Tag: Amores

Ovid’s collection of elegies, Amores (The Loves), abounds with double entendres.  Although it is a stitch in Latin, it can seem dry in English even in the hands of an expert translator. On the other hand, Ovid’s masterpiece, Metamorphoses, his epic collection of transformation myths, is a vivacious and bubbly narrative in English. But the elegies portray the pursuit of love in an ancient world that can seem exotic and foreign.

I have been rereading Ovid’s charming Latin elegies, and decided to translate Amores, II.iii, to give you a glimpse of Ovid’s world.   It is the second of two monologues addressed to a eunuch who is his mistress’s chaperone.

The persona of the poem tells the eunuch that, if he had been able to enjoy the “mutual joys of Venus,” he would have sanctioned his mistress’s affair with Ovid.  But Ovid also subtly derides the eunuch’s sexual impotence:  he uses words like mollis (soft)  and facilis (yielding), similar to Catullus’s slangy references to not being durus (hard). Ovid advises the eunuch to implere (fill) the mistress with kindness.  Will the eunuch yield or resist?

Here is my literal translation of the poem – for the sense, not the poetry, alas!

Amores, II.iii

Oh! You are neither male nor female
who guard my mistress, and you cannot
know the mutual joys of Venus (love).
The man who first gelded boys
should suffer the wounds he dealt.
If your love had grown warm
in any woman, you would be soft in compliance,
you would yield to those asking.
You were not born for the horse,
or useful with brave weapons:
A warlike spear did not fit in
your right hand.  Let the masculine men
manage wars.  Put away virile hopes;
you must instead bear
the standards of your mistress.
Fill her with kindness, and her friendship
will profit you.  If you lose your mistress,
what use will you be? Her beauty –
these are years fit for sexual sport – and
figure are unworthy to die in sluggish abstinence.
She could deceive you, though you are troublesome
What two have wished for they will get.
But it is more fitting to have made a request :
we ask you while you still have
an opportunity to place your favors well, with a good return.

I would buy a ticket if Ovid gave a reading on Zoom. If he is resurrected from the dead let me know. I might even be persuaded to attend “Ovid in Conversation with a Modern Poet.”

Ovid is the wittiest, most elegant of Roman poets, but here is what translators conceal: he is extremely bawdy, positively filthy at times.

You would think Amores II.15, an elegy addressed to the ring he plans to give his mistress, would be simple and sweet. That would be too facile for Ovid, who glories in eroticism and jokes. I have translated a few lines to unveil the double entendres.

O ring, about to encircle my mistress’ finger…
May she put it on joyfully and rub it on her knuckles.
May you fit together as my cock fits her vagina,
and may you rub her finger – perfectly sized.

Did you know that Shakespeare used the word “ring” for “vagina” in The Merchant of Venice, V.1.307? Ovid was hugely influential.

Translators tone down the Amores, while scholars explicate the double entendres and argue over problems in the text. The sexual puns are Roman, understood by Roman readers.

Brilliant Ovid had his detractors. Augustus tried to legislate morality. He banished Ovid to an island for carmen et error, “a poem and an error,” and perhaps his poetry would raise hackles in the #MeToo era, too.

You know what I say: love the writing, but don’t bother about the writers’ personal lives. You don’t need to approve them as your best friends. You just need their words.

You may well know his epic poem, Metamorphoses, a collection of myths linked by the theme of change, and undoubtedly the most renowned Latin poem after Virgil’s Aeneid. Ovid wrote many delightful poems, including the silly didactic Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), and his eclectic Amores (Loves).

One of the Amores (Loves) is of particular interest, a prayer for his girlfriend Corinna, who has an abortion and lies between life and death. It is, as far as I know, one of only two Latin poems to treat this controversial subject in detail, the second also being by Ovid. Ovidians say the word onus (burden) is used of the fetus for the first time in Latin here; and gravidus venter (swollen belly) the first time for “pregnant womb.” Fascinated by the odd juxtaposition of Ovid’s examination of his love and anger and the formal prayer to Isis, I decided to translate this. You can find the Latin poem below my translation.

My translation of Amores, II.13

When she rashly shook the burden from her womb,
Corinna lay weakened, in doubt of her life.
Having borne such peril without my knowledge
She deserved my anger, but anger died from fear.
She had conceived by me, or so I trust:
But that could be my theory, not fact.
I pray to you, Isis, dweller of Paraetoneum
and the fertile plains of Canopus,
Memphis and palm-bearing Pharon,
And where the swift Nile, having fallen
In a wide bed, travels through seven mouths
Into the waters of the sea;
I pray by your Isis-rattles,
by the revered head of Anubis,
may pious Osiris love your sacred rites,
May the slow serpent slink around the altar
And may horn-bearing Apis, sacred bull,
accompany you in procession.
Turn your face hither and spare two in one:
You will give my mistress life, she to me.
Having honored you often, she sits on certain days
when the crowd of priests waters your laurel.
And you, Ilithyia, having pitied the pregnant girls
Whose hidden burden distends their bodies,
Be gentle here and well-disposed to my prayers.
She is worthy whom you command to your service.
I myself, in white robes, will burn incense on
your smoky altars. I myself will bear gifts
to your feet and prayers. Let me add
the title, “Ovid for your saving Corinna”:
Just make a place for the inscription and gifts.
and if it is lawful to have given warning in such fear, let it be enough
for you to have fought on this side in the battle.

Ovid’s poem in Latin

XIII

Dum labefactat onus gravidi temeraria ventris,
    in dubio vitae lassa Corinna iacet.
illa quidem clam me tantum molita pericli
    ira digna mea; sed cadit ira metu.
sed tamen aut ex me conceperat—aut ego credo;
     est mihi pro facto saepe, quod esse potest.
Isi, Paraetonium genialiaque arva Canopi
    quae colis et Memphin palmiferamque Pharon,
quaque celer Nilus lato delapsus in alveo
    per septem portus in maris exit aquas,
per tua sistra precor, per Anubidis ora verendi—
    sic tua sacra pius semper Osiris amet,
pigraque labatur circa donaria serpens,
    et comes in pompa corniger Apis eat!  
huc adhibe vultus, et in una parce duobus!
    nam vitam dominae tu dabis, illa mihi.
saepe tibi sedit certis operata diebus,
    qua cingit laurus Gallica turma tuas.
Tuque laborantes utero miserata puellas,
    quarum tarda latens corpora tendit onus,
lenis ades precibusque meis fave, Ilithyia!
    digna est, quam iubeas muneris esse tui.
ipse ego tura dabo fumosis candidus aris,
    ipse feram ante tuos munera vota pedes.
adiciam titulum: ‘servata Naso Corinna!’
    tu modo fac titulo muneribusque locum.
Si tamen in tanto fas est monuisse timore,
    hac tibi sit pugna dimicuisse satis!