P. Ovidi Nasonis Amores (2.17)

This poem introduces the poet as love-slave to his mistress, Corinna, who first appears by name in Amores Book I, poem 5. Like Gallus' Lycoris, Catullus' Lesbia, Tibullus' Delia and Nemesis, and Propertius' Cynthia, the beloved one in the Amores is the source of the poet's inspiration, out of torment and in pleasure. Apart from the question of her reality in Ovid's life, her actions and her effect on her lover correspond to that of the puella in personal love elegy. The poet-lover's self-portrayal, however, is quite unconventional to the genre in its irony, intelligence, and humor. In the beginning of this dramatic monologue, he reveals himself as enslaved by his beautiful domina. But observe how, in the course of the poem, he subverts this image by directing the reader's attention to himself as a poet of some standing and to the power of his poetry to glorify Corinna.

Lines 1-7

SERVIRE PUELLAE: In Amores I.9, the poet compared himself as lover to a soldier, based on his service to his girlfriend. Here, too, he serves her, but no longer from a heroic perspective. In the eyes of his culture, he is no soldier of love, but a prize of war (praeda), more like Briseis than Achilles. He is enslaved by a mistress (domina) whose beauty (facies) makes her high-handed (animos, fastus) and cruel (violenta) in her treatment of him.

TURPIS:, The word is repeated twice in two lines. One can almost hear the stern Roman judge shouting at the poet-lover: turpe, turpis, infamis. While these harsh insults to his personal dignity might evoke fury in a more traditional Roman, the poet responds: licet, lightheartedly accepting the disgrace.

URAT: At first the subject is ambiguous (puella?). Move to the next line and discover it in the allusions to Paphon and Cythera--not the girlfriend, but Venus herself burns the poet.

DOMINAE MITI: Ovid's use of the dative case here is interesting. Had he wanted to indicate possession only, the genitive case was the obvious and viable choice. His use of the dative makes the dominae referential. The poet is a praeda, but only in the eyes of his domina. The effect is to keep the reader's attention on the poet and to assert his slavery as metaphor rather than fact.

FORMOSAE: This adjective also describes dominae; translate quoniam first.

ANIMOS: Your understanding of the meaning of the entire sentence hangs on your selection of the correct meaning for this complex word whose root goes back to the Indo-European parent language. The meaning of dat animos is well approximated by the contemporary "she has attitude," but don't forget facies in your translation.

CORINNA: An interesting correspondence has been made between the Latin word puella and this name, at the root of which is the Greek word for girl: KORE. Ovid's choice of the name Corinna (roughly equivalent to "Girlie,") gives the reader reason to doubt her reality.

Lines 8-14

SCILICET: Ovid's poetry is experienced more as a conversation than a monody. Thus far he has made an opening assertion, expressed a wish, exclaimed, asked a question, and now he is answering the question he asked.

SPECULI: The mirror, many of which hand-held bronzes archaeologists have excavated from ancient sites, is a common symbol of female beauty and vanity. The doting poet observes that her mirror gives validity to Corinna's pride.

NISI CONPOSITAM: The sly poet here peeps through his persona as lover. The reference is to the make-up and hairdressing that goes into the creation of Corinna's beautiful mirror reflection. The following reordering of words may assist your translation of this line:

nec illa videt se [in speculo] nisi prius conpositam.

Note also that prius is carefully placed in the original so as to be understood with both conpositam and videt.

NON: The poet says "No." With this word, the mood of the poem changes. Translate this non with debes(end of line 13).

TIBI: The poet stops speaking about Corinna in the 3rd person to the reader and begins to address her in a dramatic monologue which continues for the rest of the poem. She never speaks, but she is a palpable presence in the poet's repeated use of the 2nd person address and in his apostrophe "mea lux."

ANIMUM: Translate animum as animos above. Animum et omina are direct objects of dat. Some texts read instead: nimium dat in omnia regni ("gives excess of power over all things"). In either case, the poet grants Corinna royal privilege on the grounds of her beauty.

FACIES: The poet refers to Corinna's beauty five times in the first 12 lines without giving any details of her physical appearance. Content to praise her by describing her effect on him, he leaves the reader unable to envision her and thus focused on him.

IDCIRCO: The apodosis of the condition introduced by si. Translate idcirco before collatum. Although he interrupts himself with a lover's exclamation in line 12, the poet rejects his mistress' distain for him. His reasoning is, as usual, unexpected in both content and expression.

LICET: The construction Ovid uses here with licet is different from the one in line 3 above: it introduces a passive infinitive (aptari) whose subject (inferiora) is in the accusative case. The argument (a philosophical generalization) is, as usual, unexpected in both thought and expression.

Lines 15-22

TRADITUR: The verb is not being used impersonally here: its subject is nymphe...Calypso. We have come to expect Ovid to argue with examples from mythology. In the following 6 lines, he gives us four literary exempla: --three are from Greek myth and one is from Roman legend. The first and fourth examples are each described in a couplet, while the middle two share a couplet.

NYMPHE: The nymph Calypso, daughter of Atlas, fell in love (amore capta) with the hero (mortalis, virum) Odysseus (their story is told by Homer in the Odyssey). Against his will (recusantem) she kept him (detinuisse) as her lover on her island Ogygia for 7 years, while he desired nothing except to return to his wife Penelope and his island home Ithaca.

CREDITUR: Parallels traditur, with a similar meaning but a different construction. The following rearrangement of words may help you in your translation of the next lines:

creditur aequoream [concubuisse] Nereida Pthio regi,

[et] Egeriam concubuisse iusto Numae,

[et] Venerem [concubuisse] Vulcano.

NEREIDA: The reference is to Thetis, the daughter of Nereus, an old sea god. She was married to Peleus, a mortal, because it was her destiny to produce a son who was greater than his father. Their wedding gave rise to a quarrel among the goddesses Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera which ultimately precipitated the Trojan War Their son Achilles, "bulwark of the Achaeans" (see Homer's Iliad ) lost his life prematurely in battle at Troy.

EGERIAM: Roman legend records (Livy, Annales, Juvenal, Satire 3) that good King Numa (Pompilius, the 2nd King of Rome) enacted down religious laws, which he received nightly, in a sacred grove near the Porta Capena, from the nymph Egeria, whom he later took as wife.

VULCANO VENEREM: Greek mythology married the god of foundry fire (son of Zeus and Hera) to the goddess of erotic fire (see urat above in line 3). Unlike the previous examples, in which a female divinity bestows her favors on a mortal, the mismatch here is an aesthetic one.

QUAMVIS: Scan and read aloud lines 19-20 where Ovid imitates in heaviness and rhythm the limping gait of Vulcan (at the end of Book I of the Iliad, Homer tells how he was crippled by his father).

TURPITER: The poet echoes turpis above, and thus semantically links his situation (servire puellae) with Vulcan's physical disability, both of which are perceived as grotesque by their respective cultures.

PEDE: This word provides a link from Vulcan's gait to the limping meter of elegy, the poet's fifth and unanticipated example. It reminds the reader of Cupid's theft of a foot (unum surripuisse pedem) in Amores I.1, which resulted in his becomming a love poet.

GENUS INPAR: The reference is to the elegiac couplet, which joins a six foot line to a five foot line. The words inpar, apte, and iungitur in lines 21-22 conclude the set of proofs for the generalization made in line 14: aptari magnis inferiora licet. They also remind the poet of his special talents.

Lines 23-28

TU QUOQUE ME: If Calypso can accept Odysseus, Thetis Peleus, Egeria Numa, Venus Vulcan, and the heroic hexameter the lesser pentameter, then Corinna can accept the poet. He gives her 4 reasons why: he will follow her rules; he will not cause her shame; his fortune is his poetry; and-- lots of women seek to be his Corinna.

ACCIPE: With this imperative, the poet's tone changes. He has ceased to be the despised love-slave, pleading for mercy from a haughty mistress.

IN QUASLIBET LEGES: Translate: "according to whatever rules you like." In language borrowed from the law courts, the poet voluntarily grants his lux --not his domina --the privilege of setting rules over him.

DEDISSE: The use of the perfect here emphasizes the propriety and fitness of Corinna's passing judgment on him in public (medio foro).

FORO: Some texts read toro; however, "in the middle of the couch" seems less appropriate to the immediate context.

CRIMEN: The poet promises Corinna a love above reproach-- a far cry from the opening lines (turpis ego and licet infamis). Awareness of his stature as a poet appears to have brought about this change.

ERO: the verb affects both halves of the sentence: non tibi crimen and the very condensed nec quo laetere remoto ( literally, "nor [will I be the one] in whose distance you would rejoice").

CARMINA: The poet's successful verses are set against great wealth by the word order as much as by the preposition pro. His felicia carmina are framed or surrounded in the verse by the more traditional measures of Roman worth: magno and censu. The two adjectives are set beside each other, invoking contrasting life goals: greatness and happiness. The two nouns, joined by alliteration at the end of the verse, represent antithetical mindsets: the aesthetic and the material.

PER ME: The poet's last point is his attractiveness to women, many of whom seek the celebrity his poems provide.

Lines 29-34

ESSE CORINNAM: Who is Corinna? Since anyone can claim to be his mistress who is not, it is likely that she is a total fabrication.

SED NEQUE DIVERSI: Instead of the simile about his girlfriend which one might expect, the poet concludes with an image from nature that parallels his thought in construction and content. Worlds apart, the rivers Eurotas, on which the Greek city of Sparta sits, and the Po, which makes fertile the farmland of Northern Italy, do not share same bank (ripa eadem).

NEC NISI TU: In words that sound like a love song, the poet promises unwavering faithfulness to Corinna as his muse. She will be celebrated in his poetry. She will inspire his genius. Who serves whom?

You may wish to consult additionally an excellent commentary to this poem, edited by Joan Booth: "The Second Book of Ovid's Amores" (Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips, c. 1991).