Collection of books and magazines on English language & literature

Literary and Classical Culture

LOVE LETTER OF A 1st CENTURY ROMAN POET OVID (PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO)

18 July 2020
Author's Name: Publius Ovidius Naso
Credit: sanjay kumar kundan
Views: 237

[Publius Ovidius Naso (43 B.C.–17 A.D.), better known as Ovid, was one of the greatest poets of the ancient world. Most remembered for his epic collection of myths and legends, Metamorphoses, his writings have had a decisive influence on centuries of Western art and literature.

Ovid was married three times, the first two for financial and political reasons. He was separated from his last wife, Fabia, for the final nine years of his life. The letters are to his third wife, Fabia]

Author's Name: Publius Ovidius Naso
Credit: 0

Publius Ovidius Naso to Fabia

8 A.D.

Tomis, Roman Provinces

I ploughed the vast ocean on a frail bit of timber; the ship that bore the son of Jason was strong… The furtive arts of Cupid aided him; arts which I wish that Love had not learned from me. He returned home; I shall die in these lands, if the heavy wrath of the offended God shall be lasting.

My burden, most faithful wife, is a harder one than that which the son of Jason bore. You, too, whom I left still young at my departure from the City, I can believe to have grown old under my calamities. Oh, grant it, ye Gods, that I may be enabled to see you, even if such, and to give the joyous kiss on each cheek in its turn; and to embrace your emaciated body in my arms, and to say, “‘twas anxiety, on my account, that caused this thinness;” and, weeping, to recount in person my sorrows to you in tears, and thus enjoy a conversation that I had never hoped for; and to offer the due frankincense, with grateful hand, to the Caesars, and to the wife that is worthy of a Caesar, Deities in real truth!

Oh, that the mother of Menon, that Prince being softened, would with her rosy lips, speedily call forth that day.

16 A.D.

Tomis

Lyde was not so dear to Antimachus, nor Bittis so loved by her Philetas, as you, my wife, clinging to my heart, worthy of a happier, but not truer husband.

You are the support on which my ruins rest; if I am still anyone, it is all your gift.

It is your doing that I am not despoiled, stripped bare by those who

sought the planks from my shipwreck.

As a wolf raging with the prod of hunger, eager for blood, catches the fold unguarded, or as a greedy vulture peers around to see if it can find an unburied corpse, so someone, faithless, in my bitter trouble, would have come into my wealth, if you had let them.

Your courage, with our friends, drove them off, bravely, friends I can never thank as they deserve.

So you are proven, by one who is as true as he is wretched, if such a

witness carries any weight.

Neither Andromache, nor Laodamia, companion of her husband in

death, exceeds you in integrity.

If you had been destined for Homer, the Maonian bard, Penelope’s fame would be second to yours: either you owe it to your own self, not having been taught loyalty by some teacher, but through the character granted you at birth; or, if it is allowed to compare the small and great, Livia, first lady, honoured by you all those years, teaches you to be the model of a good wife, becoming like her, through long–acquired habit.

Alas, my poetry has no great powers, my lips are inadequate to sing your worth—If I had any innate vigor long ago, it is extinct, quenched by enduring sorrows—or you would be first among the sacred heroines, seen to be first, for the virtues of your heart.

Yet so far as my praise has any power, you will live, for all time, in my verse.

***