Ovid, the law and Roman society on abortion.

"She who first taught abortion techniques deserved to die by this assault of her own devising." Such is the apparently savage attack made by Ovid, of all writers, in, of all places, one of the Amores. 1 In view of the intense controversy now going on, it may be intriguing if not helpful to consider the Roman view or views on abortion and the legal and social background to Ovid's two poems touching this subject. It will be found that except for some doctors, pagan and Christian writers alike generally agreed that deliberate abortion was an evil, but the chief interest for us is that this common conclusion was reached by different though not incompatible lines of reasoning starting from rather distinct assumptions. In fact, this delicate issue takes us to the very core of Roman society and reveals the contradictory attitudes which lie behind the seemingly consistent and logical view adopted in the Digest. Ovid's two poems, Amores II xiii and xiv, probably are 'singularly tasteless', 2 but a close examination of them reveals that they are not entirely out of place in the collection of poems as a whole. Whether or not written separately, they should be read together. To clarify my interpretation of the Latin, I offer the following prosaic and pedestrian translation: