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Ovid. The Love Books
PUBLISHER NOTES:
Introduction 1
Introduction 2
Introduction 3
Introduction 4
Epigram
Elegy 1. The Poet Explains How It Is He Comes To Sing Of Love Instead Of Battles
Elegy 2. The Triumph Of Love
Elegy 3. 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 4. 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 5. His Delight At Having Obtained Corinna's Favours
Elegy 6. He Conjures The Porter To Open The Door Of His Mistress's House
Elegy 7. He Curses Himself For Having Maltreated His Mistress
Elegy 8. He Curses A Certain Old Woman Of The Town Whom He Overhears Instructing His Mistress In The Arts Of A Courtesan
Elegy 9. He Compareth Love With War
Elegy 10. He Endeavours To Dissuade His Mistress From Becoming A Courtesan
Elegy 11. He Asks Nape To Deliver A Love-Letter To Her Mistress
Elegy 12. He Calls Down Curses On The Tablets Which Bring Him Word Of His Mistress's Refusal
Elegy 13. He Entreats The Dawn To Hasten Not Her Coming
Elegy 14. To His Mistress, Who, Contrary To His Counsel, Dyed Her Hair With Noxious Compositions, And Has Nearly Become Bald
Elegy 15. The Poets Alone Are Immortal
Elegy 1. He Tells Wherefore, Instead Of The Wars Of The Giants, Which He Had Commenced, He Is Constrained To Sing Of Love
Elegy 2. To The Eunuch Bagoas, Begging Him To Give Him Access To The Fair One Committed To His Charge
Elegy 3. He Appeals Once More To Bagoas, Who Had Proved Inflexible
Elegy 4. He Confesses His Inclination For Love And His Admiration For All Manner Of Women
Elegy 5. He Upbraids His Mistress Whom He His Detected Acting Falsely Towards Him
Elegy 6. He Laments The Death Of The Parrot He Had Given To His Mistress
Elegy 7. He Assures Corinna That He Has Never Had Any Guilty Commerce With Cypassis, Her Maid
Elegy 8. He Asks Cypassis How In The World Corinna Could Have Found Them Out
Elegy 9. He Beseeches Cupid Not To Discharge All His Arrows At Him Alone
Elegy 10. 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 11. He Seeks To Dissuade Corinna From Going To Baiæ
Elegy 12. He Rejoices At Having At Last Won The Favours Of Corinna
Elegy 13. He Beseeches Isis To Come To The Aid Of Corinna In Her Confinement
Elegy 14. On Corinna's Recovery He Writes To Her Again Concerning Her Attempt At Abortion And Tells Her How Naughty She Has Been
Elegy 15. To The Ring Which He Is Sending To His Mistress
Elegy 16. To Corinna, Beseeching Her To Visit Him In His Country Home At Sulmo
Elegy 17. He Complains To Corinna That She Is Too Conceited About Her Good Looks
Elegy 18. To Macer: To Whom He Excuses Himself For Giving Himself Up Wholly To Erotic Verse
Elegy 19. To A Man With Whose Wife He Was In Love
Elegy 1. The Tragic And The Elegiac Muse Strive For The Possession Of Ovid
Elegy 2. The Circus
Elegy 3. To His Mistress, Whom He Has Found To Be Forsworn
Elegy 4. He Urges A Husband Not To Keep So Strict A Watch On His Wife
Elegy 5. A Dream
Elegy 6. To A River Which Has Overflowed Its Banks And Hindered The Poet, Who Was Hastening To His Mistress
Elegy 7. The Poet Reproaches Himself For Having Failed In His Duty Towards His Mistress
Elegy 8. To His Mistress, Complaining That She His Given Preference To A Wealthier Rival
Elegy 9. On The Death Of Tibullus
Elegy 10. He Complains To Ceres That, During Her Festival, He Is Not Suffered To Share His Mistress' Couch
Elegy 11. Weary At Length Of His Mistress' Infidelities, He Swears That He Will Love Her No Longer
Elegy 12. He Laments That His Poems Have Made His Mistress Too Well Known
Elegy 13. The Festival Of Juno At Falisci
Elegy 14. To His Mistress
Elegy 15. He Bids Farewell To His Wanton Muse, To Court One, More Austere
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Remedia Amoris (The Cures For Love)
The Art Of Beauty
PUBLISHER NOTES:
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Table of Contents
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The Love Books
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.
.....
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!"
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