Can someone confirm or deny that ars est celere artem is from Ovid's Art of
Love.
It's celare. I haven't got Ovid's Art of Love to hand, but the Oxford
Dictionary of English Proverbs cites the Latin merely as L., with no
reference to a literary source, and so I suspect it's merely proverbial.
Similarly a densely annotated edition of Sidney's Apology for Poetry, in
which references to original sources are given for practically all the
classical quotations and allusions, has no note for the passage that goes
using art to show art, and not to hide art, as ... he [an orator] should
do. If I remember rightly, Ovid does say something about the need for a
seducer to conceal his intentions at the start of a seduction, but even if
he does use those very words, how do you know he wasn't simply repeating a
well-known proverb?
Simon Cauchi, Freelance Editor and Indexer
Hamilton, New Zealand
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