Ah me! love can not be cured by herbs.

The line laments that romantic passion is not a bodily ailment amenable to ordinary medicine. By invoking “herbs” (a common shorthand in antiquity for pharmacological remedies), the speaker contrasts physical cures with the stubborn, self-renewing nature of desire: love resists rational control and therapeutic intervention. In Ovid’s elegiac world, this complaint also carries a wry, knowing tone—an admission that the lover’s suffering is both real and, in a sense, chosen, because love’s pain is inseparable from its pleasures. The sentiment underscores a recurring Ovidian theme: eros as a force that overwhelms technique, discipline, and even the arts that claim to manage it.