Category: Poetry
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part XV: At Dinner Be Bold
llustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Ah, Bacchus calls to his poet: he helps lovers too, and supports the fire with which he is inflamed. The frantic Cretan girl wandered the unknown sands, that the waters of tiny sea-borne Dia showed. Just as she was, from sleep, veiled…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part XIV: Look Presentable
llustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Don’t delight in curling your hair with tongs, don’t smooth your legs with sharp pumice stone. Leave that to those who celebrate Cybele the Mother, howling wildly in the Phrygian manner. Male beauty’s better for neglect: Theseus carried off Ariadne, without a…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part XIII: Be Where She Is
llustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Meanwhile, if she’s being carried, reclining on her bed, secretly approach your lady’s litter, and to avoid offering your words to odious ears, hide what you can with skill and ambiguous gestures. If she’s wandering at leisure in the spacious Colonnade, you…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part XII: Write and Make Promises
llustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Try wax to pave the way, pour it out on scraped tablets: let wax be your mind’s true confidante. Bring her your flattering words and play the lover: and, whoever you are, add a humble prayer. Achilles was moved by prayer to…
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The Birth of Hercules
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 back their terror. There should be a copy of his book in…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part XI: Don’t Forget Her Birthday!
llustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD It’s a mistake to think that only farmers working the fields, and sailors, need to keep an eye on the season: Seed can’t always be trusted to the furrow, or a hollow ship to the wine-dark sea, It’s not always safe to…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part X – First Secure the Maid
llustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD First Secure the Maid But to get to know your desired-one’s maid is your first care: she’ll smooth your way. See if she’s close to her mistress’s thoughts, and has plenty of true knowledge of her secret jests. Corrupt her with promises,…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part IX: How To Win Her
llustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD So far, riding her unequal wheels, the Muse has taught you where you might choose your love, where to set your nets. Now I’ll undertake to tell you what pleases her, by what arts she’s caught, itself a work of highest art.…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part VIII: And Finally There’s the Beach
llustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Why enumerate every female meeting place fit for the hunter? The grains of sand give way before the number. Why speak of Baiae, its shore splendid with sails, where the waters steam with sulphurous heat? Here one returning, his heart wounded, said:…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part VII: There’s always the Dinner-Table
llustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD The table laid for a feast also gives you an opening: There’s something more than wine you can look for there. Often rosy Love has clasped Bacchus’s horns, drawing him to his gentle arms, as he lay there. And when wine has…
