P. Ovidius Naso, Art of Love, Remedy of Love, Art of Beauty, Court of Love, History of Love, Amours, carte 327

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If Atreus' wife to incest had not run,¹
(But ah, how hard it is to love but one!)
His coursers Phoebus had not driv'n away,
To shun that sight, and interrupt the day.
Thy daughter, Nissus, pull'd thy purple hair;²
And barking sea-dogs yet her bowels tear.
At sea and land Atrides sav'd his life;
Yet fell a prey to his adult'rous wife.³
Who knows not what revenge Medea sought,
When the slain offspring bore the father's fault!
Thus Phoenix did a woman's love bewail;⁴
And thus Hippolytus by Phaedra fell.⁵
These crimes revengeful matrons did commit!
Hotter their lust, and sharper is their wit.
Doubt not from them an easy victory;
Scarce of a thousand dames will one deny.
All women are content that men should woo;
She who complains, and she who will not do.
Rest then secure, whate'er thy luck may prove,
Not to be hated for declaring love:
And yet how canst thou miss, since womankind
Is frail and vain; and still to change inclin'd?
Old husbands, and stale gallants, they despise;
And more another's than their own they prize.
A larger crop adorns our neighbour's field,
More milk his kine from swelling udders yield.

1 Atreus's wife's name was Aeropa. She suffered herself to be debauched by her brother-in-law, Thyestes.

2 Her name was Scylla, and she betrayed her father, in favour of her gallant, Minos.

3 Clytemnestra, and the adulterer Aegistheus, murdered Agamemnon: upon whose death Seneca wrote the tragedy called Agamemnon.

4 Phoenix the son of Amyntor, enjoyed a woman whom his father loved. His father was so enraged at him, that he imprecated all the miseries he could think of to light upon his son: whose children dying, he withdrew to Peleus, father of Achilles, who committed to him the care of his son's education.

5 Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, was pulled to pieces by horses. Our author in his French observations says this fable is admirably well represented in the tragedy of Seneca.

P. Ovidius Naso. Ovid's Art of Love (in three Books), the Remedy of Love, the Art of Beauty, the Court of Love, the History of Love, and Amours. Anne Mahoney. edited for Perseus. New York. Calvin Blanchard. 1855.

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P. Ovidius Naso, Art of Love, Remedy of Love, Art of Beauty, Court of Love, History of Love, Amours
various, Ed.

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P. Ovidius Naso, Art of Love, Remedy of Love, Art of Beauty, Court of Love, History of Love, Amours various, Ed.

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Table of Contents:

P. Ovidius Naso, Art of Love, Remedy of Love, Art of Beauty, Court of Love, History of Love, Amours
various, Ed.