Rome [he says in _Ars Amatoria_, i. 55 seq.] is the place for beauties. Venus has her fixed abode in the city of her Aeneas. Whatever you desire you may find. All you have to do is to take a walk in the Porticus of Pompey or of Livia,... Do not pass by the place where Venus mourns Adonis, or where the Syrian Jew performs his rites each seventh day. Nor overlook the temples of the linen-clad heifer from Memphis. She makes many what Jove made her. Even the fora favor Love, ... those where the Appian aqueduct gushes forth near the marble temple of Venus.... But above all stalk your game in the theaters. In these instances Ovid refers to place, not to time, and it is only as part of the passages as a whole that the individual references can be understood. It will be seen that all the localities, beginning with the Porticus of Pompey in the Campus Martius, are merely casual. It is at the theater and circus where Ovid’s pupils are chiefly to pick out the ladies of their light loves. For that reason the other places specified are also, to a certain extent, show places. The mention of the law-courts is especially noteworthy in this connection. We must therefore assume that in the Jewish proseucha and in the temple of the Egyptian Isis there were to be found a certain number of curious onlookers, particularly women, and while many of them became ardent converts, a certain number were innocent of any intentions except to while away an idle hour, and were easy game for the professional “mashers” for whom Ovid writes. Isis and Judaism were the two Oriental cults which at this time had the greatest success in Rome. And we can easily imagine how the unoccupied of all classes thronged to every new fashion in religious stimulation as in others. Ovid is as explicit in the selection of time as of place. Do not disregard time,... Avoid the first of April. Then the rainy season begins, and storms are frequent. But begin the day of the defeat at the Allia, or the day on which the Sabbath feast comes again, which the Syrian from Palestine celebrates. That’s a day on which other business ought not to be done. (Ars. Am. i. 413 seq.) Again, in his palinode, with which he vainly hoped to regain his shattered reputation, “The Cure for Love” (vv. 214 seq.), he brings the same things together: Off with you; take a long journey to some distant land.... The less you want to go, the more you must; remember that! Be firm and make your unwilling feet run. Do not pray for rain. Let no imported Sabbaths hinder you, nor the day on which we remember the disaster on the Allia.[270]