Aegisthus
was not wholly to
blame for his offence.
blame for his offence.
Ovid - 1901 - Ovid and His Influence
Do not
wait for them to begin. The poet caps his
argument with a supreme example:
Jove wooed the heroines on bended knee.
No maid corrupted him with amorous plea.
Iuppiter locutus est; causa finita est. The main
argument of the first book is done, but the poet
adds an epilogue. He was about to conclude,
when he bethought him of the diversity of
woman's nature. Doubtless the reader will find
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
that none of the instructions will fit his case.
Some fish are caught with a hook and some
with a drag-net. The lover should always be on
the move, always adaptive, always ready for
the sudden turn.
Act like the nimble Proteus. Turn your coat,
Changing to water, tree, boar, lion or to goat!
The life of the Ovidian lover is a perpetual,
and sometimes humiliating, metamorphosis.
The reader will assume that the argument
of the second book, "How to Keep Her," is
carried out with similar thoroughness. In this
difficult undertaking, the gallant has many
comic parts to play. He must postpone all his
business at his lady's call. If she is in the
country he must speed thither in his fastest
car. If no chariot is his, let him foot it briskly.
No running slave in comedy can be brisker, or
more ludicrous than he. All Rome will see him
carrying her parasol -- a menial task in those
days. He will often have to thread his way on
a pitch-dark night through sudden down-pours,
or sleep on the ice-cold sill. When the front
portal is barred, he will climb up by a window
or steal in at the sky-light.
One consolation there is; this sturdy disci-
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
pline is not for the wealthy lover; he needs it
not. Ovid preaches to the poor. The rich bar-
barian needs no passport; the poet's passport
rarely gets him by the door. There is, to be
sure, a small, very small, coterie of blue-
stockings:
Some girls have culture, but they're mighty few.
Some want to get it, -- or they think they do.
Here is where the poet-lover has a chance, a
slim one, with his
Rimes jolietes,
Motez, fabliaus, ou changonetes. 11
In most houses, however, Homer himself, at-
tended by all nine Muses, will be shown the
door.
For all its naughtiness, the poem is not with-
out its ethical lessons. The poet constructs a
kind of Mirror of the Chivalrous Lover, which
is the counterpart, and in many respects, the
model, of the Mediaeval Knightly Code, as we
see it in the Romance of the Rose. Patience
and courtesy are the cardinal virtues, anger
and pride the deadly sins. The lover should
cultivate a pleasant temper. He must study his
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
lady's desires and fit his mood to hers. Laugh
with her, cry with her, yield to her opinions.
Let her beat at games; escort her to receptions,
whither you may not care to go. Let her man-
age, or think she does. Learn to pay her
compliments with a straight face. Admire her
dresses, each for its own virtue; note the
changes in her art of arranging her hair.
She parts her hair; then praise the comely line.
She crimps it; call those twisted locks divine.
Serve as her doctor when she is ill. Do every-
thing for her, -- except administering the med-
icine; let your rival do that. Give her defects
the names of proximate virtues; say " slender"
for " skinny," " trim" for " puny," " buxom"
for " stout. " It is an easy art, which Plato and
Horace had prescribed before Ovid and the
heroines of Moliere and Congreve practised
after him. Prior sums it up in a neat couplet,
since become a proverb:
Be to her virtues very kind,
Be to her faults a little blind. 12
Finally, -- for Ovid's precepts always are sub-
ject to a sudden turn, -- it may be well to
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
arouse your darling's jealousy and her temper
now and then. Blessings on the amantium irae,
if they all the more endear:
Oh four times blest and blest times infinite
Is he who wounds his love and stirs her spite.
When gossip simmers and she, loath to hear,
Losing all voice and color, faints in fear,
May I be he whose locks she madly tears I
May I be he whose cheek her nail-prints bears!
At whom she looks with tearful little eyes,
Sans whom she cannot live, though hard she tries.
The last book of the poem is the most bril-
liant, if anything can be more brilliant than the
first two; in other words, the poet's climax is
sustained. With a complete volte-face, Ovid
now deserts his sex and instructs the maiden
how to win a lover and how to keep him. He
begins with a "Legend of Good Women," ex-
actly on Chaucer's plan and that of Jean de
Meun before him. It is accompanied by the
same ruthless exhibition of man's shiftiness
that we saw in the Heroides. "Deceive your
deceivers! " That maxim is passed on, with a
courteous bow, to the fair. Whether Ovid's
precepts are sound is not for a mere man to
judge. On the attractiveness of mourning ap-
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
parel, on the danger of getting mad at cards,
on the use of the mirror as a cure for temper,
on the practice of various modes of hand-writ-
ing for various lovers, on the advisability of
completing one's toilet before leaving the house,
lest, as the poet puts it, "you show yourself
a work of art in the making," -- on these and
many other matters some docta puella should
tell us whether Ovid has hit the mark.
The maidens to whom the poet gives counsel
are, as ever, those of the lower world. He had
intended a brief digression on the way for
wives to elude their shrewd husbands and
wakeful porters. No, no! Rather he had meant
to pass that topic by. But he will add a sug-
gestion for the reform of the home. If the wife
would arouse her husband's love, let her make
love less easy for him. Shut him out! Let him
hear the concierge say gruffly, as he slams the
door in his face, "Non potes! " "No you
don't! " With his sense of adventure spurred,
the master of the house can then climb in at
my Lady's window.
Such is Ovid's Art of Love, being, as a
French critic pithily observes,13 "I'art d'aimer
sans amour," the work of one who can apos-
trophize himself in Chaucer's words:
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
r<
And peynest thee to preyse (Love's) art,
Although thou haddest never part. 14
Ovid's poem is a monument of art, of chis-
elled verses with the sparkle of diamonds. It
is a monument of wit and delicate travesty,
prompted by deviltry and restrained by no re-
luctance to shock. The poet spares none of the
mysteries of sex. He shrinks from nothing. But
it is not prurience or morbidity but audacity
to the point of blasphemy that leads him to
disclose with a reckless frankness what in all
decency should be left unsung. Matrons are
warned off the field, but by irony and innuendo
we are constantly made aware that the world
of intrigue portrayed in the Art of Love differs
not at all from that in the Amores. Nor does
the earlier work fail to contain pieces quite as
impossible for a writer today as the notorious
grand finales in the Art of Love. If writing of
this sort deserved exile, Ovid should have been
banished in his early twenties.
Towards the close of the poem, Ovid illus-
trates the evils of jealousy by the story of
Cephalus and Procris. The young huntsman,
Cephalus, tired after the chase, would rest in
a grove and sing the praise of Aura, the breeze,
who came to refresh him. Procris, minded of
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
Aurora, the Dawn - goddess, who had once
stolen him from her, goes in search of him. He
hears a rustling in the bushes, and thinking
that some creature of the woods is coming
towards him, shoots an arrow thither. He
rushes into the thicket and finds that he has
slain his wife. The story is told in lines of
liquid grace, and an exquisite pathos not far
removed from tragedy. This is the moment of
serious relief in Ovid's dare-devil comedy. It
is his apology, much needed, for his transgres-
sions, proclaimed with clearness for those wha
have ears to hear.
When all is said, the Art of Love cannot
permanently harm a reader who, equipped with
a sense of humor, finds something in the poem
besides a manual of seduction. Landor, in the
imaginary conversation which he devises for
Tibullus and Messala, makes the latter re-
mark:
"Before I left Ovidius -- he read to me the
commencement of some amatory pieces, at
which if I smiled, it was in courtesy, not ap-
probation. "
Really, there is another reason for which Mes-
sala might have smiled.
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
iv. THE REMEDIES OF LOVE
I find the Medicine worse than the Malady.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER
Quid faciam? Monitis sum minor ipse meis.
OVID
The gossips at Rome had been busy with
the Art of Love. An apology seemed appro-
priate, and Ovid proceeded cheerfully to re-
cant. He lost no time in so doing. An allusion
to the Parthian expedition as still under way
fixes the date of the Remedia, like that of the
Art of Love, between i b. c. and i a. d. Both
works, therefore, were done within the space
of two years. It is a remarkable achievement,
for though Ovid composed with ease, he must
have spent some time in planning his intri-
cate structures, in elaborating his parodies and
audacities as fast as they occurred to his lively
imagination, and in polishing his first drafts of
verse into the peerless art of its finished form.
The apology, we find somewhat to our sur-
prise, is not to us but to Cupid. Cupid scents
a battle and the poet reassures him that his
object is not to annihilate love, -- in fact he
himself is laboring with a bad attack at the
moment -- but only in case some desperate
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
lover is on the point of suicide, to suggest a
few precepts that may restore his sanity.
Cupid, mollified, puts up his arrows and gives
the work his Imprimatur. So Dr. Ovid, in the
manner of the street-preacher of his day,
gathers youths and maidens about him, to
listen to his message of healing. Come ere it
be too late! Could Phyllis and Dido and even
unhappy Pasiphae have consulted the doctor,
their lives would have been models of felicity
and common sense. Could Helen have come in
time, this same physician would have prevented
the Trojan War! With an invocation to Phoe-
bus the Healer, he writes out his prescriptions.
Begin the cure at once, that is, tomorrow.
Yet even if the disease is well established, call
in the doctor; it may not be too late. Perhaps
he will advise that the fever run its course;
that is well in the more violent cases. Be neither
too fast nor too slow; watch for the psycho-
logical moment! Surely such admonition is
safe, sane and scientific. We are disposed to
trust this expert. Now for the specific cures.
The first and most fatal obstacle to recovery
is too much leisure. So get to work! Go into
politics or law or enlist for service over seas
against the Parthians. Work is the best anti-
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
dote for love.
Aegisthus was not wholly to
blame for his offence. He was a slacker, true,
and had not joined the troops, but it was just
because Argos was deserted that he devoted his
attention to Agamemnon's wife; there was
nothing else to do! Perhaps your plan for in-
dustry may look towards the country. How
pleasant to see the cattle winding slowly over
the lea, to see trees laden with fruit and sheep
with wool, and, above all, to set out plants with
your own hands. The poet praises country life,
divina gloria ruris, as enthusiastically as Virgil
does in the Georgics or Horace in his epode,
with the underlying strain of light travesty con-
spicuous in the latter poem. But, our physician
adds, do not get a country-place too near to
Rome. Travel abroad. This is bitter medicine,
but efficacious, and far safer than the magic
potion, which he never recommends. In case
the patient cannot get away from town and
can find no engrossing occupation there, he
should apply a psycho-analytical treatment.
Make a list of your darling's imperfections and
rehearse this catalogue constantly.
The more she grabs, the less she is content.
Good-bye, small home, I cannot pay the rent!
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
She swore me oaths and broke whate'er she swore.
All night I've waited at the fast-barred door.
She's tired of me. With me intrigue were sin;
My vulgar rival, with the cash, gets in!
An advanced form of this method is the oppo-
site of the principle laid down in the Art of
Love that the gallant should rename his mis-
tress's defects as though they were virtues; now
he should rename her virtues as though they
were defects.
To ills deflect her virtues, if you can,
And cheat your judgment by this subtle plan.
Obese the buxom, black the brunette call,
And swear the slender has no flesh at all.
Call pert the maiden who is not straight-laced,
And rustic call her, if, perchance, she's chaste.
Really, this cure is so complex that were the
last line quoted by itself, many an expert might
fancy that it was part of the Art of Love and
not of the Remedies.
Thus far, the lover has directed his main
attention to himself. But he should also study
his mistress and plan a new course of action in
his dealings with her. In brief, make her dis-
play her imperfections. If she has no voice,
urge her to sing. If she is gawky, set her to
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
dancing. If her speech is distinguished mainly
by bad grammar, engage her in lengthy con-
versations. If her teeth are uncomely, tell her
funny stories; if her eyes tend to be bleary,
move her to weeping by some tragic tale.
Above all, pay an early morning call, before
she has had time to manufacture a complexion
and array herself in her jewels.
By gems we're captured and the dresser's art;
A girl's own person is her smallest part.
If the lover meets with no success in these
and other attempts, some of them pretty des-
perate, let him turn his attention elsewhere.
Let fire drive out fire! If he needs instructions
in selecting a new mistress, the doctor can take
down his standard work on the Art of Love,
temporarily put on the shelf, and refer him to
Part I, Chapter I, on "How to Find Her. "
Fas est et ab hoste doceri! This, then, may be
the best way:
To quench the thirst that hath your stomach fired
Drink from mid-stream until your thirst hath tired.
The poet now comes, with a special invoca-
tion, to the second main division of his rem-
edies. It corresponds to the section on " How
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
to Keep Her" in the Art of Love. It is now
"How to Keep Her Lost. " Again there are
psychological precepts; again the gallant is in-
structed in the treatment of his former darling.
He should court the crowd, avoid solitude, but
likewise avoid contagious society. Particularly,
he must never protest that all is over. Hate her
not; hate and love are desperately contiguous.
Do not bring suit to recover your presents. Be
well prepared for a sudden meeting with her
again. Wear slouchy clothes. Turn a deaf ear
to her flattery and her tears. Above all, do not
argue with her the justice of your case; do not
give her a chance to argue. Burn her letters
and her pictures; avoid reminiscential scenes.
Lose all your money, if you can. Go not to the
theatre. Read no poetry of the softer sort;
never open your copy of Sappho or Tibullus.
Who can read Gallus and stay cool of heart?
My poems, too, have something of that art!
This were impartiality itself, for the physician
to warn the patient from his publications, --
were there not another class of patients, who
would find something of an advertisement here.
The treatment of your rival is the hardest
part of the cure. Do not think of him, or, if
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
you can, think of him as non-existing! When
you can stand his presence, when you can kiss
him, then you are cured. That is the acid test
of convalescence, that and the ability to walk
past your mistress's front door. Incidentally,
cultivate a proper diet. Eat rue and other brain
food. As to wine:
Drink not at all, or drink to drown your woe.
'Tis dangerous in the middle course to go.
So end the Remedia. The critics who ex-
pected a recantation perhaps have found this
remedy indistinguishable from the disease.
Curiously, though Ovid's patients whom he
gathered about him at the beginning of his
discourse included maidens as well as men, the
precepts are all for the latter. Maidens can
v take care of themselves.
2. The Poet of Transformations
metamorphoses
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forward do contend.
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change. . . .
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wondering at the present nor the past.
SHAKESPEARE
Sed ut unda impellitur unda,
Urgueturque eadem veniens urguetque priorem;
Tempora sic fugiunt pariter, pariterque sequuntur.
Animus tamcn omnia vincit.
OVID
The higher theme which Ovid prophesied at
the end of his Amores had found a partial ex-
pression in his tragedy Medea and in the in-
vention of heroines' love-letters. His youthful
impulse to epic, which had shattered on the
rocks of a conventional subject, still moved
him, and though the reader of Ovid's love-
poetry might gasp at the suggestion that it
would lead easily and naturally into epic, such
is the case. It may also seem strange that Ovid
should turn to mythology for a theme; he had
treated the ancient legends as the invention of
lying bards. Still, he could tell a metamorpho-
sis or two himself, if occasion required. The
Ovidian lover can narrate a whole series of
myths to the swollen stream that bars the way
to his mistress. Myths of divine amours are
useful as "ensamples olde;" the gallant is
most learned in quoting such scripture for his
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
purpose. With each succeeding work, Ovid's
facility in narrative increased. In the Art of
Love, the brilliant rapidity of the incidental
tales could hardly be surpassed. It is not sur-
prising that the poet wished to try his wings
in a longer flight through the same realm. The
spirit of metamorphosis, furthermore, was in-
grained in his nature. He relished nothing
better than to set forth a mood or a situation
with utter seriousness and then blithely to pre-
sent the exact opposite. Shifts, set-backs, dis-
appointments, metamorphoses, are the essence
of life in his world of amorous adventure. It is
also a little world of myth, with Corinna at its
centre. Ovid had hugely enjoyed the role of
creator; he is at once properly sceptical of
poets' lies and confident of his own power to
turn the chaos of brute fact into the cosmos of
poetic reality. He had come to his own in an
epic on metamorphosis.
It is unfortunate that none of the ancient
poems on metamorphosis written before Ovid's
time has come down to us in its complete form.
Various writers had been fascinated with the
theme. Among the Greeks are Nicander and
"Boeus" in the Hellenistic age; among the
Romans is Aemilius Macer, whose poem on the
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
transformations of humans jnto birds Ovid had
heard from the lips of the composer. Could we
today read these and other such works entire,
we should doubtless learn much about Ovid's
procedure and his originality. Even now it is
safe to say that no such metamorphoses as his
had ever been told before.
The backbone of Ovid's narrative is chro-
nology. He professes to record the complete
history of metamorphosis, as Dryden puts it,
Deduc'd from Nature's birth to Caesar's times.
This plan gives at once the full sweep of epic
and, as Augustan epic might demand, allows
for the tucking in of a bit of panegyric. Ni-
cander's arrangement, so far as we can fathom,
was geographical; but Ovid found small prom-
ise of climax in a Baedeker. He likewise is not
attracted by the traditional arrangement fol-
lowed in handbooks of mythology, like that of
Apollodorus. The latter starts out with chro-
nology, but interrupts his plan almost at once.
He finds himself tracing the history of various
mythological families and has constantly to
begin again. Jupiter is perpetually interfering;
what can the genealogist do with one who be-
comes his own grandfather? The result is a
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
hodge-podge, a "Who's Who Among the
Gods," without an index.
Ovid is not embarrassed with so inclusive a
plan. Not intending a Summa Mythologiae, he
can more neatly present the semblance of a
history and keep his narrative alive. Though a
sober Apollodorus would find him dreadfully
anachronistic at times, he covers such transgres-
sions with a veil of illusion, and never allows
the delight of the reader to turn to criticism.
The number of myths that he manages to tell
in the rolling course of universal metamorphosis
is amazing. As he proceeded with his work,
he was constantly occupied with the amusing
problem of weaving into the texture of meta-
morphosis stories that had nothing to do with
it. For example, the tale of Ceres and Proser-
pine lies, we should imagine, outside his do-
main, but in virtue of its setting and the tales
of magical transformation told by the way and
at the end, the atmosphere of metamorphosis
is undisturbed. In this way, Ovid both pre-
serves his original design and contrives, after
all, a lexicon of the myths, -- the Golden Leg-
end of antiquity. The latest editor of Apollo-
dorus, no mean authority on myths,15 admires
our poet not only for his exuberant fancy but
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
for his learning and his fidelity to his sources.
Ovid has beaten Apollodorus at his own game.
Ovid's predecessors in poems on metamor-
phosis had secured contrast and variety by in-
fusing large amounts of amatory material into
their narrative. Our poet was not slow to com-
ply with such authority. He could also adopt
the epic poet's familiar device of transporting
the action to Olympus now and then. But what
an Olympus it is! His first metamorphoses,--
the evolution of the world from chaos, the
course of the ages from gold to iron, the battle
of the hosts of light and darkness -- are told
in stately and imaginative verse; it is the long-
est passage of uninterrupted sobriety that Ovid
has given us thus far. With Jove, the curtain
rises for another scene. We are introduced to
a thoroughly Augustan heaven, where plebeian
deities occupy the less desirable quarters and
the upper classes reside in what the poet calls
the Palatine of the Sky, with the Milky Way,
the celestial Fifth Avenue, or "Watlinge
strete," leading up to their mansions. Jupiter,
incensed at the impiety of Lycaon, decides to
destroy mankind with his thunderbolts, -- but
no, the fire might spread and ignite Olympus.
A flood would be safer. As the waters cover
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wait for them to begin. The poet caps his
argument with a supreme example:
Jove wooed the heroines on bended knee.
No maid corrupted him with amorous plea.
Iuppiter locutus est; causa finita est. The main
argument of the first book is done, but the poet
adds an epilogue. He was about to conclude,
when he bethought him of the diversity of
woman's nature. Doubtless the reader will find
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
that none of the instructions will fit his case.
Some fish are caught with a hook and some
with a drag-net. The lover should always be on
the move, always adaptive, always ready for
the sudden turn.
Act like the nimble Proteus. Turn your coat,
Changing to water, tree, boar, lion or to goat!
The life of the Ovidian lover is a perpetual,
and sometimes humiliating, metamorphosis.
The reader will assume that the argument
of the second book, "How to Keep Her," is
carried out with similar thoroughness. In this
difficult undertaking, the gallant has many
comic parts to play. He must postpone all his
business at his lady's call. If she is in the
country he must speed thither in his fastest
car. If no chariot is his, let him foot it briskly.
No running slave in comedy can be brisker, or
more ludicrous than he. All Rome will see him
carrying her parasol -- a menial task in those
days. He will often have to thread his way on
a pitch-dark night through sudden down-pours,
or sleep on the ice-cold sill. When the front
portal is barred, he will climb up by a window
or steal in at the sky-light.
One consolation there is; this sturdy disci-
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
pline is not for the wealthy lover; he needs it
not. Ovid preaches to the poor. The rich bar-
barian needs no passport; the poet's passport
rarely gets him by the door. There is, to be
sure, a small, very small, coterie of blue-
stockings:
Some girls have culture, but they're mighty few.
Some want to get it, -- or they think they do.
Here is where the poet-lover has a chance, a
slim one, with his
Rimes jolietes,
Motez, fabliaus, ou changonetes. 11
In most houses, however, Homer himself, at-
tended by all nine Muses, will be shown the
door.
For all its naughtiness, the poem is not with-
out its ethical lessons. The poet constructs a
kind of Mirror of the Chivalrous Lover, which
is the counterpart, and in many respects, the
model, of the Mediaeval Knightly Code, as we
see it in the Romance of the Rose. Patience
and courtesy are the cardinal virtues, anger
and pride the deadly sins. The lover should
cultivate a pleasant temper. He must study his
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
lady's desires and fit his mood to hers. Laugh
with her, cry with her, yield to her opinions.
Let her beat at games; escort her to receptions,
whither you may not care to go. Let her man-
age, or think she does. Learn to pay her
compliments with a straight face. Admire her
dresses, each for its own virtue; note the
changes in her art of arranging her hair.
She parts her hair; then praise the comely line.
She crimps it; call those twisted locks divine.
Serve as her doctor when she is ill. Do every-
thing for her, -- except administering the med-
icine; let your rival do that. Give her defects
the names of proximate virtues; say " slender"
for " skinny," " trim" for " puny," " buxom"
for " stout. " It is an easy art, which Plato and
Horace had prescribed before Ovid and the
heroines of Moliere and Congreve practised
after him. Prior sums it up in a neat couplet,
since become a proverb:
Be to her virtues very kind,
Be to her faults a little blind. 12
Finally, -- for Ovid's precepts always are sub-
ject to a sudden turn, -- it may be well to
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
arouse your darling's jealousy and her temper
now and then. Blessings on the amantium irae,
if they all the more endear:
Oh four times blest and blest times infinite
Is he who wounds his love and stirs her spite.
When gossip simmers and she, loath to hear,
Losing all voice and color, faints in fear,
May I be he whose locks she madly tears I
May I be he whose cheek her nail-prints bears!
At whom she looks with tearful little eyes,
Sans whom she cannot live, though hard she tries.
The last book of the poem is the most bril-
liant, if anything can be more brilliant than the
first two; in other words, the poet's climax is
sustained. With a complete volte-face, Ovid
now deserts his sex and instructs the maiden
how to win a lover and how to keep him. He
begins with a "Legend of Good Women," ex-
actly on Chaucer's plan and that of Jean de
Meun before him. It is accompanied by the
same ruthless exhibition of man's shiftiness
that we saw in the Heroides. "Deceive your
deceivers! " That maxim is passed on, with a
courteous bow, to the fair. Whether Ovid's
precepts are sound is not for a mere man to
judge. On the attractiveness of mourning ap-
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
parel, on the danger of getting mad at cards,
on the use of the mirror as a cure for temper,
on the practice of various modes of hand-writ-
ing for various lovers, on the advisability of
completing one's toilet before leaving the house,
lest, as the poet puts it, "you show yourself
a work of art in the making," -- on these and
many other matters some docta puella should
tell us whether Ovid has hit the mark.
The maidens to whom the poet gives counsel
are, as ever, those of the lower world. He had
intended a brief digression on the way for
wives to elude their shrewd husbands and
wakeful porters. No, no! Rather he had meant
to pass that topic by. But he will add a sug-
gestion for the reform of the home. If the wife
would arouse her husband's love, let her make
love less easy for him. Shut him out! Let him
hear the concierge say gruffly, as he slams the
door in his face, "Non potes! " "No you
don't! " With his sense of adventure spurred,
the master of the house can then climb in at
my Lady's window.
Such is Ovid's Art of Love, being, as a
French critic pithily observes,13 "I'art d'aimer
sans amour," the work of one who can apos-
trophize himself in Chaucer's words:
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
r<
And peynest thee to preyse (Love's) art,
Although thou haddest never part. 14
Ovid's poem is a monument of art, of chis-
elled verses with the sparkle of diamonds. It
is a monument of wit and delicate travesty,
prompted by deviltry and restrained by no re-
luctance to shock. The poet spares none of the
mysteries of sex. He shrinks from nothing. But
it is not prurience or morbidity but audacity
to the point of blasphemy that leads him to
disclose with a reckless frankness what in all
decency should be left unsung. Matrons are
warned off the field, but by irony and innuendo
we are constantly made aware that the world
of intrigue portrayed in the Art of Love differs
not at all from that in the Amores. Nor does
the earlier work fail to contain pieces quite as
impossible for a writer today as the notorious
grand finales in the Art of Love. If writing of
this sort deserved exile, Ovid should have been
banished in his early twenties.
Towards the close of the poem, Ovid illus-
trates the evils of jealousy by the story of
Cephalus and Procris. The young huntsman,
Cephalus, tired after the chase, would rest in
a grove and sing the praise of Aura, the breeze,
who came to refresh him. Procris, minded of
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
Aurora, the Dawn - goddess, who had once
stolen him from her, goes in search of him. He
hears a rustling in the bushes, and thinking
that some creature of the woods is coming
towards him, shoots an arrow thither. He
rushes into the thicket and finds that he has
slain his wife. The story is told in lines of
liquid grace, and an exquisite pathos not far
removed from tragedy. This is the moment of
serious relief in Ovid's dare-devil comedy. It
is his apology, much needed, for his transgres-
sions, proclaimed with clearness for those wha
have ears to hear.
When all is said, the Art of Love cannot
permanently harm a reader who, equipped with
a sense of humor, finds something in the poem
besides a manual of seduction. Landor, in the
imaginary conversation which he devises for
Tibullus and Messala, makes the latter re-
mark:
"Before I left Ovidius -- he read to me the
commencement of some amatory pieces, at
which if I smiled, it was in courtesy, not ap-
probation. "
Really, there is another reason for which Mes-
sala might have smiled.
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
iv. THE REMEDIES OF LOVE
I find the Medicine worse than the Malady.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER
Quid faciam? Monitis sum minor ipse meis.
OVID
The gossips at Rome had been busy with
the Art of Love. An apology seemed appro-
priate, and Ovid proceeded cheerfully to re-
cant. He lost no time in so doing. An allusion
to the Parthian expedition as still under way
fixes the date of the Remedia, like that of the
Art of Love, between i b. c. and i a. d. Both
works, therefore, were done within the space
of two years. It is a remarkable achievement,
for though Ovid composed with ease, he must
have spent some time in planning his intri-
cate structures, in elaborating his parodies and
audacities as fast as they occurred to his lively
imagination, and in polishing his first drafts of
verse into the peerless art of its finished form.
The apology, we find somewhat to our sur-
prise, is not to us but to Cupid. Cupid scents
a battle and the poet reassures him that his
object is not to annihilate love, -- in fact he
himself is laboring with a bad attack at the
moment -- but only in case some desperate
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
lover is on the point of suicide, to suggest a
few precepts that may restore his sanity.
Cupid, mollified, puts up his arrows and gives
the work his Imprimatur. So Dr. Ovid, in the
manner of the street-preacher of his day,
gathers youths and maidens about him, to
listen to his message of healing. Come ere it
be too late! Could Phyllis and Dido and even
unhappy Pasiphae have consulted the doctor,
their lives would have been models of felicity
and common sense. Could Helen have come in
time, this same physician would have prevented
the Trojan War! With an invocation to Phoe-
bus the Healer, he writes out his prescriptions.
Begin the cure at once, that is, tomorrow.
Yet even if the disease is well established, call
in the doctor; it may not be too late. Perhaps
he will advise that the fever run its course;
that is well in the more violent cases. Be neither
too fast nor too slow; watch for the psycho-
logical moment! Surely such admonition is
safe, sane and scientific. We are disposed to
trust this expert. Now for the specific cures.
The first and most fatal obstacle to recovery
is too much leisure. So get to work! Go into
politics or law or enlist for service over seas
against the Parthians. Work is the best anti-
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
dote for love.
Aegisthus was not wholly to
blame for his offence. He was a slacker, true,
and had not joined the troops, but it was just
because Argos was deserted that he devoted his
attention to Agamemnon's wife; there was
nothing else to do! Perhaps your plan for in-
dustry may look towards the country. How
pleasant to see the cattle winding slowly over
the lea, to see trees laden with fruit and sheep
with wool, and, above all, to set out plants with
your own hands. The poet praises country life,
divina gloria ruris, as enthusiastically as Virgil
does in the Georgics or Horace in his epode,
with the underlying strain of light travesty con-
spicuous in the latter poem. But, our physician
adds, do not get a country-place too near to
Rome. Travel abroad. This is bitter medicine,
but efficacious, and far safer than the magic
potion, which he never recommends. In case
the patient cannot get away from town and
can find no engrossing occupation there, he
should apply a psycho-analytical treatment.
Make a list of your darling's imperfections and
rehearse this catalogue constantly.
The more she grabs, the less she is content.
Good-bye, small home, I cannot pay the rent!
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
She swore me oaths and broke whate'er she swore.
All night I've waited at the fast-barred door.
She's tired of me. With me intrigue were sin;
My vulgar rival, with the cash, gets in!
An advanced form of this method is the oppo-
site of the principle laid down in the Art of
Love that the gallant should rename his mis-
tress's defects as though they were virtues; now
he should rename her virtues as though they
were defects.
To ills deflect her virtues, if you can,
And cheat your judgment by this subtle plan.
Obese the buxom, black the brunette call,
And swear the slender has no flesh at all.
Call pert the maiden who is not straight-laced,
And rustic call her, if, perchance, she's chaste.
Really, this cure is so complex that were the
last line quoted by itself, many an expert might
fancy that it was part of the Art of Love and
not of the Remedies.
Thus far, the lover has directed his main
attention to himself. But he should also study
his mistress and plan a new course of action in
his dealings with her. In brief, make her dis-
play her imperfections. If she has no voice,
urge her to sing. If she is gawky, set her to
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
dancing. If her speech is distinguished mainly
by bad grammar, engage her in lengthy con-
versations. If her teeth are uncomely, tell her
funny stories; if her eyes tend to be bleary,
move her to weeping by some tragic tale.
Above all, pay an early morning call, before
she has had time to manufacture a complexion
and array herself in her jewels.
By gems we're captured and the dresser's art;
A girl's own person is her smallest part.
If the lover meets with no success in these
and other attempts, some of them pretty des-
perate, let him turn his attention elsewhere.
Let fire drive out fire! If he needs instructions
in selecting a new mistress, the doctor can take
down his standard work on the Art of Love,
temporarily put on the shelf, and refer him to
Part I, Chapter I, on "How to Find Her. "
Fas est et ab hoste doceri! This, then, may be
the best way:
To quench the thirst that hath your stomach fired
Drink from mid-stream until your thirst hath tired.
The poet now comes, with a special invoca-
tion, to the second main division of his rem-
edies. It corresponds to the section on " How
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
to Keep Her" in the Art of Love. It is now
"How to Keep Her Lost. " Again there are
psychological precepts; again the gallant is in-
structed in the treatment of his former darling.
He should court the crowd, avoid solitude, but
likewise avoid contagious society. Particularly,
he must never protest that all is over. Hate her
not; hate and love are desperately contiguous.
Do not bring suit to recover your presents. Be
well prepared for a sudden meeting with her
again. Wear slouchy clothes. Turn a deaf ear
to her flattery and her tears. Above all, do not
argue with her the justice of your case; do not
give her a chance to argue. Burn her letters
and her pictures; avoid reminiscential scenes.
Lose all your money, if you can. Go not to the
theatre. Read no poetry of the softer sort;
never open your copy of Sappho or Tibullus.
Who can read Gallus and stay cool of heart?
My poems, too, have something of that art!
This were impartiality itself, for the physician
to warn the patient from his publications, --
were there not another class of patients, who
would find something of an advertisement here.
The treatment of your rival is the hardest
part of the cure. Do not think of him, or, if
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
you can, think of him as non-existing! When
you can stand his presence, when you can kiss
him, then you are cured. That is the acid test
of convalescence, that and the ability to walk
past your mistress's front door. Incidentally,
cultivate a proper diet. Eat rue and other brain
food. As to wine:
Drink not at all, or drink to drown your woe.
'Tis dangerous in the middle course to go.
So end the Remedia. The critics who ex-
pected a recantation perhaps have found this
remedy indistinguishable from the disease.
Curiously, though Ovid's patients whom he
gathered about him at the beginning of his
discourse included maidens as well as men, the
precepts are all for the latter. Maidens can
v take care of themselves.
2. The Poet of Transformations
metamorphoses
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forward do contend.
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change. . . .
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wondering at the present nor the past.
SHAKESPEARE
Sed ut unda impellitur unda,
Urgueturque eadem veniens urguetque priorem;
Tempora sic fugiunt pariter, pariterque sequuntur.
Animus tamcn omnia vincit.
OVID
The higher theme which Ovid prophesied at
the end of his Amores had found a partial ex-
pression in his tragedy Medea and in the in-
vention of heroines' love-letters. His youthful
impulse to epic, which had shattered on the
rocks of a conventional subject, still moved
him, and though the reader of Ovid's love-
poetry might gasp at the suggestion that it
would lead easily and naturally into epic, such
is the case. It may also seem strange that Ovid
should turn to mythology for a theme; he had
treated the ancient legends as the invention of
lying bards. Still, he could tell a metamorpho-
sis or two himself, if occasion required. The
Ovidian lover can narrate a whole series of
myths to the swollen stream that bars the way
to his mistress. Myths of divine amours are
useful as "ensamples olde;" the gallant is
most learned in quoting such scripture for his
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
purpose. With each succeeding work, Ovid's
facility in narrative increased. In the Art of
Love, the brilliant rapidity of the incidental
tales could hardly be surpassed. It is not sur-
prising that the poet wished to try his wings
in a longer flight through the same realm. The
spirit of metamorphosis, furthermore, was in-
grained in his nature. He relished nothing
better than to set forth a mood or a situation
with utter seriousness and then blithely to pre-
sent the exact opposite. Shifts, set-backs, dis-
appointments, metamorphoses, are the essence
of life in his world of amorous adventure. It is
also a little world of myth, with Corinna at its
centre. Ovid had hugely enjoyed the role of
creator; he is at once properly sceptical of
poets' lies and confident of his own power to
turn the chaos of brute fact into the cosmos of
poetic reality. He had come to his own in an
epic on metamorphosis.
It is unfortunate that none of the ancient
poems on metamorphosis written before Ovid's
time has come down to us in its complete form.
Various writers had been fascinated with the
theme. Among the Greeks are Nicander and
"Boeus" in the Hellenistic age; among the
Romans is Aemilius Macer, whose poem on the
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
transformations of humans jnto birds Ovid had
heard from the lips of the composer. Could we
today read these and other such works entire,
we should doubtless learn much about Ovid's
procedure and his originality. Even now it is
safe to say that no such metamorphoses as his
had ever been told before.
The backbone of Ovid's narrative is chro-
nology. He professes to record the complete
history of metamorphosis, as Dryden puts it,
Deduc'd from Nature's birth to Caesar's times.
This plan gives at once the full sweep of epic
and, as Augustan epic might demand, allows
for the tucking in of a bit of panegyric. Ni-
cander's arrangement, so far as we can fathom,
was geographical; but Ovid found small prom-
ise of climax in a Baedeker. He likewise is not
attracted by the traditional arrangement fol-
lowed in handbooks of mythology, like that of
Apollodorus. The latter starts out with chro-
nology, but interrupts his plan almost at once.
He finds himself tracing the history of various
mythological families and has constantly to
begin again. Jupiter is perpetually interfering;
what can the genealogist do with one who be-
comes his own grandfather? The result is a
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
hodge-podge, a "Who's Who Among the
Gods," without an index.
Ovid is not embarrassed with so inclusive a
plan. Not intending a Summa Mythologiae, he
can more neatly present the semblance of a
history and keep his narrative alive. Though a
sober Apollodorus would find him dreadfully
anachronistic at times, he covers such transgres-
sions with a veil of illusion, and never allows
the delight of the reader to turn to criticism.
The number of myths that he manages to tell
in the rolling course of universal metamorphosis
is amazing. As he proceeded with his work,
he was constantly occupied with the amusing
problem of weaving into the texture of meta-
morphosis stories that had nothing to do with
it. For example, the tale of Ceres and Proser-
pine lies, we should imagine, outside his do-
main, but in virtue of its setting and the tales
of magical transformation told by the way and
at the end, the atmosphere of metamorphosis
is undisturbed. In this way, Ovid both pre-
serves his original design and contrives, after
all, a lexicon of the myths, -- the Golden Leg-
end of antiquity. The latest editor of Apollo-
dorus, no mean authority on myths,15 admires
our poet not only for his exuberant fancy but
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? THE WORLD OF POETRY
for his learning and his fidelity to his sources.
Ovid has beaten Apollodorus at his own game.
Ovid's predecessors in poems on metamor-
phosis had secured contrast and variety by in-
fusing large amounts of amatory material into
their narrative. Our poet was not slow to com-
ply with such authority. He could also adopt
the epic poet's familiar device of transporting
the action to Olympus now and then. But what
an Olympus it is! His first metamorphoses,--
the evolution of the world from chaos, the
course of the ages from gold to iron, the battle
of the hosts of light and darkness -- are told
in stately and imaginative verse; it is the long-
est passage of uninterrupted sobriety that Ovid
has given us thus far. With Jove, the curtain
rises for another scene. We are introduced to
a thoroughly Augustan heaven, where plebeian
deities occupy the less desirable quarters and
the upper classes reside in what the poet calls
the Palatine of the Sky, with the Milky Way,
the celestial Fifth Avenue, or "Watlinge
strete," leading up to their mansions. Jupiter,
incensed at the impiety of Lycaon, decides to
destroy mankind with his thunderbolts, -- but
no, the fire might spread and ignite Olympus.
A flood would be safer. As the waters cover
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