Remedii cosmetice şi terapeutice în opera poetului | [Publius Ovidius Naso Cosmetic remedies and therapeutic in the work of Publius Ovidius Naso]

Abstract

Ovid’s "Ars amatoria" books (1 BC), a true synopsis of Love’s intricate doings and relationships, also provide an array of advice mostly for women not only in their conduct in Love’s affairs but also regarding the „remedies” they can use to be more seductive. Most of all the third Book of the sequence brings to our day recommendations that have preserved their usefulness in regards to manners and the devious approaches of seduction, presented in unsurpassed elegant irony accompanied by a deep understanding of the special psychology of this relationship. But keep your jars away from lover’s sight - thy artful beauty should go unsuspected. Who would but loath to see you smear your cheeks with paint (…) And then, the sickening smell that Athens grease Releases, that oily juice they make of fleece of sheep. Moreover, in 2 AD, Ovid added his “De medicamine faciei femineae“, to round up his former anatomy of seduction, offering a few recipes of the day’s most in-fashion cosmetic remedies, widely considered to have been versifications from a prose cosmetic treatise: “So that they may mix and be properly smeared on the body, add Attic honey from its golden combs. Although incense pleases the gods and their angry powers, it must not all be offered upon kindled fires” or “A woman have I seen pound up poppies soaked in cold water and rub her cheeks with them. . .“