Ovid Quotes

Part I: It’s Time to Teach You Girls (Summary)

• Women compared to Amazons, set up as a battlefield between men and women

• Ovid points out that not all girls are bad - for every Clytemnestra, there is a Penelope

• Men are often worse than women - often cheat/ abandon their lovers (e.g. Jason, Theseus, Aeneas)

• Venus demands Ovid ‘evens out’ the battle of the sexes by writing a manual for women (tasked by the goddess of love herself)

• Tells women to have fun while they can and not wait around until they turn old and grey - make the most of your beauty now

• Many goddesses took lovers (Selene), therefore so should you

• Having multiple lovers/ casual sex won’t “waste you away” or harm you

Part I: Key Quotes

• “Go equal to the fight”

• “Some will say: ‘Why add venom to the snake, and betray the sheepfold to the rabid she-wolf?’”

• “Virtue herself is named an worshipped as a woman too”

• “smaller sails are suited to my boat” (extended metaphor of sailing)

• “Women don’t brandish flames or cruel bows: I rarely see men harmed by their weapons”

• “before my eyes, stood Venus herself, and ordered me to teach you”

• “she gave me a leaf, and a few myrtle berries” (sexual innuendo, says Venus has given herself to him)

• “years go by like flowing waters”

• “life slips by on swift feet”

• “Snakes shed their old age with their fragile skin, antlers that are cast make the stag seem young”

• “unaided our beauties flee: pouch the flower”

• “the field’s exhausted by continual harvest” (metaphor for giving birth + effects on body)

• “O mortal girls go to the goddesses for your examples, and don’t deny your delights to loving men”

Part II: Tale Care with How You Look

• Sailing metaphor continued

• Beauty comes from taking care of physical appearance

• Natural beauty is rare, so women have to put effort into looking beautiful

• Uses examples such as Andromache and Ajax’s wife to subvert traditional perceptions of them (humour), says they didn’t take care of their appearances because their husbands didn’t (olden days)

• Contrasts with Golden Age of Rome - reflects on developments/ buildings (e.g. Senate-House, Palatine) - civilisation

• Ovid is deliberately undercutting Augustan values of the old days (simplicity), saying he loves the decadence of Rome (indulgence in luxury)

• Tells women to try but not overdo it

Part II: Key Quotes

• “good wine comes from vines that are looked after”

• “Beauty’s a gift of the gods: how many can boast it”

• “beauty neglected dies”

• “If Andromache was dressed in healthy clothes, what wonder?”

• “Do you suppose Ajax’s wore would come to him all smart, when his outer layer was seven hides of an ox?”

• “now Rome is golden”

• “Others might delight in ancient times… this age suits my nature”

• “civilisation is here, and no crudity remains”

• “wealth which you court us with, often makes us flee”

Part III: Taste and Elegance in Hair and Dress

• Advice on how to style hair to appear beautiful - choose what suits your face shape

• Oval face shape - plain parting

• Round face - small knot at the top

• One girl should leave her hair out,like Apollo, and another tied up behind, like Diana

• Tangled hair suits many girls (example of Hercules and Oechalia and Bacchus and Ariadne- hair messed up by being in horrible situations - humorous/ shocking example)

• Hair can be deceptive (dyed hair, wigs)

• Says for clothes not to wear expensive purple garments when so many cheaper colours have appeared - uses natural imagery/ mythological allusion to list these colours

• Advises on which colours suit which skin tones (e.g. dark grey on white skin, Briseis as an example)

Part III: Key Quotes

• “We’re captivated by elegance: do not ignore your hair”

• “beauty’s granted or denied by a hand’s touch”

Part IV: Make-Up, but in Private

• Uses praeteritio (rhetorical technique - calls attention to a point by seeming to disregard it)

• Tells women to shave their hair using this technique - says he doesn’t have to mention this as he’s not teaching barbarian women

• Brush your teeth, wash your face (hygiene)

• Use makeup to enhance beauty and protect against faded looks, but to do so in private so men cannot see

• Says to keep hair loose - hates those who scratch at their maids’ faces with their nails for failing to do their hair right (contradicts his statement that he’s only writing for poor women/ sex workers)

• Laughs at woman who put her wig on the wrong way round - prays that such shame only comes to foreign women (Parthian girls)

• Natural metaphor to emphasis the need for makeup to enhance beauty

Part IV: Key Quotes

• “no frankness of the wild goat under your armpits, no legs bristling with harsh hair!”

• “she who doesn’t blush by brood, indeed, blushes by art”

• Doing all these things “makes for beauty, but it’s not beautiful to watch” - should be done in private

• “till your beauty’s ready banish men”

• “Hornless cows are ugly, fields are ugly without grass, and brushes without leaves. And a head without its hair.”

Part V: Conceal Your Defects

• Begins by saying he’s not here to teach the naturally beautiful (Leda, Semele, Helen used as examples)

• Conceal your faults - says to hide your body’s defects as best as you may

• If you’re short, sit down to hide your height and hide your feet with a shawl

• If you’re very slender, wear a full dress and loose clothes

• Hide ugly feet in leather sandals

• Wear a padded bra is you have a “meagre chest”

• Hide bitten fingernails and thick fingers - make use of gestures sparingly when you speak

• Those with bad breath shouldn’t talk too much and keep mouth at a distance from lover

Part V: Key Quotes

• “The beautiful ones don’t seek art and instruction”

• Sailing metaphor again - “the sailor rests when the sea’s calm: when it’s swollen, he uses every aid”

• “faultless forms are rare: conceal your faults”

• Advice has a humorous element - not serious advice

Part VI: Be Modest in Laughter and Movement

• If teeth are blackened, large, or not inline, don’t laugh

• Laugh modestly, a small dimple either side, with teeth mostly concealed by lips

• Don’t strain lungs with continual laugher - soft and feminine

• Women should speak less to avoid saying something bad on accident

• Carry yourself in a feminine - seductive walk

• Let parts of your lower shoulder and upper arm on your left side be naked to be admired

• Ovid’s own character/ alter ego’s voice - his attraction/ desire

Part VI: Key Quotes

• If teeth are bad, “laughing would be a fatal error”

• “Who’d believe it? Girls must even learn to laugh” - seems absurd/ humorous the lengths they have to go to

• “like a mangy ass braying at the shameful mill”

• “not the least part of charm is in walking: it attracts men you don’t know”

• “let parts of your lower shoulder and upper arm on the left side, be naked, to be admired”

• “when I see it, I want to kiss your shoulder, as far as it’s shown.”

Part VII: Learn Music and Read the Poets

• Tells girls to learn how to sing - sirens seduces Ulysses by singing

• Repeat songs, poems and plays - be able to recite most recent popular songs and poetry

• Lists poets to learn from (Orpheus, Sappho, Menander, Varro, Aeneas - but not Virgil, cheeky, playful banter)

• Says perhaps his poetry will be remembered at the same level as their’s (breaks 4th fall) - prays to Phoebus, Bacchus and Muses to make this come true

Part VII: Key Quotes

• “girls, learn to sing: for manny your voice is a better procures than your looks”

• “Perhaps my name will be mingled with those, mu worlds not all given to Lethe’s streams”

• “O grant it so, Phoebus! And you, sacred powers of poetry, great horned Bacchus, and the Nine goddesses!”

Part VIII: Learn Dancing, Games

• Girls should know how to dance/ entertain when the wine goes round - typically associated with lower-class and hired performers

• Must know how to play knucklebone and roll dice - be smart and tactical in games

• Chess - precise calculations, play wearily

• Says it’s shameful for a girl to not know how to play

• Prays to Jupiter that girls don’t play games in the angry and competitive way that men do as they have anxiety to please men

Part IX: Be Seen Around

• Suggests freedom, wouldn’t typically see women out in male field so they can be seen

• Attracting men by walking around/ being outside

• Can’t be desired if you aren’t seen

• Fame is validating for men, not women - poets want fame (e.g. Homer), immortalised

• Contrasts Athens - Pericles saying women be neither seen nor hear

• Uses examples (Thamyras, Amoebus, Apelles of Cos, Eunnius, Scipio for poets) (Danae and Andromeda for women rescued by men)

• Prey/ predator - hunting imagery

• Tells women to weep at their husband’s funeral as unchecked weeping suits them, and often lovers are found at husband’s funeral

Part IX: Key Quotes

• “Nature has allowed these games to girls: men have more opportunity to play”

• “You have no Field of Mars, no Ice-cold Aqua Virgo”

• “there’s no prize for a face that truly lacks a witness”

• “Lovely girls, the crowd is useful to you”

• “The wolf shadows many sheep, to snatch just one, and Jupiter’s eagle stoops on many birds”

• “always dangle your bait”

• “Often a lover’s found at a husband’s funeral: walking with loosened hair and unchecked weeping suits you”

Part X: Beware of False Lovers

• Love is more than just surface appearance, as flamboyance in terms of both beauty and riches can often lead to trickery

• Advises men to not be too sloppy but not care too much about their appearance

• Effeminate men were known to show excessive care for their appearance

• Effeminate men are also portrayed as more sexually available to both men and women

• Avoid boys who care too much about their appearances, they are unfaithful and deceitful

• If they look rich they may just be thieves

• Learn from the sufferings of other women

• Examples of unfaithful men (“Demophoon, heir to Theseus’ crimes”)

• If they are honest and give you gifts there’s nothing worse than not repaying them with sex (comparison to letting Vestal flame go out or sacking the Temple of Ino)

Part X: Key Quotes

• “Woman, what can you do with a man more delicate than you, and perhaps who has more lovers too”

• “Troy would remain, if Cassandra’s warnings had been heeded”

• “Some will attack you with a lying pretence of love”

• “Perhaps the best dressed among them all’s a thief”

• “Learn from other’s grief to fear your own”

• “She might as well put out the sleepless Vestal’s fire, and snatch the holy relics from your Temple, Ino, and give her man hemlock and monkshood crushed together, as deny him sex if she’s received his gifts”

Significance of Part X

• Reinforces Roman views on masculinity/ rejection of effeminate men (e.g. Seneca)

• Mollus Vir - literally ‘soft man’. This was a common insult in Rome and referred to men who were not masculine or adopted effeminate characteristics - often tied to ideas of morality in Rome

• Ovid as a teacher - instructs/ advises

• Insight into Roman values, culture and mythology

Part XI: Take Care with Letters

• Advice on how to hid letters given by lovers (potentially from current husband - adultery)

• Make sure a suitable servant receives the message, and wait a little before answering, as waiting always arouses love

• Write elegantly, but in neutral ordinary words

• Burn letters, write tablets in maid’s hand and don’t trust men who keep letters

• Don’t write again on wax unless it’s all been scraped and always speak of your lover as female when you write

Part XI: Key Quotes

• “waiting always arouses love, if it’s only for a short time”

• “nor deny him what he seeks out of cruelty”

• “Make him fear and hope together, every time you write”

• “though you lack marriage ribbons”

• “the law lets arms be wielded against arms”

• “always speak of your lover as female when you write”

Part XII: Avoid the Vices, Favour the Poets

• Don’t look angry - anger makes you ugly and savage

• Pride and disdain also damages looks

• Men hate sad girls as well

• Dig at Augustus - “why should we be afraid of the leader’s name?”

• Says to choose lover according to strength like how Augustus picks his troops for the military (mocking/ demeaning)

• Poets are the “choir” that write about love and make beauty well known - tells women to favour the poets as there’s divinity in them

Part XII: Key Quotes

• “Anger swells the face: the veins darken with blood: the eyes flash more savagely than the Gorgon’s”

• “love is attracted to friendly eyes”

• “why should we be afraid of the leader’s name?”

• “Our good leader trusts those commanders with a squad… You too should judge what each of us is good for, and place each one in his proper role

• “Girls, be kind to the poets of Helicon: there’s divinity in them, and they are the Muses’ friends”|

• “don’t look greedy at first sight: new love with balk when it sees the snare”

Part XIII: Try Young and Older Lovers

• “No rider rules a horse that’s lately known the reins, with the same bit as one that’s truly mastered” - young new lovers vs experienced, older men

• Young love is passionate - “will want to know you only, always cling to you alone, keep rivals away” and will “break the door down, burn it with cruel fire, attack his mistress’s tender cheeks with his nails, or rip apart his clothing or his girl’s”

• “Your older warrior loves sensibly and wisely” - “burns, alas, with slow fires, like wet straw”

• “This love’s more sure: that’s brief and more prolific”

Part XIV: Use Jealousy and Fear

• Use fear and jealousy/ manipulate emotions to keep your lover wanting you

• Let your lover think only he has access to your room, then later let him sense a rival (infidelity)

• “I don’t love unless I’m hurt”

• Still, don’t give cause for excessive grief

• “Pleasure that comes with safety’s less enjoyable”

• “Still safe loving should be mixed with fright, lest he consider you hardly worth a night”

Part XV: Play Cloak and Dagger

• “I nearly forgot the skilful ways by which you can elude a husband, or a vigilant guardian” - adultery?

• Husbands will guard their wives but maids can carry letters concealed in the “deep curves of her warm breasts” and hide papers fastened to her calf

• Pretend to be ill so you can meet up with your lover

• Have you maid distract your husband/ guardian so you can meet up with lover

• “Don’t let too beautiful a maid serve you: she’s often offered herself to me as my lady”

Part XVI: Make Him Believe He’s Loved

• Ovid admits he’s showing a naked front to the enemy and betraying himself on his own evidence (arming women against men)

• Cry and grieve performatively when he leaves “add tears, and feigned grief over a rival, and tear at his cheeks with her nails”

• He’ll believe she loves him - “She’s seized by love of me”

• Ovid presents men as desperate, stating how easy it is to make men believe they are loved

• Don’t try to find out too much about your lover or it will end badly - advisers against believing too quickly that a man may have another lover, advising against jealousy and genuine emotional connection (Procris and Locus)

Part XVII: Watch How You Eat and Drink

• Advises women to come late to dinner as lateness can make someone appear more alluring - “delay’s a grand seductress”

• Wine and drunkenness will make you more appealing - “Even if you’re plain, with drink you’ll seem beautiful, and the night itself grants concealment to your failings” (hides flaws)

• Says women should eat daintily - don’t eat at home but stop eating before you’re full, don’t eager (even Helen would appear ugly if Paris saw her eating greedily)

• Says it suits girls more to drink - “Bacchus you don’t go badly with Venus’ boy” - drink but don’t get too drunk, as this is shameful - she’s worthy of sleeping with anyone who’ll have her

• “not safe to fall asleep at table: many shameful things usually happen in sleep.”

Part XVIII: And So To Bed

• Catalogue of sexual positions - shocking, goes against legislation (‘Lex Iulia’) - although sexual images were normalised, actually writing it down, being explicit would have been really shocking

• Says Venus told him to teach the girls sex positions despite it being shameful

• “Let each girl know herself” - reference to “know thyself” (written above Greek temple for Apollo at Delphi) - blasphemy/ mockery

• Uses mythological examples - Milanion and Atalanta, Andromache and Hector, “loosen your hair, like a Maenad”

• Ovid suggests that you should have sex in a position that’s flattering + enjoyable to both men and women - both should pleasure in sexual acts - “Woman, feel love, melted to your very bones, and let both delight equally in the thing”

• “If you trust art’s promise, that I’ve long employed: my songs will offer you their promise” - culmination/ promise is sex/ lust, not love

• If women don’t feel pleasure, they should fake it so the lover many believe you’re enjoying it - this is more for the man, not the woman

• “The game is done: time to descend, you swans, you who bent your necks beneath my yoke” - this is all a game, ultimate goal is sex - Ovid is commandeering a metaphorical chariot drawn by swans (referencing Venus’ chariot)

• “inscribe on your trophies ‘Ovid was my master.’” - common didactic method to end the poem with your own name to reinforce your role as a teacher (praeceptor)