Welcome to issue #12 of Love Is a Rhythmical Art! (If you’re a newcomer, feel free to check out the archive. What, you haven’t registered? Do it now.) The last issue featured a mythical detour into the story of Theseus, Ariadne, and Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry, and today, Ovid leads us on into the world of parties, with advice on how (and how much) to drink and flirt.

Today we also meet another of the poem’s central characters: the rival. (Ovid calls him the vir.) If you, dear reader, imagine yourself as Ovid’s student, you’ve come along far enough in his educational program to have found yourself a girlfriend—and it now turns out that your girlfriend may already have a boyfriend. Quite a problem! Still, who would enjoy the sport of love if there weren’t any competition? Besides, you have Ovid as your coach, and your rival doesn’t.

By the way, though it may not be obvious yet, your girlfriend’s boyfriend may actually turn out to be her husband. The Latin word vir simply means ‘man’, but depending on the context it can and does mean ‘husband’ (and, in other contexts, ‘hero’ or ‘human’ or ‘soldier’). As Ovid’s readers would remember, he also wrote several earlier poems in which the vir is clearly the husband and not just the boyfriend of his own love interest. Here in Love Is a Rhythmical Art, he repeatedly blurs the lines between the two roles, bringing up countless mythological examples of married couples behaving licentiously (Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, Jupiter and Hera, Vulcan and Venus) yet also claiming that he’s only talking about unmarried individuals. Just wait for Book Two, and you’ll see what I mean.

The first limerick may also make you wonder: Did Ovid really speak German? Well, no. But Ovid’s Latin here refers to Dionysus with one of the god’s many Greek epithets, Nyctelius. Ovid’s well-read audience would know what it meant (“night-performing”), and I’m sure that my own equally intelligent readers would appreciate a foreign phrase that could do similar work. (Noch einmal means “one more [drink]!”)

(For those of you following along in the original Latin, here are lines 565-602 of Book 1.)

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

When the lass at your side, then, admits
That she’s ordered champagne in two splits,
   To the god of Noch einmal
   Make prayers that the wine mol-
est neither your wiles nor your wits.

Now sow some semantic confusion;
Add wordplay and subtle allusion.
   It should give her no trouble
   To take from your double
Entendres a single conclusion.

Here’s a way to depict your design:
She can read what you write in red wine.
   With a bit of Bordeaux
   She’ll see and she’ll know
That two words are sufficient: “You’re mine.”

Let your eyes make their deepest confessions
Of your strong but unspoken obsessions.
   Without talking at all, you
   May turn up the volume
With eloquent facial expressions.

If she gives you her glass of merlot
And asks you to name the chateau,
   Wherever your lass
   Put her lips on the glass
Is the place where your own lips should go.

When she gives you the food that you wish,
Be it fruit or focaccia or fish,
   If your hand simply lingers
   On top of her fingers,
She’ll recognize she is the dish.

If she’s already joined to some fellow,
Be friendly, be gracious, be mellow,
   And he’ll fall for your con.
   You can still be Don Juan;
He won’t notice that he’s Leporello.

Now in everything let him go first;
Now perform the good grace you’ve rehearsed;
   Now buy him a round,
   And soon you’ll have found
Your expenditures all reimbursed.

As your doctor, I’d like to prescribe
The amount you’re allowed to imbibe:
   If your feet start to fail
   And your phrasing gets frail,
There’s too much of the vine in your vibe.

And fractiousness bolstered by booze
Is not what a lover will choose.
   Trading insults and blows
   Is the lowest of lows;
Such behavior will no one excuse.

A centaur whom no one took pity on
Was the violent and drunken Eurytion.
   If you want to get laughs
   As you drain your carafes,
Find a theme you can safely be witty on.

If you know how to dance, you should do so;
Sing a song, if you sound like Caruso.
   When the arts you employ
   Are the arts that give joy,
You will reap from a field in which few sow.

Pretend to be drunk, and you’ll trick her
With slurred speech and a tongue that is thicker.
   If the things that you say
   Or you do are outré,
The blame will be laid on the liquor.

You can bless the good lady’s good graces
And the man who enjoys her embraces
   (But pray that your rival
   Be doomed to deprival
In Dante’s most damnable places).

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

In the next issue: How to fake it ’til you make it. Stay tuned.