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Ovid On "Woman"

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edited 8/19/11

Publius Ovidius Naso was widely popular and his controversial literary work comprises erotic poetry, mythological poetry and poetry of exile. While at the height of his fame, he was mysteriously exiled to a bleak Roman outpost on the Black Sea. According to some sources, the exile was his punishment for seducing several prominent women, among them Julia, the only child of Caesar Augustus.

Perhaps as a result of two unsuccessful marriages and innumerable successful love affairs, Ovid came to see women as vain, frail, and inconstant creatures whose main goal in life was to deceive men and be deceived by them.

To him women were willing objects of lust who responded to sexual advances as a fine instrument responds to the touch of a great musician. Ovid believed that all women were seducible and that they “simply wished to give unwillingly what they really like to give.”

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Ovid

Ovid (3 B.C.-18 A.D) --
Roman poet and one of the most interesting and tragic figures of Roman antiquity


A chaste woman is one who has not been propositioned.
-- The Loves

Whether they give or refuse, it delights women to have been asked.
-- The Art of Love

First let assurance come to your minds, that all women can be caught; spread but your nets and you will catch them.
-- The Art of Love

Sooner would birds be silent in spring, or grasshoppers in summer . . . than a woman persuasively wooed resist a lover: Nay, even she, whom you will think cruel, will be kind.
-- The Art of Love

A woman, no less than the populace, a judge, or a chosen senate, will surrender defeated, to eloquence.
-- The Art of Love

Many women long for what eludes them, and like not what is offered them.
-- The Art of Love

For a woman to give herself to a man is no more wasteful than taking a light from a torch, or using water when it
is needed. In fact, not to do so is a waste.
-- The Art of Love

[A woman] is constant only in her inconstancy.
-- Tristia

To no woman is her own personal appearance displeasing.
-- The Art of Love

What one beholds of a woman is the least part of her.
-- Love’s Cure

Thus neither with thee [woman] nor without thee, can I live.
-- The Loves

The words of women [are] lighter than falling leaves.
-- The Loves


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