On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics) (37 page)

For to avoid being captured in the snares of love

Is not so difficult as to escape

Once in, and break the powerful knots of Venus.

And yet, although entangled and ensnared,

You can escape this danger unless you stand

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In your own way, and overlook the faults

In the body and the mind of her you love,

For this is what men blinded with desire

So often do, attributing to them

Virtues with which in truth they are not endowed.

So ugly and mis-shapen women are called

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Sweet charmers and are held in highest honour.

A lover derides another, and urges him

To propitiate Venus since his love’s so foul,

But cannot see his own disastrous plight.

The dark girl is a nut-brown maid, the rank

And filthy is a sweet disorder. Is she green-eyed?

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Then she’s grey-eyed Athene. Stringy and wooden?

Then she’s a gazelle. Is she a dwarf? Why then

She’s one of the Graces, the very soul of wit.

A giantess? She’s full of dignity.

If she stammers, she has a lisp. If dumb, she’s modest.

If she’s a fiery hateful chatterbox,

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She’s a little squib. If she’s too thin to live,

She’s svelte and willowy. If she’s half dead

With coughing, then she’s delicate, you see.

Is she swollen, with enormous breasts? She’s Ceres

Suckling Iacchus. She’s a faun or satyr

If she’s snub-nosed. If she’s thick-lipped she’s ‘Kissie’.

I will not weary you with all the rest.

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But let her have the finest face of all,

Let Venus radiate from all her body,

Still there are others; still we have lived so far

Without this woman; still, as well we know,

She does things which the plainest women do.

She fumigates herself, poor wretch, with odours

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So foul and evil-smelling that her maids

Keep well away and laugh behind her back.

The lover, shut out, weeping, heaps the threshold

With flowers, anoints the proud doorposts with perfumes,

And plants his love-sick kisses on the door.

But, once admitted, one whiff would promptly make him

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Seek some polite excuse to take his leave;

His fond complaint, deep-seated, long-rehearsed,

Would turn to nothing, he’ld damn his stupid folly

In placing her above all mortal women.

Our Venuses know this; hence the pains they take

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To hide all that goes on behind the scenes

From those they wish to hold in chains of love.

In vain; for in your mind as clear as day

You can see it, and all those other absurdities.

And if you like her mind and she’s good-tempered,

Why then you in your turn can overlook

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And make allowances for human frailty.

Not always is a woman feigning love

When she sighs and clings to a man in close embrace

And body pressed to body, lips to lips,

Moistens his mouth with hers to prolong his kisses.

Often she does it from the heart, and seeking

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Shared mutual delights she rouses him

To run with her through all the lists of love.

And in no wise could birds and beasts and sheep

And mares and cattle to the male submit

But that their nature burns for it, and with joy

Receives the seed from the covering animal.

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Do you not see how pairs whom mutual pleasure

Has bound are tortured in their common chains?

Dogs at a crossroads often you may see,

Wanting to part, pull hard with all their might

In different directions, while all the time

By the strong couplings of Venus they are held fast.

This they would never do unless both felt

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Pleasures which lead them astray and hold them bound.

Wherefore again and again, I say, the pleasure is mutual.

And in the mingling of seed it sometimes happens

That the woman by a sudden move overcomes

The force of the man and takes control of it;

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From the mother’s seed then children like the mother

Are born; as from the father’s children like the father.

But those you see with figures like to each

And faces like both parents’, these have sprung

From the father’s body and the mother’s blood

When under the goads of Venus through the limbs

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The coursing seeds are driven, and dashed together

By two hearts breathing as one in mutual passion,

And neither masters the other nor is mastered.

It sometimes also happens that the children

May look like their grandparents or great-grandparents,

Since parents in their bodies oft conceal

Many first elements mixed in many ways,

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And these deriving from ancestral stock

Fathers transmit to fathers. From these Venus

With varying lot makes shapes and reproduces

The look, the voice, the hair of ancestors;

Since from a fixed seed all these features come

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No less than our faces and our limbs and bodies.

And female children spring from fathers’ seed

And male are made out of the mother’s substance;

For always birth derives from seeds of both.

Whichever parent the child most resembles,

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Of that it has more than half; which you can see

Whether the progeny be male or female.

And it is not the power of gods that blocks

The generating seed in any man

So that no darling children call him father

And he drags out his years in barren love,

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Which many think, and with much blood in tears

Sprinkle the altars, honour them with gifts,

To make their wives pregnant with abundant seed.

In vain do they importune gods and fates.

They are barren, some because the seed’s too thick,

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Others because it is too watery and thin.

The thin, because it can’t stick in its place,

At once runs out and so returns aborted.

The thick comes out too closely clotted, and either

Cannot fly forward with far-reaching blow,

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Or cannot penetrate the place, or else, once in,

Does not mix easily with the woman’s seed.

For sure love’s harmonies do greatly differ.

Some men more easily impregnate some women,

Some women more readily receive a man

And grow big from him. Many women barren

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In earlier marriages have later found

A source from which they could bear little children

And with sweet progeny enrich themselves.

And often men whose fruitful wives have been

Unable to bear a child, for these also

A woman of matching nature has been found

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To fortify their ageing years with children.

So much it matters that seeds can with seeds

Suited for generation be commingled,

Thick meeting watery, watery meeting thick.

It matters too what food supports the life,

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For some foods make the seeds thicken in the body

And others make them thin and waste away.

What matters most of all is the position

In which the soothing pleasure itself is taken;

For in the manner of four-footed beasts,

It is generally thought that women best conceive,

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Breast down and loins uplifted, so the seeds

Can take more easily their proper places.

Wives have no need at all of wanton movements.

For a woman avoids conception and fights against it,

If in delight she holds his penis close

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Between her buttocks, and all her body limp,

Flows with the waves and sways with every tide.

She turns the furrow from its rightful course

Under the ploughshare, makes the seed fall wide.

Whores do this for their private purposes

Lest they be filled too often and lie pregnant,

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And to make their loves more pleasing to their men.

Clearly our wives can find no use for this.

And not from power divine or Venus’ shafts

It sometimes happens that a wench is loved,

No beauty she; for sometimes she herself

By what she does, by person neat and clean,

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