Rome. It was their father's intention that they should both follow the profession of advocate, and with this purpose in view they were sent to study rhetoric under two of the most celebrated professors of that art--Porcius Latro and Arellius Fuscus. For in the Rome of Ovid's time, though the days of the great political orators were gone for ever, oratory, the lucrative and harmless oratory of the schools or the bar, was a highly popular pursuit. The elder brother, Lucius, appears to have devoted himself to his studies with a will. Ovid's tastes, however, lay in a very different direction. He tried hard to follow the parental injunctions and to make himself an effective advocate, but he achieved only indifferent success. The elder Seneca tells us that he once heard Ovid delivering a speech before his master Fuscus, and he gives us to understand that the effort was more remarkable for the beauty of its phrasing than for its argumentative power. Indeed he describes the speech as nothing more or less than poetry without metre. Ovid himself confesses that, try as he would to declaim in prose, he constantly found himself gliding into poetry. He "lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." His heart was with the Muses. He wanted to be, not a barrister, but a poet. One can imagine the paternal chagrin when the boy made known his ambitions. A country gentleman with family traditions, and not too much money to throw away, could hardly be expected to look with favour on poetry. As a pastime, well enough perhaps, but rather effeminate. As a profession, mere starvation. Naso père seems to have entertained the typical country squire's contempt for "those writing fellows" and to have given expression to it in no ambiguous terms. So for a time, at least, our poet had to stick to his declamatory exercises and turn his back on the Muses. It is clear that had his father remained obdurate, Ovid might well have achieved no more than mediocrity as a professional barrister, have filled with tolerable credit a few minor offices of State and, in course of time, have gone back to Sulmo to wear out the evening of his days in such innocent pursuits as usually fall to the lot of retired Civil servants with landed interests and a private income. The prudent and level-headed father would have had his way; the world would have lost one of its most delightful poets, and the literatures of Italy, France and England would have been immeasurably the poorer. But when Ovid had attained the age of nineteen or thereabouts, an event occurred which averted the threatened triumph of parental common-sense. That event was the death of Ovid's elder brother Lucius. His removal from the scene, though we have no reason to doubt that Ovid sincerely regretted it, went a long way to disarm the parental opposition, which had always been based on practical grounds of finance, for obviously what would have provided a bare sufficiency for two would furnish an easy if not abundant competence for one. Ovid doubtless returned to the charge and pressed his suit with the persuasive eloquence which his genius and his training would have placed at his command. His father, realising, like the good sensible man he was, that it is useless trying to drive a nail where it won't go, and wisely concluding that a willing poet is better than a reluctant advocate, "sealed his hard consent." Whether Ovid would have gone to Athens had he followed the forensic career designed for him by his father is perhaps doubtful, but, for the man of letters, and above all for the poet, such a crown to his education was in the highest degree desirable; so to Athens he went, much in the same way that a public school boy of to-day goes up to Oxford or Cambridge. What he did there we do not know. He himself, usually so communicative about his own affairs, contents himself with informing us that he went there for purposes of study. He would, at all events, have learned to read Homer, Euripides and Sophocles. A knowledge of Greek was in those days a mark of a superior education, and Greek he certainly acquired; but whatever he learned or did not learn--and we can scarcely picture this child of the Muses as a fort-en-thème, a determined reading man--we may be quite sure that he was not insensible to the beauty of the incomparable city to which his good fortune had sent him, or to the charm of the region in which it was set, and Attica, with its delicate and brilliant atmosphere, with its soil so favourable to the vine and olive, may well have reminded him of his native Sulmo.
His sojourn in Athens was followed by a tour which he made in company with Pompeius Macer, another youthful aspirant to poetic fame. In the course of these leisurely wanderings the two young men visited Sicily and the famous Greek cities of Western Asia Minor, bathing their spirits in the perennial springs from which Anacreon and Theocritus derived their inspiration. Altogether Ovid was away from Rome about three years. When he returned he sought, probably at his father's instigation, and obtained, certain public appointments, which, though not in themselves of great importance, were stepping-stones to the quæstor-ship, an office which, under the Empire, was shorn of much of its ancient importance, notably the care of the treasury, but which nevertheless carried with it the right to a seat in the Senate. He successively discharged the duties of Triumvir Capitalis, whose functions largely corresponded with those of a modern police magistrate, and Decemvir Stlitibus Judicandis, a member of a tribunal for the trial of private causes, representing the præetor. If, however, the father had entertained the hope that the fulfilment of these offices would divert his son from his poetic ambitions, that hope was doomed to disappointment, for, though Ovid appears to have filled these preliminary positions with credit, he made what his father at least must have considered il gran rifiuto. He declined the quæstorship, and exchanged the broad purple band which he had worn as a future member of the Senate for the narrower stripe to which he was entitled as a member of the equestrian order. In other words, he decided to retire into private life, preferring, it would seem, to indulge his dilettantism and to enjoy the distractions of society, as the fancy took him, rather than to incur the diminution of his freedom which the adoption of a public career would have necessarily involved.
When he was very young, scarcely more than a boy, Ovid was married, to a wife who was probably chosen for him by his parents. All we know about this union is that it was speedily dissolved. Another wife was promptly discovered, the bride on this occasion being a native of Falisci in Etruria and a woman of some social standing. Ovid's attitude towards her appears to have been dictated by respect rather than affection--he confesses that her conduct gave him nothing to complain of, yet the second marriage lasted but little, if any, longer than the first. All his devotion, in those early days, seems to have been reserved for the mistress whom he celebrates in his earliest poem, "The Loves," under the name of Corinna. Who Corinna was we do not know. That she was not Julia, as Sidonius Apollinaris would have us believe, is as certain as that she was a real and not an imaginary personage. How long Corinna continued to reign supreme in Ovid's heart is a matter of conjecture. Her dominion had probably come to an end some considerable time before his marriage with his third wife, to whom he appears to have been sincerely attached. Since his daughter, Perilla, the fruit of this third union, had attained the age of twenty and was herself married when Ovid was banished., A.D. 8, the marriage could scarcely have taken place later than 12 B.C. Until his fiftieth year Ovid lived at Rome in a house near the Capitol, whence, from time to time, he would go to seek refreshment and repose on his country estate at Sulmo. It seemed as though everything had combined to make Ovid's lot a happy one. Endowed with talents that shone with special lustre even among the brilliant society of the day, blest with sufficient but not burdensome wealth, popular with the men, idolized by the women, smiled on by Augustus himself, Ovid seemed to be indeed a favourite of the gods. But suddenly, when the barometer of his fortune was at its height, this brilliant and fascinating child of the age, this refined and delicate voluptuary, was commanded by an Imperial edict to quit Rome and to take himself to Tomi, a town on the Euxine, by the mouths of the Danube and on the very confines of the Empire. Though the sentence which thus fell upon him was harsh enough, it was not as terrible as it might have been. It was not an exsilium, but a relegatio. He did not lose his citizenship, he was permitted to enjoy the income of his property, to correspond with his friends and to indulge in the hope (alas, illusory!) of ultimate pardon. Still, even with all these mitigating circumstances, such a fate would have been hard enough on any man. On a man of Ovid's habits and disposition it was peculiarly so. The place of his banishment was surrounded and continually threatened by hostile and barbarous tribes. The cold was so intense that the snow would sometimes remain unmelted from one winter to another. The wine turned to ice in the jar; the broad waters of the Danube were often frozen completely over, and afforded but too easy a viaduct to the men and horses of the barbarian foe, when they came to murder, outrage and destroy.
Probably Ovid exaggerated the horrors of his situation in the hopes of moving the Emperor's pity. Those hopes, to which he clung with despairing tenacity, were destined never to be fulfilled, and he died in exile, A.D. 18, in the sixtieth year of his age.
What was the real cause of his banishment is, and will probably always remain, a mystery, for the publication of the Ars Amatoria was obviously but a mere pretext and could have deceived nobody. It certainly did not deceive Ovid, for whenever he mentions the ostensible cause of his misfortune,, he darkly alludes to another which he never discloses. He is continually harping on a "Carmen" and an "Error." The "Carmen" was the Ars Amatoria; what the "Error" was he never reveals. It is commonly supposed that, in some way or another, he had given serious offence to Livia and that the poet's banishment was due to the machinations of that redoubtable woman.
It may have been so, or it may merely have been that Augustus, with the shadows of oncoming age descending upon him, viewed with misgiving the increasing licentiousness of the times, the growing corruption, which had not spared even the members of his own household, and which the sternest legislation seemed unable to repress, and that he therefore determined to make an example of those who were most conspicuously identified with the dissolute society he thought it his duty to castigate, foremost amongst whom was the unhappy Ovid. If, as is not improbable, Ovid was privy to the adulterous intercourse of the younger Julia with Silanus, he, as well as the erring lovers, would, by the lex de adulteriis, have been liable to the capital sentence, so that in suffering a mere relegatio, the milder form of exile, he may be considered to have got off lightly.
The society into which Ovid was received after his refusal of the quæstorship, and in which he gained that intimate knowledge of women which make his love poems such masterpieces of feminine psychology, was one of the most brilliant that the world has ever known. Out of the welter of conflicting forces and rival ambitions which had so long distracted the Roman State, the crafty and patient Augustus had emerged triumphant. The era of bloodshed, of political strife and social insecurity was over. The shadow of civil conflict which had so long oppressed men's minds had at length departed, and, even if the last vestiges of political freedom had vanished with it, the loss was forgotten, at least temporarily, in the joyfulness with which the dawning of what promised, and indeed proved, to be a long era of peace and settled government was universally acclaimed.
The age in which Ovid flourished was singularly favourable to the cultivation of the arts. It was a luxurious, pleasure-loving age if you will, but at the same time it was an age of extraordinary elegance and refinement, and Ovid was one of the choicest and most typical of its products. He flung himself with zest into this brilliant and witty society, a society which he was destined to immortalize in his verse, and its members, recognizing in him a rare and congenial spirit, welcomed him with open arms. He was, in fact, an immediate and an immense success. Being a man of breeding and education, as well as the possessor of brilliant natural gifts, no door, however exclusive, was closed against him. He was a delightful companion, a brilliant talker, a tremendous favourite with the women, as well as a most observant and penetrating student of their psychology. "The Loves," the first of the three poems included in this volume, was also the first work published by Ovid. Originally, as the poet himself tells us, it consisted of five books, subsequently compressed into three, and the "elegies" of which it is made up are for the most part written to or concerned with his mistress. Who the Corinna was whom he celebrates in his "Loves" is, as we have stated, unknown. She was clearly a woman of some social standing. In an early elegy he commends himself to her favour by the merits of his poetry the purity of his morals, and by the vow he makes to her of his unchangeable fidelity. "I am none of these," he avers, "who love a hundred women at a time; I am no fickle philanderer. Whatsoever the tale of years the fates may spin for me, I will pass them at thy side, and dying be lamented by thee." At length, after a long siege, she surrenders, and Ovid is in the seventh heaven. Alas for the frailty of lovers' vows! We turn but a page or two, and we find him cursing himself for laying violent hands upon her in a fit of rage. But amantium iræ! It's soon made up; they are fast friends again, and in a poem of singular beauty he upbraids the Dawn for hastening her coming, and so tearing him from her side.
Women in Ovid's time were no less slaves to fashion than they are in ours. In these days of bobbing and shingling and permanent waving and henna dyeing, what a note of actuality rings in the reproaches he addresses to Corinna for dyeing and crimping her hair till she has nearly lost it all, and is compelled to conceal her baldness with a toupet made from the tresses of a German slave-girl! How many a lover in these days has had to deplore that his Corinna, or his Neobule, or his Cynara has wilfully deprived herself of the aureole with which the gods had endowed her.
A little while ago he was vowing eternal fidelity to Corinna, yet a few pages further on, incorrigible rogue, he is confessing that every type of beauty sets his heart on fire. Here is a girl who is shy and demure. That's enough, the flame's alight. Here's one that's out for prey. Good! She's bound to be an adept at the art of love. Here's one that's learned. He loves her because she's clever. And this one's quite unlearned. Her naïveté enthrals him. This girl tells him he's a better poet than Callimachus. How nice of her! This one says he's no poet at all. Yet he longs to have her in his arms. And so, dark or fair, short or tall, slim or plump, the girlish novice, the woman of experience he adores them all. "In a word, of all the beauties they rave about in Rome, there's none whose lover I am not fain to be."
But if men were deceivers ever, it is no less certain that
"Souvent femme varie,
Bien fol qui s'y fie,"
for in the very next elegy we find him upbraiding his mistress, whom he has detected acting falsely towards him. "I saw you making eyes at him. I saw what you wrote in wine on the table. I saw you kiss him, when you thought I was asleep. And what a kiss it was! Not the sort of kiss a girl gives her brother, but such as a loving mistress might bestow upon her eager lover." And then they make it up and she kisses him; kisses him so voluptuously that all his old suspicions are aroused again, for he wonders where she learnt the art to such perfection. "Was it that fellow who taught her?--And in bed too, perhaps!"
And now Corinna accuses him of carrying on an intrigue with her maid Cypassis. He is very indignant and swears by all that's holy that he's innocent of the charge. How could she imagine he would do such a thing, with a mere servant-girl too! And then, no sooner is he alone with Cypassis than he asks her in tones of amazement: "How ever did she find out? Who, or what, could have given us away? Anyhow, I satisfied her and she thinks it's all right. I got you out of a nice scrape, and now in payment for that good deed, my dusky Cypassis, grant me your favours to-day. What, you refuse? Nay then, in that case I shall turn King's evidence and tell your mistress all that we have done, when and where and how." We may be sure that Cypassis did not persist in her refusal.
And so it goes on to the end of the chapter. Ovid "could resist everything except temptation," and temptations were so plentiful in Rome. He loved Corinna--in his fashion. But there were many interludes--on his part and on hers. She came to consoling herself, and that liberally. He knew, poor fellow; and yet he could not give her up. "I have had a lot to put up with," he exclaims one day, "and I've put up with it a great deal too long! I am completely out of patience with you. I've done with you. No, no more kisses; it's no good talking like that any more; your words don't move me now. I'm not the madman I used to be." Brave words these. But no sooner are they out of his mouth than something catches at his heart. And forthwith he begins to chant his palinode. "Oh, this wavering heart of mine!" he cries. "How it is wrenched this way and that, torn simultaneously by love and hate. And love, I think, is winning. . . . I can live neither with you nor without you. Helpless, indeed, am I!" And then he surrenders completely. "Forgive me," he implores her, "by all the gods who lend themselves so often to thy false oaths; by that face that seems to me a thing divine, and by thine eyes which have made captives of mine."
A striking contrast this with the sane, smiling, softly ironic philosophy of Horace. "Boy, fetch the unguents and the garlands and the wine and then go round to Neaera's; tell her I want her and bid her make haste. But if the janitor's surly and you have any fuss, give it up and come away. Passion grows cool when the hair turns grey. I shouldn't have stood such a thing, though, in my young days, when Plancus was Consul." Heart-whole Horace had managed to remain, even when jilted by Pyrrha, who, reclining on her couch of roses, shines down the ages with the clear-cut perfection of the cameo. "Who's the happy youth now, Pyrrha? For whom are you braiding your fair tresses, you model of simple grace? Poor fellow, he little knows what's in store for him who thinks you will always be sparkling and lovely as the sunlit sea. He'll find out to his cost how suddenly the squalls come on. I was nearly done for once, but thank heaven I escaped." For Horace women were an interlude, a pastime. If he felt inclined for Lydia, or Glycera, or Neobule, and she was free to come, so much the better. If not, he just shrugged his shoulders and thought of other things.
But Ovid, despite his own peccadilloes, and her passades, could not live without his Corinna. He had not yet acquired the wisdom which came with later years and which he set forth in such masterly fashion in his Remedia Amoris. Home is not home without her. "Behold me," he writes to her from the land of his birth, "behold me at Sulmo, in the land of the Peligni. It is a little spot, but bright and clear with its streams of sparkling water. Though the scorching sun may crack the earth, though the dog-star shines its fiercest, limpid streamlets wind their way across the fields of the Peligni, and there the grass is always green. The land with corn is rich and with the vine is richer still. The olive, too, flourishes in profusion on the light, loose soil. The rivulets, meandering among, the meadows, clothe the moist earth with shadowy verdure.
"But here my love is not. Or stay--my love is here, but not the object of my love. I would not live in heaven itself without you." He seems, he tells her, to be dwelling not in the fair land of the Peligni, not in the familiar home of his ancestors, but in the heart of Scythia, or among the grim Cilicians, or the Britons who smear themselves with green stain--and all because she is not there beside him. The conclusion is charming: "If thou hast any pity for me in my lonely state, begin to make thy words bear fruit in deeds." She had promised never to quit his side:--"Quick, up with you into your little chaise, and with your own hands shake the reins about your horses' flying manes. And you, ye swelling hills, abase yourselves before her as she comes; ye paths in the winding vales, be smooth beneath her feet."
The Art of Love, in which he sets forth the rules of amatory intrigue, is divided into three parts. Of these, the first deals with choosing the woman to whom you intend to lay siege. "First catch your hare." The hunter knows where to spread his nets to enmesh the stag; the fowler where to smear his bird-lime; the fisherman what waters most abound in fish. As for the lover, he has no need to journey far. Here in Rome, beneath his very eyes, he'll find every type of beauty; 'tis a very embarras de richesses. Let him take a stroll through the porticoes of Pompey or of Livia, he'll discover plenty of pretty women to choose from. And the theatre! There they abound as thick as the bees that hover among the flowers and the thyme. The Circus, too, is another place most favourable to love, for there you have to sit close, you cannot help it, and it's so easy to begin a conversation. Then, you arrange a cushion for her and find a place for her to rest her feet; a speck of dust lights on her bosom: you flick it off. And if it isn't there, you flick it off just the same. Boldness is the essence of success. It's no use waiting for the woman to make the first advance. Enter the fray with a stout heart. Not one woman in a thousand will offer any serious resistance. She may put up a fight, but she'll be sorry if she wins, however pleased. She may try to look. Pay plenty of compliments, unlimited compliments, but don't start giving costly presents. That's an error, and you'll find there'll be no end to it. She'll have a birthday every time she wants you to buy her something. Study the fine arts. Adorn your mind so that you may interest her with your conversation. In whatever you say or write to her, avoid the highbrow style. Don't talk to her like a professor, or as if you were addressing a meeting. That's fatal. Keep on the best of terms with her husband. If, when the dice are thrown, chance crowns you monarch of the feast, take off your wreath and place it on his brow. Drink moderately, never overdo it. Simulate drunkenness, if you like, because that will afford you an excuse for saying things you would not dare to say when sober.
If she treats you with hauteur, cool off a little. Don't let her think you too importunate. Above all suit the treatment to the case. Different women require different methods.
The first part of the Art of Love, then, instructs the lover how to win his mistress. In the second part, the poet sets out to teach his pupil what is certainly no less important, and that is, how to retain her. Good looks are something, but charm of manner is a great deal more. Pleasant words--like music--are the food of love. Never squabble. Quarrels are the dowry which married folk bring one another. A mistress should only hear agreeable things. This, and all his counsels, are intended for lovers of small or moderate incomes. If a man has got money, there's no need for him to learn the Art of Love. Money is the sure passport to a woman's favours. If you are not endowed with wealth, you must make up for it in other ways. Pander to her when she's well; pet her and coddle her when she's sick. Don't make her take nasty medicine, or put her on a lowering diet. Leave that sort of thing to your rival. And don't try to rush things. Gradually make yourself indispensable to her; and when you are sure that she will long for you, leave her alone for a bit, so that your absence may give her some anxiety. But don't stay away too long. Out of sight may eventually be out of mind. If you've had a little dalliance elsewhere (and no man can be expected to stick wholly to one woman), don't, when you come back to your mistress, be sheepish or gushing. To be either is a sure sign of a guilty conscience and is bound to give you away. Satisfy her, if she isn't pleased with you, in the only way a woman can be satisfied. Never spy on a woman. Even if they tell you your mistress is out, when you know very well she's in don't make a fuss. Make believe she is out and that your eyes have deceived you.
In these clays when women of forty, like the little girl in Punch, have often still got "a past before them," it will gladden many hearts to hear that Ovid considered a woman only really interesting when she had passed the age of thirty-five. "No new wine for me!" he cries. "Let me have a rich and mellow vintage."
The third part of his treatise he reserves for advice to women. "Never fear," he says to those who would have it he was arming the enemy, "women are not as black as they're painted. We must not condemn the whole sex for the crimes of a few. Helen, Clytemnestra, Eriphyle--these were certainly not shining examples; but look at Penelope, look at Laodamia, look at Alcestis. No; Virtue is a woman both in vesture and in name."
Let them make haste, and not be niggard of their favours while they are yet young. Old age and wrinkles and white hair will come all too soon. Such is the burden of his counsel. Good looks are a fine thing, but they're rare. But a careful toilet will make a woman attractive, and without it the loveliest faces lose their charm.
"Let who will praise the ancient days when Tatius was king and all the women housewives. I am a child of the age. I find it better suited to my tastes not because we've got a lot of gold and wear expensive clothes, but because we know how to enjoy the amenities of life and have discarded the boorish ways of our forefathers. Dress well, but do not over-dress; smell sweet; attend to your teeth; see that your legs are not hairy; learn the art of cosmetics, but don't powder and paint before your lover--these are some of his excellent injunctions. Learn how to walk, how to laugh, and even how to weep, for there's a right and a wrong way of doing everything. Above all, if you want to keep your good looks, keep your temper. A woman is never so ugly as when she's in a rage. If your lover's getting lukewarm, let him scent a rival. Don't let him think he's the only pebble on the beach. Don't gourmandize, and don't drink to excess. There is no sight so beastly as a drunken woman." Then, with some further advice, some intimate instructions, which formed the pretext for his exile, he concludes.
As one turns these pages, one cannot but reflect how little, in essentials, the world of society, the beau monde has changed since Ovid's day. Take away the accidental circumstances, change the mise-en-scène from Augustan Rome to Paris or London, and the poem might have been written yesterday. No; woman has not changed, nor man, nor the way of a man with a woman, or of a woman with a man. It is true that the loves Ovid sings have little in common with the grande passion. The love that ends in ruin, despair and death is not for him. Such passions are enemies to wit and gaiety, and would be terribly out of place in this careless, frivolous, pleasure-loving, elegant and highly sophisticated society, a society in which the revelation of any depth of feeling would have been considered somewhat ridiculous and condemned as "bad form," even as it would be in our own. No vows of eternal fidelity for Ovid! He knew well enough that à la fin on se lasse de tout. "If Tereus had had recourse to my remedies, if I had been there to prescribe for him, he would never have gone off his head about Philomel and never have been changed into a bird for his sins." Pasiphaë would have given up her bull, Phædra would have seen the error of her ways; Paris would have pulled up in time, and there would have been no Trojan wars; Dido would never have slain herself for Æneas. Those myrtle groves, whereof Virgil sings, and within whose shade wander the ghosts of those whom hopeless love consumes, would, if Ovid could have had his way, have been eternally untenanted.
This Art of Love is indeed a miracle of a poem. There had been nothing like it in the Roman world before. Gallantry was a new cult to the Romans and Ovid was its high priest. The Comedy of Love! Here we have all the charming and familiar ingredients--the promenades, the whispered confidences, the secret assignations, the fops and the dandies, the billets-doux, the presents, the dainty dresses, the lover's pleadings, the mistress's disdain, the kissings and the quarrellings, the cuckold husband and the obliging--the very obliging--maid, the perfume, the powder, the courtliness, the wit, the raillery, the naughtiness, the rippling laughter--all the familiar stock-in-trade of the perennial comedy whose setting is now Rome, now Paris, now Versailles, or Bath or Vauxhall or the Mall. Here, in this Art of Love, we assist, as it were, at the birth of the World of Gallantry. Here is the world in which later on the de Grammonts, the de Lauzuns, the Rochesters, the Buckinghams, Beau Nash and Beau Brummell et hoc genus omne, were to find themselves so thoroughly at home.
And what a man of taste he is, this Ovid; with the true exquisite's abhorrence of vulgar display. Elegance is his watchword, but it is elegance based on the most scrupulous cleanliness. It's no good wearing fine clothes if your nails are in mourning; and--this he is never weary of reiterating--it is not only the body but the mind we must adorn. Music, poetry, dancing, there's none so fair--whether man or woman--who can afford to disdain these accomplishments. And these charming, but not very difficult, ladies, how beautiful they were, and what a wealth of care and artifice and what a troop of artists it needed to dress them, to do their hair, to emphasise their beauty or repair the ravages of time! There was the slave who removed grey and superfluous hair, a slave to comb and brush my lady's unbraided tresses; a slave for her pomades, another for her perfumes. It was the duty of one to apply the rouge and of another to paint her eyebrows and eyelashes and to shade her eyelids; another had to see to her hands, another to polish and adorn her feet. There were the wardrobe-maids and the tire-women, the ornatrices, who put on her necklaces and saw to her jewellery. One slave was skilled at holding the mirror, another at holding the torch-and when at length my lady is sufficiently bedecked, adorned, tricked out, bathed and aired, powdered and scented; when, in a word, she looks as if she has just stepped out of a bandbox, the door is flung open to admit the women-critics, the experts, who give just one last look to see that everything is just perfection.
It has been said that with the mere names of the things that composed Corinna's trousseau Ovid could have made a poem. First came the little flimsy garment woven of silk or linen, and artfully embroidered. Then the castula, which reached up to the throat, and the indusiata, which went on over it. There were the brassières to hold in a too voluminous bosom; the scarf which fell about her white shoulders from her lofty head dress; veils of every hue. As to the different dresses that a Lesbia, a Corinna or a Neaera might wear, one would have a train like the dress worn to-day by a great lady at Court. There was a wonderful diaphanous thing called the "laconic." There was the crocula, a short saffron-coloured dress; there was the impluvia, a dress worn on days of mourning, or when it was raining. As for tunics and cloaks, they were as divers as the dresses. There was the long tunic with a fringe, the short one just reaching to the knee and flounced with fur; the calthula, a sort of yellow mantilla; tunics closely woven, tunics loosely woven. There was a marvellous thing called the man-killer, because it was caught up high at the bottom and liberally displayed the wearer's person.
There was a bewildering assortment of implements and instruments in Corinna's dressing-room and on Corinna's dressing-table: scissors, razors, files, various brushes for the teeth, the nails, the hair, combs of every shape, a preparation of burnt cork for darkening the eyelashes; soaps, pastes, cosmetics, phials of scent; "strigils," that is, little ivory currycombs for rubbing and cleansing the skin after the bath; hair-nets, wigs, false teeth; oiled pumice-stone for giving a polish to the arms, neck and shoulders; paint red and white; pomades both emollient and astringent; necklaces and earrings; hair-pins in infinite variety, gold chains, brooches, bracelets, rings, cameos, artificial flowers, chaplets enriched with pearls and precious stones, butterflies, grasshoppers, flies made out of gems, cloaks embroidered and fringed, scarves inwrought with silver and gold, girdles sparkling with precious stones, frontlets, ribands, veils, shoes and so on ad infinitum.
The Remedia Amoris contains a variety of precepts too sound to admit of any other conclusion than that the physician had himself suffered from the disease in its most acute form. "If you can take it in time," he says, "before it has got a hold on you, cut it out. If you can't, wait a little until the attack has spent its force. Then drink deep of the cup of love. Drink to satiety. Drink till you're sick. And find work to occupy your mind: love thrives on idleness. Take up farming, gardening, shooting, fishing. Above all, go away. There's nothing like a long journey and change of scene to remove 'this something-settled matter in the heart.' If you've got to stay on in town willy-nilly, don't go near the places where you used to meet her; cut her friends, burn her letters, destroy her portrait and--get another mistress. And remember, if you can go on long enough pretending you're cured, you'll be cured indeed." Thus spoke Ovid in the first century, and thus speaks Dr. Coué in the twentieth. Verily, there's nothing new under the sun.
The Art of Beauty is a fragment of one hundred lines. He begins by telling his fair pupils what he had already impressed upon them in the Art of Love, namely, the importance of cultivating charm of manner. Beauty fades, but charm endures. Then he gives them a recipe or two for their complexions. What these are we leave the reader to discover.
It will readily be seen that in these poems there is no hint of the lacrimæ rerum, the sense of tears in mortal things. All is bright, sunny, sensuous and superficial, incomparably elegant, irresistibly charming, and completely insincere. If the note of sadness steals in once or twice to mingle with the laughter and the lutes, it is but to warn some pretty woman who is niggard of her favours, to make the most of her time while she is still young; ere yet the vandal years have filched the roses from her cheeks and sprent her hair with grey. It is a poetry of the senses, not of the heart, a poetry that is whole worlds away from the grave and melancholy cadences that fell from the lips of Ovid's great compatriot Virgil, that anima naturaliter Christiana. But, like the hymn to Adonis of which Matthew Arnold speaks in his essay on Pagan and Mediæval Religious Sentiment, Ovid's poetry "adapts itself exactly to the tone and temper of a gay and pleasure-loving multitude of light-hearted people who seem never made to be serious, never made to be sick or sorry." Whether or not the world to which Ovid addressed himself was "made to be sick or sorry," it is certain that it did not want to be. It wanted to be amused, and to forget. And so "all unmindful of his doom" Ovid went on gaily singing his careless lays and taking life very easily. He suffered the consequences born of too great a sense of security. Even if he, the amorous butineur of days now past, had more or less settled down to a life of conjugal fidelity--the temptation to err having forsaken him--he probably viewed with sympathy and, when he could, abetted, the moral delinquencies of others. Perhaps he failed to observe the clouds ominously gathering about the Imperial brow, or, if he observed them, cheated himself with the fond belief that their thunders would never discharge themselves upon him or upon his friends. He had ample leisure at Tomi to meditate on the foolishness of putting one's trust in princes.
It is a remarkable thing that, so far as we are aware, no complete translation of the Ars Amatoria, which Macaulay held to be Ovid's finest poem, has hitherto appeared in English. The poem, as Sir Edmund Gosse recently took occasion to remark in discussing the reason of Ovid's exile, contains "nothing so very terrible," and, as he justly proceeds to observe, "Catullus before him and Martial after him were far more indecent, to our modern ears at least, than Ovid, and nobody ever dreamed of banishing or even blaming them." The explanation of this unjust treatment of so delightful a poem is probably to be found in the fact that it was made the pretext for Ovid's banishment. It affords yet another example of the truth contained in the old adage about giving a dog a bad name. The result has been that Ovid, in so far as his Love Poems are concerned, has suffered a second exile that has endured down to the present day. It is no doubt true that the subject matter with which it deals affords inappropriate pabulum for the minds of schoolboys and schoolgirls, but that is a circumstance which, particularly in these days of free discussion, when matters of sex are the favourite theme of our novelists and playwrights, seems to offer no sufficient reason why men and women should be debarred from reading in its entirety a work which is justly regarded as being one of the finest poetical achievements of the Augustan Age.
As for the plates and decorations which enrich this volume, M. Jean de Bosschère is too well known to need any introduction here. When I saw his illustrations to the Golden Asse of Apuleius, with their wonderful power of suggestion, they seemed to me to exhibit a degree of excellence which I thought could not be surpassed. And yet here in his interpretations, for such his drawings are, of these poems of Ovid, he seems to have achieved the impossible, and to have excelled himself. M. de Bosschère possesses in a marked degree the faculty of uniting in a single picture the spirit of the past and the spirit of the present, and that is a faculty particularly valuable in an illustrator of this most modem of the ancients. Where all are excellent it would be difficult to decide to which of these pictures one would award the palm. For my own part I think I should assign the pre-eminence to the picture portraying the "really inexperienced girl," and that not only on account of the beauty of the central figure, but equally, and perhaps chiefly, by reason of the delicate and subtly significant decorative work by which it is embellished.
To attempt to translate Ovid is, of course, to attempt the impossible. The best one can hope for, in such an undertaking, is to fail with honour. It will be apparent to my readers that I have not aimed at strict uniformity of style. I have indeed allowed myself considerable latitude in this respect. The greater part of the Art of Love, for example, seems to go naturally into modern English, and I have not hesitated to employ the most up-to-date language I could think of; but, when the narration of some myth or legend introduced by the poet as an illustration of his precepts seemed to demand a more formal rendering, a more traditional vocabulary, I have adopted a less familiar tone. Nor have I made any great attempt at verbal fidelity; nevertheless, I hope I shall nowhere be found seriously to have betrayed the spirit of the original and that I may even be credited with having preserved, here and there, some faint suggestion of its elegance and charm.
J. LEWIS MAY
BOOK I--THE LOVES
ELEGY I: THE POET EXPLAINS HOW IT IS HE COMES TO SING OF LOVE INSTEAD OF BATTLES
ELEGY II: THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE
ELEGY III: HE COMMENDS HIMSELF TO HIS MISTRESS BY THE MERITS OF HIS POETRY, THE PURITY OF HIS MORALS, AND BY THE VOW OF HIS UNCHANGEABLE FIDELITY
ELEGY IV: OVID, HIS MISTRESS AND HER HUSBAND ARE ALL BIDDEN TO THE SAME SUPPER. HE GIVES HIS MISTRESS A CODE BY WHICH THEY CAN TESTIFY THEIR LOVE FOR EACH OTHER, BENEATH HER HUSBAND'S VERY EYES
ELEGY V: HIS DELIGHT AT HAVING OBTAINED CORINNA'S FAVOURS
ELEGY VI: HE CONJURES THE PORTER TO OPEN THE DOOR OF HIS MISTRESS'S HOUSE
ELEGY VII: HE CURSES HIMSELF FOR HAVING MALTREATED HIS MISTRESS
ELEGY VIII: HE CURSES A CERTAIN OLD WOMAN OF THE TOWN WHOM HE OVERHEARS INSTRUCTING HIS MISTRESS IN THE ARTS OF A COURTESAN
ELEGY IX: HE COMPARETH LOVE WITH WAR
ELEGY X: HE ENDEAVOURS TO DISSUADE HIS MISTRESS FROM BECOMING A COURTESAN
ELEGY XI: HE ASKS NAPE TO DELIVER A LOVE-LETTER TO HER MISTRESS
ELEGY XII: HE CALLS DOWN CURSES ON THE TABLETS WHICH BRING HIM WORD OF HIS MISTRESS'S REFUSAL
ELEGY XIII: HE ENTREATS THE DAWN TO HASTEN NOT HER COMING
ELEGY XIV: TO HIS MISTRESS, WHO, CONTRARY TO HIS COUNSEL, DYED HER HAIR WITH NOXIOUS COMPOSITIONS, AND HAS NEARLY BECOME BALD
ELEGY XV: THE POETS ALONE ARE IMMORTAL
BOOK II
ELEGY I. HE TELLS WHEREFORE, INSTEAD OF THE WARS OF THE GIANTS, WHICH HE HAD COMMENCED, HE IS CONSTRAINED TO SING OF LOVE
ELEGY II. TO THE EUNUCH BAGOAS, BEGGING HIM TO GIVE HIM ACCESS TO THE FAIR ONE COMMITTED TO HIS CHARGE
ELEGY III: HE APPEALS ONCE MORE TO BAGOAS, WHO HAD PROVED INFLEXIBLE
ELEGY IV: HE CONFESSES HIS INCLINATION FOR LOVE AND HIS ADMIRATION FOR ALL MANNER OF WOMEN
ELEGY V: HE UPBRAIDS HIS MISTRESS WHOM HE HAS DETECTED ACTING FALSELY TOWARDS HIM
ELEGY VI: HE LAMENTS THE DEATH OF THE PARROT HE HAD GIVEN TO HIS MISTRESS
ELEGY VII. HE ASSURES CORINNA THAT HE HAS NEVER HAD ANY GUILTY COMMERCE WITH CYPASSIS, HER MAID
ELEGY VIII: HE ASKS CYPASSIS HOW IN THE WORLD CORINNA COULD HAVE FOUND THEM OUT
ELEGY IX. HE BESEECHES CUPID NOT TO DISCHARGE ALL HIS ARROWS AT HIM ALONE
ELEGY X: HE TELLS GRÆCINUS HOW, DESPITE WHAT HE SAYS TO THE CONTRARY, IT IS POSSIBLE TO BE IN LOVE WITH TWO WOMEN AT THE SAME TIME
ELEGY XI: HE SEEKS TO DISSUADE, CORINNA FROM GOING TO BALÆ
ELEGY XII: HE REJOICES AT HAVING AT LAST WON THE FAVOURS OF CORINNA
ELEGY XIII: HE BESEECHES ISIS TO COME TO THE AID OF CORINNA IN HER CONFINEMENT
ELEGY XIV: ON CORINNA'S RECOVERY HE WRITES TO HER AGAIN CONCERNING HER ATTEMPT AT ABORTION, AND TELLS HER HOW NAUGHTY SHE HAS BEEN
ELEGY XV: TO THE RING WHICH HE IS SENDING TO HIS MISTRESS
ELEGY XVI: TO CORINNA, BESEECHING HER TO VISIT HIM IN HIS COUNTRY HOME AT SULMO
ELEGY XVII: HE COMPLAINS TO CORINNA THAT SHE IS TOO CONCEITED ABOUT HER GOOD LOOKS
ELEGY XVIII: TO MACER: TO WHOM HE EXCUSES HIMSELF FOR GIVING HIMSELF UP WHOLLY TO EROTIC VERSE
ELEGY XIX: TO A MAN WITH WHOSE WIFE HE WAS IN LOVE
BOOK III
ELEGY I: THE TRAGIC AND THE ELEGIAC MUSE STRIVE FOR THE POSSESSION OF OVID
ELEGY II: THE CIRCUS
ELEGY III: TO HIS MISTRESS, WHOM HE HAS FOUND TO BE FORSWORN
ELEGY IV: HE URGES A HUSBAND NOT TO KEEP SO STRICT A WATCH ON HIS WIFE
ELEGY V: A DREAM
ELEGY VI: TO A RIVER WHICH HAS OVERFLOWED ITS BANKS AND HINDERED THE PORT, WHO WAS HASTENING TO HIS MISTRESS
ELEGY VII: THE POET REPROACHES HIMSELF FOR HAVING FAILED IN HIS DUTY TOWARDS HIS MISTRESS
ELEGY VIII: TO HIS MISTRESS, COMPLAINING THAT SHE HAS GIVEN PREFERENCE TO A WEALTHIER RIVAL
ELEGY IX: ON THE DEATH OF TIBULLUS
ELEGY X: HE COMPLAINS TO CERES THAT, DURING HER FESTIVAL, HE IS NOT SUFFERED TO SHARE HIS MISTRESS' COUCH
ELEGY XI: WEARY AT LENGTH OF HIS MISTRESS' INFIDELITIES, HE SWEARS THAT HE WILL LOVE HER NO LONGER
ELEGY XII: HE LAMENTS THAT HIS POEMS HAVE MADE HIS MISTRESS TOO WELL KNOWN
ELEGY XIII: THE FESTIVAL OF JUNO AT FALISCI
ELEGY XIV: TO HIS MISTRESS
ELEGY XV: HE BIDS FAREWELL TO HIS WANTON MUSE, TO COURT ONE MORE AUSTERE
THE ART OF LOVE
BOOK I
BOOK II
BOOK III
LOVE'S CURE
THE ART OF BEAUTY
EPIGRAM
We who of late numbered five books, are now but three. 'Twas Ovid our author willed it so. If you win no joy from reading us, the abstraction of two books will at least lessen your displeasure.
WAS about to sing, in heroic strain, of arms and fierce combats. 'Twas a subject suited to my verse, whose lines were all of equal measure. But Cupid, so 'tis said, began to laugh, and stole away one foot. Who was it, cruel boy, gave thee this right to meddle with poetry? We poets belong to the train of the Muses and follow not in thine. What would be said if Venus were to seize upon the arms of golden-haired Minerva, and if golden-haired Minerva were to wave thy lighted torches in the wind? Who would deem it well that Ceres should queen it o'er the wood-crowned heights, and that the tilling of the fields should be the quivered Virgin's care? Shall Apollo, with his glorious tresses, go armed with the spear, what time Mars wakes into song the strings of the Aonian lyre? Too great already are thine empire and thy power; wherefore then, boy, wouldst thou make wider yet the frontiers of thy realm? Is all the world thine? Shall Helicon and the Vale of Tempe call thee master, too? Shall Apollo himself cease to be lord of his own lyre? Brave was the line that sounded the opening of my new poem, but lo! Love comes and stays my soaring flight. No boy have I, nor long-haired girl, to inspire me in these lighter strains.
Such was the burden of my plaint when, on a sudden, Cupid lowered his quiver and drew forth therefrom arrows to pierce my heart. Then, bending his curving bow with a will upon his knee, he said, "Poet, here is matter for thy song." Ah, hapless me, Love's arrow did but all too surely find its mark. On fire am I, and Love, and none but Love now rules my heart that ne'er was slave till now. Now let six feet my book begin, and let it end in five. Farewell fierce War, farewell thy measure too. Only with the myrtle of the salt sea's marge shalt thou bind thy fair head, my Muse, who needs must tune thy numbers to eleven feet.
WHO is it that can tell me why my bed seems so is hard and why the bedclothes will not stay upon it? Wherefore has this night--and oh, how long it was!--dragged on, bringing no sleep to my eyes? Why are my weary limbs visited with restlessness and pain? If it were Love that had come to make me suffer, surely I should know it. Or stay, what if he slips in like a thief, what if he comes, without a word of warning, to wound me with his cruel arts? Yes, 'tis he! His slender arrows have pierced my heart, and fell Love holds it like a conquered land. Shall I yield me to him? Or shall I strive against him, and so add fuel to this sudden flame? Well, I will yield; burdens willingly borne do lighter weigh. I know that the flames will leap from the shaken torch and die away in the one you leave alone. The young oxen which rebel against the yoke are more often beaten than those which willingly submit. And if a horse be fiery, harsh is the bit that tames him. When he takes to -the fray with a will, he feels the curb less galling. And so it is with Love; for hearts that struggle and rebel against him, he is more implacable and stern than for such as willingly confess his sway.
Ah well, be it so, Cupid; thy prey am I. I am a poor captive kneeling with suppliant hands before my conqueror. What is the use of fighting? Pardon and peace is what I ask. And little, I trow, would it redound to your glory, armed as you are, to strike down a defenceless man. Crown thy brows with myrtle and thy mother's doves yoke to thy car. Thy step-father will give thee the chariot that befits thee, and upon that chariot, amid the acclamations of the throng, thou shalt stand a conqueror, guiding with skill thy harnessed birds. Captives in thy train, youths and maidens shall follow, and splendid shall be thy triumph. And I, thy latest victim, shall be there with my fresh wound, and with submissive mien I will bear my new-wrought fetters. Prudence shall be led captive with hands bound behind her back, and Modesty, and whatsoever else is an obstacle to Love. All things shall be in awe of thee, and stretching forth their arms towards thee the throng with mighty voice shall thunder "Io Triumphe!" Caresses shall be thy escort, and Illusion and Madness, a troop that ever follows in thy train. With these fighting on thy side, nor men nor gods shall stand against thee; but if their aid be lacking, naked shalt thou be. Proud to behold thy triumph, thy mother will applaud thee from High Olympus and scatter roses on thy upturned face. Thy wings and thy locks shall be adorned with precious stones, and all with gold resplendent shalt thou drive thy golden car. Then too, if I know thee well, thou wilt set countless other hearts on fire, and many a wound shalt deal as thou passest on thy way. Repose, even when thou art fain to rest, cometh not to thine arrows. Thy ardent flame turns water itself to vapour. Such was Bacchus when he triumphed over the land of the Ganges. Thou art drawn along by doves; his car was drawn by tigers. Since, then, I am to have a part in thy godlike triumph, lose not the rights which thy victory gives thee over me. Bethink thee of the victories of thy kinsman Cæsar; he shields the conquered with the very hand that conquers them.
My prayer is just: let the fair one who has so lately captivated my heart love me ever, or so act that I shall love her ever. Nay, but 'tis too much I ask! Only let her suffer herself to be loved. May Cytherea incline her ear to all my prayers. Vouchsafe thy favours to a lover who swears that he will serve thee through the years, who knows how to love with pure and lasting fidelity. If I have no long line of famous ancestors to recommend me, if the founder of our family is but a simple Knight; if innumerable ploughs be not required to till my fields; if my father and mother are constrained to husband our resources, at least let Apollo and his choir the Nine, and the discoverer of the vine, plead with thee in my behalf and Love who gives me unto thee, and faith that shall fail not, irreproachable morals, guileless sincerity and modesty that knows how to blush. I am none of those who love a hundred women at a time; I am no fickle philanderer. Thou and only thou, believe me, wilt ever be beloved by me. Whatsoever the tale of years the fates may spin for me, I will pass them at thy side, and, dying, be lamented by thee.
Vouchsafe to be the joyful subject of my song, and my songs shall be worthy their theme. 'Twas poesy that gave renown to the nymph Io, affrighted at her horns, and to the fair Leda whom the divine adulterer seduced by taking on the semblance of a swan, and to Europa who, carried off by a fictitious bull, traversed the sea, grasping in her virgin hands the wide horns of her captor. We too shall be sung throughout the world, and ever my name shall be united with thine own.
YOUR husband will be at our supper. May that supper be his last. So I shall only be looking on my beloved as any other of the guests might look on her. The right to caress her belongs to another. Voluptuously lying at another's feet, his is the bosom thou wilt warm. And when he will, he may pat and stroke thy neck. Marvel no more that, her bridal banquet over, the fair Hippodamia excites the monstrous race of the Centaurs to the combat. I dwell not, as do they, in the forests, nor, as they, am I half-man, half-horse; yet it would, I trow, be full hard for me to restrain my ardour and my jealousy. Now learn what it will behove thee to do and suffer not the winds, neither Eurus nor the warm-breathing Notus, to whirl away my words.
See to it that thou comest before thy husband. I do not surely foresee what, if thou dost so, may befall; yet be there before him. When he shall have lain him down beside the table, go thou, with mien demure, and lay thee at his side, but forget not, as thou passest, to rub my foot, but, secretly, so that he shall not see. Never take thine eyes off me; take heed of all my movements and note the discourse of my eyes. Secretly receive, and secretly send forth, these signals of our love. Though they utter no word, my eyebrows shall speak to thee; my fingers, aye, and the very wine itself shall have their language. When thou bethinkest thee of the delights we taste together, thou and 1, pass thy dainty hand o'er the roses of thy cheeks, If there is aught wherewith thou wouldst secretly reproach me, softly, with thy fingers, touch the tip of thine ear. When the signs I make, or the words I speak, delight thee, then be sure, my starry one, to twist thy ring about thy finger.
Touch the table as the priest toucheth the altar, when thou wouldst call down well-merited evils on thy husband. When he shall pour out wine for thee, bid him quaff it himself; then whisper softly to the slave and bid him bring thee the wine thou dost prefer. The cup which thou givest him back, I will drink therefrom, and the place thy lips have touched, there shall my lips touch also. If, peradventure, he offer thee a dish whereof he hath already tasted, put it from, thee. Suffer him not to shower upon thee his unworthy caresses. Lean not thy dainity head upon his uncouth breast; let not his roving fingers touch thy lovely breast; and above all, see that there be no kissing. If thou but give him a single one, I will proclaim myself thy lover; I will say, "These kisses are mine," and I'll clap a heavy hand upon him.
These caresses at least I shall behold with mine eyes, but the fondlings that the table-cover shall conceal from my sight, they are the hidden things that will put my soul to the rack. Put not thy thighs nor thy legs nigh to thy husband, nor touch with thy dainty toes his hard and clumsy foot.
Ah, hapless me; countless are the things of this kind that I dread, for countless are the times I have myself indulged in them. All that I myself have experienced with thee, comes back to-day to torture me. Often times my mistress and I, feeling with our hands beneath our sheltering raiment, have forestalled the sweet moment of delight. Thus thou shalt not do, but so thou mayest free me from the merest shadow of misgiving, lay bare thy shoulders from the mantle that enshrouds them. Cease not to bid thy husband drink; but add no kisses to thy prayers; and so long as he shall be able to swallow, stint not secretly to fill his cup with strong wine. When he is overcome by sleep and liquor, we ourselves will do what the place and the circumstances permit.
When thou risest up to return home, all the company will rise with thee; remember then to place thyself in the midst of the throng. There shalt thou find me, or I thee, and then whatsoever part of me thou canst touch, lay thy hand upon it.
Ay me! These my behests can serve but for an hour or two. The imperious night is at hand that severs me from my mistress. Her husband will have her in keep and hold till the day cometh, and I, weeping sad tears, can but follow her to that cruel door. He will taste her lips, and anon far more than her lips. What thou grantest me in secret, he will demand as his right. But this, at least, give him with reluctance, thus much thou canst do, and as one yielding to superior force. Silent be thy caresses and let Venus be niggard with him. If thou fulfillest my behests, he will taste no delight, and thou at least will feel none in his arms. Howbeit, whatsoever may betide to-night, assure me on the morrow that he hath had no joy of thee.
'TWAS summer, and already past the hour of noon. I flung myself on my couch to rest my limbs. My windows were but half open. The light of my chamber was like the light of the woods, or like the glow which follows after sunset; or father, like the twilight that comes between departing night and dawning day. Such is the light that is befitting for young women of reserve; in its mystery their timid modesty may find concealment.
Behold Corinna cometh, her shift ungirdled, her tresses hanging loose on either side her snowy neck. In such guise did the fair Semiramis offer herself to the caresses of her spouse, and thus did Lais give welcome to her many lovers. I raised her shift, which withal was of so fine a texture that it was but a flimsy obstacle. Howbeit Corinna was not willing to be deprived of her raiment. She strove, but not as one whose will it is to conquer. Soon she gave up the struggle and consented to be conquered.
When, her apparel laid aside, she stood naked before mine eyes, not a blemish was to be seen on her whole body. What shoulders, what arms it was my privilege to behold and to touch. What bliss to press a bosom shaped so perfectly for such caresses. How soft and smooth her skin beneath her lovely breasts, how divine her figure, how firm and plump her thighs. But wherefore should I here tell o'er the number of her charms? Nought did I see that was not perfect, nor was there aught, how thin soe'er, between her lovely body and my own. Need I tell the rest? Wearied, we rested from our toil. May many an afternoon be thus sped by.
HAPLESS porter, laden with unmerited fetters, push me back this cruel door upon its hinges. 'Tis little enough I ask of thee. No, do but open it a little, just enough for me to pass in sideways. I have long been a lover and it has so reduced my body and my limbs that such a thing were easy. 'Tis Love that tells me how to creep in softly in the midst of the guards. 'Tis he that guides me and safeguards my steps.
Time was when I dreaded the night and its empty shadows. I marvelled how anyone could fare forth in the darkness. But Cupid laughed in my face with his gentle mother, and whispered in my ear, "Thou too shalt grow a mettlesome fellow." Love's hour has come; I fear not the mazy shadows of the night, nor weapons uplifted against me. I only fear the slowness of thy movements; thee alone do I cajole; in thy hands thou hold'st the weapon that can undo me. See--and that thou may be the more surely convinced, take down awhile these cruel bars--see how this door is moistened with my tears. This is I, thou knowest it well enough, who seeing that thwackings were about to rain down on thy naked shoulders, interceded for thee with thy mistress. How now! Shall my supplications, which erstwhile proved so powerful in thy behalf, to-day--oh shame!--prove powerless in my own? Come, pay back what thou owest; now mayest thou show thy gratitude to the top of thy bent. The night is passing--slide back the bolts. Open the door, and so may thou be freed for ever from thy long chain and from thy water-drinking serfdom.
Vain are my prayers, O man implacable; harder than iron is thy heart. Thou hearest me and yet thy door of oak is barred against me. That a beleaguered town should need unyielding gates, 'tis well; but in the heyday of peace, what fear hast thou of arms? How wouldst thou treat a foe, if thou repel a lover thus? The night speeds on; slide back the bolts.
I come not as a warrior attended by henchmen. I should be alone, were not cruel Love beside me. Him, even if I desired it, I could not send away. 'Twere easier to sunder my soul from my body. Love, a little a wine in my head, a chaplet slipping from my perfumed hair, these are the things I bring. Who could be scared at them? Who would be daunted by such foes? The night speeds on; slide back the bolts.
Is it thy slowness, is it sleep that is no friend to Love, that makes thee heedless of my prayers and flings them to the winds? Yet, if my memory deceive me not, when, once on a time, I sought to evade thee, I found thee astir in the middle of the night. Peradventure at this moment thine own belovèd is reposing at thy side. If this be so, how preferable is thy lot to mine. If it be so, pass on to me, ye cruel chains! The night speeds on; slide back the bolts.
Do I dream? Did not the door swing upon its hinges? Did it not grunt its signal for me to enter? Alas, I was deceived! 'Twas but an unruly gust of wind that made it creak. Ah, hapless me! How far away that gust doth bear my hopes. If, O Boreas, thou dost bethink thee of the ravished Orithya, come swiftly hither and, with thy blast, beat down this heedless door. All is quiet in the city. Moist with diamond dew, the night speeds on; slide back the bolts.
Open, I say, open, or I, better prepared than thou, with my sword and with the fire I bear within my torch, will break into this disdainful house. Night, Love and Wine counsel no half-hearted measures. Night knoweth not shame. Love and Wine know not fear. Everything, prayers, threats have I essayed, but all in vain, nought could avail to move thee, O man more deaf than the door thou guardest! Thou wast not made to guard a lovely woman's door. Thy office should be to keep the key of a loathsome dungeon. But see, the morning star is risen, and the cock's shrill trumpet calls the labourer to his task. And, flowery wreath, which from my brows sadly I disengage, lie there upon this heartless threshold through the night. When on the morrow my mistress shall descry thee trailing there, tell her the hours that, sick at heart, I wasted at her door. Farewell, porter; in spite of all, I say to thee, farewell. Mayest thou thyself suffer the agony of unrequited love. Muddy-mettled villain, who wouldst not give admittance to a lover, fare thee well. And ye too, ye cruel doors with your pitiless hinges, and threshold more slavish than the churl that guards thee, to all I say farewell.
LOAD my guilty hands with fetters, if thou be my friend, now that my anger has departed. Rage it was, look you, that made me raise my hand against my mistress. O madman that I was I To think it was my hand that made her weep! At that moment I would have struck my father and mother; nay, I would have rained blows upon the gods themselves.
But say. Did not Ajax, armed with his sevenfold shield, slaughter the flocks that he seized in the broad meads? And the ill-fated Orestes who, in his mother, wrought vengeance on his father, did he not take arms against the Dark Sisters? And could I, I of all men, dishevel her rangéd tresses? And did this mar my mistress's beauty? Not so, she only looked the lovelier. In such guise they say the daughter of Schneus, armed with her bow, pursued the beasts on Mænalus. In such a plight did Ariadne mourn, when she beheld the swift south winds bearing away both the sails and the promises of her perjured Theseus. Thus too, O chaste Minerva, but for the sacred fillets that bound her head, Cassandra had lain upon thy temple's floor.
Who would not have called me a madman? Who would not have called me a barbarian? But never a word said she. Her tongue was paralysed with fear. Howbeit I read the mute reproach upon her face, and, though she spake not, her tears were my accusers. Oh, why did not my arms fall from my shoulders? It had been better had I lost a limb. 'Tis against myself that my violence hath turned, and my vigour hath been the instrument of my own torture. Wherefore do I need you more, ye ministers of crime and slaughter? Avaunt, ye sacrilegious hands, and with the fetters ye deserve, be laden. Why, had I struck the humblest Roman, I should have had to answer for it. Have I then more right to strike my mistress? The son of Tydeus left a hideous memorial of his wickedness. He was the first to raise his hand against a goddess. I am the second. And withal, his sin was not so black as mine. I struck the woman whom I said I loved; he did but wreak his fury on a foe.
Now, mighty conqueror, go and prepare thy triumph. Set the victor's laurel crown about thy brows and on thy knees give thanks to Jove, and let the vast throng that grace thy chariot shout aloud, "Io triumphe!" And let thy poor victim fare sadly before thee, her hair unbraided, pale from head to foot but for the bruises on her cheeks.
Better it had been to have left upon her lips the imprint of my own, better that her neck should bear the traces of my loving teeth. Then, even though I was as violent as a mountain torrent, even if I was beneath the sway of blind rage, was it not enough to shout at the poor girl, without roaring out a torrent of horrible threats and tearing her dress from neck to girdle? 'Twas there my violence stopped? Nay, so hardened was my heart, that I dragged her along by the hair and in my barbarous rage I left the mark of my nails upon her dainty cheek. There she stood distraught, her face as white as Parian marble. I beheld her deathlike look, and her limbs trembling like the poplar leaf stirred by the sighing wind, like the slender reed which bends beneath 'the zephyr's breath, like the wave whose surface is ruffled by the warm south wind. Her tears, long restrained, coursed down her face as the water floweth from the melting snows. 'Twas then I 'gan to feel the blackness of my guilt. Those tears of hers, what were they but my blood? Thrice I essayed to fling myself, a suppliant, at her knees. Thrice she thrust away my dreaded hands. "Lay on," I cried, "and spare not. Vengeance win alleviate thy pain. Tear my face with thy nails, spare not mine eyes, no, nor my hair. Let rage lend strength to thy hands, weak though they be; or at least, to obliterate the sad traces of my crime, braid once more the tresses that my hand so cruelly dishevelled."
THERE exists (give ear, all ye who are fain to know a prostitute), there exists a certain old hag named Dipsas. Her name she deriveth from her calling. Never, in a sober state, does she behold dark Memnon's daughter with her steeds of roseate hue. Learned in magic and in the Ææan arts, she hath power to turn the swiftest rivers and make them flow backwards towards their sources. Skilled is she in the virtues of herbs, of linseed twisted on the cabalistic wheel, and of hippomanes. She needeth but to wish, and lo, the heavens grow dark with heavy clouds; to wish again, and lo, the heavens shine in purest splendour. I have seen, Wouldst thou believe it, blood drip from the stars. I have seen red blood overspread the face of the moon.
I suspect that she, living though she be, flies through the shadows of the night, and that her hag's body is covered with feathers. That is what I suspect, and such is the report. In her eyes shines a double pupil whence rays of fiery light dart forth. She calleth forth the dead from the graves, our grandsires and great-grandsires. At the sound of her incantations, the solid earth doth open. She delighteth to profane the chastity of the marriage bed, and her poisoned tongue is not lacking in eloquence. Chance, on a day, made me a witness of her lessons. I was able, thanks to our double doors, to hear unseen. Thus, then, she spake:
"Dost know, my fair one, that yesterday thou didst please the eye of one of our young favourites of fortune? He spied thee and his eyes never wandered from thy face. And whom, indeed, wouldst thou fail to attract? Thou yieldest in loveliness to none. But, alas, thy raiment is not worthy of thy beauty. Would thou wert rich as thou art fair. Win thou riches, and I shall no more be poor. The star of Mars in opposition hath been unkindly to thee; but Mars hath departed; and now Venus, the protectress of thy sex, hath taken his place. See how favourable to thee his advent is. A wealthy lover desireth thee and is fain to know what thou dost lack. His face and figure as thine own are fair, and if he fain would buy thy charms, so shouldst thou purchase his."
The girl blushed as she heard this. "Modesty," the crone went on," becometh a fair cheek, but 'tis useless, save when feigned. Real modesty is nearly always harmful. When, with downcast eyes, thou gazest modestly on thy bosom, look at none save in proportion to the price he offereth. Maybe, when Tatius was king, the heavy Sabine dames refused to give themselves to more men than one. Nowadays Mars employs our gallants in foreign wars; but Venus reigns in the City of her beloved Æneas. Enjoy yourselves, my pretty ones. She is chaste whom none hath courted. Or, if coyness doth not hold her back, she herself maketh the first advances. Come now, efface these frowns that delve their lines upon thy brow; with those wrinkles many a failing will be removed. 'Twas with a bow that Penelope tested the strength of her young lovers; and that bow, the index of their prowess, was of horn. Time hurries on, by us unheeded. It fleets away even as a river whose waters ever flow. Bronze is made bright by rubbing; what availeth fair apparel, if it be not worn. The palace that is tenantless decays beneath the moss that moulders it. So beauty, if there be none to enjoy, waxeth swiftly old. Nor do one or two lovers suffice. The more there be, the greater is the pay, and the more readily obtained. Rich is the booty that falls to the hoary wolves who seek their prey from a whole flock. Now tell me, what dost thou get from this poet of thine save his latest verses? A few thousand verses, such is the coin in which thy lover payeth. The god of poesy himself, robed in a mantle gold inwrought, touches the chords of a golden lyre. Let him who hath gold to give thee be greater in thy sight than great Homer himself. Mark my words, it does a man good to give. Scorn not the slave who has bought his freedom. 'Tis no crime to have thy foot marked with chalk, nor shouldst thou suffer thyself to be dazzled with the lordly display of a long line of ancestors. Begone and take thy forefathers with thee, thou needy lover. And how now? Here is another who would fain lie a night with thee, because he is comely. Ah, no indeed! Let him go and beg some money for thee from his own admirer.
"Be not over-exacting whilst thou art spreading thy nets, for fear lest the prey should escape thee; but once he is in thy power, fleece him as thou wilt. Simulated love is often no bad thing. Let him think thou lovest. But see thou love not for nothing. Sometimes withhold thy favours. As for a pretext, why, maybe thy head doth ache, or else the festival of Isis compels thee to abstain; but hold not thyself too long aloof, lest he grow used to the lack of thee, or lest love, by dint of being rebuffed, at length grow cold. Let thy door, closed to the needy, be open to the rich. Let the laments of the rejected reach the ears of the favoured lover. If thou woundest thy lover, be wroth with him as if he had hurt thee first. Forestall his upbraidings with thine own; but indulge not over-long thine anger. Anger too far prolonged hath oft engendered hate. Let thine eyes learn the secret of shedding tears at will and moistening thy cheek. If thou wouldst deceive, fear not to forswear thyself. Venus makes the gods deaf to the plaints of the deceived lover. Take into thy service a clever man and maid who may indicate what presents you would welcome. Let them also beg a few things for themselves. If they ask a little of many, each separate ear of corn will soon make up a rick. Let thy sister and thy mother and thy nurse lay thy lover under contribution. There will soon be a goodly heap of booty, when several hands labour at the task. Thou lackest a pretext for soliciting a present? Show him a cake and say it is thy birthday.
"Above all, never let thy lover think that he hath no rival; love, without rivalry, endureth not. Let him see upon thy bed the traces of another possessor of thy charms, and on thy neck the marks of his lascivious embraces; and above all, let him behold the gifts his rival hath bestowed on thee. If he brings nought with him, tell him of the novelties they are showing in the Via Sacra. When thou hast dragged from him a goodly tale of presents, bid him not despoil himself entirely, but ask him for a loan--that thou wilt ne'er repay. Let thy tongue beguile him, to conceal thy scheming; caress him, the more surely to lure him to his doom. Sweet honey hides the subtlest poison. If thou followest my lesson, which long experience has taught me, if thou tossest not my words to the winds, how oft, when I am dead, wilt thou pray the gods to let the earth lie lightly upon me."
Thus she was speaking, when my shadow betrayed me. 'Twas with difficulty I kept myself from tearing her last grey hairs, her eyes that were shedding drunken tears, and her cheeks furrowed all over with wrinkles. "May the gods," I said, "reject thee, and send thee a miserable old age, endless winters and an everlasting thirst."
THY lover is a soldier, and Cupid hath his camp. Aye, believe me, Atticus, every lover is a soldier. The age which suiteth war is also favourable to Venus. A fig for an elderly soldier! A fig for an elderly lover! The age which generals demand in a brave soldier is the age which a fair young woman demands in the possessor of her charms. Soldier and lover have, each, their vigil to keep; both couch upon the hard ground; both have their watch to keep, the one at the door of his mistress, the other at the door of his general. What a weary way the soldier hath to march! And the lover, when his mistress is exiled, will follow her, with a stout heart, to the uttermost limits of the world. He will fare over the loftiest mountains and over rivers swollen with rains; he will cleave his way through the snowdrifts. Is he compelled to cross the seas? He will not plead that the tempests are let loose; nor will he wait till the weather be propitious for setting sail. Who but a soldier or a lover will brave the chill nights and the torrents of mingled snow and rain? The one is sent forward as a scout towards the enemy; the other keepeth watch upon his rival as upon a foe. The one lays siege to warlike cities, the other to the dwelling of his inexorable mistress. One beats down gates, the other doors.
Oftentimes it hath brought victory to catch the foe asleep, and to slaughter, sword in hand, an unarmed host. Thus did the fierce battalions of Thracian Rhesus fall and you, ye captured steeds, forsook your lord. So, too, a lover oft is able to profit by the husband's slumbers and to turn his arms against the sleeping foe. To elude the vigilance of watchmen and sentinels is ever the perilous task alike of the soldier and the lover.
Mars is uncertain and in Venus there is nothing sure. The conquered rise up again, and those you would deem could never be o'erthrown, fall in their turn. No longer then let love be held a little thing. Love demandeth a resourceful mind. Achilles burns for Briseis torn from his embraces. Trojans, while his grief allows, smite ye the Grecian host. Fresh from Andromache's embraces, Hector went forth to battle. 'Twas his spouse who placed his helmet on his head. When he beheld the daughter of Priam, her tresses floating in the wind, the son of Atreus, the first of all the Grecian chiefs, stood, they say, lost in admiration. Mars himself was caught in the chains which Vulcan had forged. No tale made a greater stir in heaven than this. I myself was slothful and not born for work. My bed and sleep had softened my spirit. But love for a comely young woman set a term to my indolence. She enjoined me to make my first campaign in her service. Since then, thou seest. me ever active and always busy with some nocturnal adventure. Thou wouldst not be a sluggard? Well then, love a woman.
SUCH as she who, snatched away from the banks of the Eurotas in the Phrygian ships, was for her two husbands the cause of so long a war; such as was Leda when cunning Jupiter, hidden beneath the deceptive disguise of a white-plumed swan, seduced her and made her his paramour; such as Amymone wandering in the parched fields of Argos, her urn upon her head; such wast thou in my eyes. I feared for thee the divers wiles that Love suggested to almighty Jove, I feared for thee the metamorphosis of the Eagle and the Bull. But now I fear no more. I am cured of my malady, no more mine eyes are blinded by thy loveliness. How came this change, thou askest? Why, 'tis that thou settest a price upon thy favours. This is the reason why thou pleasest me no more. So long as thou wast art less and free from guile I loved thee body and soul; but now this blemish on thy soul hath robbed thy body of its charms. Love is a child and Love is naked. The years have not corrupted him and he wears no clothes, that he may be without guile, Wherefore dost thou ask the child of Venus to sell his favours at a price? He wears no robe wherein to put the coin. The hard calling of a soldier suits neither Venus nor her son; how befits it, then, that divinities so unused to war should serve for pay?
"A courtesan selleth herself for a given price to the first customer; by yielding her body she gaineth her miserable pay. Yet withal she curseth the tyranny of the greedy whoremaster, and what thou doest for thy pleasure, she doth because she must.
Take, for an example, the beasts devoid of reason. Thou wilt blush to find the brutes possessed of finer feelings than thyself. The mare asks no gift of the stallion, nor the heifer of the bull; the ram payeth not the ewe on whom he wreaks his passion. Woman alone loves to flaunt the spoils she wrests from man. She alone setteth a price upon her favours; she alone offereth herself for hire. She selleth a pleasure that bringeth delight to both, a pleasure which both have longed for, and she maketh him pay for the bliss he giveth her. When love hath equal charms for both, wherefore should one sell it and the other buy? Wherefore should I lose, and thou win at a game wherein we both minister to our mutual bliss?
A witness may not sell his testimony for money; nor must a judge take bribes. It is a disgrace for an advocate to sell his services to a pauper or for a tribunal to grow fat on the proceeds of justice. So, too, it is shameful for a woman to augment her patrimony by bartering her charms and by selling her body to the highest bidder. Gratitude we owe for a favour freely given, but none for the sordid hiring of a woman and a bed. Once thou hast received thy pay, thy, hire--love and gratitude are at an end.
Ah, dear women, never set a price on the favours ye bestow. Ill-gotten gains will never prosper. Of what value were the bracelets of the Sabines to the young vestal who was crushed beneath the weight of their armour? A son plunged his sword into the loins that bore him; a necklace lured him to his crime.
Not that thou shouldst refrain from asking presents of a rich man. He hath the wherewithal to satisfy thy demands. Pluck the grapes that hang from the loaded vines; gather thy apples in the fruitful orchards of Alcinoüs. And for the poor man, bethink thee of the good he doeth thee, of his zeal and his fidelity. Let every man give what he hath unto his mistress. My wealth consists in celebrating in my verse the women who render themselves worthy of that honour. She who maketh me desire, her my art exalteth. Precious gifts and costly raiment will perish; gems set in gold will one day shattered be, but my verses shall endure for ever. What disgusts and enrages me is not giving, but seeing thee ask for pay. What I refuse thee when thou askest, I will freely give thee when thou askest not.
O THOU who with such happy art dost bind and range thy mistress's hair, thou whom 'twere unjust to place in the ranks of ordinary servants, Nape, as skilful in contriving nocturnal assignations as in conveying missives to my beloved, thou hast often persuaded the hesitating Corinna to come to my arms; thou whose loyalty hath ofttimes saved me in a crisis, take these tablets and deliver them this very morning to my mistress. May thine ingenuity prove triumphant over eve obstacle. Thy breast is not made of adamant or steel; nor dost thou carry simplicity to excess. Thou too, methinks hath felt boy Cupid's darts. Fight then and defend the flag 'neath which we both do march. If she ask thee how I fare, tell her the hopes of spending a night with her keep me alive. For the rest, my passionate hand hath writ it on this waxen tablet.
Even as I speak, time fleeteth way. Go and choose a moment when she's free and give her these; but see to it that she read them straightway. Note her eves, her brow while she doth read. Her mute expression will inform thee of my fate As soon as she hath read my words, ask her to indite a long reply. I hate to see blank spaces on the wax. Let her lines be close together, let her writing fill up the margins, so I may feast my eyes upon her letters. Yet wherefore should she weary herself with writing? Let me read but a single word, Come, and swiftly I will deck my tablets with the laurels of victory, hang them as a votive offering in Venus' temple, and inscribe them thus: Unto Venus doth Ovid consecrate you, faithful ministers of his love which, but a while ago, were but a fragment of worthless maple."
MOURN and lament with me! My tablets have come back, with this one sad word upon them scored: Impossible! I have some belief in omens. Just now, as she went out, Nape struck her foot against the threshold. Henceforth, when thou art sent anywhere, remember to walk more warily and pick up thy feet. Away with you, ye ill-omened tablets, away, thou sullen wood, and as for thee, thou wax that bringest her refusal, thou wast sucked from the flower of the towering hemlock; surely thou art the dregs of the vile honey of some Corsican bee. Thou seemest to have been stained with vermilion, and truly thou art of bloody hue. Go and kiss the ground, ye useless things; may the heavy wheel of the first cart that passes crush you into atoms. No, the fellow that hacked you from the tree to shape and fashion had filthy hands. That same tree must have served as a gibbet for some unlucky wretch, and furnished the crosses of death to the executioner; beneath its mournful shade the howlet shrieked., and amid its branches the vulture and the, screech-owl laid their eggs. To such wood as this was I mad enough to confide the secrets of my heart. Such was the wood I bade carry to my mistress the tenderest words of love. This wax would more appropriately have served for some crusty lawyer's writ, or for the diary wherein a miser might record the payments that wrung his heart. O lying tablets, little wonder that men call ye double; faith, 'twas a number of evil augury. What is the worst fate my wrath can wish you? May time devour you and rot you, and may the wax which covers you grow damp and foul with mildew!
O, over the Ocean doth she come, from the arms of her aged husband. Over the waves she cometh, the bright goddess whose car brings back the day. O beautiful Aurora, whither dost thou hasten? Stay, O stay thy flight. So, yearly, may the birds make solemn offering to the shades of Memnon. This is the time when I love to lie in my sweet one's sheltering arms; this, if ever, is the moment when 'tis sweet to press her softly to my side. Now, too, sleep is pleasant and the air cool, and the birds discourse sweet music from their tender throats. Whither fleetest thou, with a speed to men and to their mistresses unwelcome? Draw in with thy shining hand the dewy reins of thy swift coursers.
Ere thou risest, the mariner can clearly see the stars, and wandereth not at random over the wide seas. When thou dost appear, the traveller, for all his weariness, must quit his couch, and the soldier seize his fighting gear. Thou art the first to behold the husbandman shouldering his mattock; the first to call the lagging oxen to the yoke. 'Thou robbest children of their sleep and handest them over to the master for their tender fingers to suffer the blows of his cruel ferule. Thou bringest the surety to the court, where a single word may make or mar him. To advocate and to judge thou art alike unfriendly, for each is forced to rise to take up a case. 'Tis thou who, when a woman would fain taste the sweets of repose, callest her to spin the wool with unwearying hands. All this I could endure; but who would bear that young women should rise thus early in the morning, save the man that hath no mistress of his own? How often have I longed that night would not make way for thee, that the stricken stars would not flee before thee! How often have I longed for the winds to shatter thy car, or for one of thy steeds to founder in the hollow of a cloud! Ah, cruel one, whither dost thou hasten? Since thou had'st a son whose skin was black, such was the colour of his mother's heart. Would that Tithonus were free to speak his mind about thee, the heavens I trow would ne'er have known a more lascivious woman. Thou fleest from thine aged spouse, because old age hath chilled him, and leavest the old man betimes to mount thy hateful car. But if in thine arms thou heldst thy favourite, Cephalus, thou wouldst cry, "Go slow, go slow, ye coursers of the Night!"
And though thy spouse be wasted with old age, wherefore should my love pay the penalty? Was it I that led thee to mate an old man? See how many hours of sleep the Moon gave to the youth she loved; and her beauty is no whit inferior to thine. The father of the gods himself, that he might not behold thy face so often, joined two nights in one, so as to let his passions have full play.
Thus did I upbraid her; be sure she heard me, for she blushed. Howbeit the day appeared no later than his wont.
DID I not say to thee, "Cease to dye thy hair?" And now thou hast no longer any hair to dye. Nevertheless, hadst thou not been stubborn, where was there anything more beautiful than thy hair? It came down to thy knees, so fine thou wast afraid to comb it. No finer is the tissue with which the dark-skinned Seres clothe themselves; no finer is the thread which, with her dainty legs, the spider, swaying from her lonely beam, draws out to weave her airy web. Howbeit its colour was not black as ebony, nor was it golden. 'Twas a mixture of the two. Such is the colour of the tall cedar in the cool valleys of Mount Ida, when its bark is stripped away.
So soft, so tractable it was that thou couldst bind it in countless different ways, without the smallest trouble. Never did the comb's tooth tear thy tresses; thy tire-woman was never fearful of a slapping. Many a time have I been present at my mistress's toilet and never did she seize the bodkin to prick her woman's arms. Sometimes of a morning, her hair still in disorder, she would lie, half turned over, on the purple bed. And even then, in her careless abandon, she was lovely, lovely with the loveliness of an o'er-wearied Bacchanal who has cast herself, heedless of her posture, on the green grass.
Then her tresses were soft as down. How often, alas, have I seen them put to the torture, compelled patiently to endure both iron and fire, to make them stay in little rounded curls. "'Tis a crime," I cried, "a crime to scorch that hair of thine; it falls beautifully of its own accord. Cruel one, have mercy on thine own head. Away with such violent treatment. This is not the sort of hair to scorch. Thy hair itself instructs the bodkin where to go."
Gone are those lovely tresses which Apollo, which Bacchus, might have envied; such tresses as Dione, coming naked from the foam, upheld with her dripping hands.
Why, since they pleased thee not, dost thou lament the ruin of thy tresses? Wherefore, stupid one, dost thou thrust aside so mournfully thy mirror? No longer doth it please thee, remembering what thou wast, to gaze therein.
Howbeit 'tis not to magic herbs culled by a jealous rival, nor to water drawn by some treacherous witch from Hæmonian springs, that their fall is due. 'Tis not the effect of some dire malady (the gods keep thee from that), no, nor a rival's jealous tongue, envious of their beauty. No, thine is the crime, and thine own the hand that wrought the loss thou mournest; thine own the hand that poured the poison on thy head. Now Germany will send you some slave-girl's hair; a vanquished nation shall furnish thy adornments. Alas, how oft, when thou shalt hear men praise the beauty of thy hair, wilt thou tell thyself with a blush, "'Tis purchased merchandise that makes me comely in their sight to-day; of some unknown Sygambrian girl my friends the praises sing. Yet I remember the day when that glory was my own."
Heavens, what have I said? See, she can scarce restrain her tears. She buries her face in her hands, and look how she is blushing. She steals a glance at one of her fallen tresses lying in her lap, a treasure, alas I not fitted for that place. Nay, come then, soothe thy heart and clear thy brow. The loss is not irreparable. Ere long with thine own hair, thou wilt be beauteous as of yore.
WHEREFORE dost thou blame me, gnawing Envy, for consuming my days in slothfulness; wherefore callest thou my verses the employment of an idle mind? Why dost thou reproach me for not following in the footsteps of my forefathers, for not seeking, while vigorous youth permits, to crown my brows with the dusty laurels of war, for not studying the jargon of the law, or for not prostituting my words in a dingy court of justice? Mortal are the works whereof thou pratest; my aim is glory that shall not perish, so that in every time and in every place I may be celebrated throughout the world. Mæonides shall live so long as Tenedos and Ida shall endure, so long as Simois shall roll his hurrying waters to the sea. The Ascræan bard, too, shall live while the grape ripens on the vine, while the corn shall fall beneath the sickle's curving blade. The song of Battus shall be sung throughout the world, albeit his art, rather than his genius, is his title deed to fame. The tragic buskin of Sophocles shall never grow old. So long as the sun and the moon shall shine, Aratus will live on. So long as slaves are rogues, as fathers storm, as pimps deceive and strumpets wheedle, Menander will not die. Ennius, for all his artlessness, and Accius, with his lusty speech, possess a name that Time shall not lay low. When shall there dawn an age that shall know not Varro, or the first ship to sail the seas, or the Golden Fleece brought home by Æson's son? When the world perisheth, then, and not till then, shall the works of the high-souled Lucretius perish too. Tityrus and the garnered crops, Æneas and his doughty deeds, will be read so long as Rome shall wield her sceptre o'er the conquered world. So long as Cupid wields his fires and bends his bow, thy numbers, skilled Tibullus, will remembered be. In the West and in the East the name of Gallus shall be known to fame, and because of Gallus, the name of Lycoris shall live on. What though devouring time wear down the flint, and blunt the share of the enduring plough, yet poetry shall never die. Let kings, then, and all their train of conquests, yield to poetry, to poetry let the happy shores of the golden Tagus give place. Let the vulgar herd set their hearts on dross if they will. For myself, let Apollo bestow on me cups overflowing with the waters of Castaly; let the myrtle that dreads the cold adorn my brow and let my verses ever be scanned by the eager lover. While we live we serve as food for Envy; when we are dead we rest within the aureole of the glory we have earned. So, when the funeral fires have consumed me, I shall live on, and the better part of me will have triumphed over death.
BEHOLD here another work of Ovid, who was born in the moist land of the Peligni, of Ovid who singeth to the world of his own follies. This time, again, 'twas Love that willed it. Hence! Avaunt! ye prim and prudish ones. No fitting audience, ye, to strains that sing of tender love. I would be read of none save the maiden that grows warm when she beholds her lover, and of the boy till now unvisited by Love. I pray, too, that some young man, wounded by an arrow sped from the same bow that hath stricken me, may recognise in my verse the image of the flames whereby he is consumed. Long may he marvel, and then at last exclaim, "How comes it that this poet singeth the very story of my love? Who is it hath informed him?"
I was, I remember, making bold to sing of the Wars of Heaven and Gyges of the hundred hands, and verily I was well equipped for that great argument. I was about to sin the fell revenge of Tellus and the fall of Pelion with Ossa crashing down from high Olympus whereon they were empiled. In my hands I held the clouds, Jove and his thunderbolts, wherewith he would not have failed to defend his heavenly realms. And then my mistress slammed her door against me. Forthwith I dropped Jupiter and his lightnings; aye, Jupiter himself clean vanished from my mind. Forgive me, Jupiter thy weapons were of no avail to me. That close-shut door moved me more than all thy thunderbolts. Back to my love songs and my gentle elegies went I; those are the arms for me, and ere long my gentle plaint moved to compassion the unfeeling doors. Poetry hath power to bring the blood-red moon to earth; poetry stayeth in mid-career the snow-white coursers of the sun. Poetry robbeth the serpent of his poisoned fang, and maketh the rivers to flow backward to their sources. Poetry hath battered down doors, it hath forced back locks, how tight soever they were welded to the massy oak. What had it booted me to sing Achilles fleet of foot; what would the sons of Atreus have done for me, or he who waged fierce war for ten long years and then wandered ten more upon his homeward way; or hapless Hector, dragged by the Hæmonian steeds across the dusty plain? But as soon as ever I pipe the praises of a sweet young girl, she cometh in person to pay the singer for his song. And that, methinks, is no small recompense. So farewell, ye heroes with illustrious names; not yours to bestow, the favours that I crave. But as for you, my charmers, look sweetly on the songs which rosy Cupid singeth in mine ear.
THOU, Bagoas, who art entrusted with the task of guarding thy mistress, lend me thine ear. I have but a couple of words to say to you, but they are weighty ones. Yesterday I saw a lady walking in the portico beneath the temple of Apollo. At once I fell in love with her and importuned her in writing. In answer, with a trembling hand, she wrote: "Impossible." And why is it impossible? I asked. And she replied that you keep too strict a watch on her.
Now listen to me, my over-watchful friend; if you are wise you will give up getting yourself hated. If people fear you, they will long for you to die. Her husband, too, is a fool, for why be at such pains to guard a thing whereof, even if you watch it not, no part is lost? Still, if he is madman enough, let him indulge his passion to the full, and believe her chaste who gives her charms to all. But for thee, vouchsafe her, in secret, a modicum of freedom. What you give her in that direction she will repay. Just let her take you into her confidence a little, and the mistress will do what the slave shall bid. Afraid of conniving a little? Why, you've only got to shut your eyes. Is she reading a letter in secret? Well, take it that it's from her mother. A stranger comes to call? Take him for some old acquaintance. She goes to see a sick friend who isn't sick at all? Why, pretend she is sick. Is she a long time coming? Let your head droop on your breast, and snore away to your heart's content. Don't go worrying your head about what they're doing in the temple of Isis, or what's going on in the theatres.
A discreet accomplice wins a deal of glory, and after all, what is simpler than to hold your tongue? Such a man is liked, he rules the household and never gets a beating. He is a man of power; the others, scurvy fellows, merely slaves. In order to keep the husband sweet, he stuffs him with fairy tales and, masters both, they both approve of what delights the woman. A husband may frown and furrow his brow with wrinkles, a wheedling woman always gets her way. Still, every now and then she must seem to have a grudge against you, pretend to cry and say you are a brute. Your cue is then to accuse her of some fault that she can readily disprove. In taxing her with what is false, you blind her husband to the real truth. This if you do, honours and money will be showered upon you. Act as I bid you, and you'll soon be a slave no more.
You see informers laden with heavy chains, you see false-hearted knaves shut up in gloomy dungeons. Tantalus is thirsty, with water all about him; surrounded by fruit, of fruit he cannot taste. That's all because he was a blabber. Because he gave too strict effect to Juno's bidding, Io's guard died ere his prime, and Io is a goddess.
I have seen a fellow loaded with chains that were making his legs black and blue, because he had insisted on telling a husband of his wife's amours. He merited a weightier doom; his prating tongue had killed the happiness of two. He filled the husband's heart with grief and slew his wife's good rime.
Mark what I say; there never was a husband yet that liked such charges brought against his spouse. Hear them he may, but he'll never hear them with pleasure. If he be indifferent, all your precious tale is wasted; if he love her, then 'tis you who kill his peace of mind. Nay, howsoever clear a woman's fault may be, it takes a deal of proving. The judge's sympathies are all for her. Even if he had seen the whole thing with his own eyes, he would still believe her, if she denied it. He would say his eyes deceived him; that he himself had been at fault. Let her but fall a-weeping, he'll mingle his tears with hers and say, "This babbling ass shall get it hot for this." You see, the odds are nearly all against you, and if you lose, you get a thrashing, while she's being dandled on the judge's knee.
It is no crime we meditate. It is not to mix a poisoned draught that we desire to meet. No naked dagger flashes in our hand. All we ask is that, by your good offices, we may love in safety; and what request could be more innocent than that?
AH me, that my mistress should be entrusted to thy care, thou who art nor man nor woman, thou who can'st never know the mutual joy that lovers give--and take. He who was the first to rob little boys of that which makes a man, deserved, himself, to suffer a like fate. Thou wouldst be less unbending, thou wouldst incline more willingly thine ear to my request, if ever thou hadst loved a woman. Thou art not made to mount the fiery steed, to handle heavy arms, or, in thy right hand, wield the warlike spear. It needs a man for that; and to do aught manly thou must never hope. Follow no standard but the standard of thy mistress. 'Tis she that thou must wait on hand and foot; make the most of her favours. If thou lose her, what purpose wilt thou serve? Her face, her youth invite to dalliance. 'Twere ill her loveliness should fade and perish in base neglect. She may have hoodwinked thee, however troublesome thou may'st appear. What lovers want, they'll find the means to get; but since, perhaps, 'twere best to see what prayers will do, we do entreat you now, while yet there's time, to give our prayers effect.
I MAKE no pretence of justifying the laxity of my morals; I never resort to untruthful pretexts to excuse my wanderings from the path of virtue. I freely confess my faults, if such avowals can serve any useful purpose. Now I have acknowledged my guilt in general terms, I mean to make a clean breast of all my follies. I curse my failings, yet I cannot help finding pleasure in the very faults that I deplore. How burdensome is the yoke that one would fain cast off. I have not the strength nor the will-power to govern my passions; they bear me along with them, even as the swift tide hurries away the slender bark.
It is not any particular type of beauty that sets my heart on fire. A hundred motives compel me to be always in love. Here is a girl that drops her gaze demurely. That is enough, my heart catches fire and her modesty is the lure that ensnares me. And here is one that is out for booty. To her I fall a willing victim because she is no novice and because she bids fair to be keen and enterprising on a downy couch. And then, if I see one with an expression that recalls to me the Sabine dames, I forthwith tell myself that she has longings but knows how to conceal them. Are you a learned lady? I fall in love with your rare accomplishments. Unlearned? Your naïveté enthralls me. This one finds Callimachus a sorry poet compared with me. I please her, and lo, straightway she pleases me. This one finds fault with my verses and tells me I am no poet. Despite her strictures I fain would have her in my arms. This one walks languorously. Her gait enchants me. This one is prim. Peradventure, if she had a lover 'twould soften her. This one sings delightfully, and breathes from her soft throat the most melodious strains. I long to steal a kiss from her parted lips. Another lightly fingers the trembling chords of her lyre; where is he who could help adoring such skilful fingers? Here is one that wins me with her dancing. I feast my eyes on her seductive poses, on the rhythmic movements of her arms, on the swaying of her whole body as she moves in time to the music. But never mind me, whom anyone can set on fire. Let Hippolytus see her; even he would become a Priapus. You, my tall beauty, recall the heroines of olden days and the bed is not a whit too long for you. And you, my dainty little treasure; I love you, too, just as much. Both are enchanting. Tall and short, I love them both. Here is one that wears no finery; I muse how jewels would enhance her beauty. Here is one tricked out with gems; how dazzling are her charms. Of fair and dark I am alike the slave; white-skinned or sunburnt, I adore them all. Black tresses flutter on a snowy neck? Leda's loveliness lay in her raven hair. Is she fair, the girl I see yonder? Why, 'twas to her golden hair Aurora owed her beauty. Everywhere history helps me to justify my love. A young woman delights me, an older one enthralls me. The one has the beauty of her body, the other experience and richness of mind, to recommend her. In a word, of all the beauties they rave about in Rome, there's none whose lover I am not fain to be.
AWAY with thee, Cupid and thy quiver! Love's not such a priceless thing that I should so often and so desperately long for death. Aye, for death I long, when I bethink me of thy perfidy, thou thankless girl, born to be a lasting grief to me. 'Tis not thy tablets carelessly effaced that reveal thy conduct to me; 'tis not the presents secretly received that tell me thy misdeeds. Would to heaven I could fail to prove the accusation that I bring against thee. Ah, hapless me, why is my cause so good! Happy the lover who can boldly defend the woman he adores; happy he to whom his mistress may say, "Free of all guilt am I!" Hard of heart is he, and too indulgent of his grief, who would seek to win a sanguinary triumph by bringing home a crime to the woman that he loves.
Alas, I saw it all when you thought I was asleep. Aye, with these eyes did I behold your treason, for the wine beside me had not dulled my vision. I saw you making eyes at him, I saw your nods of the head, and read it all as plainly as if it had been written down in words. Your eyes were not silent; I saw letters writ in wine upon the table, even thy fingers had their tale to tell. Try as yon would to hide it, I read the meaning of your discourse, and guessed the cipher of your secret code. And now the throne of guests had left the table and only two remained, both young, both drunk with wine. And then I saw you both exchange most wanton kisses, kisses in which, as I too plainly saw, your tongues were intermingled. Not such kisses as a sister gives her sober-minded brother, but such as a loving mistress might bestow upon her eager lover; not such kisses as Phbus to Diana gives, but such, we may believe, as Venus often lavished on her darling Mars.
"How now!" cried I. "On whom dost thou bestow the favours that are mine? Nay, these things are mine by right. My right I'll hold, my right I will defend. Thy kisses are for me and mine for thee, alone. What does this interloper, then, coming between us twain?"
In such-like words did I outpour my grief. The blush of shame o'erspread her guilty cheeks. So flushes the eastern sky when Tithonus' spouse arises from his bed, and so doth blush the maiden when her betrothed resteth his gaze upon her. So roses shine when lilies round them blow; so turns the pale moon red when by some magic spell her course in heaven is stayed; so gleams Assyrian ivory that a Mæonian dame has dyed with crimson so that it may not yellow grow with years. Such then, or as near as may be, was the colour of the wench's cheeks, and never had I seen her look more lovely. She looked on the ground; the look became her. Sad was her countenance; the sadness suited her. Her hair, and deftly was it braided, I nearly tore out by the roots. Her dainty cheeks, I all but laid rude hands upon. But when I saw her face, my arms fell strengthless at my side; by weapons of her own was my mistress defended. I who a moment since she had seen so fierce and menacing, now cast myself at her feet and begged her to give me kisses no less tender. She smiled, and then, with all her heart and soul, gave me a kiss, and never was kiss more sweet. 'Twas such a kiss as would have filched the thunderbolt from the hand of angry Jove. Yet how my breast is tortured now, lest another may have tasted kisses just as sweet; I hope that those were not of this celestial quality. These last kisses that she gave me were better far than those which I had taught her; she hath, methinks, acquired some novel art. It bodes no good, this too, too luscious sweetness; it bodes no good that all your tongue within my mouth was thrust, all mine within your own. And 'tis not this alone that grieves me; not only of these voluptuous kisses that I complain, albeit complain I do, but what rankles most is the thought that lessons such as those could have been given nowhere but in bed, and I know not who is the instructor that has received such rich remuneration.
OUR parrot, winged mimic of the human voice, sent from farthest Ind, is dead. Come ye in flocks, ye birds, unto his obsequies. Come, ye pious denizens of the air; beat your bosoms with your wings and with your rigid claws, score furrows on your dainty heads. Even as mourners rend their hair, rend ye your ruffled plumes. Since the far-sounding clarion is silent, sing ye a doleful song. Wherefore, O Philomel, mourn ye the dark deed of the Ismarian tyrant? Time should have ended that lament. Keep it to mourn for the passing of the rarest of thy kind. The fate of Itys was once a mighty theme of sorrow; but all that was long ago. All ye who float with outspread wings in the liquid air, and thou before all others, loving turtle, breathe forth your mournful plaint. He was, all his life long, a faithful friend to thee and never did he waver in his loyalty. What young Pylades the Phocian was to Argive Orestes, such, my parrot, was the turtle-dove to thee, so long as thou didst live.
But how did this fidelity bestead thee, and what availed the brilliant colours of thy plumage rare? or that voice so skilled in mimicking the tones of human speech? What did it boot thee to win the affection of my mistress from the very moment thou wast given her? O hapless one, thou wast the glory of birds, and now thou art no more! With thy wondrous plumage, thou couldst outshine the green fire of the emerald, and the hue of thy beak was of the richest red. No bird on earth could speak so well as thou, so great thy skill in imitating, with thy nasal tones, the sounds that thou hadst heard.
Now envious death hath stricken thee; never wast thou at war with any bird. Thou wast garrulous and didst love the piping times of peace. See, the quails are for ever at war; that, perchance, is why they live so long. Thou didst ask for very little; and sith you loved so much to gossip, your beak had very little time for food. A nut was all thy dinner, a poppy-seed or two would bring thee sleep, and with a sip of water thou wouldst quench thy thirst. The hungry vulture lives, and the kite that weaves his circles in the air, and the rain-foretelling daw. The raven, whom the panoplied Minerva hates, lives on--nine generations will hardly see it die. But he is dead, this bird, this babbling echo of the human voice, this gift so rare brought from the utmost limits of the world. 'Tis nearly always so; the greedy hands of death strike first at what is best upon the earth, and things of little worth accomplish to the full their destined tale of years. Thersites beheld the melancholy obsequies of Protesilaus. Hector came to dust and ashes while yet his brothers lived.
What boots it to recall how, with fear at her breast, my mistress prayed for thee--prayers caught up by the swift wingèd South and carried o'er the seas? The seventh day had come, the seventh, and thy last. Fate had unwound thy thread of days. Howbeit even then thou spakest, crying, with thy dying breath, "Corinna, fare thee well!"
There, in Elysium, on a hill-side's gentle slope there stands a forest of broad, shady oaks, and over the moist soil the rich grass spreads its coverlet of green. Here, if the fabled tale we may believe, abide all innocent birds, and here no fowl of evil omen ever comes. Here range the harmless swans, and here the one undying Phnix dwells. Here doth the peacock proudly show his gorgeous plumage and the crooning dove showers kisses on her eager mate. Here in their midst, here in these pleasant woody places, our parrot speaks and calls around him all birds of gentle soul. His bones a mound doth cover, a little mound as doth befit his size, and on it is a little stone that bears this little legend:
From this memorial, you may see
What love my mistress bore to
me.
Whene'er to her I spake, my words
Meant more than any other
bird's.
Oh, are you always going to be bringing some charge against me? No sooner have I succeeded in rebutting one than you trump up another. I'm sick of this perpetual bickering. If I happen to run my eye along the topmost tier of the theatre, you'll be sure to pick one woman out of the crowd there and make her a pretext for some more nagging. If a woman merely glances in my direction, and I don't look back at her, my indifference, you'll say, is all put on; there's something between us right enough. If I say anything nice about a woman, you immediately start tearing your hair; if I say anything nasty, well, you say it's just a blind. If I'm looking well, it's because I leave you alone; and if I'm not, I'm dying of love for someone else. I shouldn't so much mind if I had really done something. It's easier to put up with troubles you've brought on yourself; but you upbraid me without rhyme or reason, and your fatal proclivity for believing the worst about everybody, weakens whatever effect your fulminations might otherwise have had. Look at that poor old long-eared donkey there; he doesn't mend his pace, for all their whackings.
And now you've got another grievance. It's your smart little maid, Cypassis, with whom I am supposed to have misconducted myself this time, is it? And in your bed, too. Now if ever I feel inclined to go astray, the gods forbid that I should do so with a servant-girl. What man would ever willingly have relations with a slave or want to fondle a back all covered with weals? And, mark you, this particular slave is the one that gives the finishing touches to your hair, whose clever fingers make you look so irresistible; and I am supposed to go philandering with someone who thinks there's not a woman like you in the world? Is it likely? I should only get snubbed for my pains, and she'd tell you all about it. No, I swear by Venus and by the bow of her wingèd boy, I'm innocent of the charge you bring against me.
YOU wonderful little hair-dresser, who only ought to have goddesses' hair to tend, Cypassis, whom in a stolen moment of delight I found by no means unexpert, you who suit your mistress so well, and me better still, tell me who has given our secret away? How did Corinna get wind of our clandestine delights? Did I turn red? Did I let fall a single word that could have betrayed our hidden pleasures a' Nay, didn't I swear that for a man to hanker after a servant-girl he couldn't have all his wits about him.
And yet the Thessalian hero burned with desire for the lovely Briseis, and she was but a slave. No more than a slave was she, the priestess that cast her lures about the King of Mycenæ. Am I then greater than Achilles, greater than the son of Tantalus? Shall I blush at what was deemed a fitting portion for a king?
Nevertheless, when she turned that angry look upon you, I saw you blush red all over. I was not anything like so flustered. I, if you remember, swore by great Venus herself that I was innocent. But you, my goddess, ordain that this beneficent lie may be swept by the warm South over the Carpathian deep.
In payment for these my services, my dusky Cypassis, grant me the sweet pleasure of lying with you to-day. Why do you say no? Why, ungrateful girl, why pretend you arc afraid? It will be enough to have deserved well of one of your masters. If you are silly enough to refuse, I shall confess all we have done, I shall become my own accuser, and I shall tell your mistress-yes, I shall, Cypassis--where and how often we have met, what we did, in how many ways, And what they were.
O THOU who dost never weary of tormenting me, who never givest me any peace of mind, why, Cupid, dost thou treat me thus, who never ceased to march beneath thy banner? Why dost thou wound me thus? Why scorchest thou thine own friends with that torch of thine; why doth thy bow transfix them with its shafts? 'Twere better thou should'st prove thy might on one who resisteth thee. Did not the hero of Hæmonia, after piercing Telephus with his spear, heal with that same spear the wound that he had made? The huntsman chaseth the quarry that flees before him, yet once he hath seized it, he setteth it at liberty, and hasteneth after a fresh prey. 'Tis for us, thy loyal followers, that thou dost keep thy weapons, albeit thy sluggish arm smiteth not the foe that resisteth. Wherefore spend thine arrows on these fleshless bones? For in truth Love hath left me nought but skin and bones. Loveless live so many maidens, so many youths know nought of love. Over these, then, should be thy victory.
Rome, had she not extended her might throughout the world, would be to-day nought but a huddled group of straw-thatched huts. The war-worn veteran lays down his arms and tills his allotted fields. The courser, freed from his stall, leapeth in the meadow; vast docks shelter the vessel that hath returned to port, and the gladiator yieldeth up his weapons for the wand that quits him of his toils. And I who have fought so many campaigns in Love's service, is it not time that I should live in peace?
Yet if some god should come to me and say, "Henceforth thou shalt live a loveless life," I should demur to his decree, so sweet a plague is woman. When I have had my fill of love, when I feel its fires no more, I am driven I know not whither by an indescribable tumult of the mind. just as the horseman, tugging vainly at the foam-flecked bridle, sees himself hurried to the abyss's edge; just as the pinnace, nearing the shore and about to bound into port, is suddenly carried out to sea again by a gust of wind; so am I blown hither and thither by Cupid's changeful breath, and Love of the rosy cheeks makes me once more the target for his arrows.
Shoot on, my little one! I have laid down my arms; naked I stand, shoot on! Here show off thy strength; here display thy skill. Here in this spot, without awaiting thy command, thy arrows come and bury themselves; the quiver is scarcely more familiar to them than is my heart.
Foul fall the man who can slumber the whole night through and thinks so much of sleep. Fool! What is sleep but the image of cold Death. Thou shalt sleep long enough one of these days.
As for me, I would that my mistress should sometimes cheat me with lying promises. The anticipation of bliss I hold to be a boon in itself; I would have her sometimes caress, sometimes upbraid me. I like her to surrender often, and often to resist. If Mars is inconstant, Cupid, 'tis thanks to thee. Yea, 'tis after thy example that thy mother's lover bears his arms now here, now there. Thou art fickle, far lighter than thy wings, and as the fancy takes thee, thou givest and withholdest the delights of love. Howbeit if thou and thy gracious mother will but hearken to my prayers, thou wilt come and reign in my heart and never quit it more. May all the too inconstant host of fair ones rally to my banner. Thus of both sexes at once shalt thou adorèd be.
TWAS thou, oh, yes, I mind me well, 'twas thou, Græcinus, who wast wont to say a man could never love two women at a time. 'Tis, then, through thee that I have been deceivèd, through thee that, all defenceless and unarmed, I've fallen into the snare, for here in me--oh, scoundrel that I am--thou dost behold a man in love with two fair charmers at a time. Lovely are both and both in love with dress. In artifice I scarcely know which one the other doth surpass. Now doth the first the second one outshine, and now the second doth eclipse the first; yes, sometimes one, and then, anon, the other, taketh my fancy most. My heart, like to a barque tossed by opposing winds, veers sometimes hither, sometimes thither, between these rival loves. Oh, wherefore, Erycina, wherefore dost thou everlastingly increase my torments. Did not one mistress suffice to keep me busy? Wherefore to the trees add leaves, stars to the starry sky, or water to the boundless deep?
Howbeit 'twere better so, than live a loveless life. The life that scorns delights and lives laborious days I'll leave my enemies. Let them sleep soundly in their lonely beds, lie in the middle and stretch themselves to their heart's content. As for myself, I'd liefer cruel love should break my downy slumbers; I would not be my bed's sole burden, no, not 1. Let my mistress, without let or hindrance, ease me of love's pangs if she alone be equal to the task. If she be not, then I'll have two of them. My body's thin, but strong; it lacks not strength, but flesh. Besides, Love's joys my prowess will sustain. Never a woman have I disappointed yet, and often after battling all the night, the morn hath found me ready to renew the fray. Happy he who dies in the lists of Love. I pray the gods that such may be my end. The soldier, if he will, may oppose his breast to the foemen's spears, and buy undying glory with his blood. The miser may roam the world in search of wealth, and when he's shipwrecked, let