Apollo’s art in pursuing women not only leads to the ruin of respectable women but also reveals Apollo as a spiteful and malevolent lover. Consequently, the women whom Apollo pursues unsuccessfully, such as Cassandra and Daphne, also meet a dreadful end. This is the fate of a girl whose conquest was successful. Once Apollo had forced Leucothoe to succumb to his lustful love, Leucothoe was punished by her father for the immorality of the act by being buried alive. Ovid himself describes an instance in his Metamorphoses in which Apollo’s love conquest ends in death. Within the first pages, Ovid claims that his “art has come from Apollo.” While Apollo may be the god of many virtues such as of music, poetry and prophesy, his craft in attaining women’s love stands to be less than virtuous. The first book is primarily composed of references to ancient Roman myths and heroes however, there are a few key allusions which not only justify but actually promote an immoral pursuit of women. Religion was the muse of Ovid’s controversial The Art of Love. To decipher the manner in which Ovid accomplishes his feat one must not only consider his exploitation of religion as a mode of persuasion, but also these ancient beings themselves, whose scandalous lives and love affairs are deeply rooted with that same decadence and which Ovid tries to promote in Book I of his Ars Amatoria: rape. Ovid seeks to conduct his audience by providing them with a myriad of examples from the most respected, yet most immoral entity in ancient times: the Roman gods. When contemplating the decadent advice Ovid offers this Roman population in moral decay, one must consider what tools Ovid utilizes to persuade his audience to follow his teachings. This was the Rome of Ovid’s time, but more importantly this was the audience for whom The Art of Love was written. By 18 BC, morality among the citizens of Rome had depleted by such degree that the emperor was impelled to enact the lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus, which instituted adultery as a crime punishable by death or exile.
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