and Roman poets sought merely to beguile a class of women whose charms were for sale to anyone.  One of these profligate men might cringe and wail and cajole, to gain the good will of a capricious courtesan, but he never dreamed of bending his knees to win the honest love of the maid he took to be his wife (that he might have male offspring.) Roman love was not romantic, nor was Greek.  It was frankly sensual, and the gallantry of the men was of a kind that made them erect golden images in public places to honor Phryne and other prostitutes.  In a word, their gallantry was sham gallantry; it was gallantry not in the sense of polite attentions to women, springing from unselfish courtesy and esteem, but in the sinister sense of profligacy and amorous intrigue.  There were plenty of gallants, but no real gallantry.

OVID’S SHAM GALLANTRY

While it is undoubtedly true that Ovid exercised a greater influence on mediaeval bards, and through them on modern erotic writers, than any other ancient poet, and while I still maintain that he anticipated and depicted some of the imaginative phases of modern love (see my R.L.P.B., 90-92), a more careful study of the nature of gallantry has convinced me that I erred in finding the “morning dawn of romantic love” in the counsels regarding gallant behavior toward women given in the pages of Ovid.[33] He does, indeed, advise a lover never to notice the faults of a woman whose favor he wishes to win, but to compliment her, on the contrary, on her face, her hair, her tapering fingers, her pretty foot; to applaud at the circus whatever she applauds; to adjust her cushion and put the footstool in its place; to keep her cool by fanning her; and at dinner, when she has put her lips to the wine-cup to seize the cup and put his lips to the same place.  But when Ovid wrote this, nothing was farther from his mind than what we understand by gallantry—­an eagerness to perform acts of disinterested courtesy and deference for the purpose of pleasing a respected or adored woman.  His precepts are, on the contrary, grossly utilitarian, being intended not for a man who wishes to win the heart and hand of an honest girl, but for a libertine who has no money to buy the favors of a wanton, and therefore must rely on flatteries and obsequious fawning.

The poet declares expressly that a rich man will not need his Ars Amandi, but that it is written for the poor, who may be able to overcome the greed of the hetairai by tickling their vanity.  He therefore teaches his readers how to deceive such a girl with false flattery and sham gallantry.  The Roman poet uses the word domina, but this domina, nevertheless, is his mistress, not in the sense of one who dominates his heart and commands his respect and affection, but of a despised being lower than a concubine, on whom he smiles only till he has beguiled her.  It is the story of the cat and the mouse.