Excerpt from Chapter 1,Ovid's Amatory Poetry: Rome in a Comic Mirror

Remedia amoris : When Your Relationship Goes South; Or, What Happens When You Play It Backward

In just about the entire Western poetic discourse of love, from antiquity to the present, the greatest crises attendant upon erotic involvement result from unreturned, asymmetrical, impeded, or suddenly rejected desire. In the Amores , Ovid treats some of these situations as instances of or occasions for moment-to-moment crisis management: strategies of coded conspiracy (1.4), attempted persuasion (1.3, 1.6, 2.2, etc.), willed self-delusion (1.4), and so forth -- strategies, I've suggested, that expose, from a comic perspective, the hopelessness so often a camp follower of those engaged in campaigns fought under Cupid's banner. By contrast, the comic conceit generating the Remedia amoris is that expertise on falling in love and expertise on falling out of love (when necessary) can flow with equal facility from the mouth (and pen) of the same expert. As the magister amoris assures his erstwhile (male) follower: "Tu mihi, qui, quod amas, aegre dediscis amare, / Nec potes, et velles posse, docendus eris [But you who must now learn to unlove what you love, who want to do this but can't -- you'll be taught how by me]" ( Rem 297--98). The magister 's advice is supposedly for both sexes -- "Sed quaecumque viris, vobis quoque dicta, puellae, / Credite: diversis partibus arma damus [Whatever I say to men, girls, you must believe that I'm saying to you as well; we'll supply arms impartially to each side in this war]" ( Rem 49--50) -- but its dominant paradigm is of a man escaping a cruel woman.

As the Ars amatoria excludes the rich and the beautiful from its audience, so the Remedia declares the strong-willed exempt from its teachings:

Optimus ille sui vindex, laedentia pectus Vincula qui rupit, dedoluitque semel.Sed qui tantum animi est, illum mirabor et ipse, Et dicam, "monitis non eget iste meis."

(The guy who really can call himself a free man is the one who cuts himself loose from a self-destructive relationship and then makes a clean break from grieving about it. If anybody really is that strong, even I will be impressed, and I'll admit, "This guy has no need for my advice.") ( Rem 293--96)

This exception made, the magister minces no words in boasting of his new accomplishment:

Me duce damnosas, homines, conpescite curas, Rectaque cum sociis me duce navis eat.Naso legendus erat tum, cum didicistis amare: Idem nunc vobis Naso legendus erit.

(Follow my advice, men, and control those crippling emotions; follow my advice, and get them, and your life, back on an even keel. It was Naso you needed to read when you were learning how to be a good lover; it's that very same Naso you need so badly to read right now.) ( Rem 69--72)

The image of the straight-sailing ship (70) looks back to the beginning of the Ars , where the magister declares himself to be love's helmsman, conquering by his experience-born skills the rough seas of passion (a claim, as we've seen, frequently contradicted by the magister 's description of love's irresistible power). But whereas in the Ars there is a double, somewhat self-contradictory understanding of what the magister is in fact teaching -- self-control or control of others for the sake of one's pleasure -- here in the Remedia self-control -- what we might call steering clear of passion -- is precisely and entirely the issue.

Me duce . . . me duce; Naso legendus erat . . . Naso legendus erit . The situations are opposed -- learning how to love, learning how not to love (or, more precisely, to "un-love") -- but the repetitions that balance and, in effect, frame these lines suggest a closed system in which countervailing forces coexist within the sublime equilibrium of the magister 's controlling vision. Or, as he puts it elsewhere,

Ad mea, decepti iuvenes, praecepta venite, Quos suus ex omni parte fefellit amor.Discite sanari, per quem didicistis amare: Una manus vobis vulnus opemque feret.

(All you young men taken for a ride and then left high and dry by love, come check out my system: the same teacher who taught you how to love will now teach you how to stop the bleeding from a broken heart; the hand that wounds can also heal.) ( Rem 41--44)

Nor is this the extent of his boastfulness about what we might call his ambidextrous (ambisextrous?) delivery of erotic counseling. Claiming that attention to his magisterium would have changed the course of mythology -- and of history itself -- by teaching frustrated lovers how to squelch their unlawful or unrequited passions, he insists:

Vixisset Phyllis, si me foret usa magistro, Et per quod novies, saepius isset iter;Nec moriens Dido summa vidisset ab arce Dardanias vento vela dedisse rates;…Da mihi Pasiphaën, iam tauri ponet amorem: . . . Crede Parim nobis, Helenen Menelaus habebit, Nec manibus Danais Pergama victa cadent.

(If she'd followed my advice, Phyllis would have lived, and taken the path she did more than just nine times; when Dido, from her vantage point atop her castle, saw the Trojan ships setting out from her harbor under full sail, she wouldn't have regarded it as a death sentence. Send me Pasiphae as a student, and that's the end of her love for a bull. Entrust Paris to me, Menelaus keeps Helen, and the Trojan War never happens; end of story.) ( Rem 55--58, 63, 65--66)

Of course, the magister 's disciples will recall equally outrageous claims of opposite valence, uttered in the Ars amatoria , about mythic heroines whose tragic abandonment by treacherous males could have been averted had they available to them the magister's advice on how to attract men:

Quantum in te, Theseu, volucres Ariadna marinas Pavit, in ignoto sola relicta loco! . . . Et famam pietatis habet, tamen hospes et ensem Praebuit et causam mortis, Elissa, tuae.Quid vos perdiderit, dicam? Nescistis amare: Defuit ars vobis; arte perennat amor.

(Thanks to you, Theseus, Ariadne is quaking with fear of circling sea birds, abandoned on an uncharted island. As for you, Dido, your guest was famous for his morals, but all he did was leave you with a sword and a cause to use it on yourself. What did you women in? Shall I tell you? It was because you didn't know how to be compelling lovers. You lacked the tricks of the trade that make love last.) ( Ars 3.35--36, 39--42)

This opening comic move of the Remedia shares the stage with another: as a counterpoint to his boasting, the magister has some explaining to do to the god of love, who feels outraged or threatened (or both), depending on how one interprets the tone of the Remedia 's opening lines: "Legerat huius Amor titulum nomenque libelli: / 'Bella mihi, video, bella parantur' ait [Love saw the title page of this book; 'Uh, oh,' he said, 'someone's getting ready to make war on me']" ( Rem 1--2). Insisting that he remains Love's poet, and follower -- "ego semper amavi, / Et si, quid faciam, nunc quoque, quaeris, amo [I've always been a lover, and if you ask what I think I'm doing now, I'm still a lover]" ( Rem 7--8) -- and that "nec nova praeteritum Musa retexit opus [nor is this new poem an exposé of the last one]" ( Rem 12), the Ovidian alter ego justifies his latest poetic effort as a rescue operation: "At siquis male fert indignae regna puellae, / Ne pereat, nostrae sentiat artis opem [But if any guy lies crushed under the heel of an unworthy girlfriend, if he's not to die [from such treatment], he'll need all the help he can get from my expertise]" ( Rem 15--16). Furthermore, he adds opportunistically, in saving lovers from self-destruction, he's also saving Cupid from the ugly reputation of a murderer: "Qui, nisi desierit, misero periturus amore est, / Desinat; et nulli funeris auctor eris [As for the poor slob who'll die from an unhappy love affair unless he gets out of it, let him get out, and then you won't be responsible for the funeral]" ( Rem 21--22). Of course, with very few exceptions the convention that disappointed lovers will kill themselves -- or be murdered by love -- is just that, a (literary) convention, especially of classical myth. The following lines, in arguing that Cupid, as a child, should (in effect) make love, not war, leaving the business of death to his stepfather, Mars, continue to play with conventions: they present themselves as an espousal of divine decorum, but are actually a send-up of generic decorum:

Et puer es, nec te quicquam nisi ludere oportet; . . .Vitricus et gladiis et acuta dimicet hasta; . . . Tu cole maternas, tuto quibus utimur, artes. . . . Effice nocturna frangatur ianua rixa, Et tegat ornatas multa corona fores:Fac coeant furtim iuvenes timidaeque puellae, Verbaque dent cauto qualibet arte viro:Et modo blanditias rigido, modo iurgia posti Dicat et exclusus flebile cantet amans.His lacrimis contentus eris sine crimine mortis; Non tua fax avidos digna subire rogos.

(After all, you're just a kid; playing should be the only thing you care about. Leave the weapons of mass destruction to your stepfather, and you practice your mother's skills, which are safe to use. Let the front door be damaged in nightly fights and the doorway be covered with bouquets left by many lovers; arrange secret meetings between young men and their fearful married girlfriends; and let them make up any kind of story they can to fool the suspicious husband. Let the lover, shut out from his mistress's house, sing sad songs and use now flattery, now argument to get past that tightly closed door. You'll be happy enough with all the resulting tears, without being responsible for anyone's demise; your torch should never go near a voracious funeral pyre.) ( Rem 23, 27, 29, 31--38)

In other words, the repertory of the elegiac poets is Cupid's domain; he will escape capital blame if he is satisfied with the deceptions, lies, quarrels, and laments of urbane young lovers ( iuvenes timidaeque puellae ) -- that is, if he confines his campaigns to the landscape of desire fabricated by those poets, within which it's indecorous to let lovers die, and avoids the terminal pathos of many of Ovid's own Heroides , to say nothing of the tragic guilt of Vergil's Dido. In sum, Ovid uses the conceit of his magister 's self-exculpating lecture to a paranoid Cupid in order to poke fun once again (as in Amores 1.1, 2.1, and 3.1), but from a different perspective, at the poetic traditions that defined the topics and the boundaries of elegiac poetry. And the god, thus lectured and persuaded, permits the magister to go forward with the latter's "art of un-loving," in a line that, by its structure, ironically recalls Amores 1.1.24, in which the same god launches the arrow that will introduce the poet to the pains of love and thus to the routines and conventions of elegiac poetry: "Haec ego: movit Amor gemmatas aureus alas, / Et mihi. 'propositum perfice' dixit 'opus' [When I had finished, Love, bling and all, shook his gem-encrusted wings and said to me, 'Okay, go ahead and finish what you've started']" ( Rem 39--40).

The passages I have juxtaposed that contrast the respective claims of the Remedia amoris and Ars amatoria to supposed efficacy in relieving the distress of mythological heroines are more than just delightful examples of Ovidian comic hyperbole. Taken together, they illustrate one of two intertwined techniques that constitute Ovid's larger poetic strategy in composing the Remedia . Each of these techniques should possess contemporary resonance for a twenty-first-century reader. On the one hand, we can recognize in the Remedia a distinctive, pseudo-therapeutic regimen of recovery: Professor Naso's twelve-step program, a sequence of psychological and behavioral strategies designed to lessen and eventually unravel completely an erotic entanglement that has gone bad; a guide to freeing oneself from an unrewarding and potentially self-destructive dependency (albeit one that resulted from following rules laid down by the magister amoris ); but a guide that also incorporates warnings on the many dangers of and occasions for backsliding.

On the other hand, supporting (or perhaps comically subverting) this display of medico-psychological mastery is a rhetorical campaign that provides an exemplary parallel (mutatis mutandis) to the late-twentieth-century joke that asks what you would get if you were to play a record of country music songs backward and answers that you would get back your dog, your house, your sweetheart, and your sanity. Which is to say, Ovid also presents the Remedia as a systematic reversal of the advice proferred in the Ars -- in effect, a virtuosic parody of the disputatio ad utramque partem (argument taking both sides of a debated question) as practiced (indeed, honed to perfection) in the Roman rhetorical schools -- such that the Ars "played backward" yields the Remedia and, of course, vice versa. The presence of the selfsame Dido on both lists of mythological or legendary lovers just mentioned (Phyllis also figures in lines I have not quoted from the Ars ) -- those who would have done better had they possessed the Ars and those who could have saved themselves a lot of heartache had they read the Remedia -- underscores this strategy of reversed eloquence. Cupid sums it up best when he addresses the magister as "O qui sollicitos modo das, modo demis amores [You who first give, then take away, agita -inducing desires]" ( Rem 557). And the magister himself, counseling recovering lovers, "teneros ne tange poetas," confesses, "summoveo dotes impius ipse meas [don't even think about reading love poets (I'm shooting myself in the foot by placing my own work out of bounds)]" ( Rem 757--58; the reference is presumably to Ars 2.273--74, where he considers the possibility of sending "teneros . . . versus" ["sweet verses"] to "doctae puellae." ["well-read girls"]).

Although it's fairly easy to distinguish these two elements of the Remedia in the abstract, keeping them separate in reading (or interpreting) the text is much more complicated since the distinction is in fact artificial and ex post facto. Nonetheless, I'll begin with a few remarks on the poem as an addict-rehabilitation system and look somewhat more closely at an extended passage that deals with the dangers of backsliding; then I'll devote the larger part of my discussion to Ovid's fairly systematic reversal (or inversion) in the Remedia of advice given in the Ars since this is where he devotes most of his energy in creating a comic rebuttal to his handbook for aspiring lovers.

I am hardly the first reader of the Remedia amoris to note the similarities between its approach to the problem of breaking off an obsessive but unhappy erotic relationship and modern programs of rehabilitation for those addicted to tobacco, alcohol, or narcotics. In fact, the latest edition and translation of the text in the widely used Loeb Classical Library labels its three major sections, "Therapy After Separation," "Therapy in Her Presence," and "Causes of Recidivism." But I believe it's important to keep in mind that the magiste r's system for breaking the hold of desire on one's existence grapples with the same problem that haunts his system for winning or keeping an object of desire: the sheer variety of human characteristics and situations, necessitating, for at least the possibility of success, a pragmatic, frequently shifting strategy rather than the consistent application of a single, one-size-fits-all set of rules. In other words, one thing that doesn't change from Ars amatoria to the Remedia amoris is the key role played by suitability (the analogue, I've suggested, to decorum in rhetorical practice) in any response to situations or crises of desire and to the people who generate them. As the magister puts it, "Nam quoniam variant animi, variabimus artes; / Mille mali species, mille salutis erunt [Now since temperaments vary so much, we'll vary our treatments; for a thousand types of illness, we'll offer a thousand cures]" ( Rem 525--26). Recalling the ending of Ars book 1 is inescapable: "sunt diversa puellis / pectora: mille animos excipe mille modis" ( Ars 1.755--56; see this chapter, page 000).

From its beginning, then, the rehabilitation project for the erotically addicted must incorporate flexibility, as opposed to consistency, of response. In his opening round of strategies for extinguishing desire, the magister first espouses a policy of nipping desire in the bud:

Dum licet, et modici tangunt praecordia motus, Si piget, in primo limine siste pedem.Opprime, dum nova sunt, subiti mala semina morbi, Et tuus incipiens ire resistat equus.

(While you still can, while you're only experiencing mild desires, if they make you uncomfortable, then freeze on the very first step of the ladder of love. Suppress, while they're still new, those first symptoms of love; hold your horses right at the starting gate.)( Rem 79--82)

If " equus " is here a colloquial euphemism for the penis, it adds spice to the metaphor, but a few lines later he admits this advice may not be universally applicable and adjusts it, advising caution and delay where prompt and decisive action would be futile in the face of a desire neither incipient nor fading but rather at its fullest intensity:

Si tamen auxilii perierunt tempora primi, Et vetus in capto pectore sedit amor,Maius opus superest. . . . Qui modo nascentes properabam pellere morbos, Admoveo tardam nunc tibi lentus opem.Aut nova, si possis, sedare incendia temptes, Aut ubi per vires procubuere suas:Dum furor in cursu est, currenti cede furori;' Difficiles aditus impetus omnis habet.

(But if it's way past the time for first aid because an old love is in complete control of your heart, this is going to be a much bigger job. I was in a hurry to expel your infection in its early stages, but now, coming in as a relief pitcher late in the game, I have to move much more slowly. You try to stamp out the fire either when it's new or when its strength has pretty much given out; while it's raging, however, give way before its heat because it's difficult to come to grips with the sheer force of it.) ( Rem 107--9, 115--20)

The admission in this last line in effect attaches a debunking asterisk to the absoluteness of the magister 's claim, at the beginning of the Remedia , that he has created a foolproof regimen of control over passion: "Et quod nunc ratio est, impetus ante fuit" ( Rem 10; emphasis added); if in fact you can't control impetus , he now counsels, you must learn to outwait it: "Temporis ars medicina fere est [Be patient, patient; it's like medicine]" ( Rem 131). Similarly, after counseling feigned indifference -- you may even come to believe it! -- to the woman from whom you wish to, but because of erotic obsession cannot, break away ( Rem 491--522), the magister abruptly changes field, advising instead, "Desine luctari . . . ; / Explenda est sitis ista tibi, quo perditus ardes [Stop fighting it; instead, try to quench that burning thirst that you can't see relief from]" ( Rem 531, 533), that is, give in to your desire, but overdo it: "Taedia quaere mali: faciunt et taedia finem [Aim for the disgust that comes from overindulgence; that disgust will set you free]" ( Rem 539).

At yet another point, the magister is even forced to acknowledge that, like the ungovernable force of passion, so the variety of erotic situations in which his charges may find themselves could undercut the authority of his teachings. While urging a disgruntled lover, after lovemaking, to search the naked body of his amica for blemishes and faults, he adds, "Sed quoniam totidem mores totidemque figurae, / Non sunt iudiciis omnia danda meis [But since there's so much variety when it comes to bodies, don't be entirely ruled by my strategies]" ( Rem 425--26); that is, you may look for blemishes and be excited instead by what you see. But his most insightful and self-subverting comment on this subject seems to be, "exemplo quemque docente suo [each one learns from his own example]" ( Rem 684), in which case, the would-be ender of his addiction might well ask, who needs a loquacious teacher to smother him (or her?) in endless strategies and aphorisms?.

A quick survey of some of those strategies and recommendations should serve to confirm Ovid's anticipation (albeit from a comic perspective) of modern rehabilitative schemes. The avoidance of occasions that accommodate or encourage addictive behavior is crucial; in the case of desire, the magister insists, leisure is the danger, engaging in useful activity the antidote: Fac monitis fugias otia prima meis.Haec, ut ames, faciunt. . . . Otia si tollas, periere Cupidinis arcus; . . . Cedit amor rebus: res age, tutus eris.

(My first rule is, avoid free time, which opens you to desire. Keeping busy breaks Cupid's bow. Love retreats from a full schedule; get to work and you'll be spared.) ( Rem 136--37, 139, 144)

Aside from the commonsensical quality of this advice -- submitting oneself to demanding routines and tasks distracts one's attention from otherwise insistent, ultimately irresistible cravings -- it incorporates yet another Ovidian joke at the expense of the Roman generic theory and decorum to which I've referred in connection with traditional (conservative) complaints about the elegiac poets' espousal of a private ethos of love and leisure ( otium ) in defiance of Roman values of public activity ( negotium ) and responsibility. Take away otia , the magister contends (cf. that joke about playing a country music song backward!), and Cupid's bow is broken, that is, love fades, your addiction ends, you get your self-possession back. Otherwise, he warns, love will fill the empty spaces of an idle life: "Sic venit ille puer, sic puer ille manet [Here comes that boy [i.e., Cupid], and here he'll stay]" ( Rem 168).

The first concrete step ("prima tempora" [ Rem 234]) in the magister's program of busyness -- he also refers to it as "artis . . . ianua nostrae [the gateway to my system]" ( Rem 233) -- is putting physical distance between yourself and the causes of your addiction. For the Roman lover, that means fleeing urban leisure and the desire it breeds and immersing himself in the myriad routines of country life ( Rem 169--212). But this geographical version of going cold turkey will not be easy to initiate or to endure, the magister admits: "Dura aliquis praecepta vocet mea; dura fatemur / Esse [Some will call my rules harsh; harsh is exactly what they are; I admit it]" ( Rem 225--26). And Ovid has him paint an amusing but psychologically penetrating picture of the addicted lover's ingenuity at finding ways to put off or curtail his salvific exile:

Flebis, et occurret desertae nomen amicae, Stabit et in media pes tibi saepe via. . . .Nec pluvias opta, nec te peregrina morentur Sabbata, nec damnis Allia nota suis.. . . nec, maneas ut prope, finge moras:Tempora nec numera, nec crebro respice Romam, Sed fuge . . .(You'll cry, and the name of your abandoned mistress will echo inside you; often you'll drag your feet in the middle of the journey. But don't hope for a rain delay or use holidays -- or, for that matter, anniversaries of national defeats -- as an excuse to suspend your trip. Don't make up reasons for delay so that you can stay close to home. Don't count the days that you'll be gone or keep looking back toward Rome -- just get out of there!) ( Rem 215--16, 219--20, 222--24)

The emphatic, finger-shaking anaphoras ("nec . . . nec . . . nec") of the magister's admonition parody the stern lecture of a parent to a child ingeniously manufacturing excuses for not taking a bitter but necessary medicine -- the parallel is in fact suggested by the magister himself: "Saepe bibi sucos, quamvis invitus, amaros / Aeger [Often when I've been sick, I've had to take bitter medicines, however unwillingly]" ( Rem 227--28) -- as he insists that only complete and long absence (and thus abstinence) will defeat persistent, persevering desire:

Quod nisi firmata properaris mente reverti, Inferet arma tibi saeva rebellis Amor.Quidquid et afueris, avidus sitiensque redibis, Et spatium damno cesserit omne tuo.

(If you come running back with anything less than rock-solid willpower, Love the insurgent will immediately renew his vicious attacks. Never mind that you took a leave of absence; you've come back still hungering and thirsting for love, and all your travels will have done you no good.)( Rem 245--48)

If, however, flight from Rome, and the object of desire, be impossible, the magister has at the ready a considerable repertory of strategies designed to turn proximity to that object into something other than a disaster. Since some of these strategies involve the precise, even verbally precise, reversal of advice designed to help the would-be lover achieve the relationship from which, disenchanted, he is now seeking desperately to escape, I will mention only a few, and those briefly, saving them for fuller treatment in the next section; basically, they involve the willed metamorphosis of the once (and, in effect, still) beloved into an object of hatred and revulsion. "Saepe refer tecum sceleratae facta puellae, / Et pone ante oculos omnia damna tuos [Think often of all the things that terrible woman has done to you, and let your mind dwell on all your grievances]" ( Rem 299--300), the magister advises. Or do what I did when miserable because rejected by an uninterested puella : "Profuit adsidue vitiis insistere amicae, / Idque mihi factum saepe salubre fuit [It helped to keep coming back to my mistress's faults; that usually made me feel better]" ( Rem 315--16); the therapies' resemblance to adolescent sulks will not have been lost on Ovid's sophisticated Roman audiences, with the difference that these are strategic -- and therefore forced, rather than sincerely felt -- complaints, condemnations of demon rum by one who secretly would love a glassful at that moment: "?'Quam mala,' dicebam, 'nostrae sunt crura puellae!' / Nec tamen, ut vere confiteamur, erant ['God! My girl's legs are really ugly,' I'd say to myself -- which, to tell you the truth, they weren't at all]" ( Rem 317--18). It will also help, continues the magister , to persuade your mistress to make a fool of herself in front of you (on the face of it, an unlikely prospect): "Quin etiam, quacumque caret tua femina dote,/ Hanc moveat, blandis usque precare sonis [Why not try this: plead with your woman to do something that she doesn't do well]" ( Rem 331--32), be it singing sine voce (having no voice), conversing in barbara sermone (Latin as a second language), or laughing so as to expose crooked teeth ( Rem 333, 335, 339, respectively; see this chapter, page 000, for the precise quotation).

Rising to a dubious didactic summit, the magister advises the disciple trapped in a debilitating love affair to seek a cure -- by taking another mistress! (Addicted to gin? Try knocking down a bottle of rum every day, as well.) The comic intent of this counsel is first telegraphed by Ovid via his surrogate's implicitly misogynistic aside, hinting at female sexual voracity: "Hortor et, ut pariter binas habeatis amicas / (Fortior est, plures siquis habere potest [Here's my advice: take two mistresses at the same time -- although I admit you have to be pretty damned strong to take on more than one])" ( Rem 441--42); carried away by this bright idea, the magister offers instances drawn from classical mythology -- always a favorite Ovidian comic resource -- to support it: Paris's love for Helen after Oenone; Tereus's for Philomela after Procne, and other examples of skewed, self-serving interpretation (Paris and Tereus were two-timing ravishers, not jilted lovers) that Ovid deploys in parodic imitation of the "colors" used by professional rhetoricians to impose helpful meanings on or draw favorable conclusions from the "facts" proposed for debate in the mock-forensic Controversiae of the schools of rhetoric in imperial Rome. Rejecting further corroborating testimony -- "Quid moror exemplis, quorum me turba fatigat," he huffs -- the magister makes his categorical pronouncement: "Successore novo vincitur omnis amor [Why should I take the time to give examples, the sheer number of which exhausts me. Every old love is wiped out by a new one]" ( Rem 461--62).

Ovid now brings this mythological stew to a comic boil, turning his revisionary sights on nothing less than Homer's Iliad . Modestly disavowing credit for formulating nova iura (new laws), the magister adduces as his great precedent the behavior of Agamemnon in the Iliad : having had to restore his concubine Chryseis to her father, the seer Calchas, Agamemnon, in order to repair his damaged pride and status, claims Achilles' concubine, a political transaction the magister wilfully misinterprets as an erotic one: "Dixit, et hanc habuit solacia magna prioris, / Et posita est cura cura repulsa nova [He spoke, and his new bedmate more than made up for the loss of her predecessor; in other words, the new love drove out the old]" ( Rem 483--84). The conclusion the magister draws from this butchering of the crucial opening move of ancient Europe's premier epic combines blatant misprision with outrageous self-puffery in one of the truly great Ovidian comic climaxes:

Ergo adsume novas auctore Agamemnone flammas, Ut tuus in bivio distineatur amor.Quaeris, ubi invenias? artes tu perlege nostras: Plena puellarum iam tibi navis erit.

(Therefore, with Agamemnon as your model, start a new fire in your heart, so that you can leave your old love behind in the dust. Where will you find this new love, you ask? By reading my Ars amatoria , of course; do that, and your love boat will soon have a full female passenger list.) ( Rem 485--88)....

Ovid gives one more therapeutic counsel, this one not mediated by the Great Books (Homer's, or the magister 's own) but more personal in origin, a message to the author directly from Cupid -- or else just something he dreamed up: "Is mihi sic dixit (dubito, verusne Cupido, / An somnus fuerit: sed puto, somnus erat) [He said these things to me; I'm not sure if it was Cupid himself, or only a dream, but it probably was a dream]" ( Rem 555--56; the anticlimactic deflation is a characteristically Ovidian comic touch). If you want to stop loving, the god/dream tells him, just concentrate on all your other problems -- we all have plenty of them: "Ad mala quisque animum referat sua, ponet amorem; / . . . Et quis non causas mille doloris habet? [Whoever turns his attention to his troubles will quickly forget about love. . . . And who doesn't have a thousand things to make him unhappy?]" ( Rem 559, 572)....

There are many more screamingly obvious reversals of Ars amatoria in the Remedia amoris . With respect to the thalamus (bedroom) where the lovers come to consummate their erotic relationship, the magister in Ars book 2 counsels mutual pleasure giving leading to a shared, simultaneous climax ( Ars 2.725--28; cf. 3.794); in the Remedia he advises the unhappy lover to spend time just beforehand with a prostitute, in order to dull the edge of passion: "Quamlibet invenias, in qua tua prima voluptas / Desinat: a prima proxima segnis erit [Pick up somebody or other for a preliminary quickie, thanks to which you'll be pretty pooped out for the main event]" ( Rem 403--4). In the Ars , he advises women to choose a method and posture of lovemaking that is most flattering to them ( Ars 3. 771--86) and not to let too much light into the room while in the act, adding michievously (and not a little misogynistically), "Aptius in vestro corpore multa latent [It's best that large parts of your body stay in the shadows]" ( Ars 3.808). In the Remedia , his counsel becomes:

Et pudet, et dicam: venerem quoque iunge figura, Qua minime iungi quamque decere putas.Nec labor efficere est: rarae sibi vera fatentur, Et nihil est, quod se dedecuisse putent.Tunc etiam iubeo totas aperire fenestras, Turpiaque admisso membra notare die.

(It's ugly, but I'll say it anyway: make love in whatever contorted positions are most difficult and least flattering. That's not hard to do: women rarely tell themselves the truth, so they tend to think that nothing, no posture, can be unbecoming to them. I'll add that you should throw the windows wide open, allowing the daylight to expose the parts she should hide.)( Rem 407--12)

This not only inverts his advice to women but suggests that they have not followed it if they think they look good from any angle.

In the Ars amatoria , men and women on the make are urged to frequent the theaters, the men to seek out beauty, the women to expose theirs to male gaze; in the Remedia , the theaters are to be avoided ( Rem 751), as are the colonnades where women stroll, which men are told to frequent in the Ars ( Rem 621; cf. Ars 1.67--74). When, as I've noted, the magister claims he could have saved Pasiphae from her cruel fate ( Rem 63; see this chapter, page 000), he does more than reverse his teaching; he contradicts it: in Ars 1.295--307, Pasiphae, we recall, functions as an exemplar of women's insatiable and elemental lust, unteachable by her mirror, never mind by the magister !

Whereas, in Ars, part of the secret to holding on to your puella is what one might call decorous flattery, that is, deploying language that ameliorates her particular blemishes -- "Nominibus mollire licet mala [to mitigate failings by renaming them]," as the magister puts it ( Ars 2.657), and "lateat vitium proximitate boni [hide that fault behind the nearest virtue]" ( Ars 2.662) -- in the Remedia the opposite strategy -- exaggerating such faults -- is called for. In the Ars :

fusca vocetur, Nigrior Illyrica cui pice sanguis erit:Si straba, sit Veneri similis: si rava, Minervae: Sit gracilis, macie quae male viva sua est;Dic habilem, quaecumque brevis, quae turgida, plenam . . .

(If she's darker than Illyrian pitch, just call her "dusky"; squint-eyed? why, just like Venus in that statue. If she has a scratchy voice, compare it to Minerva's; if her body is life-threateningly anorexic, call her "slim." Practically a midget? "Compact" will do, as will "zaftig" if she's balloonlike.) ( Ars 2.657--61)

In the Remedia :

Turgida, si plena est, si fusca est, nigra vocetur: In gracili macies crimen habere potest.Et poterit dici petulans, quae rustica non est: Et poterit dici rustica, siqua proba est.

(Call her "blimp" if she's full-bodied, "black" if she's dusky; you can stigmatize a slender girl by calling her emaciated, and one who's urbane by saying she's stuck up. And, if she's honest, then call her a naïve hick.) ( Rem 327--30)

The pursuit of such strategies points obliquely to a larger truth: "Et mala sunt vicina bonis" ( Rem 323), which in this context might best be translated, "There's not much distance between defects and virtues," implying, I think, that the crucial distinguishing element lies not within the object of scrutiny itself but rather in the feelings of desire or distaste (even forced, feigned distaste) toward that object held by its observer.

Perhaps even more striking is the inversion, in the Remedia , of the magister 's advice to his female adepts in book 3 of the Ars amatoria about how they can dress and behave in such a way as to disguise their natural defects or shortcomings ( Ars 3.261--68, 275--80, quoted in this chapter, page 000). Now in rebuttal, as it were, in the Remedia he counsels men seeking liberation from a woman to encourage her dis advantageous self presentation:

quacumque caret tua femina dote, Hanc moveat, blandis usque precare sonis.Exige uti cantet, siqua est sine voce puella: Fac saltet, nescit siqua movere manum.Barbara sermone est? Fac tecum multa loquatur; Non didicit chordas tangere? Posce lyram.Durius incedit? Fac inambulet; omne papillae Pectus habent? Vitium fascia nulla tegat.Si male dentata est, narra, quod rideat, illi.

(Whatever your girl isn't good at, keep asking her to do it until she gives in. Urge her to sing if she has a lousy voice; make her dance for you if she doesn't know the moves. A real Brooklyn accent? Insist that she keep talking. Never learned to play the lyre? Get her one. If she walks awkwardly, take her for long strolls. Is she all boobs? Don't let her wear anything that keeps them from flopping. And if she has lousy teeth, tell jokes to make her laugh.) ( Rem 331--39)

***

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Preface and Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. xi
Ovid's Amatory Poetry: Rome in a Comic Mirror	p. 1
Notes	p. 92
References	p. 99
Chaucer: Dealing with the Authorities; Or, Twisting the Nose That Feeds You	p. 103
Notes	p. 167
References	p. 176
Ariosto's Orlando Furioso: Confusion Multiply Confounded; Or, Astray in the Forest of Desire	p. 181
Notes	p. 254
References	p. 263
In Conclusion (or Inconclusion)	p. 267
Epilogue	p. 269
Index	p. 275
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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