The Amores; or, Amours Literally Translated into English...

053 (return) [ A part of the window.—Ver. 3. On the 'fenestræ,' or windows of the ancients, see the Notes to the Pontic Epistles, Book iii. Ep. iii. 1. 5, and to the Metamorphoses, Book xiv. 1. 752. He means that one leaf of the window was open, and one shut.]

054 (return) [ Corinna.—Ver. 9. In the Fourth Book of the Tristia, Elegy x. 1. GO, he says, 'Corinna, (so called by a fictitious name) the subject of song through the whole city, had imparted a stimulus to my geuius.' It has been supposed by some Commentators, that under this name he meant Julia, either the daughter or the grand-daughter of the emperor Augustus, but there seems really to be no ground for such a belief; indeed, the daughter of Augustus had passed middle age, when Ovid was still in boyhood. It is most probable that Corinna was ouly an ideal personage, existing in the imagination of the Poet; and that he intended the name to apply to his favourite mistress for the time being, as, though he occasionally denies it, still, at other times, he admits that his passion was of the roving kind. There are two females mentioned in history of the name of Coriuna. One was a Theban poetess, who excelled in Lyric composition, and was said to have vanquished Pindar himself in a Lyric contest; while the other was a native of Thespiæ, in Bceotia. 'The former, who was famous for both her personal charms and her mental endowments, is supposed to have suggested the use of the name to Ovid.]

055 (return) [ Clothed in a tunic.—Ver. 9. 'Tunica' was the name of the under-garment with both sexes among the Romans. When the wearer was out of doors, or away from home, it was fastened round the waist with a belt or girdle, but when at home and wishing to be entirely at ease, it was, as in the present instance, loose or ungirded. Both sexes usually wore two tunics. In female dress, Varro seems to call the outer tunic 'subucula,' and the 'interior tunica' by the name also of 'indusium.' The outer tunic was also called 'stola,' and, with the 'palla' completed the female dress. The 'tunica interior,' or what is here called tunica,' was a simple shift, and in early times had no sleeves. According to Nonius, it fitted loosely on the body, and was not girded when the 'stola' or outer tunic was put on. Poor people, who could not afford to purchase a 'toga,' wore the tunic alone; whence we find the lower classes called by the name of 'tunicati.']

057 (return) [ Semiramis.—Ver. 11. Semiramis was the wife of Ninus, king of Babylon, and was famous for her extreme beauty, and the talent which she displayed as a ruler. She was also as unscrupulous in her morals as the fair one whom the Poet is now describing.]

058 (return) [ And Lais.—Ver. 12. There are generally supposed to have beén two famous courtesans of the name of Lais. The first was carried captive, when a child, from Sicily, in the second year of the 91st Olympiad, and being taken to Corinth, became famous throughout Greece for her extreme beauty, and the high price she put upon her favours. Many of the richest and most learned men resorted to her, and became smitten by her charms. The second Lais was the daughter of Alcibiades, by his mistress, Timandra. When Demosthenes applied for a share of her favours, she made the extravagant demand of ten thousand drachmae, upon which, regaining his wisdom (which had certainly forsaken him for a time) he said that he would not purchase repentance at so high a price.]

062 (return) [ Watches of the keepers.—Ver. 7. Properly, the 'excubiæ' were the military watches that were kept on guard, either by night or day, while the term 'vigiliæ,' was only applied to the watch by night. He here alludes to the watch kept by jealous men over their wives.]

063 (return) [ Spectres that flit by night.—Ver. 13. The dread of the ghosts of the departed entered largely among the Roman superstitions. See an account of the Ceremony, in the Fifth Book of the Fasti, 1. 422, et seq., for driving the ghosts, or Lemures, from the house.]

064 (return) [ Ready for the whip—Ver. 19. See the Note to the 81st line of the Epistle of De'ianira to Hercules. Ovid says, that he has often pleaded for him to his mistress; indeed, the Roman ladies often showed more cruelty to the slaves, both male and female, than the men did to the male slaves.]

067 (return) [ From the door-post.—Ver. 24. The fastenings of the Roman doors consisted of a bolt placed at the bottom of eacn 'foris,' or wing of the door, which fell into a socket made in the sill. By way of additional precaution, at night, the front door was secured by a bar of wood or iron, here called 'sera,' which ran across, and was inserted in sockets on each side of the doorway. Hence it was necessary to remove or strike away the bar, 'excutere seram,' before the door could be opened.]

068 (return) [ Water of the slave.—Ver. 26. Water was the principal beverage of the Roman slaves, but they were allowed a small quantity of wiue, which was increased on the Saturnalia. 'Far,' or 'spelt,' formed their general sustenance, of which they received one 'libra' daily. Salt and oil were also allowed them, and sometimes fruit, but seldom vegetables. Flesh meat seems not to have been given to them.]

069 (return) [ About my temples.—Ver. 37. 'Circa mea tempora,' literally, 'around my temples' This-expression is used, because it was supposed that the vapours of excessive wine affect the brain. He says that he has only taken a moderate quantity of wine, although the chaplet falling from off his hair would seem to bespeak the contrary.]

074 (return) [ Holding in my torch—Ver. 58. Torches were usually carried by the Romans, for their guidance after sunset, and were generally made of wooden staves or twigs, bound by a rope around them, in a spiral form, or else by circular bands at equal distances. The inside of the torch was filled with flax, tow, or dead vegetable matter, impregnated with pitch, wax, rosin, oil, or other inflammable substances.]

076 (return) [ Anxieties of the prison.—Ver. 64. He alludes to the 'ergastulum,' or prison for slaves, that was attached to most of the Roman farms, whither the refractory slaves were sent from the City to work in chains. It was mostly under ground, and, was lighted with narrow windows, too high from the ground to be touched with the hand. Slaves who had displeased their masters were usually sent there for a punishment, and those of uncouth habits were kept there. Plutarch says that they were established, on the conquest of Italy, in consequence of the number of foreign slaves imported for the cultivation of the conquered territory. They were finally abolished by the Emperor Hadrian.]

078 (return) [ Equally slaves.—Ver. 74. He called the doors, which were bivalve or folding-doors, his 'conservæ,' or 'fellow' slaves,' from the fact of their being obedient to the will of a slave. Plautuâ, in the Asinaria, act. ii sc. 3, has a similar expression:—'Nolo ego fores, conservas meas a te verberarier.' 'I won't have my door, my fellow-slave, thumped by you.']

080 (return) [ Did not Ajax too.—Ver. 7. Ajax Telamon, on being refused the arms of Achilles, became mad, and slaughtered a flock of sheep, fancying that they were the sons of Atreus, and his enemy Ulysses. His shield, formed of seven ox hides, is celebrated by Homer.]

081 (return) [ Mystic Goddesses.—Ver. 10. Orestes avenged the death of his father, Agamemnon, by slaying his own mother, Clytemnestra, together with her paramour, Ægistheus. He also attempted to attack the Furies, when they haunted him for the murder of his mother.]

082 (return) [ Daughter of Schceneus.—Ver. 13. Atalanta, the Arcadian, or Mae-nalian, was the daughter of Iasius, and was famous for her skill in the chase. Atalanta, the Boeotian, was the daughter of Schceneus, and was renowned for her swiftness, and for the race in which she was outstripped by Hippomenes. The Poet has here mistaken the one for the other, calling the Arcadian one the daughter of Schoeneus. The story of the Arcadian Atalanta is told in the Eighth Book of the Metamorphoses, and that of the daughter of Schceneus, at the end of the Tenth Book of the same work.]

085 (return) [ The humblest Roman.—Ver. 29. It was not lawful to strike a freeborn human citizen. See Acts, c. xxii. v. 25. 'And as they hound him with thongs, Paul said unto the Centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemncd?' This privilege does not seem to have extended to Roman women of free birth.]

089 (return) [ At the middle.—Ver. 48. He says that he ought to have been satisfied with tearing her tunic down to the waist, where the girdle should have stopped short the rent; whereas, in all probability, he had torn it from the top to the bottom.]

094 (return) [ Does she derive.—Ver. 3. He says that her name, 'Dipsas,' is derived from reality, meaning thereby that she is so called from the Greek verb [êtxpâui], 'to thirst'; because she was always thirsty, and never rose sober in the morning.]

097 (return) [ Spinning wheel.—Ver. 8. 'Rhombus,' means a parallelogram with equal sides, but not having right angles, and hence, from the resemblance, a spinning wheel, or winder. The 'licia' were the cords or thrums of the old warp, or the threads of the old web to which the threads of the new warp were joined. Here, however, the word seems to mean the threads alone. The spinning-wheel was much used in magical incantations, not only among the Romans, but among the people of Northern and Western Europe. It is not improbable that the practice was founded on the so-called threads of destiny, and it was the province of the wizard, or sorceress, by his or her charms, to lengthen or shorten those threads, according as their customers might desire. Indeed, in some parts of Europe, at the present day, charms, in the shape of forms of words, are said to exist, which have power over the human life at any distance from the spot where they are uttered; a kind of superstition which dispenses with the more cumbrous paraphernalia of the spinning-wheel. Some Commentators think that the use of the 'licia' implied that the minds of individuals were to be influenced at the will of the enchanter, in the same way as the old thrums of the warp are caught up and held fast by the new threads; this view, however, seems to dispense with the province of the wheel in the incantation. See the Second Book of the Fasti, 1. 572. The old woman there mentioned as performing the rites of the Goddess, Tacita, among her other proceedings, 'binds the enchantea threads on the dark-coloured spinning-wheel.']