Ovid

fumoque lucernaeFoeda lupanaris

fumoque lucernae

Foeda lupanaris

An old commentator adds:Prostabant autem meretrices ad lucernas.

Acca Larentia was a Roman goddess whose festival—the Larentalia or Larentinalia—fell on December 23. The tradition was that she herself had been a prostitute. Her festival was a fertility ritual, as in the case of Lupa and Flora.

There was a tradition that the Emperor Heliogabalus sponsored a brothel in Rome called Senatulus Mulierum: The Little Senate of Women.

Nonariae were public prostitutes in Rome who were not allowed to appear before the ninth hour. The satirist Persius refers to this custom:

Si Cynico barbam petulans Nonaria vellat.

The ancients believed that the feminine lips had some relation to the genitalia: and likewise that a prominent nose indicated a corresponding membrum virile. There is evidence of this view in a short epigram by the Roman poet Martial:

Mentula tam magna est quantus tibi, Papyle,nasus, ut possis, quotiens arrigis, olfacere.

Mentula tam magna est quantus tibi, Papyle,

nasus, ut possis, quotiens arrigis, olfacere.

One of the richest sources of eroticism is the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso, commonly called in English Ovid. Born in 43 B.C., he reached the greatest literary and social heights of his time, but, falling under imperial disfavor, he ended his life in bleak and desolate banishment.

At Rome he acquired a deep knowledge of rhetoric, both academic and applied, and then continued his studies in Athens. As was then usual, he subsequently made the grand tour of the East. Although he was destined, by his family’s wishes, for a career in law, Ovid dedicated himself to his supreme and exclusive love, the poetic Muse.

His output was tremendous. He addressed a certain Corinna in a series of love elegies. He wrote fictional poetic letters of enamoured women. HisMetamorphosesdescribes strange changes undergone by mortals and divinities in pursuit of love. His Love Letters of Heroines, Directions for a Lady’s Cosmetic Preparations, the Art of Love, and the Remedies for Love belong in a common category.

The principal climactic situation in his life was his banishment, by the imperial mandate of the Emperor Augustus,to the desolation of Tomis, on the Black Sea. He had to abandon his wife and home—he had been married three times—, his literary friends, and his social circle. It was a kind of living death, a spiritual and intellectual cataclysm. At Tomis, a wild, barbaric, inhospitable spot, Ovid spent the remaining years of his life, in regret and supplications fruitlessly addressed to the Emperor, and in writing, particularly hisTristia, Sad Themes.

The reason for the banishment is still obscure, although Ovid himself hints at a ‘poem and a blunder.’ The poem was his Art of Love, which was frowned upon imperially and excluded from the public libraries in the Roman capital. The blunder of which Ovid was apparently guilty was associated, as he declares, with his possession of eyes—that is, he may have been a spectator or observer of some adulterous act involving the imperial family. Whatever the factual reason, the Emperor remained obdurate to the poet’s pleas, and Ovid died in exile.

In the voluminous corpus of poetic accomplishment, Ovid produced many major contributions to erotic literature. HisArs Amatoriais a universal handbook to love and its manifestations. HisAmoresis a sequence of amorous vignettes. HisRemedia Amoris, Remedies for Love, constitutes a body of amatory expiations that in spite of their negative tone are as voluptuously and cynically libidinous as his forthright prescriptions. In all, here is a body of themes, views, techniques that expound the most intimate secrets of the boudoir and the salon, of the entire range of erotic manifestations. Among his known contemporaries Ovid became a kind of arch-consultant in love, the ultimate arbiter of dalliance, the poetic confessor of sensual delights. And continuously through the ages his poetic presentations, descriptions, enumerations, his almost legalized counsel in debauchery, translated into most European languages, have served as a final, authoritative, cynical and libidinous source book.

Ovid probes into both normal and perverted forms of amatory experience, and reveals in vivid and not infrequently lurid detail, the sophisticated gallantries, the urbane wantonness, the suave and polished salaciousness, and the cultivated prurience of the Roman capital during the first century before the Christian era.

In respect of the means of inspiring and promoting amatory activity, both in men and women, Ovid has many pointed things to say about potions. In Latin, thepoculum amatoriumis the common expression used to designate the potion, that is, the love-goblet.

Ovid’s primary theme, in these exciting productions of his, is: Love is a campaign, long and ruthless. It requires skill, training, equipment, strategy, vision. So, in his pleas to Corinna his poetic offerings are in the nature of addresses to Woman, tantalizing, shameless, an epitome of feminine wiles and graces.

As stimuli toward erotic diversions, Ovid generously and without resentment recommends, in addition to his own poetic manuals, his Roman contemporaries Propertius and Tibullus, the elegiac poets, as well as Vergil: and, among the Greeks, the erotic lyrics and occasional pieces of Callimachus and Philetas, Anacreon and Sappho.

In Book 3 of theMetamorphoseswe have the story of Narcissus, enamoured aphrodisiacally by his own image reflected in a pool. The image of himself is so clearly defined, the lips move so appealingly in response to his own pleas, that he is ready to succumb amorously. Then he realizes the truth, that he and his reflection are one, his own self, his very identity. And he longs to free himself from himself, to escape the duplication. By this imaginative and symbolical mythological design, Ovid is unquestionably stressing the erotic passion itself, the frenzied ecstasy to detach oneself from one’s own being, the clamor of man against his fettered self and his erotic agonies.

A potion may appear in various guises. A vision of beautycan itself act like an enriched, stimulating philtre. The enraptured glance sends its erotic pronouncement to the enraptured heart, and the potion is virtually consummated. So, it seemed to Ovid, was the strange episode involving the sculptor Pygmalion:

Pygmalion loathing their lascivious life,Abhorr’d all womanhood, but most a wife:So single chose to live, and shunn’d to wed,Well pleas’d to want a consort of his bed.Yet fearing idleness, the nurse of ill,In sculpture exercis’d his happy skill;And carv’d in iv’ry such a maid, so fair,As nature could not with his art compare,Were she to work; but in her own defence,Must take her patterns here, and copy hence.Pleas’d with his idol, he commends, admires,Adores; and last, the thing ador’d, desires.A very virgin in her face was seen,And had she mov’d, a living maid had been:One wou’d have thought she could have stirr’d; but stroveWith modesty, and was asham’d to move.Art hid with art, so well perform’d the cheat,It caught the carver with his own deceit:He knows ’tis madness, yet he must adore,And still the more he knows it, loves the more:The flesh, or what so seems, he touches oft,Which feels so smooth, that he believes it soft.Fir’d with this thought, at once he strain’d the breast,And on the lips a burning kiss impress’d.’Tis true, the harden’d breast resists the gripe,And the cold lips return a kiss unripe:But when, retiring back, he look’d again,To think it iv’ry, was a thought too mean:So wou’d believe she kiss’d, and courting more,Again embrac’d her naked body o’er;And straining hard the statue, was afraidHis hands had made a dint, and hurt his maid:Explor’d her, limb by limb, and fear’d to findSo rude a gripe had left a livid mark behind:With flatt’ry now he seeks her mind to move,And now with gifts, (the pow’rful bribes of love:)He furnishes her closet first; and fillsThe crowded shelves with rarities of shells;Adds orient pearls, which from the conch he drew,And all the sparkling stones of various hue:And parrots, imitating human tongue,And singing-birds in silver cages hung;And ev’ry fragrant flow’r, and od’rous green,Were sorted well, with lumps of amber laid between:Rich, fashionable robes her person deck:Pendants her ears, and pearls adorn her neck:Her taper’d fingers too with rings are grac’d,And an embroider’d zone surrounds her slender waist.Thus like a queen array’d, so richly dress’d,Beauteous she shew’d, but naked shew’d the best.Then, from the floor, he rais’d a royal bed,With cov’rings of Sidonian purple spread:The solemn rites perform’d, he calls her bride,With blandishments invites her to his side,And as she were with vital sense possess’d,Her head did on a plumy pillow rest.The feast of Venus came, a solemn day,To which the Cypriots due devotion pay;With gilded horns the milk-white heifers led,Slaughter’d before the sacred altars, bled:Pygmalion off’ring, first approach’d the shrine,And then with pray’rs implor’d the pow’rs divine:“Almighty gods, if all we mortals want,If all we can require, be yours to grant;Make this fair statue mine,” he would have said,But chang’d his words for shame; and only pray’d,“Give me the likeness of my iv’ry maid.”The golden goddess, present at the pray’r,Well knew he meant th’inanimated fair,And gave the sign of granting his desire;For thrice in cheerful flames ascends the fire.The youth, returning to his mistress, hies,And, impudent in hope, with ardent eyes,And beating breast, by the dear statue lies.He kisses her white lips, renews the bliss,And looks and thinks they redden at the kiss:He thought them warm before: nor longer stays,But next his hand on her hard bosom lays:Hard as it was, beginning to relent,It seem’d, the breast beneath his fingers bent;He felt again, his fingers made a print,’Twas flesh, but flesh so firm, it rose against the dint:The pleasing task he fails not to renew;Soft, and more soft at ev’ry touch it grew;Like pliant wax, when chafing hands reduceThe former mass to form, and frame for useHe would believe, but yet is still in pain,And tries his argument of sense again,Presses the pulse, and feels the leaping vein.Convinc’d, o’erjoy’d, his studied thanks and praise,To her who made the miracle, he pays:Then lips to lips he join’d; now freed from fear,He found the savor of the kiss sincere:At this the waken’d image op’d her eyes,And view’d at once the light and lover, with surprise.The goddess present at the match she made,So bless’d the bed, such fruitfulness convey’d,That e’er ten moons had sharpen’d either horn,To crown their bliss, a lovely boy was born;Paphos his name, who, grown to manhood, wall’dThe city Paphos, from the founder call’d.

Pygmalion loathing their lascivious life,

Abhorr’d all womanhood, but most a wife:

So single chose to live, and shunn’d to wed,

Well pleas’d to want a consort of his bed.

Yet fearing idleness, the nurse of ill,

In sculpture exercis’d his happy skill;

And carv’d in iv’ry such a maid, so fair,

As nature could not with his art compare,

Were she to work; but in her own defence,

Must take her patterns here, and copy hence.

Pleas’d with his idol, he commends, admires,

Adores; and last, the thing ador’d, desires.

A very virgin in her face was seen,

And had she mov’d, a living maid had been:

One wou’d have thought she could have stirr’d; but strove

With modesty, and was asham’d to move.

Art hid with art, so well perform’d the cheat,

It caught the carver with his own deceit:

He knows ’tis madness, yet he must adore,

And still the more he knows it, loves the more:

The flesh, or what so seems, he touches oft,

Which feels so smooth, that he believes it soft.

Fir’d with this thought, at once he strain’d the breast,

And on the lips a burning kiss impress’d.

’Tis true, the harden’d breast resists the gripe,

And the cold lips return a kiss unripe:

But when, retiring back, he look’d again,

To think it iv’ry, was a thought too mean:

So wou’d believe she kiss’d, and courting more,

Again embrac’d her naked body o’er;

And straining hard the statue, was afraid

His hands had made a dint, and hurt his maid:

Explor’d her, limb by limb, and fear’d to find

So rude a gripe had left a livid mark behind:

With flatt’ry now he seeks her mind to move,

And now with gifts, (the pow’rful bribes of love:)

He furnishes her closet first; and fills

The crowded shelves with rarities of shells;

Adds orient pearls, which from the conch he drew,

And all the sparkling stones of various hue:

And parrots, imitating human tongue,

And singing-birds in silver cages hung;

And ev’ry fragrant flow’r, and od’rous green,

Were sorted well, with lumps of amber laid between:

Rich, fashionable robes her person deck:

Pendants her ears, and pearls adorn her neck:

Her taper’d fingers too with rings are grac’d,

And an embroider’d zone surrounds her slender waist.

Thus like a queen array’d, so richly dress’d,

Beauteous she shew’d, but naked shew’d the best.

Then, from the floor, he rais’d a royal bed,

With cov’rings of Sidonian purple spread:

The solemn rites perform’d, he calls her bride,

With blandishments invites her to his side,

And as she were with vital sense possess’d,

Her head did on a plumy pillow rest.

The feast of Venus came, a solemn day,

To which the Cypriots due devotion pay;

With gilded horns the milk-white heifers led,

Slaughter’d before the sacred altars, bled:

Pygmalion off’ring, first approach’d the shrine,

And then with pray’rs implor’d the pow’rs divine:

“Almighty gods, if all we mortals want,

If all we can require, be yours to grant;

Make this fair statue mine,” he would have said,

But chang’d his words for shame; and only pray’d,

“Give me the likeness of my iv’ry maid.”

The golden goddess, present at the pray’r,

Well knew he meant th’inanimated fair,

And gave the sign of granting his desire;

For thrice in cheerful flames ascends the fire.

The youth, returning to his mistress, hies,

And, impudent in hope, with ardent eyes,

And beating breast, by the dear statue lies.

He kisses her white lips, renews the bliss,

And looks and thinks they redden at the kiss:

He thought them warm before: nor longer stays,

But next his hand on her hard bosom lays:

Hard as it was, beginning to relent,

It seem’d, the breast beneath his fingers bent;

He felt again, his fingers made a print,

’Twas flesh, but flesh so firm, it rose against the dint:

The pleasing task he fails not to renew;

Soft, and more soft at ev’ry touch it grew;

Like pliant wax, when chafing hands reduce

The former mass to form, and frame for use

He would believe, but yet is still in pain,

And tries his argument of sense again,

Presses the pulse, and feels the leaping vein.

Convinc’d, o’erjoy’d, his studied thanks and praise,

To her who made the miracle, he pays:

Then lips to lips he join’d; now freed from fear,

He found the savor of the kiss sincere:

At this the waken’d image op’d her eyes,

And view’d at once the light and lover, with surprise.

The goddess present at the match she made,

So bless’d the bed, such fruitfulness convey’d,

That e’er ten moons had sharpen’d either horn,

To crown their bliss, a lovely boy was born;

Paphos his name, who, grown to manhood, wall’d

The city Paphos, from the founder call’d.

The realism of the sculptured figure, together with the aroused passion of the artist, produced a kind of symbiotic philtre, a flaming, kinetic periapt.

In Book 1 of theArs AmatoriaOvid introduces his basic subject: love unrestrained, Aphrodite Pandemos, patroness of free love, of passion unconfined:

Far hence, ye Vestals, be, who bind your hair;And wives, who gowns below your ankles wear.I sing the brothels loose and unconfin’d,Th’unpunishable pleasures of the kind;Which all alike, for love, or money find.

Far hence, ye Vestals, be, who bind your hair;

And wives, who gowns below your ankles wear.

I sing the brothels loose and unconfin’d,

Th’unpunishable pleasures of the kind;

Which all alike, for love, or money find.

And, in a brief preface, he offers an epitome of early Roman history, which is equated succinctly with military prowess and sexual prowess:

Thus Romulus became so popular;This was the way to thrive in peace and war;To pay his army, and fresh whores to bring:Who wou’d not fight for such a gracious king!

Thus Romulus became so popular;

This was the way to thrive in peace and war;

To pay his army, and fresh whores to bring:

Who wou’d not fight for such a gracious king!

Now Ovid dwells on wine as an amatory stimulant, a virtual flaming potion:

But thou, when flowing cups in triumph ride,And the lov’d nymph is seated by thy side;Invoke the God, and all the mighty pow’rs,That wine may not defraud thy genial hours.Then in ambiguous words thy suit prefer;Which she may know were all addrest to her.

But thou, when flowing cups in triumph ride,

And the lov’d nymph is seated by thy side;

Invoke the God, and all the mighty pow’rs,

That wine may not defraud thy genial hours.

Then in ambiguous words thy suit prefer;

Which she may know were all addrest to her.

Practice all the variations conceivable in winning your designated conquest, Ovid advises recurrently. Your wit and suavity will prevail: far more, in fact, than artificialaids, such as philtres. Philtres, Ovid asserts from the richness of his erotic experience, are futile in the contests of love:

Pallid philtres given to girls were of no avail. Philtres harm the mind and produce an impact of madness.

He enumerates many items that were popularly reputed to possess aphrodisiac properties. But you should shun them, he reiterates, for their effect is minimal. Hippomanes, the excrescence on a new-born colt, is ineffectual: similarly with the traditional magic herbs purchased furtively from some wizened old hag. Reject, equally, formulas for exorcism and similar enchantments. The best love philtre, in short, is the lover’s own passion. Even the ancient enchantress Circe, whom Homer describes so vividly, could not, by the aid of her occult devices, prevent the unfaithfulness of Ulysses: nor could the tumultuous Medea, practiced in the lore of the sorceress, combat the waywardness of Jason.

It is true, the poet acknowledges, that in the popular mind many objects, grasses, roots are associated with the virtues of the love potion: but erroneously so, he adds. He lists the items as follows:

Some teach that herbs will efficacious prove,But in my judgment such things poison love.Pepper with biting nettle-seed they bruise,With yellow pellitory wine infuse.Venus with such as this no love compels,Who on the shady hill of Eryx dwells.Eat the white shallots sent from MegaraOr garden herbs that aphrodisiac are,Or eggs, or honey on Hymettus flowing,Or nuts upon the sharp-leaved pine-trees growing.

Some teach that herbs will efficacious prove,

But in my judgment such things poison love.

Pepper with biting nettle-seed they bruise,

With yellow pellitory wine infuse.

Venus with such as this no love compels,

Who on the shady hill of Eryx dwells.

Eat the white shallots sent from Megara

Or garden herbs that aphrodisiac are,

Or eggs, or honey on Hymettus flowing,

Or nuts upon the sharp-leaved pine-trees growing.

Morality, especially sexual morality, descended to its most degenerative nadir in the period of the Roman Empire. The poets and satirists, the historians and the moralists all uniformly fulminate against the profligacies of Roman matrons, particularly in the upper social levels and in the court circles, and blast and condemn the utter licentiousness, lewdness, and abandonment of all restraints.

Seneca the philosopher asserts:

Anything assailed by countless desires is insecure. And the young and even more mature matrons, descendants of distinguished figures in the tumultuous sequence of Roman history, were exposed to every kind of inducement to laxity, every urgent temptation, domestically, publicly, and politically. There was a vogue of indiscriminate flirtation, highly skilled, ingeniously practiced, that led into violent passion and into adultery, into incest and multiple perversions. Lust became the primary satisfaction, and its consummation was the most common, the most clamant factor in the social frame.

Even the earlier days of the Roman Republic were, as the poet Horace declares—and he was the Augustan Poet Laureate—‘rich in sin.’ Propertius too confirms this view, and goes one step further. The sea, he suggests, will be dried up and the stars torn from heaven before women reform their immoral ways.

The entire nation, rich and prosperous, masters of the universe, overwhelmed and sated with exotic luxuries, attended, for their every whim, by hordes of slaves, had lost all human modesty, all human virtues. Yet all was not entirely lost, for voices cried out, however feebly and helplessly, in the midst of their successions of wantonness and orgies.

The poet Ovid wryly says:

Only those women are chaste who are unsolicited, and a man who is enraged at his wife’s amours is merely a boor.

Seneca says again, in respect of married women: A woman who is content to have two lovers only is a paragon.

For adultery and divorce were the usual recreations of many Roman matrons in Imperial times. Marriage itself was often a mere formality, and it implied no loyalties, no honor. Some women, declares Seneca, counted the years not by the consuls, but by the number of husbands they had.

And the Church Father, Tertullian, added later, in the same vein: Women marry, only to divorce. Ovid himself, the archpoet of love, was married three times. Caesar had four wives in succession. Mark Antony also had four. Sulla the statesman and Pompey each had five wives. Pliny the Younger had three wives. Martial the epigrammatist mentions a certain Phileros who had seven wives.

Women were no better, no less restless. Tullia, Cicero’s daughter, had three husbands. The Emperor Nero was the third husband of Poppaea, and the fifth of Messalina. The poet Martial refers to a woman who had eight husbands, and to another who was suspected of murdering her seven husbands, one after the other.

Every passion, every illicit amour, was a provocation to the Roman women. They had intrigues with their slaves, with actors and pantomimists, with jockeys, charioteers, gladiators, and flute-players.

Roman temples were rendez-vous, and prostitution and adultery were practiced among the altars and in the cells that were heavy with incense. In a striking passage, Tertullian personifies Idolatry, who confesses: My sacred groves of pilgrimage, my mountains and springs, my city temples, all know how I corrupt chastity.

Astrological and magic techniques contributed to the already degenerate Romans of the Empire. Old hags practicedprocuring and other dubious trades. They prepared drugs and potions and salves for beauty and passion and poisoning. In time, these practices assumed a mysterious aura. They absorbed the secret cults of the Nile and the Ganges and the Euphrates. Some of the practitioners were actually reputable, dignified, eagerly sought after by women. Lucian describes a certain Alexander of Abonuteichos—stately, with well-trimmed beard, penetrating look, modulated voice. He wore a wig of flowing locks. He was dressed in a white and purple tunic, and a white cloak, and in his hand he carried a scythe.

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