To crown their bliss, a lovely boy was born;
Paphos his name, who, grown to manhood, wall’d
The city Paphos, from the founder call’d.
The realism of the sculptured figure, together with the aroused passion of the artist, produced a kind of symbiotic philtre, a flaming, kinetic periapt.
In Book 1 of the Ars Amatoria Ovid introduces his basic subject: love unrestrained, Aphrodite Pandemos, patroness of free love, of passion unconfined:
Far hence, ye Vestals, be, who bind your hair;
And wives, who gowns below your ankles wear.
I sing the brothels loose and unconfin’d,
Th’unpunishable pleasures of the kind;
Which all alike, for love, or money find.