Games of Venus: An Anthology of Greek and Roman Erotic Verse from Sappho to Ovid

by Peter Bing

What measure could there be in love?

You'll find another Alexis, if this one turns you down.”

Alexis is a boy. Contrast the female addressees in Theocritus 3 and especially 11, which provided Virgil with inspiration for this poem. 2. Perhaps a reference to Iollas, the rich lover mentioned in v.54. 3. These are ingredients in a rustic dish called moretum, consisting of soft cheese, oil, and crushed herbs.

Paris was shepherding on Mt. Ida when he judged the beauty contest between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Each goddess tried to persuade him to choose her, but it was Aphrodite's bribe, the gift in marriage of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, that determined Paris’ choice. He thus became a paradigm of those who value love over all things.

Quintus Horatius Flaccus was born in 65 B.C. at Venusia, in southern Italy. His father, a freed slave, made sure he got a good education at Rome and then sent him to Athens for further study. After Julius Caesar was assassinated (44 B.C.), Horace joined Brutus’ army, later returning to Rome and assuming a modest position in the Roman Treasury. Eventually he was introduced to Maecenas by Virgil, and in time won acceptance to the inner circle and was given a small farm in the Sabine hills.

I hope you'll have a roof of shade, Priapus,1 so neither suns nor snows can hurt you, just tell me, what's your trick? How do you get beautiful boys? Clearly, your beard doesn't shine, your hair's unkempt. You spend the freezing winter in the nude, and nude the drought of the seething Dog Star. That's what I said, and the rustic offspring of Bacchus answered me, the god armed with the curving sickle: “Don't believe the tender throng of boys. They all have things you can really love.

One you like because he reins his horse in tight. Another swims, his white breast thrusting through the water's calm. Another gets you ‘cause he's brave and bold. And that one's fresh cheeks have a virgin blush. But if at first he should say no, don't let apathy set in. Little by little, he'll put his neck in the yoke. It takes a long day to teach a lion to heed a man. It takes a long day for mere water to eat away stone. The year ripens grapes on sunny hills, the year directs bright stars with regular motion. Don't be afraid to swear. The lies of love drift useless on the winds, over lands and deep seas.

It's a mistake to be slow. Life will go by— and how quickly! The day's not sluggish, won't come back.

Only Bacchus4 and Phoebus5 are young forever. Uncut hair is the right of these two gods.

whatever your boy wants to try, give in. Love shall conquer most things just by going along.

And you shouldn't feel ashamed to take on harsh tasks, or rub your hands raw on a job they'd never done. And if he should want to hem in deep valleys with traps, if it gets you somewhere, load down your shoulders with nets. If it's fencing he wants, try to play with a weak right hand. Offer your naked flank, so he can often win. Then he'll soften up for you, then you'll be able to take sweet kisses; he'll fight back, but will give you the ones you take.

At first the ones you take, then, if you ask, he'll offer them, and then he'll want to wrap himself around your neck.

But O, these times now practice evil arts. Even a tender boy usually wants gifts. But as for you, who first taught that love's for sale, whoever you w...

Love the Pierides,8 boys, and learned poets, and don't let golden gif...

But whoever doesn't heed the Muses, whoever sells love, he can follow the chariots of Idan Ops11 and fill three hundred towns with his wanderings, and hack off his worthless sex to a Phrygian tune.12

But gather around me, your master, all you who are in the crafty clutches of tricky boys.

Each man has his boast: mine's that lovers who are scorned should come to me for advice, my door is open to all. There'll be a time when, as I discourse on the principles of love, an attentive crowd of boys will walk me home.

The god reserves his cruelest fire for those he sees are reluctant to submit.

Beauty needs no magic aids.

What hurts is to have touched the body, to have given long kisses, to have tangled thigh with thigh. And you, remember, don't be hard on the boy. Venus avenges unfriendly acts with torment. And don't ask for gifts. Let white-haired lovers give them, so they can warm their freezing limbs in the silky fold. Dearer than gold's the boy whose smooth face shines, in whose embrace no rough beard scratches.

And Venus shall find a way to lie in secret with the boy when he swells and sows deep into the tender fold;

Priapus was the Greek and Roman phallic deity, often presiding, in the form of a statue or statuette, over gardens. His most characteristic feature was his prominent phallus. Here the speaker asks him for his secret (1–6), then Priapus responds (9–72), after which the frame returns and we are apprised of a series of contexts for the erotodidactic discourse the speaker has elicited from the willing godhead. This poem is a miniature version of what Ovid was to do (with many a nod to this text) in his erotodidactic poetry, the Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris.