Ovid’s advice on the art of love has been known for centuries due to his three poetic books of “Ars Amatoria.” He was a Roman poet from the time of the Roman Empire. The poems in his books taught men and women how to use the art of love to seduce and make love.

In a fascinating way, “Ars Amatoria” shows how the Roman aristocracy of the time lived a life of pleasure and sophistication. I believe people today can still learn something from Ovid’s advice.

In his first two books of “The Art of Love,” Ovid mostly advises men on how to find a woman and keep her. The beautiful verses of book 1 tell us about

“What Is His Task” (Part 1),

“How to Find Her” (Part 2),

“Search for Love While Walking” (Part 3),

“Search for Love while at the Theatre” (Part 4),

“Search for Love at the Races or Circus” (Part 5),

“Triumphs that Are Good to Attract a Woman” (Part 6),

“Search for Love around the Dinner-Table and on the Beach” (Parts 7 and 8),

“How to Win Her” (Part 9),

“How to Know the Maid” (Part 10),

“How to Be Attentive to Her” (Part 11),

“How to Make Promises of Love to Her” (Part 12),

“How to Woo and Seduce a Woman” (Parts 13 and 14),

“How to Captivate a Woman at Dinner” (Part 15),

“How to Make Promises and Deceive” (Part 16),

“How Tears, Kisses, Taking the Lead Can Help in Love Affairs” (Part 17),

“Psychology Love Tricks in the Art of Love” (Parts 18-19).

Here it is Part II of Ovid’s Book II, teaching a man why he needs gifts of mind in the art of love relationships.

You Need Gifts of Mind, Part II of Book II:

“Minos could not hold back those mortal wings:

I’m setting out to check the winged god himself.

He who has recourse to Thracian magic, fails,

to what the foal yields, torn from its new-born brow,

Medea’s herbs can’t keep love alive,

nor Marsian dirges mingled with magic chants.

If incantations only could enslave love, Ulysses

would have been tied to Circe, Jason to the Colchian.

It’s no use giving girls pale drugs:

drugs hurt the mind, have power to cause madness.

Away with such evils: to be loved be lovable:

something face and form alone won’t give you.

Though you’re Nireus loved by Homer of old,

or sweet Hylas ravished by the Naiades’ crime,

to keep your love, and not to find her leave you,

add gifts of mind to grace of body.

A sweet form is fragile, what’s added to its years

lessen it, and time itself eats it away.

Violets and open lilies do not flower forever,

and thorns are left stiffening on the blown rose.

And white hair will come to find you, lovely lad,

soon wrinkles will come, furrowing your skin.

Then nourish mind, which lasts, and adds to beauty:

it alone will stay till the funeral pyre.

Cultivate your thoughts with the noble arts,

more than a little, and learn two languages.

Ulysses wasn’t handsome, but he was eloquent,

and still racked the sea-goddesses with love.

How often Calypso mourned his haste,

and denied the waves were fit for oars!

She asked him again and again about the fall of Troy:

He grew used to retelling it often, differently.

They walked the beach: there, lovely Calypso too

demanded the gory tale of King Rhesus’s fate.

He, with a rod (a rod perhaps he already had)

illustrated what she asked in the thick sand.

‘This’ he said, ‘is Troy’ (drawing the walls in the sand):

‘This your Simois: imagine this is our camp.

This is the field,’ (he drew the field), ‘that was dyed

with Dolon’s blood, while he spied on Achilles’s horses.

here were the tents of Thracian Rhesus:

here am I riding back the captured horses at night.’

And he was drawing more, when suddenly a wave

washed away Troy, and Rhesus, and his camp.

Then the goddess said ‘Do you see what you place your trust in

for your voyage, waves that have destroyed such mighty names?’

So listen, whoever you are, fear to rely on treacherous beauty or own to something more than just the flesh.”

Kline, A. S. (2001). Translation of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria: The Art of Love.