lustration by Frederico Righi
Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD
And tears help: tears will move a stone:
let her see your damp cheeks if you can.
If tears (they don’t always come at the right time)
fail you, touch your eyes with a wet hand.
What wise man doesn’t mingle tears with kisses?
Though she might not give, take what isn’t given.
Perhaps she’ll struggle, and then say ‘you’re wicked’:
struggling she still wants, herself, to be conquered.
Only, take care her lips aren’t bruised by snatching,
and that she can’t complain that you were harsh.
Who takes a kiss, and doesn’t take the rest,
deserves to lose all that were granted too.
How much short of your wish are you after that kiss?
Ah me, that was boorishness stopped you not modesty.
Though you call it force: it’s force that pleases girls: what delights
is often to have given what they wanted, against their will.
She who is taken in love’s sudden onslaught
is pleased, and finds wickedness is a tribute.
And she who might have been forced, and escapes unscathed,
will be saddened, though her face pretends delight.
Phoebe was taken by force: force was offered her sister:
and both, when raped, were pleased with those who raped them.
Though the tale’s known, it’s still worth repeating,
how the girl of Scyros mated Achilles the hero.
Now the lovely goddess had given her fatal bribe
to defeat the other two beneath Ida’s slopes:
now a daughter-in-law had come to Priam
from an enemy land: a Greek wife in Trojan walls:
all swore the prescribed oath to the injured husband:
now one man’s grief became a nation’s cause.
Shamefully, though he gave way to a mother’s prayer,
Achilles hid his manhood in women’s clothes.
What’s this, Aeacides? Spinning’s not your work:
your search for fame’s through Pallas’s other arts.
Why the basket? Your arm’s meant to bear a shield:
why does the hand that will slay Hector hold the yarn?
Throw away the spindle wound laboriously with thread!
The spear from Pelion’s to be brandished by this hand.
By chance a royal virgin shared the room:
through her rape she learned he was a man.
That she was truly won by force, we must think:
but she still wanted to be won by force.
She often cried: ‘Stop!’ afterwards, when Achilles hurried on:
now he’d taken up stronger weapons than the distaff.
Where’s that force now? Why do you restrain
the perpetrator of your rape, Deidamia?
No doubt as there’s a sort of shame in having started first,
so it’s pleasant to have what someone else has started.
Ah! The youth has too much faith in his own beauty,
if he waits until she asks him first.
The man must approach first: speak the words of entreaty:
she courteously receives his flattering prayers.
To win her, ask her: she only wants to be asked:
give her the cause and the beginning of your longing.
Jupiter went as a suppliant to the heroines of old:
no woman ever seduced great Jupiter.
If you find she disdains the advent of your prayerful sighs,
leave off what you’ve begun, retrace your steps.
What shuns them, they desire the more: they hate what’s there:
remove her loathing by pursuing less.
The hoped-for love should not always be declared:
introduce desire hidden in the name of friendship.
I’ve seen the most severe of women fooled this way:
he who once was a worshipper, became a lover.
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