Valentine’s Day is upon us: a time for overrated restaurants, ribbon-bedecked boxes of underwhelming
chocolates, and other desperate attempts to foist romance upon an otherwise dismal time
of year.
But beneath its mercenary trimmings, Valentine’s Day is about love – and so is this video,
though love, as we’ll see, may be too strong a word.
To the Greeks and Romans, love was a god: Eros to the Greeks, Cupid or Amor to the Romans.
As personified in the myths, love is an unprepossessing little wretch, who flits about inflicting
affection upon mismatched pairs of gods and mortals.
Eventually Zeus got fed up with this, but not before Cupid became a fixture of Roman
art, often multiplied into those little erotes who frolic on the fringes of so many mosaics,
the precursors of those vast flocks of cherubs on Baroque church ceilings.
The most famous classical discussion of love is Plato’s Symposium, a dialogue that presents
six splendid speeches on the power of Eros, which range from fairly standard rhetorical
tinsel to a madcap fantasy put into the mouth of Aristophanes, which imagines that men and
women were formed from creatures with two minds but a single body, leaving them forever
longing to be whole.
But the showstopper, as usual in a Platonic dialogue, is a speech delivered by Socrates,
who claims that love is ultimately a longing for beauty wherewith the mind ascends to contemplation
of all good things – the original definition of Platonic love.
In general, however, Classical Greek literature has little good to say about romantic love,
with the partial and distressing exception of affection directed toward hairless adolescent
boys.
Heterosexual love gets a somewhat better rap in Hellenistic and Imperial Greek literature.
An atmosphere of earnest fumbling romance, for example, pervades the Greek novel.
The Romans, as usual, parroted the Greeks in their literature.
Latin elegiac poetry by the likes of Catullus and Propertius revolves obsessively around
the figure of the elusive mistress and what seem to be some deeply unhealthy relationships.
But it was Ovid who was the great Latin love poet.
While still a very young man, Ovid produced the Amores, a series of poems grappling with
various affairs of the heart and loins.
His next and much more distinctive work was Ars Amatoria, the art of love, whose two books
claimed to instruct men first how to woo women and second how to hold the affections of women
already wooed and won.
An additional book, composed later, advised women on the best ways to find a man.
Much more on Ovid in a moment.
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Back to the Ovid and the art of loving.
Ovid’s tips for picking up chicks in swinging Augustan Rome make for interesting reading.
Eligible ladies, he tells us, are sure to be found strolling in shady porticoes, watching
plays at the theater, and cheering chariots at the circus.
At the circus, incidentally, Ovid suggests starting with small talk about horses.
Dinner parties are also good places to mingle – though Ovid observes that, if you’re
trying to seduce a married lady, you should be sure to befriend her husband first.
If all else fails, you can try sleeping with a lady’s maid, though this normally backfires.
Love letters and compliments, dripping with sincerity or some approximation thereof, are
much safer, and a prayer or two to the proper god never hurts.
In general, Ovid advises would-be lovers that if they keep their togas clean, nails trimmed,
and chins up, fortune will favor the bold.
The poems of Sulpicia, one of the few female Roman poets whose work has survived, provide
a whiplash-inducingly different perspective on the dating game.
Writing in the elegiac mode, Sulpicia describes a passionate relationship with a man named
Cerinthus, whom she is forced to meet in secret at night.
Cerinthus repays her devotion by having an affair with a prostitute.
In Petronius’ Satyricon, two men compete for the affection of a wayward adolescent
boy in a love triangle that frankly has not aged well.
The courtship, if it can be called that, involves deceit, a great deal of wine, and an orgy
honoring the phallic god Priapus that I was certainly never assigned in high school Latin.
The real dimension of all this is visible in the graffiti of Pompeii.
A famous series of messages, for example, was scratched on the wall of a bar by two
men named Severus and Successus, who were both interested in a barmaid named Iris.
Severus wrote first, claiming that Iris loved him, and that she only talked to Successus
because she felt sorry for him.
Successus replied below, claiming that he was more handsome than Severus and wickedly
charming besides.
Severus, unimpressed, wrote again, telling Successus to leave Iris alone.
Sadly, we don’t have Iris’ side of the story.
Although love and marriage are not necessarily found together, they often live in the same
neighborhood.
That was certainly so in the Roman world, where the goal of love was always supposed
to be wedded bliss, or at least mutual resignation within the bonds of matrimony.
The ultimate object of marriage, of course, was generally deemed to be the more or less
efficient production of legitimate children.
Not all marriages were arranged, but quite a few were, especially on the loftier rungs
of the social ladder.
Amid the gritty politics of the late republic, politicians matched their matrimonial alliances
to their political ties, which resulted in some men changing wives about as often as
their togas.
The wife-swapping was less frenetic in the imperial era, since politics didn’t matter
much anymore, but since money never went out of style, elite families considered very carefully
whom their sons and daughters should wed, sometimes arranging matches when the future
bride and groom were still hapless infants.
The paterfamilias of a Roman family was not legally permitted to compel his sons and daughters
to accept the match he had chosen, but since it was socially and financially unwise to
ignore his wishes, father usually knew best.
It was especially hard for a woman to refuse an arranged match, both because women had
less legal agency and because most Roman girls married when they were very young.
Lower on the social scale, matters were often more organic, if not necessarily more harmonious.
Middle-class families were, of course, just as concerned about the suitability of potential
sons- and daughters-in-law as their elite counterparts, and just as willing to arrange
marriages.
But to judge from Egyptian papyri, a fair number of marriages were at least initially
love matches.
Among the more stable marriages in Egypt were those between brothers and sisters, who at
least knew each other well.
Roman soldiers were forbidden to marry until the reign of Septimius Severus.
But many established long-term relationships with local women during their terms of service,
which might be made official after they were discharged.
Tombstones confirm that some women followed soldiers from one of the empire to the other
as they were transferred.
For soldiers, as for free men of all classes, the world’s oldest profession provided the
most efficient means of finding love.
Prostitution was legal, acknowledged, and gratefully taxed in the Roman world.
In Pompeii, a city of about 12,000, some 40 places have been associated with prostitution,
from back rooms in taverns to the famous purpose-built Lupanar beloved of modern tour groups, whose
frescoes are a little too hot for YouTube.
And on that note, while you search for those images, I’ll close with my customary plugs.
I have two other YouTube channels, which you, statistically speaking, have never watched.
Toldinstone Footnotes presents my podcast and Q & As.
Scenic Routes to the Past follows my historical quests.
If you’re looking for a last-minute Valentine’s Day gift, why not give your significant other
my book, Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants?
Thanks for watching