Here I quote step 3 of how to “Make Him Believe He Is Loved,” as Ovid recommended women master the art of love with a man. Many people who study love are familiar with the works of the Roman poet Ovid. He rose to prominence as the author of three books titled “Ars Amatoria” (The Art of Love).
Ars Amatoria was a fascinating depiction of the hedonistic and sophisticated lives of the Roman aristocracy at the time. The poems offered Roman men and women advice on the art of love, how to make love, including how to find, win, and seduce women, as well as how to maintain interpersonal relationships. The books also taught women how to attract, be lovable to, and keep men in love affairs.
Is Ovid’s poetic advice on “The Art of Love” still applicable in modern times?
I think that Ovid’s advice is true in some contexts of modern interpersonal relationships. This is the reason why his poems have been translated and published numerous times over the last few centuries.
The Romans lived in a different cultural era and had a different way of life than we do. Nonetheless, the art of love can endure through the ages. The poetry of Ovid can teach educated men and women interesting and useful lessons about love. Consequently, I have included excerpts from his books on this website for those interested in learning about how ancient Romans lived and loved. Some of Ovid’s love advice and recommendations can sound cynical, ironic, and manipulative, while others can reveal kernels of true wisdom.
His poems in “Ars Amatoria” offer modern men and women helpful advice on how to find, attract, and maintain a romantic partner. In his first two collections of poetry, Ovid instructs men on how to approach, court, and seduce women in romantic relationships. The third book, on the other hand, instructs women on how to be alluring in order to entice men to fall in love with them and maintain those relationships.
In previous posts, I quoted the first and second sets of advice of what Ovid advised women to do to “Make Him Believe He’s Loved.”
Here’s another verse for girls and women from Book III of Ovid’s “Ars Amatoria.” Ovid illustrates how to make him believe he is loved.
Please keep in mind that these poetry collections discuss the art of making love through manipulation, seduction, and intrigue. You can see Ovid’s cynical and manipulative style in the verse below on how to “Make Him Believe He’s Loved” that is quoted here. Nonetheless, I believe it contains some truth.
Here Is Step 3 to “Make Him Believe He’s Loved”
“The place, the name, the witness, command belief,
and the mind always thinks what it fears is true.
She saw signs that a body had pressed down the grass,
her chest throbbed, quivering with its anxious heart.
Now noon had contracted the thin shadows,
and dawn and twilight were parted equally:
behold, Cephalus, Hermes’s child, returned to the wood,
and plunged his burning face in the fountain’s water.
You hid, Procris, anxiously: he lay down as usual on the grass,
and cried: ‘Come you zephyrs, you sweet air (Aura)!’
As her joyous error in the name came to the miserable girl,
her wits and the true colour of her face returned.
She rose, and with agitated body moved the opposing leaves,
a wife running to her husband’s arms:
He, sure a wild beast moved, leapt youthfully to his feet,
grasping his spear in his right hand.
What are you doing, unhappy man? That’s no creature,
hold back your throw! Alas, your girl’s pierced by your spear!
She called out: ‘Ah me! You’ve pierced a loving heart.
That part always takes its wound from Cephalus.
I die before my time, but not wounded by a rival:
that will ensure you, earth, lie lightly on me.
Now my spirit departs into that air with its deceptive name:
I pass, I go, dear hand, close my eyes!’
He held the body of his dying lady on his sad breast,
and bathed the cruel wound with his tears.
She died, and her breath, passing little by little from her rash breast, was caught on her sad lover’s lips.”
Kline, A. S. (2001). Translation of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria: The Art of Love.