Valentines in Ancient Rome Were All About Pain

Live Science ^ | Feb 13, 2010 | Clara Moskowitz

[decimon]

While valentine notes today tend to stress caring and warmth, love letters from ancient Rome often highlighted the wrenching, painful side of romance, historians say.

Valentine's Day itself didn't yet exist in ancient Rome, but men still wrote love poems about their sweethearts - often married women, and sometimes men. But where modern declarations of love often involve flattery and gratitude, the ancient Romans wrote more about pain.

Unlike what you see in contemporary stores where we have valentines that are all clouds and dreamy and romantic, the Romans had a very different kind of take on love," said Barbara Gold, a professor of classics at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. "It's not something that is a good feeling usually; it's something that torments you."

She described ancient love poems from about the first century B.C. to around A.D. first century that call love a plague, accuse love of making the writer see double and causing his tongue to swell up.

"You would never go out today and find a valentine that says 'You're like a plague, you set my bone marrow on fire,'" Gold told LiveScience.

In ancient Rome ideas of romantic love were very different - most people never expected to love their spouse.

[decimon]

Romance language ping.

[MrEdd]

*Corny fake brogue*

My love is like a bloody nose
That drips upon the floor
How ever sweet her countenance
Inside she's guts and gore

[decimon]

Perhaps it was more than whiskey to keep the Irish from ruling the world.

[central_va]

see double and causing his tongue to swell up

They can treat that now...

[central_va]

Time to que up Love Stinks by J. Geils Band

[Daffynition]

"The love poems were all written by men, and were mostly directed at women they were having affairs with."

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh .... love poems by men....//swoon

[decimon]

Pithy.

[MrsEmmaPeel]

Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior

Catullus, poem 85

[MrsEmmaPeel]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh .... love poems by men....//swoon

She walks in beauty, like the night ..
Lord Byron of Lady Oxford (not his wife)

[decimon]

I hate and yet I love. Why I do this, you might ask?
I do not know, but I feel it happening, and I am tormented.

[Daffynition]

Or did you mean Pliny? Younger or Older?

In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.
Pliny the Elder

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.
Pliny The Younger

[dangus]

Gay culture. Jess sayin’

[martin_fierro]

Valentines in Ancient Rome Were All About Pain

They still are.

[SunkenCiv]

---

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·

---

Gods
Graves
Glyphs

Thanks decimon.

---

The Sweetness of Honey and the Sting of Bees: A Book of Love from the Ancient Mediterranean by Michelle Louvric and Nikiforos Doxiadis Mardas

---

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach

---

·Dogpile · Archaeologica · LiveScience · Archaeology · Biblical Archaeology Society ·
· Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google ·
· The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

---

[Daffynition]

Tomorrow's special at Denny's...

[decimon]

I meant the message on the fridge is to the point.

[CrazyIvan]

I bought roses the other day. Damn, THAT hurt!

[Daffynition]

Love's Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river
 And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix forever
 With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
 All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
 Why not I with thine? -

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
 And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
 If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
 And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
 If thou kiss not me?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

[Daffynition]

And I was just teasing you. ;)