If you want to be loved, be lovable
– Ovid, Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) II:ii
As I wrote in last week’s post Patience and attraction, “if you become a better, stronger, kinder human being then the right kind of woman will be attracted to you.”
Afterwards I found the quotation at the top of this post in Ovid’s Art of Love.
Ovid was a Roman writer (43BC – 17AD) who was friendly with Horace and may have met Virgil (the Virgil who wrote that extraordinary prediction of the coming of Jesus in Eclogues IV – some may dispute that this refers to Jesus but the coincidence is to be wondered at). Anyway, the poem Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) is Ovid’s guide to dating and sex.
This work got him banished to a cold, wet place by the Black Sea in what is now Constanta in Romania, ostensibly because the Ars Amatoria was far too naughty.
Over the coming weeks I shall be going through Ovid’s poem at a gentle pace, seeing what is still good advice today and what perhaps should be avoided by the wise.
Cornelius Agrippa 