Read Online The Art of Love by Ovid - Free Book Online Page A

left, his wife was on the rack;
    And you, Laodamia, longed for your husband back.
    But brief partings are safest: affection grows slack
    With lapse of time, and it’s not long before
    The old love fades and the new comes through the door.
    When Menelaus was abroad,
    Helen, being bored
    And lonely at night, found warmth on the breast
    Of her husband’s foreign guest.
    O Menelaus, I can’t help wondering whether
    You were sane to go off, leaving them together
    In the same house. Madman, do you trust doves to a kite?
    Or a full sheepfold to a wolf at night?
    Neither Helen nor the adulterer carries blame:
    You or any man would have done the same.
    By offering time and place you almost force
    Adultery; if you map out the course,
    Isn’t she going to take it? What could she do,
    Menelaus, far from you,
    With a stylish stranger around, frightened and lonely
    In an empty bed? Think hard.
You
were the only
    Culprit. In my view Helen doesn’t bear
    The blame for the affair—
    Her husband was complaisant, Paris there.
    [L ATIN :
Sed neque fulvus…
]
        As fierce as the tawny boar in a rage, when he rounds
    With flashing tusks on the maddened hounds
    And tosses them sideways, no less
    Ferocious than a lioness
    Suckling unweaned cubs, even madder
    Than a carelessly stepped-on adder,
    Is the woman who finds a rival in the bed she shares.
    Her face declares
    Everything, the flames of jealousy scorch.
    She reaches wildly for a dagger, a torch,
    She throws dignity to the wind,
    She’s a maenad, she goes clean out of her mind.
    When Jason broke his marriage vow, barbarous Medea slew
    Her own children. Think, too,
    Of Procne, now our swallow, another
    Savage, unnatural mother,
    Whose crime is still to this day expressed
    By the blood-red mark on her breast.
    These are the sort of outrages that shake
    The closest, firmest friendships; for his own sake,
    A prudent man steers clear of them.
    My moral rule, though, doesn’t condemn
    You (heaven forbid!) to one woman all your life—
    That’s beyond the hope even of a young wife.
    Play around, but discreetly, decently hiding,
    Not smugly advertising, your back-sliding.
    Never give one a present the other might recognise.
    An element of surprise
    In the times of your secret rendezvous
    Is essential; also don’t choose
    The same well-known retreat
    For all your girl-friends—you may, the three of you, meet.
    And whenever you write one a letter,
    You had better
    Check the tablets for traces of a previous note:
    Many a woman reads what her lover never wrote
    To her. Venus, when she’s sore,
    Hurls back the weapon in all-out, righteous war
    And hits you where it hurts, as she was hit before.
    So long as Agamemnon hadn’t disgraced
    His marriage, Clytemnestra remained chaste:
    It was
his
beastly conduct that made her a beast.
    She’d heard all—reports of Chryses the priest,
    Fillet on head, laurel in hand, begging in vain
    For his daughter back again,
    Of Briseis and her grief,
    Stolen from Achilles, Agamemnon the thief,
    And of action shamefully deferred,
    The war prolonged. All this she’d heard,
    But Cassandra she
saw
, and once she’d been
    Eye-witness of the scene—
    The conqueror enslaved, enraptured
    By the princess he’d captured—
    She took Aegisthus to her heart and bed
    And brought down vengeance on her husband’s head.
    [L ATIN :
Quae bene celaris…
]
        If you’re caught out, if your carefully concealed sin
    Comes to light, still lie through thick and thin.
    Don’t be extra nice to her, and don’t feebly wilt:
    Both are sure signs of guilt.
    Take her to bed—all peace is made on the pillow—
    And with all you’ve got disprove your peccadillo.
    Some recommend the use
    Of aphrodisiacs such as savory juice
    (Believe me, it harms you and it’s vile),
    Or pepper mixed with nettle-seed, or camomile
    Blended with vintage wine;
    But the goddess worshipped at the shrine
    On Eryx’s high and leafy hill
    Isn’t drummed to her pleasures by man’s will.
    Eat