By Marguerite Johnson
The Medicamina Faciei Femineae is a didactic elegy that showcases an early instance of Ovid's trademark mix of poetic guideline and trivial subject material. Exploring lady good looks and cosmeceuticals, with specific emphasis at the inspiration of cultus, the poem offers 5 useful recipes for remedies for Roman ladies. protecting either didactic parody and pharmacological truth, this deceptively complicated poem possesses wit and vivacity and gives a massive perception into Roman social mores and daily actions.
The first complete examine in English dedicated to this little-researched yet multi-faceted poem, Ovid on Cosmetics contains an advent that situates the poem inside its literary historical past of didactic and elegiac poetry, its position in Ovid's oeuvre and its relevance to social values, own aesthetics and attitudes to girl attractiveness in Roman society. The Latin textual content is gifted on parallel pages along a brand new translation, and all Latin phrases and words are translated for the non-specialist reader. distinct remark notes elucidate the textual content and person words nonetheless extra.
Ovid on Cosmetics provides and explicates this witty, subversive but major poem. Its realization to the technicalities of cosmeceuticals and cosmetics, together with exact analyses of person parts and the consequences of particular lotions and make-up, make this paintings an important contribution to the wonder in antiquity.
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Extra info for Ovid on Cosmetics: Medicamina Faciei Femineae and Related Texts
Frankincense has lengthy been well-known as having ‘antibacterial, antibiotic, antifungal, and antiseptic homes . . . The Boswellia resin is unhazardous to people and will be utilized externally, together with different items or on my own. ’ (Ben-Yehoshua et al 2012: 34). as well as its numerous makes use of in historic and sleek medicinal drugs, together with holistic treatments, the Boswellia resin (in powered shape) has been utilized in dermis remedies and beautification remedies for hundreds of thousands of years, treating ‘signs of getting older, equivalent to wrinkles, epidermis sagging, 76 Ovid on Cosmetics darkish spots, dermis infections, dermis inflammation, cuts, scarring, zits, chilly sores, chapped lips, and varicose veins’ (Ibid. 37). Theophrastus (Enquiry into crops nine. eleven) recommends frankincense combos for sores. Celsus recommends frankincense combos for detoxing the surface (5. five) and in addition for effective emollients (5. 17). Dioscorides (1. sixty eight) cites a plethora of illnesses (wounds, ulcerated cavities, warts, eruptions at the face) handled with frankincense recipes and prescribes a mix of frankincense and soda for a pores and skin cleaner and dandruff therapy; cf. additionally Miller and Morris (1988: 78–80, 298–304) and, particularly, Majno (1975: 207–219). (ii) Natron (natrum), recalling nitri spuma rubentis of l. seventy three, is identified as sodium carbonate. Rosati (1985: seventy nine) means that the assumption in the back of this line, with using ‘natron’ and the verb radere (‘to scrape’, ‘to shave’, ‘to smooth’), indicates a method that soothes the surface whereas completely detoxification it. For touch upon radere and the choice manuscript analyzing, cf. p. 138. (iii) Gum (gummi = cummi); cf. above p. sixty five. (iv) Myrrh (myrra), as saw by means of Riddle (1997: 51), ‘was recognized to Greek mythology sooner than it seemed in Greek scientific documents’ and Ovid comprises the aetiology of myrrh in Met. 10. 298–502. Like a few of the stories within the Metamorphoses, this one is stuffed with taboo and dire punishments: Myrrha, the daughter of King Cinyras of Assyria, lusted after her father (Ovid blames the Furies) and needs to make like to him. Aided through her nurse, she finally finds the way to seduce Cinyras within the darkness of evening, and for numerous days, in anonymity, she visits her father and necessarily conceives a baby. On Cinyras’s discovery of her identification, Myrrha is pressured to flee. drained, seriously pregnant and having walked for months via Arabia, she pleads with the gods to free up her, which they do, reworking her into the myrrh tree (Commiphora myrrha) whereas her unborn son, born from bark and foliage, is Adonis. The sap from the tree, myrrh, is named Myrrha’s tears. Like frankincense, myrrh is a aromatic gum from southern Arabia. within the tale, Myrrha walks in the course of the spice areas of Arabia, together with the southwest, recognized for its frankincense. just like the tale, the species Commiphora myrrha produces myrrh within the form of tears. In antiquity, via to modernity, myrrh has performed a job in therapeutic; the resin owning antiinflammatory and antibacterial houses (Ben-Yehoshua et al 2012: 46).