You probably already know everything about love. But if not:

There’s this guy named Ovid. Like a lot of other ancient Romans, he’s been dead for two millennia. Unlike most of his fellow Romans, though, he was a poet, and his poetry is hilarious and magnificent. Maybe you’ve heard of his Metamorphoses: a collection of hundreds of stories stitched together, all of them talking about bodies changed into something else, like Narcissus (who fell in love with his reflection and became a flower) or Tereus (who ate a soup made of his son’s flesh and turned into a bird — wait, what?).

But he also wrote the Ars amatoria (The Art of Love), three volumes of advice about how to fall in love and stay there. Ovid’s original Latin has been translated many times before into English, but it’s never been translated into the form that matches it best: the limerick. You may be asking:

1.      Do you know what a limerick is?
2.      Do you love love?
3.      Do you yearn to learn?
4.      Do you acknowledge knowledge?
5.      Is advice a vice?
6.      Can all of Ovid’s Ars amatoria be translated into limericks?

So many questions! If you’ve answered yes to any of them, read on. (If not, how did you get here?) The answers will come in later installments of the newsletter, so hold tight. But the answer to that final question is yes.

To put it another way, this newsletter will give you a translation of Ovid’s Ars amatoria into limericks. Yes, the whole thing: about 2,400 lines of Latin turned into nearly a thousand limericks. I’m calling it Love Is a Rhythmical Art. If you’ve been waiting to read the first limerepic in history, your patience will now be rewarded. Along the way, you’ll encounter some ideas about Latin literature, Roman culture, the history of rhyming poetry, and who knows what else.

(For those of you following along in Latin, here are lines 1-40 of Book 1. Do I occasionally add extra explanatory material? I do.)

Let’s get started with Love Is a Rhythmical Art.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Love’s an art. If you need to learn more,
Read my rules, and you’ll know how to score.
   In a bed, boat, or truck
   You need art, not just luck,
Or you’ll crash or you’ll sink or you’ll snore.

Messi mastered the beautiful game,
And in dance Fred Astaire did the same.
   Now Cupid is under
   My charge, and no wonder;
The Master of Love is my name.

He’s unruly, you say, and he’s wild?
I find his behavior most mild.
   With kids, there’s one tactic
   That works: the didactic!
I teach him as suits a young child.

An old centaur instructed Achilles
To be gentler than daffadowndillies.
   The terror of Troy
   Was a hot-headed boy,
But that geezer sure gave him the willies.

The hands by which Hector was slain
Felt the friction of Chiron’s rough cane.
   His charge and my cherub’ll
   Show they’re comparable:
Semi-divine and a pain.

But yokes can teach young bulls compliance,
And the bit breaks a fierce foal’s defiance;
   So Cupid will yield
   To me in the field
Of love — he’ll be one of my clients.

Yes, I’m wounded by fire and by arrow,
But the deeper his flame in my marrow,
   The taller I’ll stand
   As his conqueror, and
He’ll be slaving away; I’ll be Pharaoh.

My art is not due to Apollo;
It descends from no twittering swallow;
   Neither Clio nor one
   Of her sisters made fun
Of my flocks in a mountainside hollow;

(The deeper your knowledge of myth,
The more fun you will be to be with.
   To charm and be charmed,
   Keep your intellect armed —
Take a lesson from Wesson & Smith.)

The professional life of a poet
Whose career is no longer inchoate
   Gives weight to this work.
   Come, assist your young clerk,
For to you, Venus fair, do I owe it. 

Begone with the ring that engages!
Depart, ye at child-bearing stages!
   The love that I rhyme
   Is an innocent crime,
And there’s no need to gasp at my pages.

A new lover’s first labor is sure:
To discover a girl with allure.
   The next is to capture
   The source of your rapture;
The third, to cause love to endure.

The lovesong that flows from my pen
Will hew to these goals with a yen.
   Like a Lutheran hymn, it’s
   Got topical limits
Right up to the final Amen.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Is there more to come? There is. In the next issue: the best places to look for love in Rome. Stay tuned.