From Ovid's 'Ars Amatoria'
. . . Now is the time to contrive A good mind to add to your looks: that alone will endure To the pyre at the end. Make sure You cultivate the liberal arts, and learn to speak Not only perfect Latin but good Greek.
Ulysses wasn't handsome, but he had Such eloquence that two sea-goddesses were mad For his love. Calypso wept at his haste to be going And swore the water was too rough for rowing!
Again and again she asked about Troy, and he told the tale In so many ways it was never stale.
There on the shore, the lovely goddess begged, 'Friend, Tell me about King Rhesus' bloody end.'
And he with a stick he happened to have in his hand Drew diagrams on the firm sand.
'Here's Troy', he'd say; and with the damp Sand built a wall. 'Here's Simois. Our camp Imagine over there. There's the plain' — and he smoothed a plain — Where we butchered the spy Dolon on the look-out to gain Achilles' steeds. Rhesus camped there; that night I rode Back on the captured horses.' He would have showed Calpyso more, But a wave raced up the shore And washed Troy, Rhesus, and his camp away.
At which the goddess exclaimed, 'What did I say?
How can you trust this sea when one wave effaces All those famous names and places?'
And so, since looks may let you down unkindly, Don't rely on them blindly.
Reader, whoever you are, you must Have something safer than physique to trust.
James Michie
Lines 119-144, from Book II of Ovid's Ars Amatoria, to be published in an edition by the Folio Society
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