Welcome back to Love Is a Rhythmical Art! (If this is your first encounter with Ovid, check the archive for a bit of context.) Today’s issue plunges right into another mythical story: the love of the Cretan queen Pasiphae for a bull. If you’ve ever wondered where the Minotaur came from, here you go:

Once upon a time, Minos, the king of Crete, was supposed to sacrifice a particularly beautiful bull to the gods, and he foolishly chose not to. In return, the gods caused Minos’ wife Pasiphae to fall in love with the bull. Minos ordered his architect, Daedalus (you’ll meet him again in Book 2, where he gets his own time in the spotlight) to construct a hollow wooden cow, big enough for Pasiphae to, uh, position herself inside. The bull mounted the cow and impregnated Pasiphae, who later gave birth to the Minotaur, “the bull of Minos.” Any questions?

Like it or not, the story was a famous one in antiquity, and everyone from the Greek tragedian Euripides to Vergil, the Roman author of the Aeneid, crafted versions of Pasiphae’s disreputable passion. Only Ovid, though, decided to mix bestiality with slapstick humor. It’s not abominable, it’s ... Madame & A Bull! Enjoy it if you can.

Throughout the Ars amatoria, Ovid leavens his advice with stories from myth, and that’s what’s happening here: our poet has claimed that all women are prone to love, and now he offers a few narrative examples. Many of his references (including the ones at the end of today’s list) take up no more than a line or two, but on occasion he builds up the story into a substantial digression, as he does here, as he’s done before (with the Rape of the Sabines), and as he will do again. In order to mark these extended detours, I’ve chosen to begin each of them with the phrase “There once was a...”. Many limericks used to start in just this way (“There once was a man from Nantucket,” “There once was a young man named Cyril,” etc.), even though doing so is a huge waste of time; when you’re writing something as short as a limerick, there’s no point in spending half of the first line on such immaterial material. But in a limerepic like Love Is a Rhythmical Art, there’s more room to expand, and I’d like to think it functions as a change of tone and a sign to the reader of the narrative detour that is about to begin. Or, to put it another way: Listen, my children, and you shall hear…. (Longfellow will make his own appearance a little later on.)

One more note on style: Pasiphae is the heroine (if that’s the right word) of today’s story, but I’ve chosen not to mention her by name, even though Ovid did, and twice at that. It’s not that her name (pronounced pa-SIFF-ah-ee) doesn’t fit the rhythm of a limerick. Could I have rhymed it with the name of a certain plant, Sabdariffa? Easily! But elsewhere Ovid tells long mythical stories without once mentioning the name of his protagonist (see the tale of Callisto in the Metamorphoses), and I felt like honoring that element of his style here.

(For those of you following along in the original Latin, here are lines 263-350 of Book 1.)

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There once was a bull of old Crete
With whom none of the herd could compete.
   Except for a mark
   On his brow that was dark,
The white of his hide was complete.

Said the amorous cows of Heraklion,
“May our backs be what he gets exactly on!”
   But Crete’s queen loved him too,
   And that others might woo
Was a theme she got prickly and crackly on.

(What’s her story? You need be no whiz
To answer this part of my quiz—
   And that Cretans tell lies
   Is not a surprise,
But that this isn’t one of them is.)

When she brings the bull flowers, her Highness
Displays no decorum or shyness,
   And she runs from the house
   With no thought of her spouse—
This isn’t a plus for King Minos.

Dear queen, will your lover respond
To that little black dress that you’ve donned?
   Why primp in a mirror
   Or fix your brassiere or
Your hair, you unnatural blonde?

As your mirror’s plain truth reinforces,
You should stick to your human resources.
   If you like what you’ve got,
   Take your king—but if not,
Don’t take animal husbandry courses.

Yet with naught but the bull in her brain,
She gets up from the bed where she’s lain
   And heads for the hills
   With their four-footed thrills
As if Bacchus had made her insane.

She’ll glare at the herd and she’ll scoff,
“Just look at that heifer show off!
   I fail to see what
   He enjoys in that slut—
She should keep her head down in the trough.”

And as soon as her Majesty spoke,
She condemned that poor cow at a stroke:
   The one he’d preferred
   Was dragged from the herd
And her neck fastened under a yoke.

In rituals wholly fictitious
Any cow that had made her suspicious
   Was butchered; the queen,
   As she fondled its spleen,
Declared all the omens propitious.

And of all of the mythical bios,
She envies Europa’s and Io’s:
   For the latter’s cow skull
   And the trip on a bull
That the former to Zeus in the sky owes.

(As a heifer, young Io grew wider;
Zeus loved her, then needed to hide her.
   As a sea-faring ox,
   Now Jupiter docks
At Crete, with Europa his rider.)

But we end with our bull and his bride—
A decoy (the queen was inside).
   From the cow that ensconced her
   She mothered a monster
Whose father could not be denied.

Yes, the women of Crete are just shameless.
Another (who shall remain nameless)
   Loved Thyestes, that sinner
   Whose cannibal dinner
Made Phoebus the Sun God go aimless.

Lust flooded the heart of young Scylla
For the king of the Cretan flotilla;
   For betraying her town,
   From her belly on down
She resembles a canine Godzilla.

Agamemnon survived every battle
And brought home his troops and his chattel,
   But he ended his life
   At the hands of his wife,
Who dispatched him like one of his cattle.

Jason’s first wife and Theseus’s second
Were more evil than anyone reckoned;
   Thanks to their plots,
   To a bride, son, and tots
Grim Death all too famously beckoned.

What madman would blind his own son?
Yet it’s this that Amyntor has done.
   He was duped by his dame.
   And Phineus? The same—
But in his case it wasn’t just one.

The fault, then, for every such error
Can be placed on the sex that is fairer.
   Libido in men
   Lifts its head now and then,
But it’s gentler and saner and rarer.

So come! You’re officially tasked
With making all ladies unmasked.
   Some women put out,
   And others, put out,
Will say no—but they like to be asked.

She’s no danger, the dame who dissents;
Just progress through life’s varied events
   And enjoy a new scene;
   The grass is more green
On the opposite side of the fence.

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In the next issue: How to make sure that your lover’s maidservant isn’t a dismayed servant. Stay tuned.