Isabel Cooperman, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ovid writes in the Ars Amatoria that dum licet (“while it is allowed”), the prospective lover should tell a girl tu mihi sola places (“you alone please me”) (Ars 1.41-2). The traditional understanding of dum licet, expressed most clearly by Hollis (1977), interprets the phrase to mean “while you are not constrained by love”. As Hollis notes, echoed by Myerowitz (1985), tu mihi sola places is a self-aware reference to conventional elegy; it is found in both Propertius (2.7) and Tibullus (3.19), spoken by the genuinely enamored lover. Hollis’ interpretation of dum licet therefore creates a paradox: Ovid’s student should truly love and falsify love simultaneously. I argue that dum licet is instead a reference to Augustan social and legal restrictions, and Ovid’s tu mihi sola places contributes to the anti-marriage sentiment the phrase embodies in Propertius and Tibullus.
Ovid’s use of legal language, discussed by Kenney (1970) and Ziogas (2016), frames his deprecation in the Ars Amatoria of the illegality of adultery, made a public crime by Augustus in 18 BCE. As the magister of love, the precepts he teaches to women and men alike promote illicit sexual relationships between married women and young, unmarried men. In this context, Ovid uses the conventional phrase with ironic effect, proposing it as a tool of psychological manipulation to be used for getting sex: while a man is not constrained by love, he should say tu mihi sola places to entrap a girl by convincing her he loves her. When later Ovid tells the women to be nice to false lovers because they will one day love for real (Ars 1.615), it means the women must be aware when they are being deceived. Hollis’ interpretation of dum licet implies that the game is lost when the man truly falls in love; however, this is exactly the point at which he should say tu mihi sola places.
I propose to interpret dum licet as “while your youth allows”, which suggests that there is a social and legal limitation on the sexual freedom of a man’s youth; he can only court women and explore his sexuality for a brief time when he is young, before he is expected to marry and propagate his family line, fulfilling his duty as a Roman. This interpretation is supported by Ovid’s use of tu mihi sola places, which Propertius and Tibullus use to assert individualism in the choice of whom to love– Propertius in particular proclaims it in defiance of Augustan marriage legislation, which Gale (1997) discusses at length. Tu mihi sola places thus encompasses a sequence of ideas formulated in the elegiac framework that establish the ideal lover of the Ars Amatoria as one who opposes marriage and oppressive Augustan regulations.