Barbara Gold has hung out her Valentines expertise shingle again; hopefully some news services will take her up on it:

Be mine. Yours forever. You hold the key to my heart. Hamilton College Classics Professor Barbara Gold can’t help but notice the difference between modern Valentine’s Day cards filled with sentimental sayings and ancient Romans’ wrenching expressions of love.

Today’s valentines focus on sharing, caring, love and friendship. The beloved is portrayed as gentle, sensitive, tender and compassionate, says Gold. The ancient Romans had quite a different take on love.

“Love for them was interesting, both to live and to write about, because it was painful, like a disease,” Gold says. Roman lovers described themselves as “‘wounded, wretched, enslaved by their lovers, having their bone marrow on fire and suffering from double vision.”

“They melded coarse obscenities with deepest expressions of sexual, erotic longing,” she says. “Above all there was no sharing or caring and no real idea of a friendship of equals.”

For example the love poet Catullus writes to his lady love, “I hate and I love. Perhaps you ask why I do that? I don’t know but I feel it happening and I am tormented.” Gold notes, “The dream couples of ancient love poetry are hardly the stuff of today’s romantic. They inhabit a world of playful and elegant poetry far removed from the false sincerity of contemporary Hallmark romance. But the depth of the feelings expressed by the ancients is also far removed from the superficial and hyperbolic lovebites found in contemporary commercial expressions of love.”

With the big Vday on its way, it will be interesting to see if we see repeats of the 'Aphrodite's buttocks' theory ... and the usual 'picking names out of a jar' thing ...


gag ... no sooner do I post the above than the following lands in my mailbox (the egods are cruel) ... from the same press release source that Barbara Gold uses comes this:

Planning any stories on the innocent romance of Valentine’s Day? Feel free to contact Dr. Galdino Pranzarone, professor of psychology at Roanoke College in Salem, Va., and an excellent source on the real meaning of the holiday.

Some examples of the origin, history and symbolism of Valentine's Day:

February: “February has been the traditional time of year when, after the winter solstice and during the apparent lengthening of daylight period, many animals – with us humans among them – begin the yearly frenzy of spring mating and reproduction,” says Pranzarone. But there’s more to it than just spring fever. “The Romans held love and fertility celebrations in February. These were called the Lupercalia, a time of love, eroticism and sexual license,” he says. But it’s not as romantic as it sounds, he adds. “Enthusiastic revelers were paired up by public raffle.”

Cards: “During the Lupercalia party in Rome, young men chose their sexual partners by a drawing of ‘billets’, small paper cards, with women’s names on them,” he says. “Christians later denounced the use of these cards as lewd and pagan custom. The Church tried to substitute the exchange of prayer and sermon cards at this time of year, but the people reverted to hand-made love notes. The commercialization of the Valentine card occurred in recent history at the end of the Victorian Era.”

Hearts: According to Pranzarone, the origin of the heart symbol was probably the shape of human female buttocks seen from the rear, and not an actual heart. Again, thank the Greeks and Romans. “The Greek goddess of beauty, Aphrodite, was beautiful all over, but was unique in that her buttocks were especially beautiful,” he says. “Her shapely, rounded hemispheres were so appreciated by the Greeks that they built a special temple to Aphrodite Kallipygos, which literally meant, ‘Goddess with the Beautiful Buttocks’. This was probably the only religious building in the world that was dedicated to buttock worship.”

Cupid: Cupid – the Roman god of love, desire and lust -- is the son of Venus. “So we see here that the goddess of beauty gives birth to the little god of love, desire and lust,” he says. “Ain’t that the truth? This Cupid was no innocent kid, either. Even though he was a cute cherub, he flew about naked shooting people in the heart with arrows. His relationship with his mother was not particularly wholesome, either. Several paintings from the Renaissance show a rather incestuous relationship existing between Cupid and Venus.”

Cupid’s Arrow: “Do I really have to explain the obvious symbolism inherent in Cupid’s arrow?” asks Pranzarone. But there really is some interesting historical background on Cupid’s archery. “In India, where Cupid was known as Kama, represented passionate, lustful sexual desire,” he says. “The famous sex manual of India, the Kama Sutra, was named after him.”

[snip]

Saint Valentine: There is genuine question as to whether this person ever really existed, says Pranzarone. “Several contradictory biographies exist for him,” he says. “One describes him as a handsome Roman youth who was executed the moment that his lover received his ‘billet’ of love. Some say he was a tutor to young ladies who was martyred for his faith.” While there was some attempt to deny his existence and suppress the celebration, his myth persisted and he became the patron saint of lovers.”

So ... if you were a responsible journalist, who would you consult about the Roman connections to Valentine's Day ... a Classicist? or a Psychologist? Sadly, I suspect we all know which one will get more press ...

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Bloglossalia
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N.S. Gill glosses with some info about and quotes from Catullus ...