Ars Amatoria, Ars Amatoria

His intent is often more profound than the brilliance of the surface suggests. In connection with the revelation that the theatre is a good place to meet girls, for instance, Ovid, the classically educated trickster, refers to the story of the rape of the Sabine women. It has been convincingly argued that this passage represents a radical attempt to redefine relationships between men and women in Roman society, advocating a move away from paradigms of force and possession, towards concepts of mutual fulfilment. Dutton, Jacqueline, The Rape of the Sabine Women, Ovid Ars Amatoria Book I: 101-134, master's dissertation, University of Johannesburg, 2005 The superficial brilliance, however, dazzles even scholars (paradoxically, Ovid consequently tended in the 20th century to be underrated as lacking in seriousness). The standard situations and cliches of the subject are treated in a highly entertaining way, spiced with ever-colourful details from Greek mythology, everyday Roman life and general human experience. Ovid likens love to military service, supposedly requiring the strictest obedience to the beloved woman. Women, meanwhile, he advises to make their lovers artificially jealous so that they do not become neglectful through complacency. For this purpose, a slave should be instructed to interrupt the lovers' tryst with the cry 'Perimus' ('We are lost!'), compelling the young lover to while away some time in a cupboard. Readers can follow the allusive chatter of the poet with a smile, without ever being able to be quite certain how seriously he means any of it. The tension implicit in this uncommitted tone is reminiscent of a flirt, and in fact, the semi-serious, semi-ironic form is ideally suited to Ovid's subject matter.

For one thing, the Ars amatoria had been in circulation for eight years by the time of the relegation, and the book postdates the Julian Marriage Laws by eighteen years. Secondly, it is hardly likely that Augustus, after forty years unchallenged in the purple, felt the poetry of Ovid to be a serious threat or even embarrassment to his social policies. Thirdly, Ovid's own statement Ov. Tr., 2.207 from his Black Sea exile that his relegation was because of 'carmen et error' ('a song and a mistake') is, for many reasons, hardly admissible.

This would also explain why Ovid was not reprieved when Augustus was succeeded by Agrippa's rival Tiberius. It is likely, then, that the Ars amatoria was used as an excuse for the relegation. F. Norwood (1964), 'The Riddle of Ovid's Relegatio', in Classical Philology. 58: 150-63 This would be neither the first nor the last time a 'crackdown on immorality' disguised an uncomfortable political secret.

AD). The list of later manifestations of the poem's influence is immense: reference is made to the almost equally extensive literature on the subject. e.g. Gibson, R., Green, S., Sharrock, A., (eds.) 'The Art of Love: Bimillennial Essays on Ovid's Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris', OUP 2007; Sprung, Robert C., 'The Reception of Ovid's Ars Amatoria in the Age of Goethe', Senior Thesis, Harvard College, 1984.

European literature was so great that the German mediaevalist and palaeographer Ludwig Traube dubbed the entire age 'aetas Ovidiana' ('the Ovidian epoch'). McKinley, K.L., Reading the Ovidian Heroine, Brill, Leiden, 2001, xiii As in the years immediately following its publication, it has also subsequently fallen victim to outbursts (or exhibitions) of moral opprobrium. All of Ovid's works were burned by Savonarola in Florence, Italy in 1497; Christopher Marlowe's translation was banned in 1599, and another English translation of the Ars amatoria was seized by US Customs in 1930. Haight, A. L. and Grannis, C. B., Banned Books 387 BC to 1978 AD, R.R. Bowker & Co, 1978 It seems possible that Edmond Rostand's fictionalized portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac makes an allusion to the Ars amatoria : the theme of the erotic and seductive power of poetry is highly suggestive of Ovid's poem, and Bergerac's nose, a distinguishing feature invented by Rostand, calls to mind Ovid's cognomen, Naso (from nasus , 'large-nosed').

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