162

Ovid, The Art of Love

The Art of Love is a humorous guide for lovers written by the Roman poet Ovid. Ovid addresses the first two parts to men, instructing them on how to seduce and keep women — look good, give them compliments, don’t be too obvious. The third part is his corresponding advice for women, which in its main points is the same. The section below comes from the beginning of part one, advising men on where and how to meet women.

While you are footloose and free to play the field at your pleasure,

Watch for the one you can tell, “I want no other but you!”

She is not going to come to you floating down from the heavens:

For the right kind of a girl you must keep using your eyes.

Hunters know where to spread their nets for the stag in his cover,

Hunters know where the boar gnashes his teeth in the glade.

Fowlers know brier and bush, and fishermen study the waters

Baiting the hook for the cast just where the fish may be found.

So you too, in your hunt for material worthy of loving,

First will have to find out where the game usually goes.

. . .

. . . The theater’s curve is a very good place for your hunting,

More opportunity here, maybe, than anywhere else.

Here you may find one to love, or possibly only to have fun with,

Someone to take for a night, someone to have and to hold.

. . .

Furthermore, don’t overlook the meetings when horses are running;

In the crowds at the track opportunity waits.

There is no need for a code of finger-signals or nodding,

Sit as close as you like; no one will stop you at all.

In fact, you will have to sit close — that’s one of the rules, at a race track.

Whether she likes it or not, contact is part of the game.

Try to find something in common, to open the conversation;

Don’t care too much what you say, just so that every one hears

Ask her, “Whose colors are those?” — that’s good for an opening gambit.

Put your own bet down, fast, on whatever she plays.

. . .

Often it happens that dust may fall on the blouse of the lady.

If such dust should fall, carefully brush it away.

Even if there’s no dust, brush off whatever there isn’t.

Any excuse will do: why do you think you have hands?

. . .

There is another good ground, the gladiatorial shows.

On that sorrowful sand Cupid has often contested,

And the watcher of wounds often has had it himself.

While he is talking, or touching a hand, or studying entries,

Asking which one is ahead after his bet has been laid,

Wounded himself, he groans to feel the shaft of the arrow;

He is victim himself, no more spectator, but show.

EVALUATE THE EVIDENCE

Source: Ovid, The Art of Love, trans. Rolfe, pp. 106–110. Copyright © 1957 Indiana University Press. Reprinted with permission of Indiana University Press.