The Art of Love by Ovid Page B

most
    Don’t. Attention helps: though you were graced
    With the looks of Venus, neglected they’ll go to waste.
    In the past girls may not have groomed themselves, but men
    Were equally uncultivated then.
    Do you wonder that Andromache wore
    A rough smock?—she’d married a man of war.
    And if you were Ajax’s wife, would you put on your best
    For a fellow whose arrow-proof vest
    Was a seven-layered ox-hide? In the days of old
    Styles were crude and simple. Now Rome has gold,
    The huge wealth of the conquered world. Compare
    The new with the old Capitol and you’d swear
    They belonged to different Jupiters. Who remembers
    That our Senate House, now worthy of its members,
    Was wattle-built under Tatius, and the Palatine,
    Site of Apollo’s shrine
    And the imperial palace now,
    Once pastured oxen for the plough?
    Let others venerate the past,
I
say
    Thank goodness I’m alive today;
    This age suits me—not because we mine
    Stubborn gold from the earth, or gather fine
    Shells from exotic shores, or dig
    Marble from shrinking mountains, or thrust big
    Villas into the bay’s blue water, but because
    We have culture, and the coarse life that was
    Natural to our grandfathers didn’t last
    To our day, is a thing of the past.
    [L ATIN :
Vos quoque nec…
]
        Don’t load your ears with expensive pearls that have been
    Fished up by dark-skinned Indians from green
    Tropical waters, don’t parade
    In heavy, gold-embossed brocade—
    Money displayed
    For applause can have the opposite effect.
    What we admire is elegance: don’t neglect
    Your hair or let it stray too much;
    Chic can be made or marred by a single touch.
    There’s more than one way hair can be dressed:
    Consult your mirror and choose the best
    For
you
. An oval face prefers
    Hair parted plainly (Laodamia did hers
    Like that); a round face calls for a different style—
    The hair in a neat pile
    On top of the head, so the ears show.
    One girl should let her tresses flow
    Over her shoulders in a cascade,
    Like Apollo when he plays the lyre; another should braid
    Hers like Diana when, skirt tucked above the knee,
    She hunts, and the wild things flee.
    Some look good with it loose and tousled by the wind,
    Others prefer it tied or pinned;
    Some fancy tortoise-shell combs, others elect
    To cultivate a wave-effect.
    If the number of all acorns on all oak-trees,
    If all the fauna of the Alps, if all the bees
    On Hybla are beyond computation,
    So are hair-styles—every day there’s a new creation.
    Take the “careless look,” which suits a lot of girls:
    To judge by their wild curls
    You’d think they’d been slept on all night, but they’ve just
    This moment been carefully mussed!
    Art simulates chance effects. Think of the case
    Of Hercules, who saw and loved the face
    Of his unkempt captive, Iole; or forlorn,
    Dishevelled Ariadne, borne
    Away by Bacchus in his car
    To the satyrs’ loud shouts of “hurrah!”
    Nature’s treatment of your beauty’s more
    Than kind—you’ve a thousand tricks to restore
    The damage. We’re miserably stripped bare—
    With age we lose our hair,
    Which falls like gale-blown leaves. A woman can dye
    Her grey streaks with German lotions, try
    To enhance its natural colour, sport a big,
    Thick, built-up wig,
    New hair for old, which money buys—
    There’s no embarrassment or disguise—
    From the shop right under Hercules’ and the Muses’ eyes.
        Now, what about clothes? I can’t abide
    Flounces or Tyrian-purple-dyed
    Wool. It’s mad,
    When so many cheaper colours can be had,
    To load your back with the worth of a whole estate.
    There’s the blue you see when the spring winds abate
    And stop bringing rain, and the air’s
    Cloudless; there’s
    Tawny gold, like the ram
    On whose back Phrixus and Helle swam
    To escape from Ino’s malice; there’s grey-green,
    The colour of the waves, which we call “marine”—
    I imagine that’s what the sea-nymphs must have worn;
    There’s saffron—the dewy goddess