RE-AIR: Conversations: When Ovid Invented Pick-up Artistry, the Ars Amatoria w/ Imogen Briscoe
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Oh, hi, hello, and welcome to another episode of Let's Talk About Myths, baby. The show that examines how utterly garbage some men of the ancient world were. I'm your host, Liv, she who is bound to hear not all men, at least once after the

dares? We'll see. Maybe I'll keep a tally. Well, as if that didn't set it up well enough, I am here with a conversation with Imogen Briscoe, a PhD student studying Ovid's quote-unquote love poetry.

Most of which is. I mean, we will get into it. But a couple of years ago, maybe it was like only last year. I don't even remember. Anyway, I covered some of Ovid's Ars Amatoria on the show because it is absolutely batshit fucking bananas. It is misogyny in a text. It is literally the original handbook to modern pickup artistry. It is wild.

And so when I heard from Imogen pitching this as a topic for a conversation, I nearly lost my mind with excitement. We recorded it a while ago, as you will hear, for reasons. And I was just so thrilled to air it around Valentine's Day because apparently I'm fun for Valentine's Day.

It's exactly as good as I expected it to, this conversation. Plus, I got ranty, so it's long enough without me dragging out the introduction. Just know, well, big trigger warnings, because for real, it's gross and entertaining, but gross. Uh-oh.

there's talk about how men can best convince women to have sex with them or worse you know force them and it's it's so it's much more in that realm than the former yeah so it is it is very dark it is pickup artistry from the ancient world but I do promise we have fun with it because it's the only way to speak about something like this without devolving into a pit of sadness that humanity has not come far at all in the intervening 2000 years

Like, for real. It's a little too on the nose. But just beware. Conversations when Ovid invented pickup artistry. The Ars Amatoria with Imogen Briscoe.

I am, I'm so excited to talk about this because I just, the Ars Amatoria is, is so utterly wild. So as soon as I saw, you know, those, those words next to your name in my little form, I was like, oh shit, no, like I'm so keen. Yeah. So, I mean, I don't even totally know where to begin, but maybe like what drew you to be studying this?

baffling and also so deeply entertaining work like what do you love about it I don't know yeah yeah no that's it's a really interesting question um I think I kind of started with the amores and then worked my way through to the ars amatoria I mean I did the amores as like translation at school so the the slightly less racy parts of it um they kind of set you the nicer passages um and then yeah I think it was it wasn't

wasn't until like my third year of my undergrad that I really looked at the Ars Amatoria properly and I remember being set this question of as like a seminar prep of like can you think of any modern

things that this reminds you of, like, you're going to read the whole Ars Amatoria, what can you think of? And I remember doing like a short forum post about the Dennis system from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and talking about his kind of pickup artist systems and how Ovid is, you know, essentially doing the same thing. And I think that's kind of where it all came from was this idea that like,

we can see such a continuation from the ancient all the way through to the modern and that's really what I look at now in my research. So my thesis at the moment, I mean I'm kind of coming to the end of my first year starting my second year

um so I'm sure it will have changed by the time this podcast comes out let alone um you know in a couple of years but at the moment my focus is really on masculinity in Ovid's amatory works so the Amores, Ars Amatoria and the Remedio Amores as well so like the the cures for love um

And yeah, this idea of the links with pickup artists in the modern day, I find really interesting. And something that I think hasn't been touched on as much yet, which is what I'm hoping to do, is the way that Ovid has been

I'd like to say co-opted, but I don't think he has necessarily been co-opted. I think he's been taken at his word by modern incel groups as well. So there's a lot of relevance to the modern day. And I think that's what keeps me coming back to Ovid constantly is this idea that he's always relevant somehow, no matter what's going on. There's just something about him that I, you know, you can keep relating to the modern day, but also

That's just, I can't figure him out as a person. Like you said, like the Ovid of it all. Yes. He's completely baffling. He really is. And like, so I joke about this a lot on the show. Like Rome is not my favorite. I'm all about Greece all the time, except that I love Ovid. Because like one, most of what I read is Metamorphoses, which is just a beautiful, you know, way of capturing Ovid.

primarily Greek myths, hence why I'm able to love it. But what is so interesting to me about the metamorphoses, it is like in complete contrast to the Rs, which is that like

In the Metamorphoses, he seems to have a real sympathy for the plight of women who are assaulted by gods. That is what makes him quite unique amongst mythological sourcing, is that he cares. He says it's assault. He has empathy for the plight of these women and other people as well who are facing down the gods in this way. And then he goes and writes the Ars Amatorio, which is like...

nasty in the most entertaining way. And yeah, like when I was reading it, I also just kept being like, wait, like, what am I reading? Like, it's like when you know Ovid, you read it and you just think, okay, like, is this tongue in cheek? Are you playing with us? Is this serious? I think that it has such elements of both that I can only imagine that it would just be like a wealth of information for you to read.

piece through in your study because like it's really baffling like what what do you think about how like what his intentions might have been with it yeah I think I think I mean in terms of like my own writing I try not to go down I'm sure you've heard this before I think even with like you know other people from Exeter doing of it who've come on and you know we talk about

authorial intention is, is difficult. And I try not to go too far into it in my actual work because that way lies madness essentially. But I like to think about Ovid as a person and think about whether he's genuine or not. I think it's a fun thought exercise, whether or not we can actually put it into our scholarship. Yeah. We'll never have the answer, but like the theorizing can be there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I'd love...

I know you shouldn't meet your heroes, but I would love to meet him because I almost want it confirmed that he's an asshole. I know he is, but how much? Is he poking fun at the fact that he is or does he just not know? And I think that he's clever and he's self-conscious. I think those are the two things that you can say from what we've got definitely is that I don't think he ever does anything kind of, yeah, accidentally, right?

I think that throughout his work, he's putting forward, you know, arguably different narratorial personas, but that he's always making conscious decisions. I mean, something that I find really interesting in the Ars Amatoria is that he talks about, you know, this work being based on experience in the opening lines of book one. And then you see little episodes of like, almost, he goes into this semi-autobiographical mode at points in the Ars.

where it links up with episodes from the Amores and that's something that I've always found really fascinating he has this I mean getting into the kind of dark underbelly of it straight away but he talks about one time I pulled my girl's hair and essentially he tells about a physical assault on his girlfriend um

Which he also covers, and I cannot remember which poem it is in the Amores, but he talks about upsetting his girlfriend by kind of lashing out at her and pulling her hair. But in the Ars, he basically says, like, the moral of the story is if you're going to attack your girlfriend, try not to rip her clothes because this ended up costing me loads of money.

Which is just absolutely insane. And yeah, just on the metamorphoses, I think it's so interesting talking to people who

come at Ovid from the Met almost because I've done it the other way around so I mean talking to other people who study Ovid as well and people who are just interested in him and if you read the Met and then you come straight into the Ars you're going to be absolutely baffled it made more of like a natural progression the way that I read his works and kind of did bits and bobs of the Metamorphoses but never really read it cover to cover until much later and now you know as part

part of like my teaching I'm covering the metamorphoses with first and second year undergrads and hearing their thoughts on that and like you said talking about this sympathy that Ovid shows to women you know I'm really quite convinced by this idea that like some part of him is really interested in like the lived female experience and then I kind of struggle to reconcile what I'm talking to them about and then I come back into my own work and I'm like this is a dig yes

Yeah, I mean, that, yeah, it's just, it's fascinating and I love that. It reminds me of what I love about mythology so much, which is that, like,

it's all a contradiction. Every bit of it is a contradiction. Mostly in that case, it's because we've got like a thousand years worth of sources and regionality and everything in there. So it's like, well, that makes sense. Like that, that is rational. Like why that everything is a contradiction when it comes to Greek myth, but often it's like, no, it's just one guy. How can just one guy be so contradictory? And that is sort of like a different level of,

of interesting. Like, yeah, what, what is he doing that he wrote the Met and then he wrote the hours. And, and I wonder if it's like this notion of, of,

mythological women being better or not better like in his mind that they are they are more deserving of sympathy because he hasn't encountered them and like because yeah i mean there's a major incel narrative running through the r's that makes you think that like okay maybe he's got a thing against real women but he likes fictional like it may be like

a good equivalent would be like women in video games versus real life women, you know, like this idea of, of a false woman, like the guys who got angry when they made Lara Croft have smaller boobs, you know, like it makes me think of that, like, okay, he can love the mythological, but he can't stand real. Yeah. Yeah. And almost, I mean, you know, in the Met it's a,

we have that with Pygmalion. Yeah. He kind of aligns himself with Pygmalion quite well, which is, I mean, he does it with a lot of the artist figures in the Metamorphoses anyway. But yeah, Pygmalion, he seems to

have quite a lot of sympathy for his, you know, disgust at women and then his crafting of a perfect woman. And I guess that'd be a really, yeah, like a kind of almost depressing view of like why Ovid has this fascination with women is he is able to write them in a particular way that suits him. Yeah. Oh yeah. I like that idea. And Pygmalion is like so deeply one of the grossest stories in the Met. And yeah,

Yeah, that feels right. Yeah, it's so interesting. So, I mean, I'm just trying to think back on having read the R's because like it's so, I mean, I guess just to remind my listeners, though, I will have also done that in the introduction, but like it really is, I mean, it's called The Art of Love, but it really is like a sort of step-by-step instructions on how to get a woman, only they're all horrifying. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of semi-didactic, written in elegiac couplets. So in terms of, I mean, ancient genre, it's disputed what the Ars Amatoria is. It is, yeah, written as if it's elegy, which leads some kind of

meter purists to believe that it must be elegy. But it's got a lot of didactic elements and it clearly takes inspiration from other didactic poems like, you know, Virgil's didactic works and stuff like that. Yeah, it's kind of, it definitely is didactic in tone, whether or not, you know, we look at the meter and Ovid paints himself as the praeceptor amoris, the teacher of love.

And he does that straight away, like in line 16 of the first book, I'm pretty sure. He's like, I am the Praeceptor Amoris. And he it's probably the clearest persona he ever gives himself. And he maintains that all the way through. He also ends book two and book three with the words like Neso Magister Erat.

Can't remember exactly the Latin. And Neso is like his middle name. So it's Ovid was my teacher. Ovid was my instructor. And that's what he wants his kind of students to go out into the world and say. And obviously we've got this, this cheekiness of Ovid running through it. You know, how much of this is him actually wanting people to be walking adverts for his seduction school? We don't know. But yeah, it's three books and book one and two are directed at men.

And book three is aimed at women, which is, you know, part of what makes this as a group of three so interesting is that he kind of dedicates book one is how to find a woman, you know, to aim your affections at, which he covers pretty quickly. And then how to get that woman. And then book two is about how to keep the woman.

And he kind of delineates quite, quite clearly the points where he's changing tack with the male centered books. And then book three, it's, yeah, it's kind of all in, it feels a bit more rushed, I guess. It's the same, pretty much the same length as the other two. And yeah, his advice to women is really interesting. A lot of it aligns pretty clearly with the first two books. You get the equivalence, you know,

But there is this pretty convincing argument that book three isn't really directed at women. It's, you know, it's for entertainment purposes and that obviously his male audience are going to be reading it too. We get this kind of idea, especially in certain scholarship of,

the men are kind of kind of just off stage right essentially and Ovid's making little kind of winks and nudges towards them throughout book three and even if you're not convinced by that and you take him at his word that he is talking to women in book three his advice is a lot more focused on looks you

you know, how to, how to not be disgusting seems to be a large thing. You know, he uses words like disgusting quite a lot. I mean, I'd be interested in, you know, the actual split between the books. And then, yeah, at the end of book three has this kind of catalogue of sexual positions that women should consider based off of how they look. So,

So it's like, if you've got stretch marks, you're better viewed from behind, like things like that. It's really quite rude in terms of, you know, explicit for Ovid. He's not normally that explicit, but also...

quite nasty talking about, you know, so that petite women should ride horse, women with longer legs should have them over their shoulders. It's really quite full on. And he's kind of aiming this at women as if he's saying like, I'm interested in your pleasure.

But what he's saying is, here's how to look best for your male sexual partner. Yes. We've still got a hugely, a huge kind of interest in appeasing his male audience throughout the third book. So I'm not hugely convinced that it's actually aimed at women. And even if it is, the advice lines up pretty well with keeping the men happy.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, that doesn't sound like it's really for women. Yeah, yeah. I just, yeah, I mean, my biggest memory of reading that for the first time was just purely like, what on earth am I reading? Like, what is happening?

happening here in the most enjoyable way because I think that's the only way that's like well it's you know the way to stay sane is to read something like that and laugh at it because it's utterly absurd but that's how I feel about you know modern pickup artists and stuff too like obviously they are also inherently dangerous but you still like I think have to laugh at a lot of the nonsense that that men are being led to believe is like how to get a woman I'm trying to think of the name of that guy I don't

I think he's British American and he started that like enormous YouTube channel of like how to get women and also get rich. I listened to a podcast episode about him.

Do you know who I'm talking about? He moved to Eastern Europe to escape the prosecution. Not Andrew Tate. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's a big one at the moment, especially with the rise of incels as well. Exactly. Yeah, like it just screams...

all of his work from what I know which is just listening to like a behind the bastards podcast episode I had like never heard of him before and I was like oh my god I can't stop listening to this it's horrifying yeah but yeah yeah this idea that like I mean it's just the the idea that even 2,000 years ago

There were people being like, so you just have to neg a woman. Tell her she's ugly. That's going to turn her to your advances. Yeah.

I just, yeah, I mean, it's incredible. And the amount that does line up with the modern ideas. So I didn't originally intend to like jump straight into that. But you look at that too, right? Like this, the stuff that lines up, like I would love to hear more about that because it's wild that 2000 years pass and it's still just as absurd. Yeah, yeah. And I think the main thing to say about that is we kind of, I don't know, I feel like especially,

people who study Ovid, there's this inclination to try and like almost defend the people that you're studying. And I think I try really hard not to do that because I think he probably was, you know, like I say, just a bad, a bit of a bad person, even if he was funny and a bit emotional and interesting. I think he's still, you know, a product of his time, whether at the time he would be considered a bad person or not. We have to remember that for

for all his kind of posturing and his posing as, you know, a victim of his girlfriend and a slave to love. He was, you know, a Roman man of the equestrian class who was educated in rhetoric and, you know, turned down the chance to be a lawyer, essentially. So he's pretty, he's doing pretty well for himself. Yeah. Also able to, yeah, able to write poetry as a career, which isn't something that's usually open to anyone.

other people as much as he likes the whole, you know, tortured poor artist. Yeah. He's got some privilege. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I think,

We really just like to say that certain people have, they haven't read him properly. And that's why they've, you know, adopted him or co-opted him or however you want to phrase it. And I think what we're defining as reading properly is something that I'm quite interested in because I'm like, the words are there. Yeah. Whether, you know, we can't say that they're not for reading.

everyone I would encourage people who want to read Ovid to take him with a pinch of salt and to try and get a bit more context and read the whole hours rather than just the passages where you know he endorses rape and says all these other horrible things but certain people have almost cherry-picked quotes from Ovid's work that they use to push their own particularly masculinist agendas um

So yeah, the pickup artist link is relatively well established. And I think Donna Zuckerberg is the main scholar who's really worked on this. Mark Zuckerberg's sister, kind of.

kind of unfortunately um but yeah she she did a really good book called uh not all dead white men I have that I've never read it I need to yeah I haven't to be honest haven't read the whole text but the the chapter on Ovid is is really instructive for looking at pickup artists that's from 2018 it's only five years ago um yeah and she talks about a particular pickup artist I'm

I know his surname is Strauss. I believe he's called Neil Strauss. And he's the guy who wrote The Game, like the big pickup artist manual that made it into the mainstream. And he literally calls Ovid like the father of modern pickup artistry. Does he really? Yeah.

So there are people endorsing of it as someone to look back to and saying like, look, what we're doing is right because it has a precedent of, you know, 2000 years people have been doing this and they do really use him to push that. And yeah, I think with the pickup artists, there's a couple of people, but yeah, Donna Zuckerberg's chapter on it is brilliant.

brilliant and very informative and then with the incels I feel like it's something that hasn't been as touched on and the thing that kind of clued me onto the direct link rather than me just reading through and thinking this seems a bit incely it screams incel yeah yeah

There was a blog post on the Pharos doing justice to the classics website. It only came out this year. And it was about the presence of ancient authors on the incel wiki. So from what I can gather, the incels had their own Wikipedia page, but were getting frustrated with Wikipedia's rules for what you could post in the moderation. And so they created their own Wikipedia page.

which is terrifying. Like I've been on it. And I'm quite scared that the university is going to take away my computer access at some point because my history is just not looking great at the moment. Like actually having to, just like clicking through the incel wiki very happily. Well, obviously not happily. It's just awful. But yeah, you, and it functions in the same way as Wikipedia where like you hover over a hyperlink and it

brings up the start of the article about that personal thing but it'll be an entry that they've written

So they have a list of what they call proto-cells. So people who weren't, who were around before incels were like a thing, you know, a recognised group. And they claim, they claim people like Charles Bukowski as a proto-cell. They claim Jesus Christ as a proto-cell. Like, it's just insane. They just have this list of people that they've decided were incels.

But if you then click on the hyperlink, it takes you to a page that they have written about that person. Right. About how exactly that person. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's where, like, the Ovid things come in. They use Ovid on their incel wiki page. Yeah, they have a page called Timeless Quotes About Women. And they have about five quotes from Ovid on there. And no referencing anything.

no links to the translation that they've used not even which book it's from one of them just says the art of love but yeah it's it's stuff about women being gold diggers uh women enjoying forceful sex like they've really picked what they want oh my god yeah and that that was where I got that like the real interest in it from because I realized that not not only are is there like this sense of

in cell-ish line of thought throughout Ovid's work well at least in places but they are using his work to further their ideology see that I wouldn't have guessed I guess I should have but the idea that they're actually directly using him in that way just feels I think it's just because I have such a poor opinion of them obviously where I'm like you don't read somebody like Ovid you're ridiculous yeah

Not least because I just have to say, like, the more we... Like, I don't think about incels often, thankfully. But even just, like, talking about them this much, it just makes me want to, like... I mean, I know that, like, obviously you can't expect them to make sense, but I just... Like...

if you are building your entire personality around this concept and building an entire Wikipedia page or Wikipedia like concept around this like can't you also recognize that the term involuntary then no longer applies like this is clearly very fucking voluntary like you can just call yourself an involuntary celibate when you've dedicated your life to being this guy it's now voluntary anyway just like

It's truly, truly wild. Yeah. But yeah, oh my god, the idea of... Because, I mean, the thing about... Even, like you're saying, it seems likely maybe he was a bit of an asshole amongst being also very talented. That's fine. People can be talented and also misogynist assholes. But...

like if reading the reading the rs2 like there is so much that is seemingly intentionally comedic as well like do you think that that was also the point like a lot of these things seem to be like so ridiculous as to be intentionally comedic yeah yeah i think i think he's he can be quite like

yeah just just overblown in the way that he talks and he's he's very conscious about as well kind of um picking his audience i think he's he's aware of his context and that especially in the book towards women he kind of says like you know only certain women should read my texts and then kind of midway through or just past the middle point of book three he starts saying like

I wasn't going to talk about how to evade your husband because, you know, it's not right to encourage adultery. But anyway, here's a list of things that you can do. So obviously there's deliberate humour in here because he knows what he's doing and he knows that it's silly and subversive. And, you know, I think that that's something that makes it

kind of fun and enjoyable to read and also it's what makes these episodes that are quite troubling all the more shocking is that it's kind of within this what seems quite a light-hearted text you know this idea of like the art of love or I mean there's there's debate about how to translate ours amatoria as well because ours is more like skill interesting so it's it's more to do with um

It is pretty much a manual. It's like the skill of the lover as well. Amatoria is more, it's the person, the amator. So yeah, it's like the skill of the lover. And obviously Ovid is the lover supreme. And I'm really fond of this idea that although he does...

delineates his persona in the Ars as the praeceptor amoris, which we don't really, he is never explicit in the Amoris. I like this idea that it is the same, we're meant to read it as the same guy, but just a bit more grown up. Because it was, I think, well, I'm not, you know, confident on the dating in terms of, you know, how we do the dating and everything.

It's not something that really comes up in my research that much, but I know that there's at least kind of 10 or 15 years between the Amores and the Ars. So we do get this idea that the Amores is the kind of, um,

almost like just like the horny nonsense of like a 20 year old guy yeah and then when he's a bit more you know a bit older and a bit more mature he's kind of like right I've learned my lessons and I'm ready to share that with with everyone else I quite like this idea of a continuation between the two because we do we always put them together into one volume of translation pretty much you know yeah but what I've got is like it's just called the erotic poems and it includes all of them yeah

Yeah. And even the Amores, some of them are very off the topic of love. Yeah, I haven't read them. They're worth a read. They're worth a read. I mean, book two in particular is the main one I've studied. And in that you have a couple of like dip tips of pairs of poems where there's one where he's saying to his mistress, you know, I, I

swear on my life and on all the gods that I haven't cheated on you with your hairdresser who would have been a slave woman and then the next poem is him being directed to the slave woman being like how how could you give it away you idiot like really laying into her and

And, you know, it's just utter silliness. But then once you actually read it, you know, again and again, he then goes into quite, he like explicitly threatens her at the end. And there's this underlying awareness of his higher status, as much as he kind of pretends that he's at the mercy of these two women. He's actually, you know, by the end of those two poems, he's got them both kind of under his thumb. And in the middle of, yeah. Yeah.

In the middle of book two of The Amores, we have another diptych where his mistress Corinna has an abortion and he gets really angry at her because of how ill it makes her. And then we get the sense in the second poem that she's feeling a bit better now and he's ready to go on a moral tirade at her about how it's unnatural. She's deprived the world of the potential for more of it is actually a large part of the argument.

So yeah, we call them love poems. And I mean, some of them are more straightforward, but yeah, it's anything to do with relationship poems, basically. Rather than just like, you know, typical love poetry. Yeah, I think we need to remove the word love. Yeah, yeah. That's horrifying. Don't make me hate you completely, Ovid. My God.

No, that's fascinating and dark. Having really primarily read The Met, I just think it's so interesting to see him this way because I really, I do love The Met. And so I really have notoriously talked about loving Ovid. And I think even probably when I read The R's, I was just like, I don't know, I kind of have to trust and hope that he's being tongue in cheek and being satirical. But hearing about The Amores, I feel like maybe it's pretty legit. That seems like kind of how he thinks. Yeah.

I mean, obviously, like, it is worth, you know, noting that I'm picking out the fun or inflammatory ones. He does have some nice stuff in there as well. For sure. But yeah, it's more fun to talk about the horrible stuff as well. Yeah. Yeah. And does it, you know, the fact that large parts of it are more straightforward and nice love poetry, does that actually kind of forgive, obviously?

of the bits where he's talking about beating his girlfriend or cheating on her with her slave girl and stuff like that. Yeah, that's the thing. It does not. And so it's really okay to cherry pick the bad stuff for a conversation like this. But also because, yeah, I mean, I think...

I think there's a very strong mindset from certain groups of people that might suggest that like, oh, you can't judge somebody by only like one section of their work or whatever. But it's like, and that's fine too. But you also can't pretend that they didn't say that. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, he still said all of this. So here we are. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it's part of what makes him kind of such an interesting guy to look at such as, you know, an interesting writer and an interesting historical figure is trying to work out, like you said, I do believe that the Oz reads largely as kind of tongue in cheek, right?

And that's the way that, like you said, I like to read it. I always want these more hopeful readings of these things. And that's why I have really enjoyed turning back to the Met this term whilst teaching it is because I'm able to see Ovid in a nicer light than what I normally do and remember that not only is he one of the most talented writers in the Latin language, he also has some inexplicable understanding of lived history

like female experience, lived experience of victims and of people of kind of, um, in the metamorphoses, the, the figures whose gender is kind of confused by the narrative or, or who kind of either change their gender or have it changed for them. It's, you know, he's, he's got some really interesting insight into these things. I'd love to know what was going on there. Um,

equally there's an argument that he's just a bit of a deviant and just wants to talk about anything to do with sex and that's kind of what we get through his love poetry I guess and yeah something that I was thinking about is do we call it love poetry because I mean the Ars Amatoria I would argue is more sex poetry it's about how to attain kind of casual affairs for the most part I mean he talks about keeping a lover in book two but

largely it's based off of maintaining access to the girl

keeping her interested um you know leading her on a bit with false promises promising her gifts but never actually delivering them because once you've given her the gift she can just run off with it so you have to keep stringing her along um equally you know let her know that she's got potential rivals that you're wanted around town but not don't ever let her catch you in the act you know he he

kind of prescribes this very walking of a very fine line which I just don't believe is the way that you would treat someone that you were like actually courting I guess yeah or you'd like to think again no and I think that that's yeah again what's what like screams modern pickup artist you know is that like it's not about finding affection and like a relationship it is about like

I don't want to say tricking, but it is, you know, ultimately a lot of it is like tricking a woman, but it's, but it's also just that, like, it's about control, right? Like it is about, it's about a man having control over not only a woman, but like the situation entirely. Like his, yeah. I mean, yeah.

it's misogynistic at its like core, right? It's about subjugating women, but like specifically for sex. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's a really interesting kind of string of argument in scholarship that, that the Ars Amatoria isn't so much about finding a girlfriend. It's about being able to have sex with prostitutes without paying. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah.

Which again, you know, some of these arguments are more illustrative of the wide range of things we've got. I'm not sure how convinced I am by it, but it does kind of make sense. He has a lot of focus on money. He talks a lot about gifts and exchange of kind of sex for goods, sex for money,

um don't ever meet up with your girlfriend on her birthday because you'll end up having to buy her a present like stuff like that there's he's really fixated on this idea of kind of exchange I guess yeah which is just yeah absolutely fascinating wow it's yeah oh my god it really yeah it screams not even just modern pickup artists but like

a very large subset of modern dating. Like, just dating. And like, I think, you know, that rightfully says how dark it can be to date in the 21st century. But yeah, it really just kind of generally screams sort of,

a certain type of of man and like the way they might just talk to their friends just even just that that really specific thing of not seeing a girl on her birthday like yeah yeah oh my god bending over backwards to like not do one tiny nice thing like it's what a mentality it's wild

Yeah, he lists a few days where you shouldn't see her and it's various feasts and festivals as well where you would be expected to spend money. And then he suggests in particular taking her on a walk through town or the market on the Sabbath where a lot of the shops will be closed and things like that. He's really picky. I think whether you buy into the idea that this is actually about how to explain

exploit prostitutes which is a much more serious reading or whether you think it is more just about you know women in general I think that the crux of it is it's about how to get as much by giving as little and that is the kind of overarching theme throughout the Ars Amatoria which interestingly I struggle to find such a strain in book three aimed at the women I guess interestingly but unsurprisingly um

His, yeah, his advice to women seems to be a lot more kind of surface level, whereas for the men there's a lot more, I don't know, deception involved, but then also a lot of talking about women as deceptive. Right. So it's their fault. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Obviously. Obviously it's women's fault.

Yeah. I mean, it just makes me think of like, even just the number of TV shows that I mean, I think probably not so much recently, but I'm old enough to remember the 90s and the 2000s. And like, the early 2000s were a very dark time. And you know, like the number of TV shows that would just make a joke about like, oh, well, like, it's too close to Valentine's Day to get a girlfriend. Like, you've got to wait until after. And it's like, you really break that down. It's like,

Why? Like, okay, you're... You just... If you like a girl, you really want that badly not to, like, buy her something? Like, I just...

It's utterly wild to me. And yeah, it just screams this idea that like, we've just really been dealing with this for so long and it's so absurd. It's just blown away. The world continues to exist in the way that it does. How are we still here? Yeah, no, it's,

It's just one of those texts that, I mean, I almost hope that one day we won't relate to it as much. But there's something about the way that Ovid writes as well, whether he's being, you know, in text where he's more serious and where he isn't, you know, this one, I don't know.

I do kind of see the argument that this is a bit of a parody of more serious didactic poetry and that he is kind of just poking fun. He's like, well, if I'm going to write a didactic poem, I'm going to do it in elegiac meter because that's what I'm comfortable in. And I'm going to, you know, talk about love because that's what I'm comfortable talking about. And either way, I think Ovid as a writer throughout all of his work just really

there's something very human about him, which is what I think, and I know it's probably just a bit like wishy-washy, but like, that's what I think gives him such an enduring influence, I guess, why we keep coming back to him and people are interested in all the different types of his poetry and interested in him for completely different reasons. And yeah, mine just happened to be, I guess, kind of a

dark fascination with whatever's going on in his strange little brain. I mean, yeah, I'm equally interested. It's like, it's one of those things that I would much more, I would enjoy much more fully if it

you know, wasn't so relevant. Like I would love to look back and be like, Oh wow. Like, man, people used to think that way. That's crazy. I'd love to read up about it. And instead I'm like, Oh my God, people still think this way. Holy shit. And like, it doesn't change how interesting it is from the Ovid perspective, but it makes it a lot more frustrating. Yeah. Yeah. But,

I would love to know more about part three, like book three, when he's like directing stuff to women. Because I mean, what little you've said is wild. So yeah, I'd love, I'd love to hear more about what wacky things he tells us to do. Yeah. So, I mean, he, he opens it, um,

by kind of saying I've armed, it talks about the Amazons, I think it's I've armed Greeks against Amazons and now it's time to arm you against Penthealisea, I think I've said that right, so again love is warfare, love is a game, you know these are really common things, I mean love as war is common all the way throughout, I'm just finding yeah,

I've armed Greeks against Amazons. Now I must fashion weapons for Penthalosea and her girls. A well-matched fight is best with victory granted through the favour of kind Venus and Venus's earth-girdling son. So he's basically saying it's not fair for women to go into this battle unarmed. So, you know, he's going to do them the favour of...

giving them some tips. How nice of him. Yeah. He's just lovely. Yeah. He kind of immediately talks about like, he then suggests that there's this kind of aside or interruption of like, why would you do that? Either from, I think it's from the other men.

yeah, yeah, I hear you are. So why, basically, why betray a fold of sheep to the she-wolf? I hear you ask. Like, you know, there's a lot of hunter and hunted prey and predator analogies. Yeah, yeah. And he's basically saying, like, don't, don't base your judgment of all women on certain women. And he gives the example of people like Clytemnestra and then basically does, like, maybe a few lines, like,

less than a dozen lines on good women like Penelope then um goes you know men are more often deceivers than women but here's a list of women who are deceivers and then just goes off on this kind of tangent so it talks about Medea and people like that um so yeah it's it's pretty clear right from the start that I mean to me I believe that the men are

either the intended audience secretly or that they're meant to be there listening as well. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And so he, what's his talk about? He, he largely, he,

Keeps on with these kind of love as war and love as a game metaphors and that he is making it fair by doing this. So thanks very much, Ovid. The main thing that I've drawn out through just like skimming back through the books in preparation for this is that the amount of focus on how to present yourself

is astounding in book three compared to book one and book two. I mean, I think it's in book one where he has maybe like 10 or 20 lines about like, um, don't over preen yourself. This directed at the men. Um, he talks about don't pumice your legs until they're smooth. Don't curl your hair. Do you think that Theseus would have done that? You know, just, just all of this stuff about like, no one wants a man who's over preened, but equally, uh, make sure that, um,

that you don't have nose hairs and bad breath. And like, these are literally the things that he lists. And he talks about a male stench, which I just think is hilarious. And that's kind of the extent of the advice towards men about, about how to present themselves. He has a little bit about, yeah, make, make sure your shoes fit and your toga fits, you know, so you don't look like a slob equally don't overdo it. So yeah, do the basics, be hygienic, wear clothes that fit you.

And that's about it for blokes. And then, yeah, we look at the women and it's just constant. Yeah. Yeah. He has a lot of kind of nature metaphors as well about women are plants or not women are plants. But, you know, he says about taking care of yourself and says that you get the best vintage from well-cared for grapes and things like that. Just like take care of yourself and you're going to produce the best vintage.

What, you know, appearance or the best sex? What is he actually getting at there? Best children for art? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, he talks a lot about, specifies hair, makeup, clothes, and also not to let a man see you kind of in the process of getting ready.

Sure, you can't give away the deception. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And he says like one time he made the mistake of going into a girl's bedroom while she was putting her wig on and she had it on backwards because she'd rushed and, you know, couldn't ever look at her the same way. Things like that. He talks about certain things that girls should train themselves to do well. So singing and dancing are all very charming things.

talks about things to avoid. So yeah, his kind of overarching advice to women is know yourself, but that's kind of meant in the sense of know your faults and avoid showing them. You know, things like if you've got big teeth, don't laugh really wide and just like really nasty stuff like that. Yeah.

I'm trying to find the other bits of this girl. Horrifying. Yeah, yeah. I also love him using the example of Theseus as the correct manly man of all the heroes. I think you did something really specific by selecting that one. Yeah, yeah. So towards the end of book three, he has a short...

kind of mythological, I guess, aside where he tells the story of Procris and Cephalus. And then once he's finished that, he then goes into the list of the sex positions.

So it's all a bit like, sometimes in the R's, it feels like he's just either trying to meet like a word count or really wanting to show what he can do. You know, here's a story as I would tell it in the Metamorphoses, but this time it's in Elegites. And he'll just do a hundred lines of like a...

mythological disgusts basically. I mean, there's some quite convincing arguments that they're not actually like meant to be read as bits outside of the text, that they are actually informative to the text. They are important, but kind of for the purposes of something like this, it's easy to just skip over them. And then, yeah, after he's done kind of telling their story, which the moral is to him,

is to try not to fall too quickly into distrust of your male partner. Oh, so it's Pokris' fault. Yeah, yeah, of course. And then it just goes straight into, how many lines do we have here? Like 30 lines of...

if you look this way, you're better viewed this way during sex. If you look this way, you're better doing this. Gives some mythological examples, which is always helpful. Oh my God. He imagines Andromache and people like that in bed. And then ends it by saying, after the pleasures of sex, don't rush too quickly to ask for a gift.

because it'll it'll just scare him off and then equally don't open the bedroom bedroom windows much of your body is better left unseen and that's how he kind of ends it so I mean there's this constant I think we

we don't get like really any advice to neg women in book one and book two. It's all about how to take women's faults and turn them into something really like, it says something about like, if she's skeletal, call her svelte. If she's a bit chubby, call her like, I don't know, it said like,

bouncing or something like that like use use nice synonyms essentially yeah but then in book three which you know what would a female reader make of this and what do we as modern female readers make of this that like

He's kind of just saying like, your body's not great. Here's how to do the best with it. Do we think that book three is actually designed to further his kind of erotic project of book one and book two, which is the reading that I kind of subscribe to, is that whilst I don't believe it's exclusively aimed at women, I believe that he wanted women to read this and that actually he's making them more susceptible to the kind of tricks of the trade that he's

advising to men in books one and book two yeah and it almost sounds like he's also you know he wants them both to read it but he also wants the women who are reading it because they should to know that the men are reading it too yeah like it's clear that it's not like it's it it's not just for you because you know the men are obviously more important in this scenario so like

you should know that I'm not telling you any secrets that they are not allowed to know. Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, within the first few lines of this book, he's got that, you know,

why are you giving them secrets? And it says, you ask. Who's this you? It's clearly not the women. No, it's you. It's the men to whom he directs the first couple of books. And just go back to the start of book one, he opens it in quite an interesting way. It's like, if there's anyone in Rome who is not adept in love, let him read my book and results are guaranteed. And I just find that really interesting. There's this kind of, I guess, the

the difference in the way that he directs it towards the men and women. Book two, we don't get it as much because it's seen as quite a continuation of book one. He's kind of like, right now onto the next topic, just picks up where he left off. But yeah, book three, he has to refigure it. And it's very clear that the men are there. He's not hiding the fact that his male audience is still present. Yeah, no, it's important that the women know the men know because it's

I mean, it's just, yeah, it adds to the level of gross where it's like, okay, well, I'm telling you to do this stuff, but the men know that I've told you this, which means you're at fault if, you know, you look a certain way and you don't position yourself in that ascribed way because they know that I've told you. So it's like, yeah, like this attitude.

extra level of horror of just like no no you best listen to me because the men are watching yeah do as you're told essentially it's really interesting because he frames it with all these kind of

war metaphors at the start it's like almost empowering the women he's giving them equal arms as the men but I mean arguably they've got like half as many lines dedicated to them nowhere near as in depth it's it's a lot more about how to kind of present yourself

in kind of a sexy way and an attractive desirable way um and how not to be gross whereas for the men it's it's a lot more specific um and there are a couple of points in the first couple of books that I wanted to draw on because we're kind of I feel like we've like

talked about the grossness of the first couple of books. But yeah, if it's okay, I wanted to get into just a couple of those episodes just to really like make it clear what we're talking about when we're saying that it's gross and it's horrible. So I mean, the first one that I picked up on is very quick in book one. And it's probably the most

like, commonly known bit of grossness in the Ars Amatoria is he starts to talk about where to find a girl. So how to find a girl that suits your fancy. And he's like, you won't, you know, be remiss in Rome. There's plenty of girls. Talks about all the different ages and types of girls that you can find in Rome. And then says, here are some places you can meet girls. And his main place that he prescribes is the theatre.

and his example of why the theatre is a great place to pick up women is The Rape of the Sabine Women where Romulus put on this like fake well like a spectacle to I think the kind of

I don't know that the surface level idea of it was to get the Sabines down to Rome and create some kind of peace with them. But obviously there was this secret plan that they would kill all of the Sabine men and rape all of the Sabine women and take them as wives because, you know, they'd set up this wonderful city of Rome, but they didn't have any women or not enough women. So they decided to just steal some from the neighbouring tribes. And I think that the backstory is that they'd had like,

they tried to create some kind of marriage treaty and the Sabines had turned it down. And so they were like, oh, okay, as recompense, come along to these games that we're going to put on. And yeah, Ovid just then, he says, the theatre's a great place to meet women. And, you know, Romulus set this precedent when he gave the secret signal and then describes, he just goes into this kind of, yeah, this, not even the side, he goes through quite a, almost,

almost metamorphosis esque description of the rape of the Savine women talks about, you know, all of the different ways that they showed their, their panic and their fear. And he's very aware of their fear the same way that he is in the metamorphosis. But, and he then talks about how many of them managed to make panic like sexy and

He thinks that he discusses them having like, some of them went pale, some of them blush, some of them ripped their hair and it went all frenzied. And that was really attractive. So he's kind of touching on the real severity and the horror of the rape of the Sabine women. But then being like, and that's why the theatre is a great place to meet women. And then he just moves on.

It's insane. Yeah. I just, I mean, one, I know if this is a podcast, but I need everyone to know that my face looks absurd. But yeah,

For one, it never ceases to amaze me that Rome wrote that into their founding mythology. And I think as a lover of Greece, I think it says a lot. For all Theseus, it was a piece of shit. They did not write a story like that into their mythology. But aside from that, that is wild. That is especially compared to the Met. Yeah.

We feel for the women in that. Yeah. It's making me not so much. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just, it's,

just a baffling kind of like editorial choice to be like you know because he doesn't give many examples for the others he doesn't give historical precedence for the other places that he says are great for meeting women you know the promenades and he specifies like um a few different like landmarks that are great places to pick up women and they're all landmarks dedicated to augustus's family so people read that as a bit of a dig um you know i'll meet them at like um like i

I don't know, it's like Octavia's Colonnade or whatever. And that's kind of it. And then he does the theatre, goes off on this like 50 page, 50 line,

you know, excursus about the rape of the Sabine women in extreme detail. And then just goes, don't forget the races. The races are also a great place to pick up women. But with the races, he talks about how the seating is really confined and it's, you know, they can't escape. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh, you know, it facilitates physical contact. And you think like, okay, if you left it there, arguably a bit creepy, but maybe okay. And he's like, cause she can't get away. And it just, yeah. Yeah.

But you're not helping yourself of it. No! Okay, this, I meant to ask this earlier, but you've really set it up now with the Augustus reference. Where does this fall in his exile? Because he was exiled by Augustus, right? And so there's, I know there's a lot of debate about like, whether even the Met is written kind of as a dig to Augustus and like kind of how he felt about him. So do you know where these poems like,

fall into that timeline yeah yeah so i mean it's it's definitely pre-exile um the dating is it's around like zero between like 2 bce and 2 ce essentially right from from what i know um yeah so so we've got that before his exile i think the met is usually dated to around like 8 ce um

So this kind of predates that, although that's not to say that he wasn't working on The Met at the same time, because it's 15 books long. It probably took him a very long time. And arguably you could see the beginnings of The Met here with these

mythological excursuses that he goes on. So yeah, the big thing about Ovid's exile in the Tristia, I believe, or Ex Pontus, one of his pieces of exile poetry, he claims that he was exiled for what he calls a carmen et error, so a poem and a mistake. And people take the carmen

usually to be the Alzheimer's. They believe that, you know, with Augustus's moral laws about adultery and the protection of the family and

Ovid kind of prescribing casual sex, promoting adultery, all of this stuff is it just doesn't sit well with what Augustus is trying to put forward. You know, really trying to protect the Roman family and ensure that the elites were reproducing at the right rate. Ovid is essentially sticking his fingers up to that, whether on purpose or not.

So yeah, I think, like you say, it's very debated what he was exiled for. We don't know what the error was either, the mistake. There's a suggestion, which I find quite convincing, that he got himself involved with someone in the Julian family and maybe was involved in some kind of adultery within the imperial family. So that would be a pretty good reason to exile him. Yeah.

But as far as I know, his wife goes with him to exile as well. So who knows? Not to say that he wouldn't cheat on his wife, you know, from his poetry. No, it sounds like he would. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that's kind of...

the general consensus, if we can call it a consensus, is that usually it's argued that if there is a Carmen poem which was responsible for his exile, it's got to be the Ars Amatoria. And if there was a mistake, it's likely to be something that would be a personal slight to Augustus. You know, how much truth there is in that, we don't know. And again, it comes from Ovid's own kind of autobiography.

autobiographical in inverted commas writing so how much he would yeah exaggerate or try and you know it would be a really good self-promotion technique to say yeah because he it may be he just made a mistake and then was like I'm gonna say it was one of my poems as well and then people are gonna be fixated on it for 2000 years because he was the type of poet who thought forward and you know the metamorphoses he's like I've sealed myself into the literary canon now

And he's not wrong. He's lucky that his work got preserved in manuscripts. I mean, we've lost his Medea, which is really tragic, but most of his work survives. I was just going to say, just even hearing you reference Medea earlier, I mean, I've always been fascinated by the fact that he had a Medea that we don't have and what was that like? But from my love of the Met, I've always...

been drawn towards the idea that his Medea could be, you know, in the vein of, I mean, of the others, right? The ones that do survive because both Euripides and Seneca, uh,

tend to be fairly sympathetic to her plight. And now I wonder, now I wonder if it would just be like this like massive pro Jason, like Kriosa didn't deserve it kind of thing. Like I'm so curious. I know it's, it's such a travesty. It's one of those things that you hope will just show up one day in one of these old, you know, rubbish dumps where they just discover stuff. But yeah. I mean, again,

I'd like to think that, yeah, that he would, you know, be part of the, like, justice for Medea team. Yeah. I think that, yeah, the poetry like that where arguably he's taking it more seriously. So, you know, that would be, again,

I guess, a play of sorts. Or even if he was telling it in the same way as The Met. I do believe that he has a more serious tone in those, even though he's still himself and he's still a bit jovial. He has always got a bit of tongue-in-cheek. I think that he's capable of being a serious writer. And I like to think that in Madea he probably would do that. I think that The Isles is the biggest example we have of this just absolute absurdity

I feel like I keep calling it silliness, which is quite reductive. It's just the word that comes to mind. But yeah, it's absolutely absurd. It is kind of comforting to call it silly though too because I think we have to be reductive because that's –

Like, I think that's actually almost important because it shouldn't be taken seriously at all. It is silly. Like, that's, I think, a good thing to emphasize. Yeah. But yeah, like what you're saying, like, he can be very serious in the Met. I mean, particularly in the Medea episodes of the Met, he's quite serious. Makes me think of...

Procne and Philomela where he is incredibly serious like that is a traumatic story and he tells it like a horror show yeah so it is so interesting then to to turn to this work and and see sort of this other side because yeah I mean he was he was very capable of serious poetry and serious storytelling yeah it's interesting that you bring up yeah Procne and Philomela because it's it's

One that I've been doing in these lessons with about the Met and well, about, about kind of women in ancient literature. And the example from the Met that we've used is that story and teaching that is really interesting. But people come at it from completely different angles as well. Like some people read it as purely just horrific and that's because he's a man and he's taking pleasure in showing this horrible event and others see him as really, really sympathetic and,

towards Philomela and, you know, I mean...

through this, it's not the type of poem or kind of episode that I think I would have revisited of my own accord really and actually going back through it and really thinking about her I think that she is such an interesting character and Ovid's portrayal of her is really interesting because she kind of maintains her femininity throughout everything that happens to her a lot of his, especially his rape victims well barely any of them get revenge at all most of them are metamorphosed as part of like a

a way of saving them in inverted commas. Um,

And yeah, the fact that she gets revenge, but arguably isn't really masculinized in her strength. She still maintains this real femininity. And that was something that a lot of people have like, you know, talking about it that they've resonated with. It's like, rarely do you get ancient women who are strong without also being kind of masculine. If you think of like Atalanta and figures like that, who are like, I'm going to remain virginal.

in a way where I compete with men so that they can't like win me over. Yeah. She's, she's a really interesting character and it's, it's so difficult to, yeah, to reconcile Ovid in episodes like that. And Ovid, the Ovid that's written this, this piece where, yeah, he's talking about the Sabine rape and saying like, that's why you should go to the theater. And, you know, this is funny. And, and I mean, I, you can see the same kind of,

seriousness and understanding of the horror of these assaults in that short passage about the Sabine rape but the context that he sits it in is completely just it's just yeah a huge juxtaposition um and he does yeah that I think book one is the the most rife with this kind of stuff so a bit later on um

He says, it's all right to use force. Force of that sort goes down well with the girls. They love to yield what they'd love to yield. They'd often rather have stolen.

So this is one of the quotes that, again, you know, we talk about him being kind of absurd and that as kind of, I guess I don't want to draw too much of a distinction between like learned readers and like layman readers, because I believe that everyone should be able to access this poetry and understand it. But like, surely you have to have some kind of deliberate blinkers on to read that and be like, cool, I'm going to apply that to my life now. But that's what's happening. And that's why these texts are so important to keep going back to is because it's

Someone has read that and gone, right, so forceful sex is okay, especially to the point where it's basically rape, although I don't believe he uses the word rape. The translation I have says, yeah, the audacity of near rape is a compliment.

Well, that sounds like he is picking. I don't even know what the word I want, but he is picking and choosing what he's calling rape. Because literally, if you I mean, you've just described rape. You can't just then call it near rape and say, well, I didn't. I didn't say rape. Like, well, if you describe nonconsensual sex, I'm sorry to tell you that's what it is. Yeah, exactly. Reminds me of I.

like obviously the point of my podcast is to talk about how most of Greek mythology involves assault and we've not been taught that it is assault for like the last hundreds of years but the number of times that I have been told that like

because, say, the story of... You know what? I'll say the story of, say, Europa, right? I don't think that one's... I think, no, it is often described as the rape of Europa. Yeah, yeah. These stories that we call that, we call it the rape of a woman. But obviously that terminology has been used for hundreds of years. And so people will come to me and they'll say like,

Oh, no, no. That's just an old word that meant abduction. And I just look at like, I mean, obviously, I'm not never looking at these people. It's always online, but I just want to look them dead in the eye and be like, why do you think that is?

why do you think that the word for abduction used to be rape is it because that was the intention of the abduction like get a grip yeah that's the whole point like you can't just say it wasn't rape just because you want it to not be when you described it when you described it was a rape what can I tell you like yeah yeah yeah that's oh that's so yeah so yeah yeah

I think, yeah, the only other point I had on this type of stuff that I just really wanted to draw out is a bit away from that side of things. Still in a similar vein, but not as explicitly about raping women, I guess. Something that he kind of preaches throughout is this idea of like, I guess like a meritocracy of like...

work hard enough at your pickup artistry and work hard enough at your seduction, whatever we want to call it. It's essentially the same stuff that is in modern pickup artistry. Yeah, work hard enough and you will be able to win over any woman. And I think that that is a really...

I think this is actually almost the crux of the issue is that that is such a dangerous precedent that Ovid is saying any woman can be won over and this is what's dangerous about pickup artistry and how it links into incels is people feel like they have a right and that this is you know that being told no means try again later and when they keep getting told no yeah yeah

Yeah. The no means try harder. Yeah. Yeah. This is what it is. They're saying like he literally is like be persistent. If she if she says no, just try again another time or keep keep persisting. And he literally does prescribe just work harder, work hard enough and you can have any women. And he talks about women's libido is being much stronger than men's, which is a very interesting thing that I think has persisted quite long.

a lot through history and especially like female medicine as well it's quite dangerous this idea that like women that women are really lustful um so yeah he he talks about the female libido being strong then talks about it being like equivalent to a kind of minad style frenzy oh my god and talks about his examples of female lust are all examples of incest and bestiality oh goodness

So he talks about like episodes from the Met, which is why I'm like really hesitant to talk about the dating because it's it's just something that I'm not sure of. And I feel like he's either written part of the Met at this point or is like published bits of it. I really don't know on that side of things. But yeah, he's he's talking about Mirror.

and her wanting to sleep with her father he has another example of incest um he talks about pacify and looking at the bull and being just overwhelmed with lust and like he describes female lust it perpetuates this idea which you still see today of like not only it's kind of this use of um

feminism against itself where they're like women have sexual agency but they're told not to talk about it by the patriarchy and that's bad so what we have to do is decide for them what they want and that's the level that's kind of been reached today and actually it's interesting to see this with others that he has a similar thing but obviously just not quite as conscious of itself I guess where he's saying yeah women are

lustful and sex crazed and therefore they will go for you if you try hard enough like of course they will no idea about exclusively lesbian women I mean I know that homosexuality wasn't conceived of in the same way in the ancient world but like yeah there would have been women who only wanted to sleep with women there would have been asexual women yeah there's just this yeah this concept that like they

they must want you somehow. And I think, yeah, that's like, I guess like the main point that I wanted to make about the kind of the dangers here. It's not all just,

cherry picking certain aspects of the text and putting it into this modern context, which is a huge issue. It's also, there is this rhetoric here, which I believe has been continued. I don't believe that all of these people are using Ovid as a direct source. I think that it's a continuation over, you know, thousands of years of this idea that, yeah, if you work hard enough, you'll be able to get what you want. And there's, yeah, no,

kind of concept of a woman's right to say no and yeah a woman's just the idea that women might not want to sleep with you which is why you then get these disillusioned men who believe that they are involuntarily celibate because they're like well i'm trying just assholes yeah yeah don't be an asshole that's that's the number one solution for incels be not gross like come on

It reminds me of so much rhetoric from today where you know that these people aren't reading Ovid in most cases. It's just that this persists like the idea of, you know, the guy who's mad because he's a nice guy and the girl keeps going for someone else. And it's like, Hey dude, maybe you're not the fucking nice guy. Like you're not the arbiter of that. And then also this idea that like,

I watch a lot of TikToks from women who are happily proclaiming that they're single and child free because that is what I am. And it's nice to not be alone. And the number of times that they'll reply to a man's comment where it's like, oh, you're going to end up an old cat lady. And the women are like,

Great. Do you think that's a threat? Like if the, if the decision is between, and it's, I, I realized I didn't even register the fact that I'm sitting here with my cat on my lap. Yeah. Pausing that sentence to deal with the fact that won't leave me alone. But yeah,

But yeah, like this, it's like, okay, if I have to choose between a shitty man who, who is just going to make my life more difficult or the complete freedom of living on my own with a loving little cat, like, oh, I'm so sorry. Like, yeah, I'm going to be sad for the rest of my life because I don't have you at this asshole, like in my life. Like,

like it's this this bizarre mentality that that all women must like or just for sure like all straight women let's even just go that far yeah like all straight women must want a man that's the ultimate goal and eventually they will get so tired of being single that they'll settle for a piece of shit and it's like

I don't know how to tell you that being single is like pretty great. Like I don't answer to anybody and I do not need that to change unless the guy is amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And guess what? They're mostly not. And that's fine too. Yeah.

You know, it really reminds me, it's literally something I saw today. There's, you know, around this time of year in particular, I don't know if they do it in like, you know, North America as well. But in the UK, we have these reclaim the night marches where, especially as it starts to get darker, because of like daylight savings, women will all gather and just walk through the town. And it's about, you know, we should feel safe walking at night. I wish we had that, but we don't.

Yeah, yeah. There's one happening in Exeter at the end of this month, which is why it's kind of fresh in my mind. And they shared this, it was just a Twitter exchange. And it was this guy saying,

reasons why women are single they walk too fast they have their headphones on they're rude when I try and talk to them and it was like someone had replied to it basically saying like the three main ways that women present like protect themselves from unwanted attention is by walking fast and wearing headphones and being abrupt so sorry we're doing that on purpose yeah that is intentional because we do not want to talk to you I don't know how to tell you like that's not an accident yeah

But I really think that that's such a, it's such a good like way of understanding their mentality. Like a lot of the time, like obviously we're generalizing obviously, but like,

But again, like, I mean, if there's a dude listening to my show of all shows who thinks that when I say this, I mean him specifically, then you know what? Probably I do. Because the good ones realize that I'm talking about the shitty ones. Yeah. We're going to get loads of not all men in the comments. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine. It's like my entire show. Like, it's fine. This is not new. But like, yeah, this mentality that like, we must...

want a man and it is because like the reasons why we're single or stuff like that walking too fast with headphones like oh you must you need to stop doing that because you want a man it's like that yeah they can't fathom that that's on purpose yeah yeah that's the whole point yeah I walk with headphones on so no one talks to me yeah yeah it's like I 100% do that yeah yeah yes yeah it

like I mean safety yes absolutely it's safety like you know I think it's so important that we like are so open about all the different things that women do to protect ourselves from men but like

In addition to it's also that, you know, nine times out of 10, if a dude talks to you on the street, he's being a creep. So even if I'm not feeling like explicitly unsafe, you know, like it's, it's light out, I'm in a crowd of people, whatever, like, I still want to avoid a creepy dude talking to me. Yeah, yeah, you know, like, that's still the point. Like, I think

you know, one of the last times that, that I had a guy try to like, you know, my walking around with my headphones in and like, you know, they've like make a motion to you to like take them out or whatever. And it's like, for me, which is not visible on this call, but like, for me, one of the things that men do most is to like,

They think they're complimenting, like I'm covered in tattoos and, and they just like think they're complimenting it. And they're always fucking weird. And it's like, it's such a, it's a kind of similar mindset specifically tied to, I think women with tattoos that like,

The idea that I got them. And I want men to talk to me about them. And like that's why I got tattoos. And I'm like. I can't assure you enough. That like these are not for you. I don't want to talk to you about them. I don't want you to compliment my ink. Like you're always going to sound like a dumbass. And it's always dudes who aren't tattooed. Because dudes who are tattooed get it. And you're like.

I just, yeah, I find it. It's so entertaining to kind of navigate. You didn't go through hours of needles, stabbing your skin and pay hundreds and potentially thousands of dollars to get this stuff on you.

for a guy to stop you in the street and be like cool egg like honestly that was just the word tat and I just hate the word tat more than anything anyway yeah oh just the ways that this is just still so relevant is I mean I I knew but it's still my god it's horrifying

Yeah. I mean, just to like, I guess, bring it back into a bit a little bit, there's, you know, if we're talking about women out on the street, I don't know how much of that, you know, we'll end up on the, on the cutting room floor, but the idea of like being able to walk around and not be bothered, um,

um he does talk about in his advice about you know how to how to get a woman approach her when she's out in her litter so like her little walking group with her kind of companions that little guards that are keeping her safe um make sure that you vary her pace so that sometimes you're ahead of her sometimes you're behind her um make sure that like whenever you can you brush your hand against hers and and that just reads as like

stalkerish and he says like literally follow her down the promenades if she goes for walks make sure you know where her walking spots are like stuff like this it's just like it's literally follow women but also rub up against them as much as possible without seeing if they actually want that like

I think as a woman reading these texts, you're kind of just like, that really isn't good advice. Because I mean, not to give him credit, but I guess like certain bits of it are just interesting or seem to be about forming good relationships. It's, you know, it is like take care of her when she's ill and then he'll finish that off with,

the seeds that you've sown will reap you a big reward in the future. You can't even be nice about this one nice thing. I was trying to give an example of him being nice and I just backed out. I just realised that wasn't a good example. But there are bits and pieces where he gives advice that would actually be relatively useful.

And obviously those are ones that I haven't touched because they're not as fun as well and as interesting and just inflammatory, you know. But I would never advise anyone to read this book and actually take any of it as advice because there is this undercurrent all the way through of just persist and get access to the woman at any cost, essentially.

Yeah. I mean, that's true of all like of modern pickup artistry too, where it's like, this is not going to work. You have been conned into thinking that this will work. Yeah. And, and that's simply not the case. It's horrific advice. What are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. And with modern pickup artistry as well, there's this kind of,

even clearer idea to bring it back to like the the meritocracy and like if you work hard enough you you get what you want not only is that in Ovid's work it's more just like a dangerous precedent to set

But in modern pickup artistry, they will make them keep paying to come back. It's not only exploitative of the women that they approach, it's exploitative of the men who take part in these things. There's a really good piece by, it's kind of a sociological text by Rachel O'Neill called Seduction. And she basically immersed herself in pickup artist cultures in all like kind of seduction groups in London, England.

So this book came out, I think, in 2018. So it was like for a couple of years before that. And she talks about like the money side of it, that like they just they just keep paying to come back. And a lot of them end up really disillusioned by the end of it. And I think that that's like pickup artistry on its own is pretty dangerous and creepy and weird. But once you then get these disillusioned guys who have had their heads filled with ideas about what they deserve,

Because they've worked so hard and paid so much money. That's where I think that the real danger lies in all of this. And that, yeah, that they can take an ancient text that certainly does have these elements in it and just present snippets of it.

as evidence, it really gives people the idea that what they're doing is right as well, which is why I think it's so important to talk about these poems, especially as people who are reading them in a wider context, understanding the context that they were written in. And, you know, knowing that Ovid is rarely serious in his love poetry, that, you know,

whether you buy into him just being like a fun little prankster or not, I think there's this idea that people who aren't familiar with the context are just taking it for their own means. And yeah, that's why I think it's really important that we keep talking about them. There's this suggestion that like,

should we teach the arts amatoria it's like absolutely we need to content warning loads of it but I think it's really important that we are talking about it and understanding where these thought processes come from yeah no I mean it makes me think of like the the number of times that I have been told that like I need to just stick to the mythology and not talk about the treatment of women and I'm like

That's literally what I'm doing. It's that the mythology treats women like shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like if we keep only taking in these, these versions that have been retold to wash over all of that and pretend as though all these women actually loved Zeus, even when he was a fucking swan. Like, yeah. Yeah. Like that's,

like that's what's ridiculous. Like what I'm doing is literally talking about the ancient sources exactly as they exist. I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable, like that's how it is. And, and yeah, I mean, it is very applicable to Ovid. And yeah, I mean, for, for all that, like,

Yeah, I think it's pretty safe to say that he recognizes the absurdity in a lot of the R's. Like, he is still saying it. It does still exist. Like, we can absolutely still talk about it. And it's the same, you know, like, a lot of people hear me and they think that, they're like, why do you talk about this if you hate mythology? And I'm like, I fucking love mythology. I just am still going to talk about how it was awful to women. And it's like, I'll still love Ovid.

and his met and like be fascinated by him and register that the ours is gross and dangerous, especially today. But like, yeah, I mean, we, we can have both. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And like, we don't know what he was like as a person and, you know, I mean, I feel like it's kind of echoing what, um, I know you had, uh, Freddie Kimpton come on here and something that he said really kind of resonated with me. Cause I mean, we've,

studied together and we talk about Ovid quite a lot and we come at Ovid's work from completely opposite points of view as well in terms of he's focusing on different poems to me and I think the thing that Freddie said that's really just important for the ours as well is like all we have is the words and

So, you know, in terms of if we are to just reduce it to what we have written down, what we have written down is difficult and worth talking about. And that's kind of the crux of it, I guess, is just that.

no matter whether we read it as meant to be kind of tongue in cheek, meant to be taken seriously, these words still have effect. And it's, you know, a different reader can interpret them differently. And there are readers out there who are taking this at face value and going out into the world and behaving in the way that Ovid says to behave, which just, yeah, isn't the type of world that I kind of feel safe in, I guess. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and what you said earlier, you know, about how, like, one, yeah, like, modern pickup artistry is a full, like, they're scam artists in the exact same breath that they are misogynist assholes. Like, what they're doing is dangerous for women, but it is also scamming men. Like, they are talented in their, just generally being horrific. But also, like, yeah, the mentality that it, that imbues, that it, that men think they deserve. Yeah. Yeah.

women and sex like that's that's the danger and yeah like you know if if if examining and talking about this ancient work can also like you know draw light on on that that's still happening that that these you know ideas still exist and they're still disgusting and we you know still can like

kind of what is going on there or just like enlighten people who aren't like that, you know, about these works and like allow them to kind of see it for what it is, both absurd and, you know, and dark and twisted. And, you know, like, I mean...

Yeah, it's still, it's absolutely still valid also to study problematic works. Yeah, yeah. Like, as long as you recognize that they're problematic. Exactly, yeah. Like, this isn't entirely the same, but I fucking love Medea. Like, I'm fine when she kills her children, because it's fictional, and it's 2,500 years old, and like, I can just still enjoy it, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, I don't know, it's interesting whenever...

any kind of ancient work comes under fire like that or think about it in the opposite respect where where like the right-wing conservatives are like they're trying to cancel homer and you're like oh my god get a fucking grip like the closest thing to ever even remotely attempting to like stop studying something would be something that is outright dangerous like ours and even still like i think we should still study it yeah like i mean god the idea that anyone's trying to cancel homer get a grip yeah yeah oh it's it's ridiculous i think yeah with the whole you know

If we were never to study texts that were problematic, classics and ancient history as a discipline would be dead. It would be gone. All literature would be dead. I have an English degree, did a double major. I can tell you that studying English lit is just as problematic as studying classics. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You find out, you know, that the guys that were writing all of these amazing pieces of literature just...

absolute dicks in their personal lives yeah yeah

Oh, it's just, yeah. Oh my God. This, I knew this conversation would be good, but it's fucking fascinating. It's so gross. Like I do love though to, to laugh at it in this way and to point out the absurdity. I do think like you're saying, like it is so beneficial, but also deeply enjoyable. Yeah. Really, really fun to just like, yeah, to have a bit of time to talk about it in this way, because it's, it's difficult when you're studying something like the arts to, to get across the,

this kind of, I mean, you know, I feel like in terms of scholarly views, I have sat very much on the fence throughout this whole thing. And that is where I am at the moment is like, I'm not sure whether I read of it as sincere or tongue in cheek. And that's the really good kind of thing about, I guess, this format is that I don't need to know. I haven't really written all that much about the hours because I just struggle with it too much. I'm like, I'm going to disagree with myself in two years time. So yeah, it's really nice to have the opportunity to just

to just chat about it and talk about how absolutely fucking insane it is. And yeah, I mean, no matter which side you fall on of that,

of that question. It's still fucking absurd. So this conversation is just as valid regardless of, of what opinion you might form or then change two years later or whatever, because like you said, or like Freddie said on my, that past episode, like the words are what we have and the words are absurd and silly in that way where I think it is kind of nice to be reductive because it is so just over the top ridiculous. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, we're,

regardless of what Ovid did or did not mean of whether he was a cool guy or a piece of shit or somewhere in the middle like regardless of any of that he wrote this and here we are so this is what we've got yeah no absolutely

Yeah, it's just I love it. But clearly, like, we could talk about it forever, but we won't. But is there do you want to share anything with my listeners in terms of reading more from you or following you anywhere? It's also fine if that's not something you want. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I relatively active on Twitter.

I was going to say Twitter, X, Twitter, whatever you want to call it. We can also call it Twitter. Yeah. I'm not calling it. Yeah. It's like a form of protest to keep calling it Twitter. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Speaking of men who are pieces of shit, we're just going to keep calling it Twitter. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. So I have, yeah, like public Twitter and Instagram, both are Imogen underscore Briscoe.

I mean, I'm not massively active on either in terms of posting, but I repost things that are to do with my work. So that's helpful. And I co-edit a magazine which is free to access online. It's currently on a free version of WordPress. We're hoping we might be able to get some money together to make it ad-free eventually. But yeah, it's called Ecclesia Magazine. The idea behind it is it's something that myself and

it was well, one of my friends from my MA came up with this idea kind of post MA because he was out of classics and missed it so much that he wanted to still be writing about it and still be involved in that world. - I know that feeling. - Yeah, yeah. - That's why I have a podcast. - Yeah. The whole ethos of it is like accessibility. So it's always gonna be free to access, even if that means that it's on a bit of a, you know, an ad ridden platform at the moment.

Also, we accept submissions from anyone, regardless of level of, you know, academic achievement. We're not looking for exclusively, you know, doctors, PhDs, things like that. We've got a couple on there just because obviously that's my kind of work circle. But yeah, we publish on anything to do with the ancient world. So I've written a couple of pieces for that. I've written one on a poet from Devon called Fiona Benson, who's done a book called

it's it's a lovely poetry anthology but really hard-hitting in places um where she kind of refigures a lot of stories from the met and she recasts zeus as like a modern rapist so in places i mean it's called zeus obviously it's jupiter in the met but a lot of her sources are taken from the met so she has a kind of a daphne episode and io um and she kind of

it's kind of timeless but like recontextualizes it a bit more modern so basically the the premise is that zeus is on trial um and we're seeing different pieces of evidence against him it's it's a brilliant brilliant piece of work i don't know how i haven't heard of

heard of this yeah this is like everything I want yeah so we've actually got two pieces published on that one piece of work because a couple of us are just absolutely obsessed with it so yeah I wrote something about um kind of this idea of timelessness in victimhood and mainly focusing on Fiona Benson but I think that that idea is really applicable to the Met as well

So yeah, that's the main thing to push is, you know, Ecclesia magazine. We work very hard on it. We've only been doing it for like seven months. So it's still a bit of a baby. But, you know, any readership is brilliant for us. And then, yeah, we're always looking for secondary editors, people to write for us, stuff like that. So let me just double check what, because our handles are different on Instagram and Twitter at the moment.

Yeah, Ecclesia underscore magazine. So Ecclesia as in the Greek word for like a gathering, not ecclesiastical churches. Great. Yeah. And then yeah, on Twitter, it's Ecclesia underscore mag, just mag rather than magazine.

Yeah. That's the main thing to promo. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm so glad to have heard about that. I will. Yeah. I'll link to everything in the episodes description so people can find it, but I'm also just going to go and follow. Yeah. I will. This is exciting. I love learning about new things too, but I'm also always happy to, to promote that stuff. So yeah. Thank you so much. That's really lovely. Yeah. No,

Oh, I love that that exists. That's so great. Well, thank you so much for doing this. This was ridiculous amounts of fun. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Like I said, it's just so nice to be able to, yeah, just, just talk about absolute absurdity of this text and not in a kind of a lower pressure context. I'm not having to come to any big conclusions. It's lovely. It's my favorite thing about this show. We're just going to rant and ramble about the ancient world and like, and everyone loves to listen. So it's perfect. Yeah. Yeah.

Ha ha ha, nerds. Thank you so much for listening. As always, enormous thanks to Imogen for having this conversation. Like, not only is it a topic I so wanted to talk about more, but we just had so much fun, which is hard when you're talking about something utterly horrifying. But we did great together and I appreciate it. I can't tell you enough how horrifying some of the Ars Amatoria is, not least because of the ways it has inspired modern dangerous men.

Uh-huh. But fortunately, when something is so utterly absurd, it's also seriously fun to make fun of. Just like the entire incel mentality. Maybe just don't be an asshole. Have you ever thought of that? Anyway, this episode was long enough, so I will just leave you by saying that you can find links to Imogen's social media that she mentioned in the episode's description, as well as the Ecclesia magazine, which seems very wonderful and cool.

The more accessible ancient content, the better. So find links to everything in the description there. Let's Talk About Myths, baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Smith is the Hermes to my Olympians, better known as the assistant producer. Laura Smith is the production assistant.

assistant, and audio engineer. The podcast is part of the iHeart Podcast Network. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Help me continue bringing you the world of Greek mythology and the ancient Mediterranean by becoming a patron, where you will get to bonus episodes and more. And current patrons, I promise you will hear from me soon. It's been a time.

um visit patreon.com slash miss baby or click the link in this episode's description a reminder about my patreon it is primarily considered to be helping me with the free podcast you do not get a lot of bonus content and i will not pretend otherwise i do not have the time i am i am perpetually drowning but there is a lot of backed up bonus content and if you want to help you would be just helping me produce you know two free episodes a week i am live and i love this shit