| The Art of Love | |
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Title page of a 1644 edition of "Ars amatoria", published in Frankfurt. |
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| Author(s) | Ovid |
| Original title | Ars amatoria |
| Country | Roman Empire |
| Language | Latin |
| Publication date | ca. 1 BCE |
The Ars amatoria (English: The Art of Love) is an instructional love elegy in three books by the Roman poet Ovid, penned around 2 CE. It claims to provide teaching in three areas of general preoccupation: how and where to find women in Rome, how to seduce them, and how to prevent others from stealing them.
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After a first publication of two of the books, dated to around 1 BCE, Ovid wrote the third dealing with the same themes from the female perspective two years later..
The Ars amatoria is, in part, a burlesque satire on didactic poetry. Claiming 'Aeacidae Chiron, ego sum praeceptor Amoris'[1] ('As Chiron was to Achilles, so I am to Cupid' - in other words, 'I taught Cupid everything he knows'), Ovid offers advice to men on how to seduce and keep a woman, and to women on how to be attractive to a man. He advises that, if one is accompanying a lady to the horse-racing in the Circus Maximus, one should gallantly brush the dust from her gown. And if there isn't any dust there, brush it nonetheless. A young man should promise the moon to the object of his affections in letters - even a beggar can be rich in promises. A small woman, meanwhile, would be better advised to receive her suitor lying down... but should make sure that her feet are hidden under her dress, so that her true size is not disclosed.
Although Ovid protests 'Siqua fides arti, quam longo fecimus usu, /Credite: praestabunt carmina nostra fidem'[2] ('If you trust art's promise that I've long employed/ my songs will offer you their promise'), and his erotic advice indicates a good understanding of women psychology, in part he is following a literary tradition, especially the two previous exponents of the Latin love-elegy, Propertius and Tibullus, and the (mostly lost) erotic poetry of the Greek Hellenistic period.
The first two books, aimed at men, contain sections which cover such topics as 'not forgetting her birthday', 'letting her miss you - but not for long' and 'not asking about her age'. The third gives similar advice to women, sample themes include: 'making up, but in private', 'being wary of false lovers' and 'trying young and older lovers'. Although the book was finished around 2 CE, much of the advice he gives is applicable to any day and age. His intent is often more profound than the brilliance of the surface suggests. In connection with the revelation that the theatre is a good place to meet girls, for instance, Ovid, the classically educated trickster, refers to the story of the rape of the Sabine women. It has been argued that this passage represents a radical attempt to redefine relationships between men and women in Roman society, advocating a move away from paradigms of force and possession, towards concepts of mutual fulfilment.[3]
The superficial brilliance, however, dazzles even scholars (paradoxically, Ovid consequently tended in the 20th century to be underrated as lacking in seriousness). The standard situations and cliches of the subject are treated in a highly entertaining way, spiced with colourful details from Greek mythology, everyday Roman life and general human experience. Ovid likens love to military service, supposedly requiring the strictest obedience to the beloved woman. Women, meanwhile, he advises to make their lovers artificially jealous so that they do not become neglectful through complacency. For this purpose, a slave should be instructed to interrupt the lovers' tryst with the cry 'Perimus' ('We are lost!'), compelling the young lover to while away some time in a cupboard. Readers can follow the allusive chatter of the poet with a smile, without ever being able to be quite certain how seriously he means any of it. The tension implicit in this uncommitted tone is reminiscent of a flirt, and in fact, the semi-serious, semi-ironic form is ideally suited to Ovid's subject matter.
It is striking that through all his ironic discourse, Ovid never becomes ribald or obscene. Of course 'embarrassing' matters can never be entirely excluded, for alma Dione praecipite nostrum est, quod pudet, inquit, opus[4] '..."what you blush to tell", says nourishing Venus, "is the most important part of the whole matter"'. Sexual matters in the narrower sense are only dealt with at the end of each book, so here again, form and content converge in a subtly ingenious way. Things, so to speak, always end up in bed. But here, too, Ovid retains his style and his discretion, avoiding any pornographic tinge. The end of the second book deals with the pleasures of simultaneous orgasm. Somewhat atypically for a Roman, the poet confesses, Odi concubitus, qui non utrumque resolvunt. Hoc est, cur pueri tangar amore minus[5] ('I abhor intercourse which does not relieve both. This is also why I find less pleasure in the love of boys').
At the end of the third part, as in the Kama Sutra, the sexual positions are 'declined', and from them women are exhorted to choose the most suitable, taking the proportions of their own bodies into careful consideration. Ovid's tongue is again discovered in his cheek when his recommendation that tall women should not straddle their lovers is exemplified at the expense of the tallest hero of the Trojan Wars: Quod erat longissima, numquam Thebais Hectoreo nupta resedit equo[6] ('Because she was very tall, the Theban bride (Andromache) never sat on her Hectorian horse').
The polysemous word ars in the title is not, then, to be translated coldly as 'technique', but here really means 'art' in the sense of civilized refinement.
Appropriately for its subject, the Ars Amatoria is composed in elegiac couplets, rather than the dactylic hexameters, which are more usually associated with the didactic poem.
The work was such a popular success that the poet wrote a sequel, Remedia Amoris (Remedies for Love). At an early recitatio, however, S. Vivianus Rhesus is noted as having walked out in disgust.[7]
The assumption that the 'licentiousness' of the Ars amatoria was responsible in part for Ovid's relegation (banishment) by Augustus in AD 8 is dubious, and seems rather to reflect modern sensibilities than historical fact. For one thing, the Ars amatoria had been in circulation for eight years by the time of the relegation, and the book postdates the Julian Marriage Laws by eighteen years. Secondly, it is hardly likely that Augustus, after forty years unchallenged in the purple, felt the poetry of Ovid to be a serious threat or even embarrassment to his social policies. Thirdly, Ovid's own statement[8] from his Black Sea exile that his relegation was because of 'carmen et error' ('a song and a mistake') is, for many reasons, hardly admissible.
It is more probable that Ovid was somehow caught up in factional politics connected with the succession: Postumus Agrippa, Augustus' adopted son, and Augustus' granddaughter, Vipsania Julilla, were both relegated at around the same time. This would also explain why Ovid was not reprieved when Augustus was succeeded by Agrippa's rival Tiberius. It is likely, then, that the Ars amatoria was used as an excuse for the relegation.[9] This would be neither the first nor the last time a 'crackdown on immorality' disguised an uncomfortable political secret.
The Ars amatoria created considerable interest at the time of its publication. On a lesser scale, Martial's epigrams take a similar context of advising readers on love. Modern literature has been continually influenced by the Ars Amatoria, which has presented additional information on the relationship between Ovid's poem and more current writings.[10] The Ars Amatoria was included in the syllabuses of mediaeval schools from the second half of the 11th cent., and its influence on 12th and 13th cent. European literature was so great that the German mediaevalist and palaeographer Ludwig Traube dubbed the entire age 'aetas Ovidiana' ('the Ovidian epoch').[11] To this day, it has remained a topic of study in Latin literature classes in high schools and colleges around the world.
As in the years immediately following its publication, the Ars Amatoria has historically been victim of moral outcry. All of Ovid's works were burned by Savonarola in Florence, Italy in 1497; Christopher Marlowe's translation was banned in 1599, and another English translation of the Ars amatoria was seized by U.S. Customs in 1930.[12] Despite the actions against the work, Ars amatoria has remained a topic of study in Latin literature classes in high schools and colleges around the world.
It is possible that Edmond Rostand's fictionalized portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac makes an allusion to the Ars amatoria: the theme of the erotic and seductive power of poetry is highly suggestive of Ovid's poem, and Bergerac's nose, a distinguishing feature invented by Rostand, calls to mind Ovid's cognomen, Naso (from nasus, 'large-nosed').
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