In these instances Ovid refers to place, not to time, and it is only as part of the passages as a whole that the individual references can be understood. It will be seen that all the localities, beginning with the Porticus of Pompey in the Campus Martius, are merely casual. It is at the theater and circus where Ovid’s pupils are chiefly to pick out the ladies of their light loves. For that reason the other places specified are also, to a certain extent, show places. The mention of the law-courts is especially noteworthy in this connection.
We must therefore assume that in the Jewish proseucha and in the temple of the Egyptian Isis there were to be found a certain number of curious onlookers, particularly women, and while many of them became ardent converts, a certain number were innocent of any intentions except to while away an idle hour, and were easy game for the professional “mashers” for whom Ovid writes. Isis and Judaism were the two Oriental cults which at this time had the greatest success in Rome. And we can easily imagine how the unoccupied of all classes thronged to every new fashion in religious stimulation as in others.
Ovid is as explicit in the selection of time as of place.
Do not disregard time,... Avoid the first of April. Then the rainy season begins, and storms are frequent. But begin the day of the defeat at the Allia, or the day on which the Sabbath feast comes again, which the Syrian from Palestine celebrates. That’s a day on which other business ought not to be done. (Ars. Am. i. 413 seq.)
Again, in his palinode, with which he vainly hoped to regain his shattered reputation, “The Cure for Love” (vv. 214 seq.), he brings the same things together:
Off with you; take a long journey to some distant land.... The less you want to go, the more you must; remember that! Be firm and make your unwilling feet run. Do not pray for rain. Let no imported Sabbaths hinder you, nor the day on which we remember the disaster on the Allia.[[270]]
As far as Ovid is concerned, and we must assume he is speaking for Fuscus’ multi, a certain Jewish feast, whether it is the Sabbath or some special holiday, such as the Day of Atonement, is ranked with the Dies Alliensis, the fifteenth of July, the day on which, in 390 B.C.E., the Romans suffered their great defeat at the hands of the Gauls, and which was in consequence an ill-omened day from that time forth. Again, the Sabbath is classed with the rainy season as a day that might ordinarily incline a man to put off serious business.
As stated in the Notes, it is a common error to suppose that the generally ill-omened character of these days makes them eminently proper for flirtation. No Roman, however cynical, could flout superstition to that extent. The advice is given for purely practical considerations. The rainy season at the time of the equinoxes is an inauspicious time to begin a courtship, which, as we have seen in the previous passage, must be carried on almost wholly in the open air. Social gatherings in the houses of friends in the society of ladies were not common. There was nothing among the Romans to correspond to modern five-o’clock’s or receptions, at which court might be paid to anyone who had caught the fancy of the Roman man about town. It is in the porticoes, in the idle crowds at the theater or circus, where the steps of ingratiating are to be carried out, and for these the rising of the Pleiades (Ars. Am. i. 409) is distinctly unpromising.
This is especially borne out by the passage immediately following the one quoted from the “Art of Love” (Ars. Am. i. 417 seq.). The most inauspicious day to attempt the beginning of an intrigue is the lady’s birthday. Gifts are in order then, and they undoubtedly deplete one’s pocket-book. Ovid is jocose here, but the point is the same throughout. The hints and suggestions are as practical and direct as the formula of Ovid’s face-powder, which he also sets forth in the unfinished verses called Medicamina Faciei Femineae.
That which makes the Dies Alliensis and the Jewish Sabbath desirable is the fact that the former is in mid-July and the latter in the early fall, the most delightful of Italian seasons. Then an unbroken series of cloudless skies is almost assured; and the Roman fop could count on meeting his fair one day after day in one of the places of assignation so conveniently enumerated by Ovid.