Ovid: Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) Book III

I wanted to share in this post, of a Roman poet named Ovid. I never heard of him
until now but I read snippets of his poetry for western history and I found it quite
interesting. It is about love and his advice to men and women but this book is for
the women. It is quite long but if you're interested, read it.

PART I
Have fun while it’s allowed, while your years are in their prime:
the years go by like flowing waters:
The wave that’s past can’t be recalled again,
the hour that’s past never can return.
Life’s to be used: life slips by on swift feet,
what was good at first, nothing as good will follow.
Those stalks that wither I saw as violets:
from that thorn-bush to me a dear garland was given.
There’ll be a time when you, who now shut out your lover,
will lie alone, and aged, in the cold of night,
nor find your entrance damaged by some nocturnal quarrel,
nor your threshold sprinkled with roses at dawn.
How quickly (ah me!) the sagging flesh wrinkles,
and the colour, there, is lost from the bright cheek.
And hairs that you’ll swear were grey from your girlhood
will spring up all over your head overnight.
Snakes shed their old age with their fragile skin,
antlers that are cast make the stag seem young:
un-aided our beauties flee: pluck the flower,
which, if not plucked, will of itself, shamefully, fall.
Add that the time of youth is shortened by childbirth:
the field’s exhausted by continual harvest.

PART II
But I’m blown about by greater gusts of wind,
while we’re in harbour, may you ride the gentle breeze.
I’ll start with how you look: good wine comes from vines
that are looked after, tall crops stand in cultivated soil.
Beauty’s a gift of the gods: how many can boast it?
The larger number among you lack such gifts.
Taking pains brings beauty: beauty neglected dies,
even though it’s like that of Venus, the Idalian goddess.
If girls of old didn’t cultivate their bodies in that way,
well they had no cultivated men in those days:

PART IV
How near I was to warning you, no rankness of the wild goat
under your armpits, no legs bristling with harsh hair!
But I’m not teaching girls from the Caucasian hills,
or those who drink your waters, Mysian Caicus.
So why remind you not to let your teeth get blackened,
be being lazy, and to wash your face each morning in water?
You know how to acquire whiteness with a layer of powder:
she who doesn’t blush by blood, indeed, blushes by art.
You make good the naked edges of your eyebrows,
and hide your natural cheeks with little patches.
It’s no shame to highlight your eyes with thinned ashes,
or saffron grown by your banks, bright Cydnus.
It’s I who spoke of facial treatments for your beauty,
a little book, but one whose labour took great care.
There too you can find protection against faded looks:
my art’s no idle thing in your behalf.
Still, don’t let your lover find cosmetic bottles
on your dressing table: art delights in its hidden face.
Who’s not offended by cream smeared all over your face,
when it runs in fallen drops to your warm breast?
Don’t those ointments smell? Even if they are sent from Athens,
they’re oils extracted from the unwashed fleece of a sheep.
Don’t apply preparations of deer marrow openly,
and I don’t approve of openly cleaning your teeth:
it makes for beauty, but it’s not beautiful to watch:
many things that please when done, are ugly in the doing:

PART X
Avoid those men who profess to looks and culture,
who keep their hair carefully in place.
What they tell you they’ve told a thousand girls:
their love wanders and lingers in no one place.
Woman, what can you do with a man more delicate than you,
and one perhaps who has more lovers too?
You’ll scarcely credit it, but credit this: Troy would remain,
if Cassandra’s warnings had been heeded.
Some will attack you with a lying pretence of love,
and through that opening seek a shameful gain.
But don’t be tricked by hair gleaming with liquid nard,
or short tongues pressed into their creases:
don’t be ensnared by a toga of finest threads,
or that there’s a ring on every finger.
Perhaps the best dressed among them all’s a thief,
and burns with love of your finery.

Link to the rest: Art of Love