\"Ovid apologizes for not chanting the glory of war; Cupid came and stole a foot from his verse and \nleft it lame. He wrote a lost play, Medea, \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nwhich was well received, but for the most part he preferred \n\"the slothful shade of Venus,\" and was content to be called \"the well-known singer of his worth-less \nways.\" Here are the lays of the troubadours a thousand years before-time, addressed like them to \nmarried ladies, and making flirtation the main business of life. Ovid instructs Corinna how to \ncommunicate with him by signs as she lies on her husband\"s couch. He assures her of his eternal \nfidelity, his strictly monogamous adultery: \"I am no fickle philanderer, not one of those who love a \nhundred women at a time.\" At last he wins her and intones a paean of victory. He commends her for \nhaving denied him so long, and advises her to deny him again, now and then, so that he may love her \nforever. He quarrels with her, strikes her, repents, laments, and loves her more madly than before. \nRomeo-like he begs the dawn to delay, and hopes some blessed wind will break the axle of Aurora\"s \ncar. Corinna deceives him in his turn, and he is furious on finding that she holds her favors insufficiently \n rewarded by the homage of his verse. She kisses him into forgiveness, but he cannot pardon the new \nskill of her loving; some other master has been teaching her. A few pages later he is \"in love with two \nmaids at once, each beautiful, each tasteful in dress and accomplishment.\" Soon, he fears, his \nsimultaneous duties will undo him; but he will be happy to die on the field of love.

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These poems were tolerantly received by Roman society four years after the passing of the Julian \nreform laws. Great Senatorial families like the Fabii, the Corvini, the Pomponii continued to entertain \nOvid in their homes. Buoyant with success, the poet issued a manual of seduction called Ars amatoria \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n(2 b.c). \"I have been appointed by Venus,\" he says, \"as tutor to tender love.\" He chastely warns \nreaders that his precepts must be applied only to courtesans and slaves; but his pictures of whispered \nconfidences, secret assignations, billets-doux, raillery and wit, deceived husbands, and resourceful \nhandmaids suggest the middle and upper classes of Rome. Lest his lessons should prove too apt, he \nadded another treatise, Kemedia amoris, \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\non curing love. The best remedy is hard work; next, hunting; \nthird, absence; \"it is also useful to surprise your lady in the morning, before she has completed her \ntoilette.\" Finally, to make the balance even, he wrote De medi-camina faciei feminineae, \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\na metrical \nmanual of cosmetics, pilfered from the Greeks. These little volumes sold so well that Ovid soared to \nheights of insolent fame. \"So long as I am celebrated all the world over, it matters not to me what one \nor two pettifoggers say about me.\" He did not know that one of these pettifoggers was Augustus, that \nthe Prince resented his poems as an insult to the Julian laws, and would not forget the insult when \nimperial scandal should touch the poet\"s careless head.\"

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source: Durant

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Ancient Rome Ovid