Ovid on Cosmetics by Ovid Johnson Marguerite

Author:Ovid,Johnson, Marguerite [Johnson, Marguerite]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472507495
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2015-09-27T16:00:00+00:00

Translation

I was constantly saying ‘Desist from treating your locks’;

now there is not a tress left for you to dye.

Ah, but if you had allowed it, what was more abundant than those locks?

They had reached down to your side as far as it extends.

What of the fact that they were finely textured and the kind you would

fear to adorn, like the cloth the coloured Chinese have, 5

or the thread the spider spins with delicate foot,

when it weaves its gossamer work beneath an abandoned beam?

Yet its colour was neither black, yet neither was it gold

but, although neither of the two, combined both, 10

like the lofty cedar in the moist valleys of steep Ida

possesses when stripped of its bark.

Moreover, they were compliant and adaptable to infinite styles

and to you not a cause of anger.

The hairpin did not break them, nor the teeth of the comb; 15

the hairdresser’s body was always safe;

often was she adorned before my eyes but never

has she caused wounded arms by snatching at a hairpin.

Often as well with her locks not yet arranged in the early morning

she would lie half-reclining on her purple bed; 20

then also was she becoming in her neglect, like a Thracian Bacchant,

when carelessly she sprawls exhausted on the lush grass.

But while finely textured and like down,

alas, what great misfortunes those tortured tresses endured!

How patiently they offered themselves up to steel and fire, 25

so that a wavy appearance from shaped coils could be produced!

I used to shout ‘It is a crime, a crime, to scorch those hairs.

They are naturally becoming: be sparing of your head, girl-of-iron.

Violence begone far from here: your hair is not the kind to be scorched;

the lock itself educates the hairpins attached to it’. 30

The beautiful tresses have perished, which Apollo would want,

which Bacchus would want upon his own head;

I could compare them to those which naked Dione

in her portrait held up with dripping hand.

Why do you complain at the loss of these badly styled locks? 35

Why do you, foolish one, set aside your mirror with sorrowful hand?

It is not good for you to look at yourself with your usual stare:

in order to please yourself, try to be forgetful of yourself.

The charmed herbs of a rival have not harmed you,

a treacherous old hag has not bathed you in Haemonian water, 40

nor has the violence of a disease harmed you (let such an ill be far away),

nor has an envious tongue thinned your thick tresses.

You are suffering the results of your own handiwork and your own mistakes;

you blended and applied the poisons to your own head.

Now to you will Germany send captive hair; 45

safe will you be via the gift of a conquered people.

O how often you will blush when people marvel at your tresses

and you will say ‘Because of something purchased I am now admired.

Now he is praising an unknown Sygambrian woman instead of me;

yet I remember when such glory was entirely my own’. 50

Wretched me! She can barely hold back tears and she covers her features

with her right hand, staining her tender cheeks

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