Learn, girls, what care commends the face, and in what way you must preserve your beauty.
Cultivation ordered the barren soil to pay Ceres' gifts, and the sharp brambles perished.
Cultivation also improves the sour juices in fruits, and the cleft tree receives adopted wealth.
§7Culta placent.
Cultivated things please.
auro sublimia tecta linuntur, §8Nigra sub imposito marmore terra latet: §9Vellera saepe eadem Tyrio medicantur aëno: §10Sectile deliciis India praebet ebur.
High roofs are coated with gold, and the black earth lies hidden under laid marble: Often the same fleeces are dyed in a Tyrian cauldron: and India provides cut ivory for luxury.
§11Forsitan antiquae Tatio sub rege Sabinae §12Maluerint, quam se, rura paterna coli: §13Cum matrona, premens altum rubicunda sedile, §14Assiduum duro pollice nebat opus, §15Ipsaque claudebat quos filia paverat agnos, §16Ipsa dabat virgas caesaque ligna foco.
Perhaps the ancient Sabine women under King Tatius would have preferred their paternal fields to be cultivated rather than themselves: When the ruddy matron, pressing the high seat, spun her continuous work with a hard thumb, and herself shut up the lambs which her daughter had pastured, and herself gave twigs and cut wood to the hearth.
§17At vestrae matres teneras peperere puellas.
But your mothers have given birth to delicate girls.
§18Vultis inaurata corpora veste tegi, §19Vultis odoratos positu variare capillos, §20Conspicuam gemmis vultis habere manum: §21Induitis collo lapides oriente petitos, §22Et quantos onus est aure tulisse duos.
You wish your bodies to be covered with gold-woven clothing, you wish to vary your scented hair by its styling, you wish to have a hand conspicuous with gems: You put on your necks stones sought from the East, and ones so large that it is a burden to have borne two on the ear.
Nor yet is it shameful: let you have a care for pleasing, since our age possesses well-groomed men.
Your husbands are polished by a feminine law, and the bride has scarcely anything to add to their cultivation.
Each woman prepares herself for her own sake, nor does it matter what loves she hunts; cleanliness deserves no blame.
They hide in the country and style their hair; though steep Athos should conceal them, high Athos will have them well-groomed.
There is also pleasure for anyone in having pleased oneself; their own beauty is dear and pleasing to maidens.
The Junonian bird unfolds her praised feathers to man, and many a bird takes pride in its beauty.
Thus love urges you on rather than powerful herbs, which the witch's hand cuts with terrifying art.
§37Nec vos graminibus nec mixto credite suco, §38Nec temptate nocens virus amantis equae; §39Nec mediae Marsis finduntur cantibus angues, §40Nec redit in fontes unda supina suos; §41Et quamvis aliquis Temesaea removerit aera, §42Numquam Luna suis excutietur equis.
Trust neither to grasses nor to mixed juice, nor try the noxious poison of a mare in heat; Snakes are not split in half by Marsian chants, nor does the backward wave return to its sources; and although someone should shake the Temesaean bronze, the Moon will never be shaken from her horses.
§43Prima sit in vobis morum tutela, puellae.
Let the safeguard of character be first among you, girls.
§44Ingenio facies conciliante placet.
The face pleases when character wins people over.
Love of character is secure: age will ravage beauty, and the pleasing face will be plowed with wrinkles.
The time will be when it will pain you to have seen the mirror, and grief, another cause of wrinkles, will arrive.
Virtue is sufficient and endures for a long age, and from this, love hangs securely through its years.
Come, tell how, when sleep has released your tender limbs, your fair faces can shine.
Barley, which Libyan farmers have sent in ships, strip of its chaff and its coverings.
Let an equal measure of vetch be moistened by ten eggs: but let the stripped barley amount to two pounds.
§57Haec ubi ventosas fuerint siccata per auras, §58Lenta iube scabra frangat asella mola: §59Et quae prima cadent vivaci cornua cervo, §60Contere in haec (solidi sexta fac assis eat).
When these have been dried by the windy breezes, order a slow she-ass to grind them with a rough millstone: and the horns which first fall from a long-lived stag, crush into these (make a sixth part of a solid as go in).
And now when they have been mixed into a powdery meal, straightway sift all of them in hollow baskets.
Add twelve bulbs of narcissus without their skin, which a vigorous right hand should grind on pure marble.
And let a sixth of a pound of gum draw along with Tuscan seed: to this let nine times as much honey go.
Whichever woman shall treat her face with such a cosmetic will shine smoother than her own mirror.
§69Nec tu pallentes dubita torrere lupinos, §70Et simul inflantes corpora frige fabas; §71Utraque sex habeant aequo discrimine libras, §72Utraque da nigris comminuenda molis.
Nor hesitate to roast pale lupins, and at the same time fry the beans that bloat the body; let both have six pounds in equal measure, give both to be crushed by black millstones.
Let neither white lead nor the froth of red soda be lacking to you, and the iris that comes from Illyrian soil.
Give them to be kneaded equally by the strong arms of young men: but the proper weight of the crushed ingredients will be an ounce.
Cosmetics added from the plaintive nest of birds banish spots from the face: they call them alcyonea.
If you ask what weight of them I am content with, that which a divided ounce draws into two parts.
So that they may combine and be able to be smeared fitly over the body, add Attic honey from yellow honeycombs.
Although incense placates gods and angered divinities, yet it must not all be given to burning hearths.
When you have mixed incense with the soda that scrapes swellings, make it so that there is a third of a pound on both sides in just weights.
Add gum stripped of its bark, less by a fourth part, and add a moderate cube from rich myrrh.
When you have crushed these, sift them through dense holes: the powder must be pressed together by infused honey.
§91Profuit et marathros bene olentibus addere myrrhis, §92(Quinque trahant marathri scrupula, myrrha novem) §93Arentisque rosae quantum manus una prehendat, §94Cumque Ammoniaco mascula tura sale.
It has also been useful to add fennel to sweet-smelling myrrh, (let the fennel draw five scruples, the myrrh nine) and as much of dried rose as one hand can grasp, and masculine incense with Ammoniac salt.
Pour over them the liquid which barley makes: let the incense and salt equal the weighed roses.
Although they may be smeared on your soft face for only a short time, much color will remain over your whole face.