Word: ovide
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...learning and his devotion to all vertical and horizontal forms of the chase. In Giulio, this son of Isabella d'Este found a court artist whose libidinousness and intelligence fit his own. Both men moved naturally in the imaginative world of a recovered antiquity -- the world of Apuleius and Ovid's Metamorphoses, the brutal sharp humor of Martial's epigrams, the fantasies of a Golden Age and the pseudo-scientific world view of astrology...
...shoots, suggesting that the state is replenished by merciless excision. The Weavers would satisfy anyone as a genre picture of women at work, spinning the woolen yarn for the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Isabel; but its meanings unravel far beyond that, back to the fable of Arachne in Ovid's Metamorphoses, taking in complicated references to Titian and even to Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling...
...field without grass is an eyesore," wrote the Roman poet Ovid, "so is a tree without leaves, so is a head without hair." For centuries, bald and balding men have winced at such unkind references to their predicament. Conditioned to regard hairlessness as a male curse second only to impotence, they have historically taken drastic measures to undo their baldness. Some have pretended to own hair, bewigging their shining pates with nylon or natural locks; others have recycled what little thatching they have left, combing a few camouflaging strands across their brows or having "plugs" transplanted from one part...
...what about those poor bald souls for whom Rogaine is not recommended? Ovid's fellow Roman, the epigrammatist Martial, may have had the best advice: "Be content to seem what you really are, and let the barber shave off the rest of your hair...
...China, during the Ch'ing dynasty, the Emperors' Pekingese were suckled by wet nurses, raised by eunuchs and given royal rank. Tsunayoshi, the "Dog Shogun" of 17th century Japan, distorted his nation's economy to pamper his 100,000 canines. Ovid and Catullus wrote poems to commemorate the deaths of their mistresses' birds, and trendy Romans kept pet turbot. Today a dog's vita can be just as dolce. Three years ago, Lady Beaverbrook booked all the seats in the business section of a jumbo jet so that she and her pooch could travel in solitary comfort...