Welcome to issue #9 of Love Is a Rhythmical Art! (If you’re a newcomer, feel free to check out the archive.) In today’s episode, Ovid finally gets to the topic he’s been promising all along: how to acquire your love interest — and I hope you’re not surprised to learn that the first thing our writer Ovid recommends is to write her a letter.

You might notice a few biblical allusions in this issue, and they’re there for good reason: because Ovid is quoting (and perverting) equally canonical texts. Vergil’s Aeneid, written just a few decades before Ovid’s Ars amatoria, was immediately famous for its epic, gripping, and dignified account of the founding of Rome by the Trojan hero Aeneas. (Okay, Rome was founded later by its first king, Romulus, but Aeneas set the stage.) At the midpoint of Vergil’s epic, Aeneas is told that he must visit his deceased father in the underworld and return to the land of the living. Visiting the dead is easy enough; that’s what you do when you die. But, says Vergil, to come back up from the realm of the dead: “this is the work, this is the struggle.” And this is the phrase (in Latin, hoc opus, hic labor est) that Ovid quotes verbatim here. He’s not necessarily mocking or denigrating Vergil, but he’s creating comedy by taking an epically serious phrase and applying it to something much more lowly: getting a girlfriend without spending too much.

What better way, then, to preserve the original flavor of downgraded epic than by translating Ovid with a quotation not from Vergil but from Jesus? After all, he’s the one who defines the “greatest commandment” as “love God with all your heart and soul and mind” (Matthew 22:36-38). Ovid has a slightly different commandment in mind, but in his mind it’s equally great. And there’s more! If you’ve heard of the Christian idea of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and the trio of Faith, Hope, and Love (1 Corinthians 13), Ovid will be delighted. You’ll also be pleased to know that the Romans thought of all three as deities, too.

(For those of you following along in the original Latin, here are lines 437-486 of Book 1.)

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As you start towards your amorous end,
A letter’s the thing you should send.
   By text or by email
   You’ll flatter your female
With words of true love (just pretend).

The employment of prayers and of pleas
Is nothing at which you should sneeze.
   Even epic ill-will
   Can be brought down to nil
By praying—and Homer agrees:

In Book 24 of the Iliad,
Priam, praying with all of the skill he had,
   Used a charming bon mot
   To gain from his foe
A balm like the one found in Gilead.

(Truth to tell, it was no duty-free tale;
He also engaged in some retail.
   The problem was solved
   Because cash was involved,
But Ovid’s omitting that detail.)

Make pledges—they’re useful and cheap—
And a profit is what you will reap.
   If you’ve given your word,
   Will it cost you? Absurd!
You’ll be rich in the things you don’t keep.

Yes, faith, hope, and love are a trinity,
But hope is a fickle divinity.
   Yet if hope can be planted,
   Your wish will be granted,
And love will abide to infinity.

Give a promise, but don’t give a gift,
Or her gain and your pain will be swift.
   By that tangible token
   Your dreams can be broken;
You’ll end at a loss and adrift.

But you always should seem on the verge
Of letting that present emerge:
   So poor cropland will bring
   Any farmer to sing
Not a harvest-time hymn but a dirge.

So a gambler already in debt
Will place yet another bad bet.
   Can the dice make him rich?
   His fingers still itch,
To his lasting financial regret.

Here’s the greatest commandment of all:
In love, not in debt, you must fall.
   Beware any cost!
   To regain what you’ve lost
Is an order that’s simply too tall.

At the outset, there’s nothing that’s better
Than sending a personal letter
   To charm and cajole
   Her sensitive soul
And to test her and try her and vet her.

For example, I think that I’ll launch us
With the tale of the lover Acontius.
   With a quince and a quip he
   Bamboozled Cydippe,
Who fell for Acontius unconscious.

(On that quince a few words could be read:
“I promise Acontius to wed.”
   She read them aloud
   In front of a crowd
And soon ended up in his bed.)

What’s the best way to sharpen your smarts?
A degree in the liberal arts.
   You can shape an oration
   Through broad education
To win the world’s minds and its hearts.

Like a judge to a public defender,
So to you is the opposite gender,
   And like great Vercingetorix
   She to your rhetoric’s
Power will give total surrender.

Should your note be at all ostentatious
Or affectedly learnèd?  Good gracious!
   Only morons and churls
   Write speeches to girls;
Simplicity’s more efficacious.

Credibility stands as your guide;
Use phrasing whose truth has been tried.
   Yet still you must coax;
   A good letter evokes
The strong sense that you’re there at her side.

If she sends back your letter unread,
She still reads, and your hopes are not dead:
   Just stick to your plan,
   You stout-hearted man,
And send her another instead.

Over time a young bullock learns how
To accustom himself to the plow;
   Over time does the fit
   Of a bridle and bit
Become something a foal will allow.

A ring made of iron or brass
Or a lawnmower blade in the grass,
   If you use it each day,
   Can be quite worn away;
Though metal, these also shall pass.

Is anything softer than rain,
Or harder than rock?  Yet in vain
   Does the rock get its wish in
   This war of attrition,
Worn down by rain’s steady campaign.

Troy lasted ten years, but Troy fell.
If a man, then, has laid his plan well
   And lets it develop, he
   Gets his Penelope,
Her whom no man could compel.

Now suppose that she’s read what you wrote
But won’t yet respond with a note.
   Pay it no heed;
   She’ll continue to read,
So continue to write and emote.

Since she saw the sweet words on your slate,
A reply she’ll see fit to create.
   You can safely impute your
   Success to the future;
She’ll write when she’s ready—just wait.

Her initial reply may be daunting
And ask that you finish your flaunting.
   But she fears what she asks;
   What she longs for, she masks;
Don’t stop, and you’ll get what you’re wanting.

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In the next issue: Roman looksmaxxing. Stay tuned.