Posted on 02/13/2010 7:16:09 AM PST by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
There actually IS a reason that they cast cupid as shooting you with a bow and arrow. That was a battle weapon of that day. It would be like if we gave modern cupid an M-1 Garand or an AR-15.
They thought cupid was one dangerous little guy,,
Nice euphemism...
Duct tape:
Turning no, no, no
into
mmmmm mmmm mmmm....
Tease not the heart that yearns. Or some such crap.
Heh. So, Nazareth was carrying on an ancient Roman tradition?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2BjJbKQkgc
To paraphrase this whole thread, “love, ain’t it grand?”
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