Ovid and Attar’s Warfare of Love

Militia amoris is a trope in Roman erotic elegy wherein love affairs are characterized through imperial language. Ovid’s Amores delineates the trope in “1.9” through extended comparison between behaviors supposedly consistent between lovers and soldiers. “1.9” consequently epitomizes how militia amoris undermined Roman mores in arguing that love affairs—associated with idleness or excess sexuality, and consequently effeminacy—were comparable to militaristic activities intrinsic to proper Roman masculinity (virtus). This counter-culturalism develops through the poet-narrator, Naso’s, submission to his mistress, Corinna, and self-portrayal as Amor’s¹ captive. Ovid’s figurative language for Naso’s submission to Amor and Corinna parallels Farid ud-din Attar’s depiction of a sheikh’s infatuation with a Christian in “The Story of Sheikh San’an.” Dick Davis argues that Attar’s such love poems depict “love that flies in the face of either social or sexual or religious convention” in “an instance of ignoring the world’s demands, of renouncing their authority, in order to fulfill a more overwhelming need, and this is the Sufi duty.”² There is thus a potential antinomian overlap between Ovid and Attar, but these metaphors’ purposes appear unique to either text. Ovid and Attar’s poetics implement similar militaristic metaphors and flame symbolism to depict relationships involving a lover’s submission to the belovèd, and this figurative language reinforces respective thematic and narrative characteristics in each work.

The Amores opens as Naso rebukes the god Amor for interfering in his poetics. An irritated Amor then strikes Naso with an arrow: “At once he chose from his freed quiver / an arrow made for my ruin / […] Miserable me! That boy certainly had arrows. / I burn³, and Amor reigns in my vacant heart.”⁴ “1.1” introduces love through an imperial frame, as Amor’s violence predicates his dominion over Naso in a parallel to military conquest. “1.2” further develops Amor’s conquest as Naso debates yielding to him; here Ovid introduces fire imagery by likening capitulation to Amor—i.e. falling in love—to kindled fire or stirred torch flames⁵. Ovid joins the flame and militaristic figurative language as Naso imagines Amor in a triumphal procession in the manner of a Roman emperor. Naso introduces this fanciful procession by addressing Amor as his captive: “I am [your] new war-spoils, Cupid; / I extend my conquered hands to your justice.”⁶ Naso’s self-description as Amor’s war-spoils (praeda) likely references enslaved individuals captured in war and made to walk in imperial processions; Ovid’s notion of praeda thus further objectifies Naso and reinforces his passivity and submission to Amor. Naso claims amidst this procession that “If I know you [Amor] well, you will inflame not a few more; / you will grant many others wounds in passing. / Even if you yourself wished it, your arrows are not permitted to cease.”⁷ Naso’s remarks demonstrate how Ovid associates love with wounding and burning within a frame of militaristic defeat and subsequent domination. He likewise places Naso’s belovèd, Corinna, in the conqueror’s role from “1.3” onward as Naso laments, “I pray for justice: that the girl who newly took me as war-spoils / Either loves me or makes plain why I should always love [her].”⁸ The couplet exemplifies how Amor and the poet-narrator’s mistress are often conflated as his conqueror in militia amoris, with Naso describing himself as Corinna and Amor’s praeda and appealing to their justice.

However, the militia amoris in Naso and Corinna’s physical encounters implies that Naso only feigns submission and is in actuality dominant and ultimately violent toward Corinna. For instance, Naso uses bellicose language to describe undressing Corinna in “1.5”: “I tore off [her] tunic […] / although she was fighting to be covered by it, since she fought as if she did not wish to win, / she was easily conquered by her own betrayal.”⁹ Naso portrays Corinna’s resistance as insincere and light-hearted; though Ovid does not provide her perspective, he grammatically obfuscates her agency. Ovid uses a passive verb (victa est) and ablative noun (proditionē) alongside the reflexive pronoun sua; Corinna is consequently passive yet simultaneously her own “conqueror.” As victa est denotes Corinna being undressed, Ovid leaves her passive in the act, while Naso’s active first-person “I tore off” (dēripuī)¹⁰ renders him the empowered actor in their sexual encounter. Ovid’s complication of Naso’s supposed submission recurs in “1.7” when Naso physically abuses Corinna. The triumphal motif thus far associated with eroticism turns to violence as Naso, having struck Corinna, pictures an onlooking crowd exclaim, “‘iō!¹¹ The girl has been conquered by the bold victor!’”¹² This line mirrors “1.2,” wherein a crowd exclaims “‘iō triumphe!’” to Amor in his victorious procession.¹³ Ovid consequently grants Naso the victor’s persona rather than Amor or Corinna, while the next couplet inverts Naso’s action in “1.3” from erotic to violent. Naso remarks in sudden guilt, “Would it not be enough to shout abuses at the fearful girl […] / or disgracefully¹⁴ tear apart her tunic […]?”¹⁵ Naso tearing Corinna’s clothes thus transitions from its prior arguably playful eroticism to violence meant to demean her; the martial language likewise now intends intimidation while the previous line positions Naso as the conqueror figure. “1.7” therefore undermines the militia amoris trope’s sincerity, which the Amores’ potential political undertone may explain.

“Amores 1.2” implies a political undertone in its final couplet, which ostensibly scrutinizes the Roman state. The last couplet addresses Amor: “See the auspicious arms of [your] kinsman Caesar: / he protects the conquered, with the hand which conquered [them].”¹⁶ The couplet references the contemporary emperor Augustus (Octavian), who introduced moral legislation intended to “penalize sexual indulgence, promote child-bearing, and restore the family.”¹⁷ These laws likely appealed to conservatism to counter unfavorable views of Augustus’ actions during the Roman Civil Wars, which facilitated the principate’s formation and Augustus’ ascension to emperor. As Julius Caesar’s adopted son, Augustus claimed lineage from the Roman founder Aeneas, Venus’ son. Ovid may thus name Augustus Amor’s kinsman to imply some irony in Augustus’ legal crusade for sexual propriety, despite his imperial legitimacy being based on heritage from Rome’s principal deity of sexuality. The couplet in conjunction with Amor’s cruelty throughout “1.2” seemingly indicates contradiction in Augustus’ celebrated clemency,¹⁸ as it is afforded to those he has subjugated. This potentially informs Ovid’s perversion of militia amoris from love to violence through the poems: to denote the insincerity of Augustus’ merciful identity given his actions as emperor. “1.2” accordingly implies that the Amores’ counter-culturalism lies not in Naso’s submission to Corinna or Ovid’s portrayal of love-affairs as synonymous with military endeavor, but scrutiny of early Roman imperialism.

Attar’s “The story of Sheikh San’an” utilizes similar martial and flame metaphor in narrating a sheikh’s infatuation with a Christian girl. The Christian’s beauty is immediately connected with her lovers’ submission to her: “The man who saw her lips and knew defeat / Embraced the earth before her bonny feet.”¹⁹ Attar likewise describes her beauty: “indeed the spoils she won,”²⁰ heightening the militaristic within an erotic context in a similar vein to Ovid’s praeda. Attar’s introduction of the Christian foreshadows the imminent asymmetrical relationship between herself and the sheikh, during which he becomes increasingly willing to yield to her demands in hopes of reciprocation; this culminates in his conversion to Christianity. Attar further binds weaponry and injury to Sheikh San’an’s infatuation in describing love as an arrow-wound: “To Love, both young and old are one—his dart / Strikes with unequalled strength in every heart,”²¹ and “A demon [the Christian]’s poisoned dart— / Unknown to you— has pierced your trusting heart.”²² Attar casts both Love and the Christian as the archer, similar to how Naso frames himself as the war-spoils of conqueror Amor and Corinna. The sheikh accordingly yields to each: he addresses the Christian, “‘You need not try to […] kick the foe / Who in the dust submissively bows low,”²³ and says of Love: “‘I yield to love, unequal to the fight,’” and “‘Love ambushed me and at its sudden stroke…’”²⁴ Yet while Sheikh San’an submits to both, his submission to Love is more suffuse with the bellicose, as he directly likens love to a fight or ambush.

A final parallel between the lover’s submission in Attar and Ovid occurs when the love-stricken sheikh lies outside the Christian’s door. Attar writes that he “kept his haunted vigil, watched and wept”²⁵ and “Disput[ed] with stray dogs the place before / His unattainable beloved’s door […] / Her street became his bed.”²⁶ The lover outside his mistress’s threshold at night is a motif in the Amores, introduced in “1.9” as Ovid writes, “both [lovers and soldiers] keep watch all night; each rests [upon] the earth— / one watches over [his] mistress’s doors, the other [his] general’s.”²⁷ This nighttime vigil occurs in “1.4:” after Naso laments Corinna leaving a banquet with her lover²⁸ and follows them to her threshold.²⁹ While not identical, the parallel image in Ovid and Attar demonstrates the lovers’ respective submission to his belovèd through the ostensibly humiliating action of lying on her threshold. Thus, as Naso in the Amores, the lover-sheikh adopts a defeated persona to Love and his belovèd, who instead bears the militarily victorious persona in the relationship’s martial frame.

Attar implements flame imagery alongside the martial, and fire develops from a figurative linguistic device to a narrative presence in Sheikh San’an’s conversion to Christianity. After the sheikh’s conversion, however, Attar returns fire to the figurative and primarily associates it with sin, divine punishment, and repentance rather than desire. Attar first describes the sheikh’s infatuation: “A fire flashed through the old man’s joints he loved!” and “in sudden fire […] knelt abjectly as the flames beat higher […] / And passion’s smoke obscured his heart and head.”³⁰ Both Attar and Ovid thus use fire to characterize infatuation, but Attar brings fire from metaphor to the narrative proper as the sheikh enacts the Christian’s commands. She demands, “‘Perform to show that you deserve my trust: burn the Qu’ran, drink wine, seal up faith’s eye, / Bow down to images.”³¹ The sheikh initially only concedes to drink wine, which exacerbates his infatuation—Attar writes that the drink “mingles with [the sheikh’s] love,” and “conquer[s]” him. Once drunk and further infatuated, the sheikh relents to the Christian’s exhortations: “Beside himself with love and drink, he cried: ‘Command me now […] your beauty is to me / An idol for whose sake I’ll gladly burn / My faith’s Qu’ran.’”³² The wine sequence thus initiates Attar’s transition from associating flame with love and desire to religion—in particular blasphemy, damnation, and repentance—as Sheikh San’an burns the Qu’ran and his dervish cloak.

The sheikh’s most blasphemous acts require fire, as though Attar’s fanciful language of flame has become direct action in physical reality. Love and blasphemy remain joined in Attar’s figurative language, however, as the sheikh’s disciples confide in his Meccan friend. The passage’s imagery mirrors Attar’s prior description of the sheikh’s initial infatuation: “[they told] how curls usurped belief and how his cloak / Had been consumed in passion’s blackening smoke.”³³ Smoke recalls Attar’s association between fire and desire, and that he distinguishes this smoke as “passion’s” rather than simply literal reinforces that the sheikh’s abandonment of Islam derived from his amatory submission to an earthly belovèd. Fire’s purpose in Attar’s figurative language echoes the narrative end, as the sheikh characterizes his return to faith as having “escaped the hell in which he’d burned,”³⁴ where hellfire evokes damnation and infatuation. Attar likewise writes that God “Can turn black sin to pure repentant light— / He kindles a repentant spark, the flame / Burns all our sins and all sin’s burning shame.”³⁵ In consequence, flame symbolism ultimately appears to parallel the sheikh’s narrative: it first indicates the infatuation which turns him from Islam, marks the acts which herald his conversion, and follows his return to Islam through an association with absolution.

The militaristic language likewise transitions towards the poem’s end from a principal association with desire to religion. Attar anticipates this transition when the sheikh first falls for the Christian, as his disciple insists, “‘Stop vacillating now and fight; defend the ways our faith proclaims as right.’”³⁶ After this line, Attar confines the metaphorical fight to the erotic until Sheikh San’an has reached his humiliation’s height. The sheikh’s disciples then discuss with his Meccan friend, who says, “However hard the fight, / You should have fought for what was clearly right. / Truth struggled there with error.”³⁷ Attar recovers the connection between religion and war from love and war, emphasized as the sheikh’s friend “Let loose the arrows of belief”³⁸— these arrows offer an inversion of the love-arrows which afflicted the sheikh, indicating the imminent Prophetic intercession for his soul. After this intercession, the sheikh’s disciples remark that “Truth has defeated Rome’s idolatry.”³⁹ The line suggests that as Attar’s fire imagery, the militaristic mirrors the sheikh’s return from infatuation to faith. Ovid and Attar’s works use similar militaristic metaphors and flame symbolism in their figurative language around love, yet each work maintains an independent aim. The authors’ echoed imagery characterizes asymmetrical relationships between an empowered belovèd to whom a lover submits in an arguably antinomian frame; infatuation is further likened to fire and arrow-wounds that the lover suffers in yielding to Love alongside his belovèd. These symbols develop throughout their respective texts to support thematic and narrative detail, rather than providing mere ornamentation to stimulate a reader’s imagination. The Amores apparently inverts militia amoris’ counter-cultural argument for sexual license to a plain depiction of domination and violence, perhaps scrutinizing Augustus and the principate’s imperialism. Attar instead interweaves these metaphors from love to religion, echoing the poem’s narrative movement as Sheikh San’an temporarily abandons Islam on account of an infatuation from which he is ultimately delivered.


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