With gilded horns the milk-white heifers led, Slaughter’d before the sacred altars, bled: Pygmalion off’ring, first approach’d the shrine, And then with pray’rs implor’d the pow’rs divine: “Almighty gods, if all we mortals want, If all we can require, be yours to grant; Make this fair statue mine,” he would have said, But chang’d his words for shame; and only pray’d, “Give me the likeness of my iv’ry maid.” The golden goddess, present at the pray’r, Well knew he meant th’inanimated fair, And gave the sign of granting his desire; For thrice in cheerful flames ascends the fire. The youth, returning to his mistress, hies, And, impudent in hope, with ardent eyes, And beating breast, by the dear statue lies. He kisses her white lips, renews the bliss, And looks and thinks they redden at the kiss: He thought them warm before: nor longer stays, But next his hand on her hard bosom lays: Hard as it was, beginning to relent, It seem’d, the breast beneath his fingers bent; He felt again, his fingers made a print, ’Twas flesh, but flesh so firm, it rose against the dint: The pleasing task he fails not to renew; Soft, and more soft at ev’ry touch it grew; Like pliant wax, when chafing hands reduce The former mass to form, and frame for use He would believe, but yet is still in pain, And tries his argument of sense again, Presses the pulse, and feels the leaping vein. Convinc’d, o’erjoy’d, his studied thanks and praise, To her who made the miracle, he pays: Then lips to lips he join’d; now freed from fear, He found the savor of the kiss sincere: At this the waken’d image op’d her eyes, And view’d at once the light and lover, with surprise. The goddess present at the match she made, So bless’d the bed, such fruitfulness convey’d, That e’er ten moons had sharpen’d either horn, To crown their bliss, a lovely boy was born; Paphos his name, who, grown to manhood, wall’d The city Paphos, from the founder call’d. The realism of the sculptured figure, together with the aroused passion of the artist, produced a kind of symbiotic philtre, a flaming, kinetic periapt. In Book 1 of the _Ars Amatoria_ Ovid introduces his basic subject: love unrestrained, Aphrodite Pandemos, patroness of free love, of passion unconfined: Far hence, ye Vestals, be, who bind your hair; And wives, who gowns below your ankles wear. I sing the brothels loose and unconfin’d, Th’unpunishable pleasures of the kind; Which all alike, for love, or money find. And, in a brief preface, he offers an epitome of early Roman history, which is equated succinctly with military prowess and sexual prowess: