Category: Poetry
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book II Part VIII: Favour Her and Compliment Her
Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Then what you’re about to do, and think is useful, always get your lover to ask you to do it. You promised liberty to one of your slaves: still let him seek the fact of it from your girl: if you stay a punishment, forgo the…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book II Part VII: Give Her Little Tasteful Gifts
Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD I don’t tell you to give your mistress expensive gifts: give little but of that little, skilfully, give what’s fitting. When the field is full of riches, when the branches bend with the weight, let the boy bring a gift in a rustic basket. You can…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book II Part VI: Win Over the Servants
Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Nor is it shameful to you to cultivate her maids, according to their grades, and the serving men. Greet them by their names (it costs you nothing) clasp humble hands with yours, in your ambition. And even offer the servant, who asks, a little something on…
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Metamorphoses
Juul Kraijer’s Spawn (2019) Wherever the might of Rome extends in the lands she has conquered, the people shall read and recite my words. Throughout all ages, if poets have vision to prophesy truth, I shall live in my fame. Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.877–9 Funny, devastating, flip, throat-catching – the moods of the Metamorphoses are as…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book II Part V: Don’t be Faint-Hearted
Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Love is a kind of warfare. Slackers, dismiss! There are no cowards guarding this standard. Night and winter, long roads and cruel sorrows, and every kind of labour are found on love’s campaigns. You’ll often endure rain pouring from heavenly clouds, and frozen, lie there on…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book II Part IV: Be Patient and Comply
Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD If she’s not charming or courteous enough, at your loving, endure it and persist: she’ll soon be kinder. You can get a curved branch to bend on the tree by patience: you’ll break it, if you try out your full strength. With patience you can cross…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book II Part III: Be Gentle and Good Tempered
Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Gentleness especially impresses minds favourably: harshness creates hatred and fierce wars. We hate the hawk that lives its life in battle, and the wolf whose custom is to raid the timid flocks. But the swallow, for its gentleness, is free from human snares, and Chaonian doves…
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Salmacis and Hermaphroditus
Paolo de Matteis, 9 February 1662 – 26 January 1728, Italian painter. Praise for Tales from Ovid: ‘A breathtaking book…To compare his versions with the Latin is to be awestruck again and again by the range and ingenuity of his poetic intelligence…He rescues the old gods and goddesses from the classical dictionaries and gives them…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book II Part II: You Need Gifts of Mind
Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Minos could not hold back those mortal wings: I’m setting out to check the winged god himself. He who has recourse to Thracian magic, fails, to what the foal yields, torn from its new-born brow, Medea’s herbs can’t keep love alive, nor Marsian dirges mingled with magic chants.…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book II Part I: His Task
Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Sing out the Paean: sing out the Paean twice! The prize I searched for falls into my net. Delighted lovers grant my songs the palm, I’m preferred to Hesiod and old Homer. So Paris the stranger sailed, from hostile Amyclae’s shore, under white sheets, with his…
