The Odes
Carmina
Headnote
The Odes are Horace’s masterwork and the foundation of his fame: four books of lyric poems in a great variety of Greek meters, the first three published together around 23 BC and the fourth added roughly a decade later, near 13 BC, at the prompting (Horace says) of Augustus himself. With them Horace did what he had announced he would do — “I was the first to bring Aeolic song to Italian measures” — naturalizing in Latin the personal lyric of the archaic Greek island of Lesbos, the poetry of Sappho and above all of Alcaeus, the “citizen of Lesbos” whom he names in 1.32 as his model. He does not translate the Greeks; he absorbs their meters (the Alcaic and Sapphic stanzas, the several Asclepiadean forms) and their occasions — the drinking-song, the hymn, the love complaint, the propemptikon or send-off — and rebuilds them around a wholly Roman sensibility and a wholly Horatian voice.
That voice is the most finished in Latin poetry. Every word is set with deliberation — Horace’s own callida iunctura, the cunning placement of the familiar word — and the Latin holds its architecture taut, suspending a noun from its adjective across a whole line, building toward a landing that the sense and the meter reach together. This translation does not reproduce the Greek meters or impose English ones; it follows the line-structure of the source and lets the poems’ own shape — the suspension, the balance, the closing turn — carry the music, rendering the compression that makes an ode feel chiselled rather than spilled.
The range of the four books is wide. There are the great public and Augustan odes: the second poem on the portents of civil war and the prayer that Caesar, imagined as Mercury come to earth, may be Rome’s deliverer (1.2); the encomium that sets Augustus to “reign second” under Jupiter (1.12); and the famous Cleopatra ode, “Nunc est bibendum” (1.37), which celebrates the victory at Actium and then, with characteristic doubleness, grants the defeated queen a death too noble for a triumph. Against these stand the private poems that have proved immortal: the carpe-diem ode to Leuconoe (1.11), with its maxim “seize the day, trusting as little as you may to the next”; the Soracte ode (1.9), turning from the snow-bound mountain to the fire, the wine, and the present hour; the Ship of State (1.14) in Alcaeus’s old allegory; the Pyrrha ode (1.5) on the fickle beloved and the lover who has escaped her; and the address to the lyre and to Vergil’s ship (1.3). Hymns to the gods (Mercury in 1.10, Diana and Apollo in 1.21, Fortune of Antium in 1.35), invitations and symposia, the love poems of desire and jealousy and faithlessness, the consolations on mortality (the dirge for Quintilius in 1.24, the dead astronomer Archytas on the shore in 1.28) — all are held within a single intelligence.
The later books deepen the public note without losing the private one. Book 3 opens with the six grave “Roman Odes” (3.1–3.6), a sustained sequence in a single Alcaic key on civic virtue, restraint, and the duties owed to the gods and the state — the soldier’s dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (3.2), the just man unshaken though the world fall in (3.3), Juno’s speech consenting to Rome’s greatness on condition that Troy never rise again (3.3), and the warning that “the sins of your fathers, though undeserving, you will pay” (3.6) — before the book turns back to wine, love, and the spring of Bandusia (3.13) and closes with the proud seal, Exegi monumentum aere perennius (3.30). Book 4, written a decade later, is mellower and more retrospective: the praises of the young Neros Drusus and Tiberius (4.4, 4.14), the hymn to Apollo that recalls the Carmen Saeculare (4.6), the matchless lament for the returning spring and the irrevocable dead (Diffugere nives, 4.7), and the repeated claim that song alone confers immortality (4.8, 4.9).
The Horatian ethic is everywhere: an ethic of measure — the aurea mediocritas, the golden mean; the brevity of life and the fleeting years (fugaces anni); the counsel to want little, prize the present, and be at home in one’s own skin. The melancholy beneath the wit — the awareness of death that gives the call to pleasure its urgency — is real and quiet, never sentimental. The realia are kept in Horace’s own world: the Roman gods in their Roman names (Jupiter, Venus, Bacchus, Faunus, the Muses), the wines (Massic, Caecuban, Falernian), the places of Italy (Tibur, Soracte, the Sabine farm) and the learned geography of the Greek and mythological world, worn lightly and unpacked in the apparatus rather than glossed inside the line.
Maecenas, sprung from royal forebears of old, o my bulwark and my sweet glory: there are men whom it delights to have gathered Olympic dust with the chariot, the turning-post grazed by their glowing wheels, the noble palm lifting them, lords of the earth, to the gods; one, if the fickle crowd of Roman citizens contends to raise him by threefold honors; another, if he has stored in his own granary all that is swept from the Libyan floors. The man who loves to break his fathers’ fields with the hoe — you could never move him, not on the terms of Attalus, to cut, a frightened sailor, the Myrtoan sea in a Cyprian hull. The merchant, dreading the African gale that wrestles the Icarian waves, praises the calm and the countryside of his own town; but soon he refits his battered ships, untaught to bear want. There is the man who scorns neither cups of old Massic nor stealing a part from the solid day, now stretched beneath the green arbutus, now at the gentle wellhead of a sacred spring. Many are gladdened by the camp, the trumpet’s note mingled with the clarion, and the wars that mothers curse. Under the cold sky the hunter stays, forgetful of his tender wife, whether his faithful hounds have sighted a doe or a Marsian boar has burst the fine-wrought nets. Me, the ivy, prize of learned brows, mingles with the gods above; me the cool grove and the nimble dances of Nymphs and Satyrs set apart from the crowd — if Euterpe withholds not her pipes, nor Polyhymnia refuses to tune the Lesbian lyre. But if you rank me among the lyric bards, I shall strike the stars with my lifted head.
Maecenas atavis edite regibus, o et praesidium et dulce decus meum: sunt quos curriculo pulverem Olympicum collegisse iuvat metaque fervidis evitata rotis palmaque nobilis terrarum dominos evehit ad deos; hunc, si mobilium turba Quiritium certat tergeminis tollere honoribus, illum, si proprio condidit horreo quidquid de Libycis verritur areis. gaudentem patrios findere sarculo agros Attalicis condicionibus numquam demoveas, ut trabe Cypria Myrtoum pavidus nauta secet mare. luctantem Icariis fluctibus Africum mercator metuens otium et oppidi laudat rura sui; mox reficit rates quassas indocilis pauperiem pati. est qui nec veteris pocula Massici nec partem solido demere de die spernit, nunc viridi membra sub arbuto stratus, nunc ad aquae lene caput sacrae. multos castra iuvant et lituo tubae permixtus sonitus bellaque matribus detestata. manet sub Iove frigido venator tenerae coniugis inmemor, seu visa est catulis cerva fidelibus seu rupit teretes Marsus aper plagas. me doctarum hederae praemia frontium dis miscent superis, me gelidum nemus Nympharumque leves cum Satyris chori secernunt populo, si neque tibias Euterpe cohibet nec Polyhymnia Lesboum refugit tendere barbiton. quodsi me lyricis vatibus inseres, sublimi feriam sidera vertice.
Enough now of snow and of dread hail the Father has sent upon the earth, and, striking the sacred citadels with his red right hand, has terrified the city, terrified the nations, lest the grievous age of Pyrrha return, who wept at strange portents when Proteus drove his whole flock up to visit the high mountains, and the race of fishes lodged in the elm-top, which had been the familiar seat of doves, and the frightened deer swam on the overspreading flood. We have seen the yellow Tiber, his waves hurled violently back from the Etruscan shore, go to throw down the king’s monuments and the temple of Vesta, while he boasts himself avenger of Ilia’s excess of grief — the uxorious river, straying, gliding over his left bank with Jupiter’s disapproval. A youth made few by their parents’ crime shall hear that citizens whetted the sword by which the heavy Persians had better fallen, shall hear of the battles. Which of the gods shall the people summon to the affairs of the falling empire? With what prayer shall the holy virgins weary Vesta, who heeds their hymns less and less? To whom will Jupiter assign the part of expiating the crime? Come at last, we pray, your bright shoulders veiled in cloud, augur Apollo; or, if you would rather, smiling Erycina, about whom Mirth and Cupid wheel; or if you look back, founder, on your neglected race and your descendants, alas, glutted with the too-long game — you whom the war-cry pleases and the burnished helmets and the savage face of the Marsian foot-soldier over his bloodied enemy; or if, your shape transformed, you play the youth on earth, a winged son of nurturing Maia, content to be called the avenger of Caesar: late may you return to heaven, and long gladly stay among the people of Quirinus, and let no swifter breeze, in anger at our sins, lift you away before your time. Here may you rather love great triumphs, here to be called father and prince, nor let the Medes ride unpunished while you are our leader, Caesar.
Iam satis terris nivis atque dirae grandinis misit pater et rubente dextera sacras iaculatus arcis terruit urbem, terruit gentis, grave ne rediret saeculum Pyrrhae nova monstra questae, omne cum Proteus pecus egit altos visere montis, piscium et summa genus haesit ulmo, nota quae sedes fuerat columbis, et superiecto pavidae natarunt aequore dammae. vidimus flavum Tiberim retortis litore Etrusco violenter undis ire deiectum monumenta regis templaque Vestae, Iliae dum se nimium querenti iactat ultorem, vagus et sinistra labitur ripa Iove non probante u- xorius amnis. audiet civis acuisse ferrum, quo graves Persae melius perirent, audiet pugnas vitio parentum rara iuventus. quem vocet divum populus ruentis imperi rebus? prece qua fatigent virgines sanctae minus audientem carmina Vestam? cui dabit partis scelus expiandi Iuppiter? tandem venias precamur nube candentis umeros amictus augur Apollo; sive tu mavis, Erycina ridens, quam Iocus circum volat et Cupido; sive neglectum genus et nepotes respicis, auctor heu nimis longo satiate ludo, quem iuvat clamor galeaeque leves acer et Marsi peditis cruentum voltus in hostem; sive mutata iuvenem figura ales in terris imitaris almae filius Maiae, patiens vocari Caesaris ultor: serus in caelum redeas diuque laetus intersis populo Quirini neve te nostris vitiis iniquum ocior aura tollat; hic magnos potius triumphos, hic ames dici pater atque princeps neu sinas Medos equitare inultos te duce, Caesar.
So may the goddess who rules over Cyprus, so may the brothers of Helen, those shining stars, and the father of the winds so guide you, all of them shut up but the Iapyx, o ship, who owe us Vergil entrusted to your keeping: bring him safe, I pray, to the shores of Attica, and preserve the half of my own soul. Oak and triple bronze were about the breast of the man who first committed his fragile bark to the savage sea: he did not fear the headlong African wind at war with the North, nor the gloomy Hyades, nor the rage of the South wind, than whom there is no greater master of the Adriatic, whether he would raise the seas or lay them. What step of death did he dread, who with dry eyes looked on the swimming monsters, who looked on the turbid sea and the ill-famed Acroceraunian crags? In vain did a provident god cut off the lands by the estranging ocean, if all the same impious ships go leaping across the waters that were not to be touched. Bold to endure all things, the human race rushes through forbidden wrong: the bold son of Iapetus by wicked fraud brought fire to the nations; once fire was stolen from its heavenly home, wasting and a new cohort of fevers settled on the earth, and the slow necessity of death, once far away, quickened its step. Daedalus tried the empty air on wings not granted to man; the labor of Hercules broke through Acheron. Nothing is too steep for mortals: in our folly we make for heaven itself, and by our crime we do not let Jupiter lay down his angry thunderbolts.
Sic te diva potens Cypri, sic fratres Helenae, lucida sidera, ventorumque regat pater obstrictis aliis praeter Iapyga, navis, quae tibi creditum debes Vergilium; finibus Atticis reddas incolumem precor et serves animae dimidium meae. illi robur et aes triplex circa pectus erat, qui fragilem truci conmisit pelago ratem primus: nec timuit praecipitem Africum decertantem Aquilonibus nec tristis Hyadas nec rabiem Noti, quo non arbiter Hadriae maior, tollere seu ponere volt freta; quem mortis timuit gradum qui siccis oculis monstra natantia, qui vidit mare turbidum et infamis scopulos Acroceraunia? nequiquam deus abscidit prudens oceano dissociabili terras, si tamen inpiae non tangenda rates transiliunt vada. audax omnia perpeti gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas: audax Iapeti genus ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit; post ignem aetheria domo subductum macies et nova febrium terris incubuit cohors semotique prius tarda necessitas Leti corripuit gradum; expertus vacuum Daedalus aera pennis non homini datis; perrupit Acheronta Herculeus labor. nil mortalibus ardui est: caelum ipsum petimus stultitia neque per nostrum patimur scelus iracunda Iovem ponere fulmina.
Sharp winter melts at the welcome turn of spring and the west wind, and the windlasses haul the dry keels down, and now the flock no longer loves the stalls, nor the plowman his fire, nor are the meadows white with hoar frost. Now Cytherean Venus leads her dances under the rising moon, and the comely Graces, joined with the Nymphs, shake the earth with alternate foot, while burning Vulcan visits the heavy forges of the Cyclopes. Now is the time to wreathe the gleaming head with green myrtle or with the flower the loosened earth brings forth; now too it is fitting to sacrifice to Faunus in the shady groves, whether he ask a lamb or prefer a kid. Pale Death knocks with impartial foot at the hovels of the poor and the towers of kings. O fortunate Sestius, life’s brief sum forbids us to begin a long hope; soon night will press on you, and the fabled Shades, and the meager house of Pluto; and once you have gone there, you will not cast the dice for the lordship of the wine, nor marvel at tender Lycidas, for whom now all the young men burn, and soon the girls will grow warm.
Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et Favoni trahuntque siccas machinae carinas ac neque iam stabulis gaudet pecus aut arator igni nec prata canis albicant pruinis. iam Cytherea choros ducit Venus imminente luna iunctaeque Nymphis Gratiae decentes alterno terram quatiunt pede, dum gravis Cyclopum Volcanus ardens visit officinas. nunc decet aut viridi nitidum caput impedire myrto aut flore, terrae quem ferunt solutae, nunc et in umbrosis Fauno decet immolare lucis, seu poscat agna sive malit haedo. pallida Mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas regumque turris. o beate Sesti, vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam; iam te premet nox fabulaeque Manes et domus exilis Plutonia; quo simul mearis, nec regna vini sortiere talis nec tenerum Lycidan mirabere, quo calet iuventus nunc omnis et mox virgines tepebunt.
What slender boy, drenched in liquid scents, presses on you amid the heaped roses, Pyrrha, in a pleasant grotto? For whom do you bind back your golden hair, plain in your elegance? Alas, how often will he weep over faith and the gods turned strange, and gape, unschooled, at seas roughened by black winds — he who now enjoys you, golden, and believing, who hopes you always free, always to be loved, and does not know the treacherous breeze. Wretched are they to whom you shine untried. For me, the votive tablet on the temple wall declares that I have hung up my dripping garments to the god who is mighty over the sea.
Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa perfusus liquidis urget odoribus grato, Pyrrha, sub antro? cui flavam religas comam simplex munditiis? heu quotiens fidem mutatosque deos flebit et aspera nigris aequora ventis emirabitur insolens qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea, qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem sperat, nescius aurae fallacis. miseri, quibus intemptata nites. me tabula sacer votiva paries indicat uvida suspendisse potenti vestimenta maris deo.
You will be written of by Varius, brave and a victor over the foe, in the winged Maeonian song — whatever deed the fierce soldier accomplished with ships or horses under your command. We, Agrippa, do not try to tell these things, nor the heavy wrath of Peleus’ son, who knew not how to yield, nor the voyages of double-dealing Ulysses over the sea, nor the savage house of Pelops — slight as we are for great matters — while modesty and the Muse who masters the unwarlike lyre forbid me to wear away the praises of glorious Caesar and of you by the fault of my talent. Who could write worthily of Mars in his tunic of adamant, or of Meriones black with the dust of Troy, or of the son of Tydeus, by Pallas’ aid made equal to the gods? We sing of feasts, we sing of the battles of girls fierce against young men with their nails pared close, whether heart-free or burning a little — light, as our way is.
Scriberis Vario fortis et hostium victor Maeonii carminis alite, quam rem cumque ferox navibus aut equis miles te duce gesserit. nos, Agrippa, neque haec dicere nec gravem Pelidae stomachum cedere nescii nec cursus duplicis per mare Ulixei nec saevam Pelopis domum conamur, tenues grandia, dum pudor inbellisque lyrae Musa potens vetat laudes egregii Caesaris et tuas culpa deterere ingeni. quis Martem tunica tectum adamantina digne scripserit aut pulvere Troico nigrum Merionen aut ope Palladis Tydiden superis parem? nos convivia, nos proelia virginum sectis in iuvenes unguibus acrium cantamus, vacui sive quid urimur, non praeter solitum leves.
Others will praise bright Rhodes, or Mytilene, or Ephesus, or the walls of Corinth set between two seas, or Thebes famed for Bacchus, or Delphi for Apollo, or Thessalian Tempe; there are some whose single task is to celebrate the city of virgin Pallas in unbroken song, and to set on their brow the olive plucked from every side; many, in Juno’s honor, will tell of Argos, fit for horses, and of rich Mycenae: but me neither hardy Lacedaemon nor the plain of fertile Larisa has struck so hard as the house of echoing Albunea, and headlong Anio, and the grove of Tiburnus, and the orchards wet with their shifting streams. As the bright south wind often clears the clouds from a darkened sky and does not breed unending rains, so you, being wise, remember to put an end to sorrow and the toils of life with mellow wine, Plancus, whether the camps gleaming with standards hold you, or the dense shade of your own Tibur shall. When Teucer fled Salamis and his father, still, they say, he bound his temples, wet with wine, in a poplar wreath, and so addressed his grieving friends: "Wherever fortune, kinder than a father, bears us, we will go — o my comrades and companions; nothing is to be despaired of with Teucer as your leader and Teucer your augur: for unerring Apollo has promised that in a new land there will be a second Salamis, ambiguous in name. O brave men, who have often suffered worse with me, now drive off cares with wine; tomorrow we set out again upon the boundless sea."
Laudabunt alii claram Rhodon aut Mytilenen aut Epheson bimarisve Corinthi moenia vel Baccho Thebas vel Apolline Delphos insignis aut Thessala Tempe; sunt quibus unum opus est intactae Palladis urbem carmine perpetuo celebrare et undique decerptam fronti praeponere olivam; plurimus in Iunonis honorem aptum dicet equis Argos ditisque Mycenas: me nec tam patiens Lacedaemon nec tam Larisae percussit campus opimae quam domus Albuneae resonantis et praeceps Anio ac Tiburni lucus et uda mobilibus pomaria rivis. albus ut obscuro deterget nubila caelo saepe Notus neque parturit imbris perpetuos, sic tu sapiens finire memento tristitiam vitaeque labores molli, Plance, mero, seu te fulgentia signis castra tenent seu densa tenebit Tiburis umbra tui. Teucer Salamina patremque cum fugeret, tamen uda Lyaeo tempora populea fertur vinxisse corona sic tristis adfatus amicos: "quo nos cumque feret melior fortuna parente, ibimus—o socii comitesque, nil desperandum Teucro duce et auspice Teucro: certus enim promisit Apollo ambiguam tellure nova Salamina futuram. o fortes peioraque passi mecum saepe viri, nunc vino pellite curas; cras ingens iterabimus aequor."
Lydia, tell me, by all the gods I beg you, why you hasten to ruin Sybaris by loving him; why he hates the sunny field, though he can bear the dust and the sun; why he does not ride among his equals, soldierly, nor curb the Gallic mouth with toothed bits. Why does he fear to touch the yellow Tiber? Why does he shun the wrestling-oil more warily than viper’s blood, and no longer carry his arms bruised by weapons — he, once famed often for the discus, often for the javelin flung past the mark? Why does he hide, as they say the son of sea-born Thetis hid before the tearful funerals of Troy, lest a man’s array hurry him to the slaughter and the Lycian ranks?
Lydia, dic per omnis te deos oro, Sybarin cur properes amando perdere, cur apricum oderit campum patiens pulveris atque solis, cur neque militaris inter aequalis equitet, Gallica nec lupatis temperet ora frenis? cur timet flavum Tiberim tangere? cur olivum sanguine viperino cautius vitat neque iam livida gestat armis bracchia saepe disco, saepe trans finem iaculo nobilis expedito? quid latet, ut marinae filium dicunt Thetidis sub lacrimosa Troiae funera, ne virilis cultus in caedem et Lycias proriperet catervas?
You see how Soracte stands white with deep snow, and the laboring woods no longer bear up their burden, and the rivers have halted with the keen frost? Dissolve the cold, piling the logs generously on the hearth, and more freely draw out the four-year wine, O Thaliarchus, from its Sabine jar. Leave the rest to the gods: as soon as they have stilled the winds battling on the seething sea, neither the cypresses nor the old ash-trees are shaken. Do not ask what will come tomorrow, and whatever day Fortune gives, count it as gain; nor, while a boy, scorn sweet loves nor the dances, so long as crabbed gray hair is far from your green years. Now let the field, the squares, and the soft whispers at nightfall be sought again at the appointed hour, now the welcome laugh that betrays the girl hiding in the inmost corner, and the pledge snatched from her arm or her ill-resisting finger.
Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte nec iam sustineant onus silvae laborantes geluque flumina constiterint acuto? dissolve frigus ligna super foco large reponens atque benignius deprome quadrimum Sabina, o Thaliarche, merum diota. permitte divis cetera, qui simul stravere ventos aequore fervido deproeliantis, nec cupressi nec veteres agitantur orni. quid sit futurum cras, fuge quaerere et quem Fors dierum cumque dabit, lucro adpone nec dulcis amores sperne puer neque tu choreas, donec virenti canities abest morosa. nunc et campus et areae lenesque sub noctem susurri conposita repetantur hora, nunc et latentis proditor intumo gratus puellae risus ab angulo pignusque dereptum lacertis aut digito male pertinaci.
Mercury, eloquent grandson of Atlas, who shrewdly shaped the wild ways of new-made men by speech and by the rule of the graceful palaestra, of you I shall sing, herald of great Jupiter and the gods, father of the curved lyre, clever to hide whatever pleased you in some playful theft. You, while Apollo tried with threatening voice to frighten you, a boy, unless you gave back the cattle stolen by trickery, he laughed, robbed of his quiver. Indeed with you as guide rich Priam, leaving Ilium, slipped past the proud sons of Atreus, the Thessalian watch-fires, and the camp that was hostile to Troy. You settle the pious souls in their glad seats, and with your golden wand you herd the weightless throng, dear alike to the gods above and below.
Mercuri facunde nepos Atlantis, qui feros cultus hominum recentum voce formasti catus et decorae more palaestrae, te canam, magni Iovis et deorum nuntium curvaeque lyrae parentem, callidum, quidquid placuit, iocoso condere furto. te, boves olim nisi reddidisses per dolum amotas, puerum minaci voce dum terret, viduus pharetra risit Apollo. quin et Atridas duce te superbos Ilio dives Priamus relicto Thessalosque ignis et iniqua Troiae castra fefellit. tu pias laetis animas reponis sedibus virgaque levem coerces aurea turbam, superis deorum gratus et imis.
Do not ask — to know is forbidden — what end the gods have given me, what they have given you, Leuconoe, and do not try the Babylonian reckonings. How much better to bear whatever shall be, whether Jupiter has granted us more winters or this the last, which now wears out the Tyrrhenian sea on the pumice set against it: be wise, strain the wine, and to a brief span prune back long hope. Even as we speak, envious time will have fled: seize the day, trusting as little as you may to the next.
Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios temptaris numeros. ut melius, quidquid erit, pati. seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam, quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare Tyrrhenum: sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi spem longam reseces. dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem quam minimum credula postero.
What man or hero do you take up to celebrate on the lyre or the keen pipe, Clio? What god? Whose name will the playful echo sound back again, whether on the shady shores of Helicon, or on Pindus, or on cold Haemus, whence the woods rashly followed tuneful Orpheus, who by his mother’s art held back the rushing courses of the rivers and the swift winds, and, coaxing, with his sounding strings drew the listening oaks? What shall I tell before the wonted praises of the Father, who governs the affairs of men and gods, who governs the sea and lands and the world with its changing seasons? From whom nothing greater than himself is born, nor does anything thrive like him or second to him. Yet Pallas has seized the honors nearest to him, bold in battle. Nor will I be silent of you, Liber, and you, virgin foe of savage beasts, nor of you, Phoebus, dread with your unerring shaft. I will tell of Alcides too, and the sons of Leda, the one renowned for outdoing men on horseback, the other with his fists; as soon as their white star shines out for sailors, the tossed water streams down from the rocks, the winds fall, the clouds flee, and the threatening wave — because they have so willed — lies down upon the deep. After these I doubt whether to recall first Romulus, or the peaceful reign of Pompilius, or the proud fasces of Tarquin, or the noble death of Cato. Regulus, and the Scauri, and Paulus, lavish of his great soul when the Carthaginian was winning, I will recall with grateful, distinguished song, and Fabricius. Him, and Curius with his unkempt hair, fierce poverty made useful for war, and Camillus too, with a fitting hearth and an ancestral farm. The fame of Marcellus grows like a tree in secret time; among them all the Julian star gleams like the moon among the lesser fires. Father and guardian of the human race, sprung from Saturn, to you the fates have given the care of great Caesar: may you reign with Caesar second to you. Whether he drives in a just triumph the Parthians, subdued, who threaten Latium, or the Seres and the Indians of the eastern shore, lesser than you, he will rule the wide world justly: you will shake Olympus with your heavy chariot, you will hurl your hostile thunderbolts on the groves that are less than chaste.
Quem virum aut heroa lyra vel acri tibia sumis celebrare, Clio? quem deum? cuius recinet iocosa nomen imago aut in umbrosis Heliconis oris aut super Pindo gelidove in Haemo? unde vocalem temere insecutae Orphea silvae, arte materna rapidos morantem fluminum lapsus celeresque ventos, blandum et auritas fidibus canoris ducere quercus. quid prius dicam solitis parentis laudibus, qui res hominum ac deorum, qui mare ac terras variisque mundum temperat horis? unde nil maius generatur ipso nec viget quidquam simile aut secundum. proximos illi tamen occupavit Pallas honores proeliis audax. neque te silebo, Liber et saevis inimica virgo beluis, nec te, metuende certa Phoebe sagitta. dicam et Alciden puerosque Ledae, hunc equis, illum superare pugnis nobilem; quorum simul alba nautis stella refulsit, defluit saxis agitatus umor, concidunt venti fugiuntque nubes et minax, quia sic voluere, ponto unda recumbit. Romulum post hos prius an quietum Pompili regnum memorem, an superbos Tarquini fascis, dubito, an Catonis nobile letum: Regulum et Scauros animaeque magnae prodigum Paulum superante Poeno gratus insigni referam camena Fabriciumque. hunc et incomptis Curium capillis utilem bello tulit et Camillum saeva paupertas et avitus apto cum lare fundus. crescit occulto velut arbor aevo fama Marcelli; micat inter omnis Iulium sidus velut inter ignis luna minores. gentis humanae pater atque custos, orte Saturno, tibi cura magni Caesaris fatis data: tu secundo Caesare regnes. ille seu Parthos Latio imminentis egerit iusto domitos triumpho sive subiectos Orientis orae Seras et Indos, te minor latum reget aequos orbem: tu gravi curru quaties Olympum, tu parum castis inimica mittes fulmina lucis.
When you, Lydia, praise the rosy neck of Telephus, the waxen arms of Telephus — ah, my liver swells, inflamed with a bile hard to bear. Then neither my mind nor my color keeps its settled place, and moisture slips by stealth onto my cheeks, betraying with what slow fires I am wasted to the core. I burn, whether brawls grown loud with wine have marred your white shoulders, or the raging boy has pressed upon your lips a mark that will be remembered with his tooth. You would not, if you heard me out, hope for constancy from one who barbarously wounds the sweet kisses that Venus has steeped with the fifth part of her own nectar. Thrice happy and more are they whom an unbroken bond holds, and whose love, torn apart by no ugly quarrels, will not loosen sooner than the last of days.
Cum tu, Lydia, Telephi cervicem roseam, cerea Telephi laudas bracchia, vae, meum fervens difficili bile tumet iecur. tum nec mens mihi nec color certa sede manet, umor et in genas furtim labitur arguens, quam lentis penitus macerer ignibus. uror, seu tibi candidos turparunt umeros inmodicae mero rixae sive puer furens inpressit memorem dente labris notam. non, si me satis audias, speres perpetuum dulcia barbare laedentem oscula, quae Venus quinta parte sui nectaris imbuit. felices ter et amplius quos inrupta tenet copula nec malis divolsus querimoniis suprema citius solvet amor die.
O ship, new waves will carry you back out to sea. What are you doing? Bravely make the harbor. Do you not see how your side is stripped of its oars, your mast wounded by the swift African gale, the yardarms groaning, and how, without ropes, the hulls can scarcely endure a sea grown too imperious? You have no whole sails, no gods to call upon again when the next storm presses you. For all that you are Pontic pine, daughter of a noble wood, boasting your stock and your useless name: the fearful sailor trusts nothing to painted sterns. You — unless you owe the winds a mockery — take care. You, who lately were my anxious weariness, and now my longing and no light concern, avoid the seas that pour between the gleaming Cyclades.
O navis, referent in mare te novi fluctus. o quid agis? fortiter occupa portum. nonne vides, ut nudum remigio latus et malus celeri saucius Africo antemnaeque gemant ac sine funibus vix durare carinae possint imperiosius aequor? non tibi sunt integra lintea, non di, quos iterum pressa voces malo. quamvis Pontica pinus, silvae filia nobilis, iactes et genus et nomen inutile: nil pictis timidus navita puppibus fidit. tu, nisi ventis debes ludibrium, cave. nuper sollicitum quae mihi taedium, nunc desiderium curaque non levis, interfusa nitentis vites aequora Cycladas.
When the shepherd carried his hostess Helen in Idaean ships across the seas, treacherous, Nereus weighed down the swift winds with an unwelcome calm, to sing their savage fates: "Under an evil omen you bring home one whom Greece will demand back with many a soldier, sworn together to break your marriage and the ancient kingdom of Priam. Alas, alas, what sweat is at hand for horses, for men! What funerals you set in motion for the Dardanian race! Already Pallas makes ready her helmet and aegis, her chariot and her fury. In vain, fierce in Venus’ protection, will you comb your hair, and on the unwarlike lyre apportion songs that please the women; in vain in your bedchamber will you dodge the heavy spears and the points of the Cnosian reed, and the din, and Ajax swift in pursuit: still, too late, alas, you will foul your adulterer’s locks with dust. Do you not look back at the son of Laertes, the ruin of your race, at Pylian Nestor? Salaminian Teucer bears down on you, fearless, and Sthenelus, who knows his battle-work, or, if there is need to master horses, no sluggard at the reins. Meriones too you will come to know. See where he rages, savage to find you out — Tydides, better than his father: and you, like a deer that has spied a wolf across the valley and forgets its grazing, will run from him, soft, with high panting breath — not what you promised her. The wrathful fleet of Achilles will put off the day for Ilium and the Phrygian matrons; after a fixed count of winters the Achaean fire will burn the houses of Troy."
Pastor cum traheret per freta navibus Idaeis Helenen perfidus hospitam, ingrato celeres obruit otio ventos ut caneret fera Nereus fata. "mala ducis avi domum quam multo repetet Graecia milite coniurata tuas rumpere nuptias et regnum Priami vetus. heu heu, quantus equis, quantus adest viris sudor, quanta moves funera Dardanae genti. iam galeam Pallas et aegida currusque et rabiem parat. nequiquam Veneris praesidio ferox pectes caesariem grataque feminis inbelli cithara carmina divides; nequiquam thalamo gravis hastas et calami spicula Cnosii vitabis strepitumque et celerem sequi Aiacem: tamen, heu serus, adulteros crines pulvere collines. non Laertiaden, exitium tuae genti, non Pylium Nestora respicis? urgent inpavidi te Salaminius Teucer, te Sthenelus, sciens pugnae sive opus est imperitare equis, non auriga piger. Merionen quoque nosces. ecce furit, te reperire atrox, Tydides melior patre: quem tu, cervus uti vallis in altera visum parte lupum graminis inmemor, sublimi fugies mollis anhelitu, non hoc pollicitus tuae. iracunda diem proferet Ilio matronisque Phrygum classis Achillei; post certas hiemes uret Achaicus ignis Iliacas domos.
O daughter fairer than your fair mother, put whatever end you please to my slanderous iambics — by fire, if you like, or in the Adriatic sea. Not Dindymene, not the Pythian dweller in his shrine, so shakes the minds of priests, not Liber so, nor do the Corybantes so redouble their shrill bronze, as do grim fits of anger, which neither the Noric sword deters, nor the shipwrecking sea, nor savage fire, nor Jupiter himself rushing down in fearful uproar. Prometheus, the story goes, when forced to add to our first clay a particle cut from each creature, set the violence of the mad lion in our stomach. Wrath laid Thyestes low in grievous ruin, and has stood as the final cause why lofty cities perished root and branch, and the insolent army drove the enemy’s plow across their walls. Master your mind: a fever of the breast tempted me too in sweet youth, and drove me, raging, into swift iambics. Now I seek to trade the bitter for the gentle, if only, my reproaches now recanted, you become my friend and give me back your heart.
O matre pulcra filia pulchrior, quem criminosis cumque voles modum pones iambis, sive flamma sive mari libet Hadriano. non Dindymene, non adytis quatit mentem sacerdotum incola Pythius, non Liber aeque, non acuta sic geminant Corybantes aera, tristes ut irae, quas neque Noricus deterret ensis nec mare naufragum nec saevos ignis nec tremendo Iuppiter ipse ruens tumultu. fertur Prometheus addere principi limo coactus particulam undique desectam et insani leonis vim stomacho adposuisse nostro. irae Thyesten exitio gravi stravere et altis urbibus ultimae stetere causae, cur perirent funditus inprimeretque muris hostile aratrum exercitus insolens. conpesce mentem: me quoque pectoris temptavit in dulci iuventa fervor et in celeres iambos misit furentem. nunc ego mitibus mutare quaero tristia, dum mihi fias recantatis amica opprobriis animumque reddas.
Swift Faunus often trades Lycaeus for lovely Lucretilis, and keeps the fiery summer heat and the rainy winds always away from my she-goats. Safely through the harmless grove the wandering wives of the rank-smelling husband seek out the hidden arbutus and the thyme, and the kids do not fear the green snakes nor the wolves of Mars, whenever, Tyndaris, the valleys and the smooth rocks of low-lying Ustica have rung to his sweet pipe. The gods watch over me; my piety and my song are dear to the gods. Here for you in full abundance the wealth and honors of the countryside will pour from a generous horn. Here in a secluded valley you will escape the Dog-star’s heat, and on the Teian string will sing of Penelope and glassy Circe both laboring over the one man; here under the shade you will draw cups of harmless Lesbian wine, nor will Semelean Thyoneus join battle with Mars, nor, suspected, will you fear insolent Cyrus, lest on you, so ill his match, he lay his uncontrolled hands and tear the garland clinging in your hair and your undeserving dress.
Velox amoenum saepe Lucretilem mutat Lycaeo Faunus et igneam defendit aestatem capellis usque meis pluviosque ventos. inpune tutum per nemus arbutos quaerunt latentis et thyma deviae olentis uxores mariti nec viridis metuunt colubras nec Martialis haediliae lupos, utcumque dulci, Tyndari, fistula valles et Usticae cubantis levia personuere saxa. di me tuentur, dis pietas mea et musa cordi est. hic tibi copia manabit ad plenum benigno ruris honorum opulenta cornu. hic in reducta valle Caniculae vitabis aestus et fide Teia dices laborantis in uno Penelopen vitreamque Circen; hic innocentis pocula Lesbii duces sub umbra nec Semeleius cum Marte confundet Thyoneus proelia nec metues protervum suspecta Cyrum, ne male dispari incontinentis iniciat manus et scindat haerentem coronam crinibus inmeritamque vestem.
Plant no tree, Varus, before the sacred vine, around the mild soil of Tibur and the walls of Catilus; for the god has set all things hard for the dry, and no otherwise do the biting cares disperse. Who, after wine, prattles of harsh soldiering or of poverty? Who not rather of you, father Bacchus, and you, gracious Venus? But lest any overstep the gifts of moderate Liber, the Centaurs’ brawl with the Lapiths, fought to the end over wine, gives warning, and Euhius, no light god to the Sithonians, gives warning, when, greedy, they part right and wrong by the narrow boundary of their lusts. I will not shake you, bright Bassareus, against your will, nor drag into the open what your varied leaves cover over. Hold back the savage drums and the Berecyntian horn, which blind self-love attends, and Vainglory lifting too high her empty head, and Faith, prodigal of secrets, clearer than glass.
Nullam, Vare, sacra vite prius severis arborem circa mite solum Tiburis et moenia Catili; siccis omnia nam dura deus proposuit neque mordaces aliter diffugiunt sollicitudines. quis post vina gravem militiam aut pauperiem crepat? quis non te potius, Bacche pater, teque, decens Venus? ac ne quis modici transiliat munera Liberi, Centaurea monet cum Lapithis rixa super mero debellata, monet Sithoniis non levis Euhius, cum fas atque nefas exiguo fine libidinum discernunt avidi. non ego te, candide Bassareu, invitum quatiam nec variis obsita frondibus sub divum rapiam. saeva tene cum Berecyntio cornu tympana, quae subsequitur caecus amor sui et tollens vacuum plus nimio gloria verticem arcanique fides prodiga, perlucidior vitro.
The savage mother of the Cupids, and the son of Theban Semele, and wanton License bid me give my heart back to the loves I had done with. The radiance of Glycera burns me, gleaming purer than Parian marble; her welcome sauciness burns me, and a face too dazzling to look upon. Venus, rushing on me with her whole force, has abandoned Cyprus, and will not let me sing of the Scythians, or of the Parthian, fierce with his wheeling horse, or of what is nothing to the point. Here set for me a living turf, here vervain, boys, and incense with a bowl of two-year wine: with a victim slain she will come gentler.
Mater saeva Cupidinum Thebanaeque iubet me Semelae puer et lasciva Licentia finitis animum reddere amoribus. urit me Glycerae nitor splendentis Pario marmore purius, urit grata protervitas et voltus nimium lubricus adspici. in me tota ruens Venus Cyprum deseruit nec patitur Scythas et versis animosum equis Parthum dicere nec quae nihil attinent. hic vivum mihi caespitem, hic verbenas, pueri, ponite turaque bimi cum patera meri: mactata veniet lenior hostia.
Cheap Sabine you will drink from modest cups — wine I sealed myself in a Greek jar and laid away, on the day the applause rose for you in the theater, illustrious Maecenas, eques, so that the banks of your ancestral river and the playful echo of the Vatican hill at once gave you back your praises. You may drink Caecuban, and the grape tamed by the Calenian press: but neither Falernian vines nor the Formian hills season my cups.
Vile potabis modicis Sabinum cantharis, Graeca quod ego ipse testa conditum levi, datus in theatro cum tibi plausus, clare Maecenas eques, ut paterni fluminis ripae simul et iocosa redderet laudes tibi Vaticani montis imago. Caecubum et prelo domitam Caleno tu bibes uvam: mea nec Falernae temperant vites neque Formiani pocula colles.
Sing of Diana, tender maidens; sing, boys, of the unshorn Cynthian, and of Latona, deeply beloved of Jupiter on high. You, maidens, sing of her who delights in rivers and the leafage of the groves, whatever juts from cold Algidus, or the black woods of Erymanthus, or green Cragus; you, boys, exalt Tempe with as many praises, and Delos, Apollo’s birthplace, and his shoulder distinguished by the quiver and his brother’s lyre. He, moved by your prayer, will drive tearful war, wretched famine, and plague away from the people and from prince Caesar onto the Persians and the Britons.
Dianam tenerae dicite virgines, intonsum pueri dicite Cynthium Latonamque supremo dilectam penitus Iovi. vos laetam fluviis et nemorum coma quaecumque aut gelido prominet Algido nigris aut Erymanthi silvis aut viridis Cragi; vos Tempe totidem tollite laudibus natalemque, mares, Delon Apollinis insignemque pharetra fraternaque umerum lyra. hic bellum lacrimosum, hic miseram famem pestemque a populo et principe Caesare in Persas atque Britannos vestra motus aget prece.
The man upright in life and clean of crime has no need of Moorish javelins, nor of bow, nor of a quiver heavy with poisoned arrows, Fuscus, whether his road will be through the sweltering Syrtes, or through the inhospitable Caucasus, or the lands the fabled Hydaspes laps. For a wolf in the Sabine wood fled from me, unarmed, while I sang of my Lalage and wandered past my boundary, free of my cares — a portent such as neither warlike Daunia feeds in its broad oak-woods, nor the land of Juba breeds, that arid nurse of lions. Set me on the sluggish plains where no tree is freshened by a summer breeze, the quarter of the world that mists and a sullen sky weigh down; set me beneath the chariot of the sun too close, in a land refused to dwellings: I will love my Lalage, sweet of laughter, my Lalage, sweet of speech.
Integer vitae scelerisque purus non eget Mauris iaculis neque arcu nec venenatis gravida sagittis, Fusce, pharetra, sive per Syrtis iter aestuosas sive facturus per inhospitalem Caucasum vel quae loca fabulosus lambit Hydaspes. namque me silva lupus in Sabina, dum meam canto Lalagen et ultra terminum curis vagor expeditis, fugit inermem; quale portentum neque militaris Daunias latis alit aesculetis nec Iubae tellus generat, leonum arida nutrix. pone me pigris ubi nulla campis arbor aestiva recreatur aura, quod latus mundi nebulae malusque Iuppiter urget; pone sub curru nimium propinqui solis in terra domibus negata: dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo, dulce loquentem.
You shun me, Chloe, like a fawn seeking its frightened mother on the pathless mountains, not without an idle dread of the breezes and the wood. For whether the coming of spring has shuddered in the trembling leaves, or the green lizards have stirred the bramble apart, she trembles in heart and knees. And yet I do not hunt you down to crush you like a fierce tiger or a Gaetulian lion: cease at last to follow your mother, ripe now for a man.
Vitas hinnuleo me similis, Chloe, quaerenti pavidam montibus aviis matrem non sine vano aurarum et siluae metu. nam seu mobilibus veris inhorruit adventus foliis seu virides rubum dimovere lacertae, et corde et genibus tremit. atqui non ego te tigris ut aspera Gaetulusve leo frangere persequor: tandem desine matrem tempestiva sequi viro.
What shame or measure can there be in longing for so dear a head? Teach me the mournful strains, Melpomene, to whom the Father gave a liquid voice with the lyre. And so does an endless sleep weigh down Quintilius? When will Modesty, and Justice’s sister, incorruptible Faith, and naked Truth ever find his equal? He has fallen, to be wept by many good men, by none more wept than you, Vergil. You, alas, devout in vain, demand Quintilius back from the gods, who lent him on no such terms. What if, more winningly than Thracian Orpheus, you tuned the strings the trees once heard? Would the blood come back to the empty shade, whom Mercury, not gentle to unbar the fates to prayers, has herded with his dreadful wand into his black flock? It is hard: but by patience whatever it is forbidden to set right grows lighter to bear.
Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus tam cari capitis? praecipe lugubris cantus, Melpomene, cui liquidam pater vocem cum cithara dedit. ergo Quintilium perpetuus sopor urget? cui Pudor et Iustitiae soror incorrupta Fides nudaque Veritas quando ullum inveniet parem? multis ille bonis flebilis occidit, nulli flebilior quam tibi, Vergili. tu, frustra pius, heu non ita creditum poscis Quintilium deos. quid? si Threicio blandius Orpheo auditam moderere arboribus fidem, num vanae redeat sanguis imagini, quam virga semel horrida non lenis precibus fata recludere nigro conpulerit Mercurius gregi? durum: sed levius fit patientia quidquid corrigere est nefas.
Less often now do the wanton young men shake your shut windows with their pelting throws, nor take away your sleep, and the door loves its own threshold, which once moved its hinges all too readily. Less and less now you hear: "While I, your own, am dying through the long nights, Lydia, do you sleep?" In your turn, an old woman, you will weep, slighted, for the arrogant adulterers in a lonely alley, while the Thracian wind raves the harder under the moonless nights, when burning love and the lust that is wont to madden the mothers of horses will rage about your ulcered liver, not without complaint that the glad youth take more delight in the green ivy and the dark myrtle, and dedicate the withered leaves to the East wind, winter’s comrade.
Parcius iunctas quatiunt fenestras iactibus crebris iuvenes protervi nec tibi somnos adimunt amatque ianua limen, quae prius multum facilis movebat cardines. audis minus et minus iam: "me tuo longas pereunte noctes, Lydia, dormis?" invicem moechos anus arrogantis flebis in solo levis angiportu Thracio bacchante magis sub inter- lunia vento, cum tibi flagrans amor et libido, quae solet matres furiare equorum, saeviet circa iecur ulcerosum non sine questu, laeta quod pubes hedera virenti gaudeat pulla magis atque myrto, aridas frondes hiemis sodali dedicet Euro.
Friend to the Muses, I will hand over sadness and fears to the wanton winds to carry into the Cretan sea, careless, beyond all others, what king is feared under the Bear, what terrifies Tiridates. O you who delight in untouched springs, weave the sunlit flowers, weave a garland for my Lamia, sweet Pimpleis. Without you my tributes are worth nothing: it is fitting that you and your sisters hallow this man with new strings, hallow him with the Lesbian quill.
Musis amicus tristitiam et metus tradam protervis in mare Creticum portare ventis, quis sub Arcto rex gelidae metuatur orae, quid Tiridaten terreat, unice securus. o quae fontibus integris gaudes, apricos necte flores, necte meo Lamiae coronam, Piplei dulcis. nil sine te mei prosunt honores: hunc fidibus novis, hunc Lesbio sacrare plectro teque tuasque decet sorores.
To fight with cups that were born for joy is the way of Thracians: away with the barbarous custom, and shield modest Bacchus from bloody brawls. How vastly the Median scimitar jars with wine and lamps: hush the unholy clamor, comrades, and keep your places, elbow pressed to couch. You want me too to take my share of the stern Falernian? Then let the brother of Opuntian Megilla say by what wound he is blessed, by what arrow he dies. His will flags? On no other terms will I drink. Whatever Venus masters you, you burn with no fires to be ashamed of, and your sin is always with a freeborn love. Come, whatever you have, set it down in trustworthy ears. Ah, wretch — in what a Charybdis you were laboring, boy, deserving a better flame! What witch, what wizard with Thessalian drugs, what god could set you free? Pegasus himself will scarcely disentangle you, bound by the threefold Chimaera.
Natis in usum laetitiae scyphis pugnare Thracum est: tollite barbarum morem verecundumque Bacchum sanguineis prohibete rixis. vino et lucernis Medus acinaces immane quantum discrepat: inpium lenite clamorem sodales et cubito remanete presso. voltis severi me quoque sumere partem Falerni? dicat Opuntiae frater Megillae, quo beatus volnere, qua pereat sagitta. cessat voluntas? non alia bibam mercede. quae te cumque domat Venus, non erubescendis adurit ignibus ingenuoque semper amore peccas. quidquid habes, age, depone tutis auribus. a miser, quanta laborabas Charybdi, digne puer meliore flamma. quae saga, quis te solvere Thessalis magus venenis, quis poterit deus? vix inligatum te triformi Pegasus expediet Chimaera.
You, the measurer of sea and land and the numberless sand, Archytas, a small gift of meager dust holds fast near the Matine shore, and it profits you nothing to have probed the airy houses and traversed in mind the rounded vault — and you to die. The father of Pelops died too, the gods’ own guest, and Tithonus, withdrawn into the breezes, and Minos, let into Jupiter’s secrets, and Tartarus holds the son of Panthous, sent down a second time to Orcus — though, by unfastening the shield, he had attested the days of Troy and yielded to black death nothing beyond sinews and skin, no mean authority, in your judgment, on nature and truth. But one night awaits us all, and the road of death must be trodden once for all. The Furies give some as a show to grim Mars; the greedy sea is the ruin of sailors; crowded together press the funerals of old and young; no head does savage Proserpina pass by. Me too the swift South wind, companion of setting Orion, has whelmed in the Illyrian waves. But you, sailor, do not grudge, in your spite, to give a little of the drifting sand to my bones and my unburied head: so, whatever the East wind shall threaten to the Hesperian waves, may the Venusine woods be flogged while you go safe, and may rich reward flow down to you, from where it can, from just Jupiter and from Neptune, guardian of sacred Tarentum. Do you make light of committing a wrong that will harm, hereafter, your innocent children? Perhaps a debt of justice and a proud requital await you too: I shall not be left with my prayers unavenged, and no atonements will absolve you. Though you are in haste, the delay is not long; once three handfuls of dust are cast, you may run on.
Te maris et terrae numeroque carentis harenae mensorem cohibent, Archyta, pulveris exigui prope litus parva Matinum munera nec quicquam tibi prodest aerias temptasse domos animoque rotundum percurrisse polum morituro. occidit et Pelopis genitor, conviva deorum, Tithonusque remotus in auras et Iovis arcanis Minos admissus habentque Tartara Panthoiden iterum Orco demissum, quamvis clipeo Troiana refixo tempora testatus nihil ultra nervos atque cutem morti concesserat atrae, iudice te non sordidus auctor naturae verique. sed omnis una manet nox et calcanda semel via leti. dant alios Furiae torvo spectacula Marti, exitio est avidum mare nautis; mixta senum ac iuvenum densentur funera, nullum saeva caput Proserpina fugit: me quoque devexi rapidus comes Orionis Illyricis Notus obruit undis. at tu, nauta, vagae ne parce malignus harenae ossibus et capiti inhumato particulam dare: sic quodcumque minabitur Eurus fluctibus Hesperiis Venusinae plectantur silvae te sospite multaque merces unde potest tibi defluat aequo ab Iove Neptunoque sacri custode Tarenti. neglegis inmeritis nocituram postmodo te natis fraudem conmittere? fors et debita iura vicesque superbae te maneant ipsum: precibus non linquar inultis teque piacula nulla resolvent. quamquam festinas, non est mora longa; licebit iniecto ter pulvere curras.
Iccius, do you now envy the blessed treasures of the Arabs, and prepare a fierce campaign against the kings of Sheba, not conquered before, and forge chains for the dreaded Mede? What barbarian maiden, her betrothed slain, will be your slave? What palace boy, his hair perfumed, will be set beside your cup, taught to draw the Seric arrows on his father’s bow? Who would now deny that downward streams can flow back up the steep mountains, and the Tiber turn, when you, who promised better, strain to swap the noble books of Panaetius, bought up everywhere, and the Socratic household, for Iberian breastplates?
Icci, beatis nunc Arabum invides gazis et acrem militiam paras non ante devictis Sabaeae regibus horribilique Medo nectis catenas? quae tibi virginum sponso necato barbara serviet, puer quis ex aula capillis ad cyathum statuetur unctis doctus sagittas tendere Sericas arcu paterno? quis neget arduis pronos relabi posse rivos montibus et Tiberim reverti, cum tu coemptos undique nobilis libros Panaeti Socraticam et domum mutare loricis Hiberis, pollicitus meliora, tendis?
What does the bard ask of newly dedicated Apollo? What does he pray, pouring fresh wine from the bowl? Not the rich harvests of fertile Sardinia, not the pleasing herds of sweltering Calabria, not gold, nor Indian ivory, nor the fields the Liris gnaws with its still water, a silent stream. Let those to whom fortune has given it prune the Calenian vine with the hook, and let the rich merchant drain from golden cups the wines bought back with Syrian wares — dear to the very gods, since thrice and four times a year he revisits the Atlantic sea unharmed. Me the olive feeds, me chicory and light mallows. Grant me to enjoy what I have ready, son of Latona, and in good health, I pray, with mind entire; nor to pass a shameful old age, nor one without the lyre.
Quid dedicatum poscit Apollinem vates? quid orat de patera novum fundens liquorem? non opimae Sardiniae segetes feracis, non aestuosae grata Calabriae armenta, non aurum aut ebur Indicum, non rura, quae Liris quieta mordet aqua taciturnus amnis. premant Calenam falce quibus dedit fortuna vitem, dives ut aureis mercator exsiccet culillis vina Syra reparata merce, dis carus ipsis, quippe ter et quater anno revisens aequor Atlanticum inpune. me pascunt olivae, me cichorea levesque malvae. frui paratis et valido mihi, Latoe, dones et precor integra cum mente nec turpem senectam degere nec cithara carentem.
We are called on. If ever, idle in the shade, I have played with you a thing that may live for this year and more, come now, sing a Latin song, my lyre, first tuned by a citizen of Lesbos, who, fierce in war, yet, whether amid arms or having moored his tossed ship on the wet shore, sang of Liber and the Muses and Venus and the boy forever clinging to her, and of Lycus, lovely with his black eyes and his black hair. O glory of Phoebus, shell welcome at the feasts of highest Jupiter, o sweet solace of toils, be favorable to me whenever I duly call.
Poscimur. si quid vacui sub umbra lusimus tecum, quod et hunc in annum vivat et pluris, age dic Latinum, barbite, carmen, Lesbio primum modulate civi, qui ferox bello tamen, inter arma sive iactatam religarat udo litore navim, Liberum et Musas Veneremque et illi semper haerentem puerum canebat et Lycum nigris oculis nigroque crine decorum. o decus Phoebi et dapibus supremi grata testudo Iovis, o laborum dulce lenimen, mihi cumque salve rite vocanti!
Albi, do not grieve too much, remembering cruel Glycera, nor chant your piteous elegies because, her faith now broken, a younger man outshines you. Love for Cyrus scorches Lycoris, lovely with her low brow; Cyrus inclines toward harsh Pholoe: but sooner shall the she-goats be mated with Apulian wolves than Pholoe sin with a base adulterer. So it seemed good to Venus, who delights to send ill-matched bodies and minds under her bronze yoke with savage jest. I myself, when a better love was seeking me, was held by the pleasing fetters of Myrtale, a freedwoman, fiercer than the Adriatic that curves the Calabrian bays.
Albi, ne doleas plus nimio memor inmitis Glycerae neu miserabilis decantes elegos, cur tibi iunior laesa praeniteat fide. insignem tenui fronte Lycorida Cyri torret amor, Cyrus in asperam declinat Pholoen: sed prius Apulis iungentur capreae lupis quam turpi Pholoe peccet adultero. sic visum Veneri, cui placet inpares formas atque animos sub iuga aenea saevo mittere cum ioco. ipsum me melior cum peteret Venus, grata detinuit compede Myrtale libertina, fretis acrior Hadriae curvantis Calabros sinus.
A sparing and infrequent worshipper of the gods, while I strayed, schooled in a mad wisdom, now I am forced to set my sails backward and retrace the courses I had left behind: for the Father of Day, who most often cleaves the clouds with flashing fire, drove his thundering horses and his winged chariot through a clear sky, at which the dull earth and the wandering rivers, at which the Styx and the dread seat of hated Taenarus and the Atlantean boundary are shaken. The god has power to change the lowest with the highest, and, bringing the obscure to light, he humbles the eminent; from one man rapacious Fortune with a sharp shriek has snatched the crown, and rejoices to have set it on another.
Parcus deorum cultor et infrequens, insanientis dum sapientiae consultus erro, nunc retrorsum vela dare atque iterare cursus cogor relictos: namque Diespiter, igni corusco nubila dividens plerumque, per purum tonantis egit equos volucremque currum, quo bruta tellus et vaga flumina, quo Styx et invisi horrida Taenari sedes Atlanteusque finis concutitur. valet ima summis mutare et insignem attenuat deus obscura promens; hinc apicem rapax: Fortuna cum stridore acuto sustulit, hic posuisse gaudet.
O goddess who rule pleasant Antium, ready either to lift the mortal body from the lowest rank, or to turn proud triumphs into funerals: the poor farmer of the countryside courts you with anxious prayer; you, as mistress of the sea, whoever harries the Carpathian deep in a Bithynian keel; you the harsh Dacian, you the wandering Scythians, and cities and nations, and fierce Latium, and the mothers of barbarian kings, and the purple-robed tyrants fear, lest with injurious foot you overthrow the standing column, lest the thronging crowd rouse to arms, to arms, the laggards, and break the rule of empire. Before you always walks savage Necessity, bearing in her bronze hand the beam-spikes and the wedges; nor is the cruel clamp absent, nor the molten lead. You Hope, and rare Faith veiled in white cloth, attend, nor does she refuse her company, whenever, hostile, your garb changed, you forsake the houses of the powerful; but the faithless rabble and the perjured harlot draw back, and friends scatter once the casks are drained to the lees, too crafty to bear the yoke as equals: guard Caesar as he sets out against the Britons at the world’s edge, and the fresh swarm of young men, to be feared by the eastern regions and the Red Ocean. Alas, alas, we are ashamed of our scars and crimes and brothers. What have we, a hard generation, shrunk from? What unholy thing have we left untouched? From what has our youth held back its hand in fear of the gods? What altars have they spared? O may you reforge upon a new anvil the iron blunted against the Massagetae and the Arabs.
O diva, gratum quae regis Antium, praesens vel imo tollere de gradu mortale corpus vel superbos vertere funeribus triumphos: te pauper ambit sollicita prece ruris colonus, te dominam aequoris quicumque Bithyna lacessit Carpathium pelagus carina; te Dacus asper, te profugi Scythae urbesque gentesque et Latium ferox regumque matres barbarorum et purpurei metuunt tyranni, iniurioso ne pede proruas stantem columnam neu populus frequens ad arma, cessantis ad arma concitet imperiumque frangat; te semper anteit saeva Necessitas, clavos trabalis et cuneos manu gestans aena nec severus uncus abest liquidumque plumbum; te Spes et albo rara Fides colit velata panno nec comitem abnegat, utcumque mutata potentis veste domos inimica linquis, at volgus infidum et meretrix retro periura cedit, diffugiunt cadis cum faece siccatis amici, ferre iugum pariter dolosi: serves iturum Caesarem in ultimos orbis Britannos et iuvenum recens examen Eois timendum partibus Oceanoque rubro. heu heu, cicatricum et sceleris pudet fratrumque. quid nos dura refugimus aetas? quid intactum nefasti liquimus? unde manum iuventus metu deorum continuit? quibus pepercit aris? o utinam nova incude diffingas retusum in Massagetas Arabasque ferrum.
With incense and the lyre it is a joy to appease, and with the due blood of a calf, the gods who guard Numida, who now, safe home from farthest Hesperia, deals out many kisses to his dear companions, yet to none more than to sweet Lamia, mindful of a boyhood passed under one and the same "king," and of the toga they put on together. Let this fair day not lack its Cretan mark, nor a limit be set to the jar brought out, nor rest given to the feet in the Salian fashion, nor let Damalis, deep in wine, outdo Bassus in the Thracian draining-bout; nor let roses be wanting from the feast, nor the long-living parsley, nor the short-lived lily. All will fix their swimming eyes on Damalis, but Damalis will not be torn from her new lover, more clinging than the wanton ivy.
Et ture et fidibus iuvat placare et vituli sanguine debito custodes Numidae deos, qui nunc Hesperia sospes ab ultima caris multa sodalibus, nulli plura tamen dividet oscula quam dulci Lamiae, memor actae non alio rege puertiae mutataeque simul togae. Cressa ne careat pulcra dies nota neu promptae modus amphorae neu morem in Salium sit requies pedum neu multi Damalis meri Bassum Threicia vincat amystide neu desint epulis rosae neu vivax apium neu breve lilium. omnes in Damalin putris deponent oculos nec Damalis novo divelletur adultero lascivis hederis ambitiosior.
Now is the time to drink, now with free foot to beat the earth; now, my comrades, was the time to deck the couch of the gods with Salian feasts. Before this it was forbidden to bring out the Caecuban from ancestral cellars, while the queen was readying mad ruin for the Capitol and death for the empire, with her contaminated herd of men foul with disease, wild enough to hope for anything, and drunk with sweet fortune. But scarcely one ship saved from the flames lessened her frenzy, and Caesar reduced her mind, crazed with Mareotic wine, to true terrors, pressing close with his oars as she flew from Italy, as a hawk pursues the soft doves, or a swift hunter a hare on the snowy plains of Haemonia, to give the fated monster over to chains. She, seeking to perish more nobly, neither shrank like a woman from the sword, nor with her swift fleet made for hidden shores. She dared, too, to look on her fallen palace with serene face, and, brave, to handle the fierce serpents, that she might drink the black venom into her body, fiercer for the death she had resolved: grudging, no doubt, to be led, stripped of her throne, in a proud triumph by the savage Liburnian galleys — no humble woman.
Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus; nunc Saliaribus ornare pulvinar deorum tempus erat dapibus, sodales. antehac nefas depromere Caecubum cellis avitis, dum Capitolio regina dementis ruinas, funus et imperio parabat contaminato cum grege turpium morbo virorum quidlibet inpotens sperare fortunaque dulci ebria. sed minuit furorem vix una sospes navis ab ignibus mentemque lymphatam Mareotico redegit in veros timores Caesar ab Italia volantem remis adurgens, accipiter velut mollis columbas aut leporem citus venator in campis nivalis Haemoniae, daret ut catenis fatale monstrum. quae generosius perire quaerens nec muliebriter expavit ensem nec latentis classe cita reparavit oras. ausa et iacentem visere regiam voltu sereno, fortis et asperas tractare serpentes, ut atrum corpore conbiberet venenum, deliberata morte ferocior; saevis Liburnis scilicet invidens privata deduci superbo, non humilis mulier, triumpho.
Persian trappings I hate, boy; garlands woven with linden bark displease me; leave off the search for the place where the late rose lingers. I am at pains that you add nothing, in your zeal, to the plain myrtle: the myrtle is unbecoming neither to you, the server, nor to me drinking under the close-set vine.
Persicos odi, puer, adparatus, displicent nexae philyra coronae, mitte sectari, rosa quo locorum sera moretur. simplici myrto nihil adlabores sedulus curo: neque te ministrum dedecet myrtus neque me sub arta vite bibentem.
The civic turmoil from Metellus’ consulship, the causes of the war, its crimes, its phases, the game of Fortune, the ruinous friendships of the great, and arms smeared with blood not yet atoned for — a work full of perilous chance — these you handle, and you walk over fires laid beneath a treacherous ash. Let the Muse of stern tragedy be missing from the theaters a while: soon, when you have set the state’s affairs in order, you will resume your great task in the Cecropian buskin, Pollio, illustrious bulwark of sorrowing defendants and of the senate in its counsel, you for whom the laurel won undying honors in the Dalmatian triumph. Already now with the threatening murmur of horns you graze our ears; already the clarions blare, already the flash of arms frightens the fleeing horses and the riders’ faces. Already I seem to hear of great captains befouled with no dishonorable dust, and of the whole earth subdued save the fierce soul of Cato. Juno, and whatever god, more a friend to the Africans, had withdrawn powerless, leaving the land unavenged, has brought the victors’ grandsons as offerings to Jugurtha’s shade. What field, fattened with Latin blood, does not bear witness by its graves to our unholy battles, and to the sound of Hesperia’s ruin, heard even by the Medes? What gulf, what rivers, are strangers to the mournful war? What sea have Daunian slaughters not discolored? What shore is free of our blood? But, saucy Muse, lest you forsake your jests and take up again the task of the Cean dirge, seek with me, in Dione’s grotto, measures on a lighter quill.
Motum ex Metello consule civicum bellique causas et vitia et modos ludumque Fortunae gravisque principum amicitias et arma nondum expiatis uncta cruoribus, periculosae plenum opus aleae, tractas et incedis per ignis suppositos cineri doloso. paulum severae musa tragoediae desit theatris: mox ubi publicas res ordinaris, grande munus Cecropio repetes cothurno, insigne maestis praesidium reis et consulenti, Pollio, curiae, cui laurus aeternos honores Delmatico peperit triumpho. iam nunc minaci murmure cornuum perstringis auris, iam litui strepunt, iam fulgor armorum fugacis terret equos equitumque voltus. audire magnos iam videor duces, non indecoro pulvere sordidos et cuncta terrarum subacta praeter atrocem animum Catonis. Iuno et deorum quisquis amicior Afris inulta cesserat inpotens tellure victorum nepotes rettulit inferias Iugurthae. quis non Latino sanguine pinguior campus sepulcris inpia proelia testatur auditumque Medis Hesperiae sonitum ruinae? qui gurges aut quae flumina lugubris ignara belli? quod mare Dauniae non decoloravere caedes? quae caret ora cruore nostro? sed ne relictis, Musa procax, iocis Ceae retractes munera neniae, mecum Dionaeo sub antro quaere modos leviore plectro.
Silver has no color while hidden away in the greedy earth, Crispus Sallustius, enemy of bullion unless it gleam with tempered use. Proculeius will live through a lengthened age, known for a father’s heart toward his brothers: him surviving Fame will carry on a wing that fears to fail. You would reign more widely by mastering a greedy spirit than if you joined Libya to far-off Gades, and both Carthaginians served a single master. The dread dropsy grows by indulging itself and does not drive off thirst, unless the cause of the sickness has fled the veins, and the watery languor the pale body. Virtue, at odds with the crowd, strikes Phraates, restored to the throne of Cyrus, from the count of the blessed, and unteaches the people to use false words, granting the kingdom and the safe diadem and the proper laurel to whoever looks on great heaps of gold with an uncovetous eye.
Nullus argento color est avaris abdito terris, inimice lamnae Crispe Sallusti, nisi temperato splendeat usu. vivet extento Proculeius aevo, notus in fratres animi paterni: illum aget penna metuente solvi Fama superstes. latius regnes avidum domando spiritum quam si Libyam remotis Gadibus iungas et uterque Poenus serviat uni. crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops nec sitim pellit, nisi causa morbi fugerit venis et aquosus albo corpore languor. redditum Cyri solio Phraaten dissidens plebi numero beatorum eximit Virtus populumque falsis dedocet uti vocibus, regnum et diadema tutum deferens uni propriamque laurum quisquis ingentis oculo inretorto spectat acervos.
Remember to keep an even mind in hard circumstances, and likewise, in good ones, a mind tempered from insolent joy, Dellius, doomed to die, whether you live downcast at every season, or, reclined in a remote meadow through the holidays, bless yourself with an inner-cellar mark of Falernian. To what end do the huge pine and the white poplar love to weave their hospitable shade with their boughs? Why does the fleeting water labor to hurry along in its winding stream? Bid them bring here wine and perfumes and the too-brief blossoms of the lovely rose, while circumstance and age and the black threads of the three Sisters allow. You will leave your bought-up woodlands and your house and the villa the yellow Tiber laves; you will leave them, and an heir will possess your riches piled on high. Whether you tarry under the sky rich and sprung from ancient Inachus, or poor and of the lowest stock, it makes no difference: you are the victim of Orcus, who pities nothing. We are all herded to the one place; the lot of all is shaken in the urn, sooner or later to come forth and set us aboard the boat for everlasting exile.
Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem, non secus in bonis ab insolenti temperatam laetitia, moriture Delli, seu maestus omni tempore vixeris seu te in remoto gramine per dies festos reclinatum bearis interiore nota Falerni. quo pinus ingens albaque populus umbram hospitalem consociare amant ramis? quid obliquo laborat lympha fugax trepidare rivo? huc vina et unguenta et nimium brevis flores amoenae ferre iube rosae, dum res et aetas et sororum fila trium patiuntur atra. cedes coemptis saltibus et domo villaque, flavos quam Tiberis lavit, cedes et exstructis in altum divitiis potietur heres. divesne prisco natus ab Inacho nil interest an pauper et infima de gente sub divo moreris: victima nil miserantis Orci. omnes eodem cogimur, omnium versatur urna serius ocius sors exitura et nos in aeternum exilium inpositura cumbae.
Let love for a slave-girl be no shame to you, Xanthias of Phocis: before you, the slave Briseis with her snow-white color moved the haughty Achilles; the beauty of captive Tecmessa moved her master Ajax, son of Telamon; the son of Atreus, in mid-triumph, burned for the ravished maiden, after the barbarian squadrons fell to the Thessalian victor, and Hector, taken off, gave Pergamum, the easier to be brought down, to the weary Greeks. You cannot know — perhaps the blessed parents of golden Phyllis would grace you as a son-in-law: surely she is of royal stock, and mourns her unjust household gods. Believe that she, your beloved, was not picked from the wicked rabble, nor that one so faithful, so averse to gain, could be born of a mother to be ashamed of. Her arms, her face, her shapely calves I praise with a clear conscience: do not suspect me, whose years have hurried to close their eighth lustrum.
Ne sit ancillae tibi amor pudori, Xanthia Phoceu: prius insolentem serva Briseis niveo colore movit Achillem, movit Aiacem Telamone natum forma captivae dominum Tecmessae, arsit Atrides medio in triumpho virgine rapta, barbarae postquam cecidere turmae Thessalo victore et ademptus Hector tradidit fessis leviora tolli Pergama Grais. nescias an te generum beati Phyllidis flavae decorent parentes: regium certe genus, et penatis maeret iniquos. crede non illam tibi de scelesta plebe dilectam neque sic fidelem, sic lucro aversam potuisse nasci matre pudenda. bracchia et voltum teretesque suras integer laudo: fuge suspicari, cuius octavum trepidavit aetas claudere lustrum.
She is not yet strong to bear the yoke on a broken neck, not yet to match a mate’s duties, nor to endure the weight of the bull rushing into love; your heifer’s heart is on the green fields, now soothing the heavy heat in the streams, now keen, beyond measure, to play with the calves in the moist willow-thicket. Put off your craving for the unripe grape: soon dappling autumn will tint for you the livid clusters with a purple color. Soon she will follow you (for fierce time runs on, and will charge to her account the years it strips from you); soon, with wanton brow, beloved Lalage will seek a husband, loved as fleeing Pholoe is not, nor Chloris, gleaming with a white shoulder as the pure moon shines on the nocturnal sea, or Cnidian Gyges, whom, if you set him in a chorus of girls, would wondrously deceive even shrewd guests — the distinction blurred by his loosened hair and his ambiguous face.
Nondum subacta ferre iugum valet cervice, nondum munia conparis aequare nec tauri ruentis in venerem tolerare pondus; circa virentis est animus tuae campos iuvencae nunc fluviis gravem solantis aestum, nunc in udo ludere cum vitulis salicto praegestientis. tolle cupidinem inmitis uvae: iam tibi lividos distinguet autumnus racemos purpureo varius colore. iam te sequetur (currit enim ferox aetas et illi quos tibi dempserit adponet annos), iam proterva fronte petet Lalage maritum dilecta, quantum non Pholoe fugax, non Chloris albo sic umero nitens ut pura nocturno renidet luna mari, Cnidiusve Gyges, quem si puellarum insereres choro, mire sagacis falleret hospites discrimen obscurum solutis crinibus ambiguoque voltu.
Septimius, ready to go with me to Gades, and to the Cantabrian not yet taught to bear our yoke, and the barbarous Syrtes, where the Moorish wave forever seethes: may Tibur, founded by an Argive settler, be the seat of my old age; may there be a limit for one wearied of the sea, the roads, and soldiering. But if the unjust Fates bar me from there, I will make for the river Galaesus, sweet to skin-clad sheep, and the fields once ruled by Laconian Phalanthus. That corner of the earth smiles on me beyond all others, where the honey yields nothing to Hymettus, and the olive rivals green Venafrum, where Jupiter grants a long spring and mild winters, and friendly Aulon, dear to fertile Bacchus, envies the Falernian grapes very little; that place and its blessed heights call out for you and me together: there you will wet with the tear that is owed the warm ash of your poet-friend.
Septimi, Gadis aditure mecum et Cantabrum indoctum iuga ferre nostra et barbaras Syrtis, ubi Maura semper aestuat unda: Tibur Argeo positum colono sit meae sedes utinam senectae, sit modus lasso maris et viarum militiaeque. unde si Parcae prohibent iniquae, dulce pellitis ovibus Galaesi flumen et regnata petam Laconi rura Phalantho ille terrarum mihi praeter omnis angulus ridet, ubi non Hymetto mella decedunt viridique certat baca Venafro, ver ubi longum tepidasque praebet Iuppiter brumas et amicus Aulon fertili Baccho minimum Falernis invidet uvis; ille te mecum locus et beatae postulant arces: ibi tu calentem debita sparges lacrima favillam vatis amici.
O you often led with me into the last extremity, with Brutus as our commander, who has given you back, a citizen, to your fathers’ gods and the Italian sky, Pompeius, first of my companions, with whom I often broke the lingering day with wine, my hair garlanded and gleaming with Syrian malobathrum? With you I knew Philippi and the headlong rout, my little shield left behind in shame, when valor was broken and the blustering men touched the base ground with their chins; but swift Mercury bore me, terrified, through the enemy in a thick cloud, while you the wave, sucking you back, carried again into war on its seething straits. So render to Jupiter the feast you owe, and lay your side, weary with long soldiering, under my laurel, and do not spare the casks marked out for you. Fill the polished cups with Massic that drowns remembrance, pour out perfume from capacious shells. Who will hurry to twine the garlands of moist parsley or of myrtle? Whom will Venus name the master of the drinking? I will revel no more soberly than the Edonians: sweet it is to me to play the madman, my friend restored.
O saepe mecum tempus in ultimum deducte Bruto militiae duce, quis te redonavit Quiritem dis patriis Italoque caelo, Pompei, meorum prime sodalium, cum quo morantem saepe diem mero fregi, coronatus nitentis malobathro Syrio capillos? tecum Philippos et celerem fugam sensi relicta non bene parmula, cum fracta virtus, et minaces turpe solum tetigere mento; sed me per hostis Mercurius celer denso paventem sustulit aere, te rursus in bellum resorbens unda fretis tulit aestuosis. ergo obligatam redde Iovi dapem longaque fessum militia latus depone sub lauru mea nec parce cadis tibi destinatis. oblivioso levia Massico ciboria exple, funde capacibus unguenta de conchis. quis udo deproperare apio coronas curatve myrto? quem Venus arbitrum dicet bibendi? non ego sanius bacchabor Edonis: recepto dulce mihi furere est amico.
If ever any penalty for a perjured oath had harmed you, Barine, if you grew uglier by a single black tooth or a single nail, I would believe you: but the moment you have bound your faithless head with vows, you shine far lovelier, and step forth the public darling of the young. It pays you to swear falsely by your mother’s buried ashes, by the silent signs of night and all the sky, and by the gods exempt from cold death. Venus herself, I say, laughs at this; the artless Nymphs laugh, and fierce Cupid, forever whetting his burning arrows on a bloody stone. Add that all the youth is growing up for you, a new crop of slaves; nor do the former ones quit the roof of their unholy mistress, though they often threaten to. You the mothers fear for their young bulls, you the thrifty old men, and the wretched brides new-wed, lest your bright air hold back their husbands.
Vlla si iuris tibi peierati poena, Barine, nocuisset umquam, dente si nigro fieres vel uno turpior ungui, crederem: sed tu simul obligasti perfidum votis caput, enitescis pulchrior multo iuvenumque prodis publica cura. expedit matris cineres opertos fallere et toto taciturna noctis signa cum caelo gelidaque divos morte carentis ridet hoc, inquam, Venus ipsa, rident simplices Nymphae, ferus et Cupido semper ardentis acuens sagittas cote cruenta. adde quod pubes tibi crescit omnis, servitus crescit nova nec priores inpiae tectum dominae relinquunt, saepe minati. te suis matres metuunt iuvencis, te senes parci miseraeque nuper virgines nuptae, tua ne retardet aura maritos.
Not always do the rains stream from the clouds onto the shaggy fields, nor do uneven squalls forever vex the Caspian sea, nor, on the Armenian shores, friend Valgius, does the ice stand idle through all the months, nor do the oak-woods of Garganus labor under the North winds, and the ash-trees are widowed of their leaves: you forever press, in tearful measures, Mystes taken from you, nor do your loves withdraw when Vesper rises, nor when he flees the racing sun. Yet the old man who lived three ages did not bewail the lovable Antilochus all his years, nor did his parents and his Phrygian sisters weep forever for unbearded Troilus. Cease at last from your soft laments, and let us rather sing the new trophies of Augustus Caesar, and the stiff Niphates, and the Median river, added to the conquered nations, rolling lesser eddies, and the Geloni riding within a prescribed bound on their narrow plains.
Non semper imbres nubibus hispidos manant in agros aut mare Caspium vexant inaequales procellae usque nec Armeniis in oris, amice Valgi, stat glacies iners mensis per omnis aut Aquilonibus querceta Gargani laborant et foliis viduantur orni: tu semper urges flebilibus modis Mysten ademptum nec tibi Vespero surgente decedunt amores nec rapidum fugiente solem. at non ter aevo functus amabilem ploravit omnis Antilochum senex annos nec inpubem parentes Troilon aut Phrygiae sorores flevere semper. desine mollium tandem querellarum et potius nova cantemus Augusti tropaea Caesaris et rigidum Niphaten Medumque flumen gentibus additum victis minores volvere vertices intraque praescriptum Gelonos exiguis equitare campis.
You will live more rightly, Licinius, by neither always driving out to the deep, nor, while you warily shrink from the storms, by hugging too close the treacherous shore. Whoever loves the golden mean is safe, spared the squalor of a ruined house, and spared, in his sobriety, the hall that breeds envy. More often the giant pine is shaken by the winds, and lofty towers fall with a heavier crash, and the lightning strikes the topmost peaks. A well-prepared heart hopes, in adversity, and fears, in prosperity, the change of lot. Jupiter brings the ugly winters back; the same god takes them away. If things go ill now, they will not always be so: sometimes Apollo rouses with the lyre the silent Muse, and does not always bend his bow. In narrow straits show yourself spirited and brave; and as wisely you will draw in your sails when they swell with too fair a wind.
Rectius vives, Licini, neque altum semper urgendo neque, dum procellas cautus horrescis, nimium premendo litus iniquum. auream quisquis mediocritatem diligit, tutus caret obsoleti sordibus tecti, caret invidenda sobrius aula. saepius ventis agitatur ingens pinus et celsae graviore casu decidunt turres feriuntque summos fulgura montis sperat infestis, metuit secundis alteram sortem bene praeparatum pectus. informis hiemes reducit Iuppiter, idem submovet. non, si male nunc, et olim sic erit: quondam cithara tacentem suscitat Musam neque semper arcum tendit Apollo. rebus angustis animosus atque fortis adpare: sapienter idem contrahes vento nimium secundo turgida vela.
What the warlike Cantabrian and the Scythian, parted from us by the interposed Adriatic, are plotting, Quinctius Hirpinus, cease to ask, nor fret over the needs of a life that asks for little: smooth youth and beauty flee behind us, as dry gray hair drives off wanton loves and easy sleep. The spring flowers do not always keep their glory, nor does the reddening moon shine with one face: why weary, with eternal counsels, a mind too small for them? Why not, lying carelessly thus beneath a tall plane or this pine, our gray hair fragrant with rose while we may, and anointed with Assyrian nard, drink? Euhius scatters the gnawing cares. What boy will more quickly cool the cups of burning Falernian with the passing water? Who will coax the wandering courtesan Lyde from her house? Come, tell her to hurry with her ivory lyre, her hair bound up in a neat knot, in the Spartan way.
Quid bellicosus Cantaber et Scythes, Hirpine Quinti, cogitet Hadria divisus obiecto, remittas quaerere nec trepides in usum poscentis aevi pauca: fugit retro levis iuventas et decor arida pellente lascivos amores canitie facilemque somnum. non semper idem floribus est honor vernis neque uno luna rubens nitet voltu: quid aeternis minorem consiliis animum fatigas? cur non sub alta vel platano vel hac pinu iacentes sic temere et rosa canos odorati capillos, dum licet, Assyriaque nardo potamus uncti? dissipat Euhius curas edacis. quis puer ocius restinguet ardentis Falerni pocula praetereunte lympha? quis devium scortum eliciet domo Lyden? eburna, dic age, cum lyra maturet, in comptum Lacaenae more comam religata nodum.
You would not wish the long wars of fierce Numantia, nor hard Hannibal, nor the Sicilian sea purpled with Punic blood, to be set to the soft measures of the lyre, nor the savage Lapiths, and Hylaeus too full of wine, and the sons of Earth subdued by the Herculean hand, at whom the shining house of old Saturn trembled in its peril: and you, Maecenas, will better tell in prose histories the battles of Caesar, and the necks of threatening kings led through the streets. Me the Muse willed to tell of the sweet songs of my lady Licymnia, of her brightly shining eyes, and of her heart faithful in love well shared; who found it no disgrace to set her foot in the dances, nor to vie in jest, nor to give her arms, playing among the gleaming girls on Diana’s crowded holy day. Would you exchange for a lock of Licymnia’s hair all that rich Achaemenes held, or the Mygdonian wealth of fertile Phrygia, or the full houses of the Arabs, when she bends her neck to your burning kisses, or with easy cruelty refuses what she would joy to have snatched more than the one who asks — or, now and then, is first to snatch herself?
Nolis longa ferae bella Numantiae nec durum Hannibalem nec Siculum mare Poeno purpureum sanguine mollibus aptari citharae modis nec saevos Lapithas et nimium mero Hylaeum domitosque Herculea manu Telluris iuvenes, unde periculum fulgens contremuit domus Saturni veteris: tuque pedestribus dices historiis proelia Caesaris, Maecenas, melius ductaque per vias regum colla minacium. me dulcis dominae Musa Licymniae cantus, me voluit dicere lucidum fulgentis oculos et bene mutuis fidum pectus amoribus; quam nec ferre pedem dedecuit choris nec certare ioco nec dare bracchia ludentem nitidis virginibus sacro Dianae celebris die. num tu quae tenuit dives Achaemenes aut pinguis Phrygiae Mygdonias opes permutare velis crine Licymniae plenas aut Arabum domos, cum flagrantia detorquet ad oscula cervicem aut facili saevitia negat quae poscente magis gaudeat eripi, interdum rapere occupet?
He both planted you on an unlucky day, whoever first did it, and with sacrilegious hand reared you, tree, for the ruin of his grandsons and the village’s disgrace; I could believe that he broke his own father’s neck, and spattered his inmost rooms by night with a guest’s blood; he handled Colchian poisons and whatever wrong is anywhere conceived, the man who planted you in my field, you dismal timber, you to fall on the head of your undeserving master. What each should shun no man can guard against enough, from hour to hour: the Punic sailor dreads the Bosphorus, and fears no blind fate beyond it from elsewhere; the soldier dreads the arrows and swift flight of the Parthian, the Parthian the chains and Italian might; but the unforeseen force of death has snatched, and will snatch, the nations. How nearly I beheld the realms of dusky Proserpina, and Aeacus at his judging, and the seats set apart for the pious, and Sappho complaining, on the Aeolian strings, of the girls of her own country, and you, Alcaeus, sounding more fully with your golden quill the hardships of the ship, the hardships of flight, the hardships of war. The shades marvel at both, as they utter things worthy of sacred silence; but more of battles and of tyrants driven out the crowd, packed shoulder to shoulder, drinks with its ear. What wonder, when, stunned by those songs, the hundred-headed beast lets droop its black ears, and the snakes entwined in the hair of the Eumenides are soothed? Indeed even Prometheus and the father of Pelops are beguiled of their torment by the sweet sound, nor does Orion care to drive the lions or the timid lynxes.
Ille et nefasto te posuit die quicumque primum, et sacrilega manu produxit, arbos, in nepotum perniciem opprobriumque pagi; illum et parentis crediderim sui fregisse cervicem et penetralia sparsisse nocturno cruore hospitis; ille venena Colcha et quidquid usquam concipitur nefas tractavit, agro qui statuit meo te, triste lignum, te, caducum in domini caput inmerentis quid quisque vitet, numquam homini satis cautum est in horas: navita Bosporum Poenus perhorrescit neque ultra caeca timet aliunde fata, miles sagittas et celerem fugam Parthi, catenas Parthus et Italum robur; sed inprovisa leti vis rapuit rapietque gentis. quam paene furvae regna Proserpinae et iudicantem vidimus Aeacum sedesque discriptas piorum et Aeoliis fidibus querentem Sappho puellis de popularibus et te sonantem plenius aureo, Alcaee, plectro dura navis, dura fugae mala, dura belli. utrumque sacro digna silentio mirantur umbrae dicere, sed magis pugnas et exactos tyrannos densum umeris bibit aure volgus. quid mirum, ubi illis carminibus stupens demittit atras belua centiceps auris et intorti capillis Eumenidum recreantur angues? quin et Prometheus et Pelopis parens dulci laborem decipitur sono nec curat Orion leones aut timidos agitare lyncas
Alas, Postumus, Postumus, the fleeting years slip by, nor will devotion bring delay to wrinkles, to pressing old age, and to unconquered death, not if with three hundred bulls for every passing day, my friend, you tried to appease the tearless Pluto, who pens thrice-vast Geryon and Tityos with his gloomy stream — to be sailed across, surely, by all of us who feed on the earth’s bounty, whether we shall be kings or needy farmers. In vain shall we keep clear of bloody Mars and the broken waves of the hoarse Adriatic; in vain through the autumns shall we dread the South wind, harmful to our bodies: the black Cocytus, wandering with its sluggish stream, must be seen, and the infamous race of Danaus, and Sisyphus, son of Aeolus, condemned to his long labor. The earth must be left, and your home, and your pleasing wife, nor will any of these trees you tend, except the hated cypresses, follow you, their brief master. A worthier heir will drink up the Caecuban guarded behind a hundred keys, and stain the pavement with a proud wine finer than the pontiffs’ feasts.
Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume, labuntur anni nec pietas moram rugis et instanti senectae adferet indomitaeque morti, non, si trecenis quotquot eunt dies, amice, places inlacrimabilem Plutona tauris, qui ter amplum Geryonen Tityonque tristi conpescit unda, scilicet omnibus quicumque terrae munere vescimur enaviganda, sive reges sive inopes erimus coloni. frustra cruento Marte carebimus fractisque rauci fluctibus Hadriae, frustra per autumnos nocentem corporibus metuemus Austrum: visendus ater flumine languido Cocytos errans et Danai genus infame damnatusque longi Sisyphus Aeolides laboris. linquenda tellus et domus et placens uxor neque harum quas colis arborum te praeter invisas cupressos ulla brevem dominum sequetur. absumet heres Caecuba dignior servata centum clavibus et mero tinguet pavimentum superbo, pontificum potiore cenis.
Soon the regal piles will leave few acres to the plow; on every side will be seen fish-ponds spread wider than the Lucrine lake, and the barren plane will oust the elms; then violet-beds and myrtle and all the wealth of scents will scatter fragrance over olive-groves that bore fruit for their former owner; then the laurel, dense with boughs, will shut the burning rays out. Not so was it ordained by Romulus, and the auspices of unshorn Cato, and the rule of the ancients. Their private wealth was scant, the common store was great: no portico, measured out for private men with ten-foot rods, caught the shady north; nor did the laws let them despise the chance turf, but bade them adorn the towns at public cost, and the temples of the gods with newly quarried stone.
Iam pauca aratro iugera regiae moles relinquent, undique latius extenta visentur Lucrino stagna lacu platanusque caelebs evincet ulmos; tum violaria et myrtus et omnis copia narium spargent olivetis odorem fertilibus domino priori, tum spissa ramis laurea fervidos excludet ictus. non ita Romuli praescriptum et intonsi Catonis auspiciis veterumque norma. privatus illis census erat brevis, commune magnum: nulla decempedis metata privatis opacam porticus excipiebat arcton nec fortuitum spernere caespitem leges sinebant, oppida publico sumptu iubentes et deorum templa novo decorare saxo.
Peace the man caught in the open Aegean begs of the gods, the moment a black cloud has hidden the moon and the fixed stars no longer shine for sailors; peace Thrace, frenzied in war, peace the Mede, adorned with the quiver, begs, Grosphus — peace not to be bought with gems or purple or gold. For neither treasures nor the consul’s lictor clears away the wretched tumults of the mind and the cares that flit about the paneled ceilings. He lives well on little on whose frugal table the ancestral salt-cellar gleams, and whose light sleep no fear or sordid craving takes away. Why, brave in our brief span, do we aim at so much? Why do we exchange our land for countries warmed by another sun? What exile from his homeland fled himself as well? Vicious Care climbs the bronze-clad ships, nor leaves the squadrons of the horsemen, swifter than deer, swifter than the East wind driving the clouds before it. A mind glad in the present should refuse to care for what is beyond, and temper its bitterness with an easy smile: nothing is blessed on every side. Swift death carried off famous Achilles, long old age dwindled Tithonus, and perhaps the hour will hold out to me what it has denied to you. About you a hundred herds and Sicilian cows low; for you the mare fit for the chariot lifts her neigh; you wools twice dipped in African purple clothe: to me a small farm, and the slender breath of the Greek Muse, truth-telling Fate has given, and to despise the spiteful crowd.
Otium divos rogat in patenti prensus Aegaeo, simul atra nubes condidit lunam neque certa fulgent sidera nautis, otium bello furiosa Thrace, otium Medi pharetra decori, Grosphe, non gemmis neque purpura ve- nale nec auro. non enim gazae neque consularis submovet lictor miseros tumultus mentis et curas laqueata circum tecta volantis vivitur parvo bene cui paternum splendet in mensa tenui salinum nec levis somnos timor aut cupido sordidus aufert. quid brevi fortes iaculamur aevo multa? quid terras alio calentis sole mutamus? patriae quis exsul se quoque fugit? scandit aeratas vitiosa navis Cura nec turmas equitum relinquit ocior cervis et agente nimbos ocior Euro. laetus in praesens animus quod ultra est oderit curare et amara lento temperet risu: nihil est ab omni parte beatum. abstulit clarum cita mors Achillem, longa Tithonum minuit senectus et mihi forsan tibi quod negarit porriget hora. te greges centum Siculaeque circum mugiunt vaccae, tibi tollit hinnitum apta quadrigis equa, te bis Afro murice tinctae vestiunt lanae: mihi parva rura et spiritum Graiae tenuem Camenae Parca non mendax dedit et malignum spernere volgus.
Why do you unman me with your complaints? It pleases neither the gods nor me that you should die before me, Maecenas, great glory and pillar of my fortunes. Ah, if a premature stroke snatches you, the half of my own soul, why do I, the other, linger, neither equally dear nor whole in surviving? That day will lead us both to ruin. I have sworn no faithless oath: we will go, we will go, whenever you lead the way, prepared as comrades to take the last road together. Me neither the breath of the fiery Chimaera nor, should hundred-handed Gyas rise again, will ever tear from you: so it has pleased mighty Justice and the Fates. Whether the Balance looks on me, or dread Scorpio, the more violent quarter of my natal hour, or Capricorn, the tyrant of the Hesperian wave, our two stars agree in a way past belief: the protection of Jupiter, blazing out, rescued you from impious Saturn and stayed the wings of winged Fate, when the thronging people thrice cracked out a glad sound in the theaters; me a tree-trunk falling on my head would have killed, had not Faunus, guardian of the men of Mercury, lightened the blow with his right hand. Remember to render the victims and the votive shrine; I will sacrifice a humble lamb.
Cur me querelis exanimas tuis? nec dis amicum est nec mihi te prius obire, Maecenas, mearum grande decus columenque rerum. a, te meae si partem animae rapit maturior vis, quid moror altera, nec carus aeque nec superstes integer? ille dies utramque ducet ruinam. non ego perfidum dixi sacramentum ibimus, ibimus, utcumque praecedes, supremum carpere iter comites parati. me nec Chimaerae spiritus igneae nec si resurgat centimanus Gyas divellet umquam: sic potenti Iustitiae placitumque Parcis. seu Libra seu me Scorpios adspicit formidolosus pars violentior natalis horae seu tyrannus Hesperiae Capricornus undae: utrumque nostrum incredibili modo consentit astrum; te Iovis inpio tutela Saturno refulgens eripuit volucrisque Fati tardavit alas, cum populus frequens laetum theatris ter crepuit sonum; me truncus inlapsus cerebro, sustulerat, nisi Faunus ictum dextra levasset, Mercurialium custos virorum. reddere victimas aedemque votivam memento; nos humilem feriemus agnam.
No ivory nor golden coffered ceiling gleams in my house, no beams of Hymettus press on columns hewn in the farthest reaches of Africa, nor have I, some unknown heir, taken over the palace of Attalus, nor do well-born client-women trail Laconian purples for my sake. But I have honesty, and a kindly vein of talent, and the rich man seeks me out, poor as I am: I press the gods for nothing more, nor beg of my powerful friend anything more lavish, content enough with my one Sabine farm. Day is thrust on by day, and the new moons press on to wane: you, on the very edge of the grave, contract for marble to be cut, and, forgetful of the tomb, raise houses, and strain to push back the shores of the sea that roars at Baiae, too little rich with the mainland for your bound. And what of this — that you keep wrenching up the neighboring boundary-stones of your land, and leap, in your greed, beyond your clients’ limits? Out are driven the wife and husband, bearing in their bosom their fathers’ gods and their squalid children. Yet no hall more surely awaits the wealthy lord than the appointed end of rapacious Orcus. Why reach further? The impartial earth unlocks alike for the poor and for the sons of kings; nor did the warder of Orcus, bribed with gold, bring the cunning Prometheus back; he keeps proud Tantalus and the race of Tantalus in check, and, called or uncalled, he hears the poor man freed from his labors.
Non ebur neque aureum mea renidet in domo lacunar, non trabes Hymettiae premunt columnas ultima recisas Africa neque Attali ignotus heres regiam occupavi nec Laconicas mihi trahunt honestae purpuras clientae. at fides et ingeni benigna vena est pauperemque dives me petit: nihil supra deos lacesso nec potentem amicum largiora flagito, satis beatus unicis Sabinis. truditur dies die novaeque pergunt interire lunae: tu secanda marmora locas sub ipsum funus et sepulcri inmemor struis domos marisque Bais obstrepentis urges submovere litora, parum locuples continente ripa; quid quod usque proximos revellis agri terminos et ultra limites clientium salis avarus? pellitur paternos in sinu ferens deos et uxor et vir sordidosque natos. nulla certior tamen rapacis Orci fine destinata aula divitem manet erum. quid ultra tendis? aequa tellus pauperi recluditur regumque pueris nec satelles Orci callidum Promethea revexit auro captus; hic superbum Tantalum atque Tantali genus coercet, hic levare functum pauperem laboribus vocatus atque non vocatus audit.
I saw Bacchus teaching songs among remote crags — believe it, you who come after — and the Nymphs learning, and the pricked-up ears of the goat-footed Satyrs. Euhoe! my mind shakes with fresh fear, and, my breast full of Bacchus, rejoices in its turmoil. Euhoe! spare me, Liber, spare me, dread with your heavy thyrsus. It is mine to sing of the unrelenting Thyiads, the fountain of wine, the rich streams of milk, and to tell again of the honey dripping from hollow trunks; mine too to sing of the honor of your blessed consort, set among the stars, of the roof of Pentheus shattered in no gentle ruin, and the doom of Thracian Lycurgus. You turn aside the rivers, you the barbarian sea; you, wine-drenched on the secluded ridges, bind with a snake-knot, doing no harm, the hair of the Bistonid women. You, when the impious band of Giants was scaling the steep toward your father’s realms, hurled Rhoetus back with the claws and dreadful jaw of a lion; though called fitter for dances and for jests and play, and reported not enough suited to battle, you proved the same in the midst of peace and of war. Cerberus, harmless, looked on you, adorned with your golden horn, and gently brushing you with his tail, touched your feet and legs with his three-tongued mouth as you went.
Bacchum in remotis carmina rupibus vidi docentem, credite posteri, Nymphasque discentis et auris capripedum Satyrorum acutas euhoe, recenti mens trepidat metu, plenoque Bacchi pectore turbidum laetatur. euhoe, parce Liber, parce gravi metuende thyrso. fas pervicacis est mihi Thyiadas vinique fontem lactis et uberes cantare rivos atque truncis lapsa cavis iterare mella; fas et beatae coniugis additum stellis honorem tectaque Penthei disiecta non leni ruina Thracis et exitium Lycurgi tu flectis amnis, tu mare barbarum, tu separatis uvidus in iugis nodo coerces viperino Bistonidum sine fraude crinis. tu, cum parentis regna per arduum cohors gigantum scanderet inpia, Rhoetum retorsisti leonis unguibus horribilique mala; quamquam choreis aptior et iocis ludoque dictus non sat idoneus pugnae ferebaris; sed idem pacis eras mediusque belli. te vidit insons Cerberus aureo cornu decorum leniter atterens caudam et recedentis trilingui ore pedes tetigitque crura.
On no common or feeble wing shall I be borne, a twofold poet, through the liquid air, nor shall I linger longer on the earth, and, greater than envy, I shall leave the cities behind. Not I, the blood of poor parents, not I, whom you call your own, beloved Maecenas, shall perish, nor be held by the Stygian wave. Even now a rough skin settles on my legs, and I am changing, above, into a white bird, and light feathers are sprouting over my fingers and my shoulders. Now, more famed than Daedalean Icarus, I shall visit, a singing bird, the shores of the groaning Bosphorus, the Gaetulian Syrtes, and the Hyperborean plains. Me the Colchian shall know, and the Dacian who hides his fear of the Marsian cohort, and the farthest Geloni; me the learned Iberian shall study, and the drinker of the Rhone. Let dirges be absent from my empty funeral, and ugly mourning and laments; hold back your outcry, and forgo the superfluous honors of a tomb.
Non usitata nec tenui ferar penna biformis per liquidum aethera vates neque in terris morabor longius invidiaque maior urbis relinquam. non ego, pauperum sanguis parentum, non ego, quem vocas. dilecte Maecenas, obibo nec Stygia cohibebor unda. iam iam residunt cruribus asperae pelles et album mutor in alitem superne nascunturque leves per digitos umerosque plumae. iam Daedaleo notior Icaro visam gementis litora Bospori Syrtisque Gaetulas canorus ales Hyperboreosque campos. me Colchus et qui dissimulat metum Marsae cohortis Dacus et ultimi noscent Geloni, me peritus discet Hiber Rhodanique potor. absint inani funere neniae luctusque turpes et querimoniae; conpesce clamorem ac sepulcri mitte supervacuos honores.
I hate the uninitiated crowd and keep it off. Keep silence: songs not heard before I, the priest of the Muses, sing to maidens and to boys. Over their own flocks is the power of dread kings; over the kings themselves is Jupiter’s, glorious for his triumph over the Giants, moving all things with a lift of his brow. It happens that one man ranks his orchards in wider furrows than the next; this candidate, more nobly born, comes down to the field; this one contends, better in character and repute; that one has a greater throng of clients: with an even law Necessity allots the eminent and the low; the capacious urn shakes every name. For the man over whose impious neck the drawn sword hangs, Sicilian feasts will not contrive a sweet savor, nor will the song of birds and the lyre bring sleep again: the gentle sleep of country men does not scorn the humble house and the shady riverbank, nor Tempe stirred by the zephyrs. The man who craves only what is enough, neither the tumultuous sea unsettles, nor the savage onset of Arcturus setting or of the Kid arising, nor his vineyards flogged by hail, his deceiving farm — the tree now blaming the rains, now the stars that scorch the fields, now the unjust winters. The fish feel the seas contracted by the piles flung into the deep: here the contractor, with his gangs, and the master, scornful of dry land, send the rubble down; but Fear and Threats climb to the same place as the master, nor does black Care depart from the bronze-fitted galley, and behind the horseman she takes her seat. But if neither Phrygian marble nor the use of purples brighter than a star soothes the suffering man, nor the Falernian vine and the Achaemenian balsam, why should I rear a lofty hall with envied doorposts in the new fashion? Why exchange my Sabine valley for riches more burdensome?
Odi profanum volgus et arceo. favete linguis: carmina non prius audita Musarum sacerdos virginibus puerisque canto. regum timendorum in proprios greges, reges in ipsos imperium est Iovis, clari Giganteo triumpho, cuncta supercilio moventis. est ut viro vir latius ordinet arbusta sulcis, hic generosior descendat in campum petitor, moribus hic meliorque fama contendat, illi turba clientium sit maior: aequa lege Necessitas sortitur insignis et imos, omne capax movet urna nomen. destrictus ensis cui super inpia cervice pendet, non Siculae dapes dulcem elaborabunt saporem, non avium citharaeque cantus somnum reducent: somnus agrestium lenis virorum non humilis domos fastidit umbrosamque ripam, non Zephyris agitata Tempe. desiderantem quod satis est neque tumultuosum sollicitat mare nec saevus Arcturi cadentis impetus aut orientis Haedi, non verberatae grandine vineae fundusque mendax arbore nunc aquas culpante, nunc torrentia agros sidera, nunc hiemes iniquas. contracta pisces aequora sentiunt iactis in altum molibus: huc frequens caementa demittit redemptor cum famulis dominusque terrae fastidiosus: sed Timor et Minae scandunt eodem, quo dominus, neque decedit aerata triremi et post equitem sedet atra Cura. quodsi dolentem nec Phrygius lapis nec purpurarum sidere clarior delenit usus nec Falerna vitis Achaemeniumque costum, cur invidendis postibus et novo sublime ritu moliar atrium? cur valle permutem Sabina divitias operosiores?
Let the sturdy boy learn to bear pinching poverty as a friend, in hard soldiering, and, a horseman dreaded for his spear, harry the fierce Parthians, and pass his life under the open sky and amid anxious dangers. Looking out at him from the hostile walls, may the matron of the warring tyrant, and the grown maiden, sigh: "Alas, may my royal betrothed, untrained in the battle-lines, not provoke the lion savage to the touch, whom bloody wrath sweeps through the midst of the slaughter." Sweet it is and fitting to die for one’s country: death runs down even the fleeing man, and does not spare the hams and the cowardly back of unwarlike youth. Virtue, knowing nothing of base rejection at the polls, shines with untarnished honors, and neither takes up nor lays down the axes at the whim of the popular breeze. Virtue, opening heaven to those not fated to die, tries a road by a way denied, and spurns the common crowd and the damp earth on a fleeing wing. There is for faithful silence too a sure reward: I will forbid the man who has divulged the rite of secret Ceres to be beneath the same roof-beams, or to loose the fragile skiff with me; often, when slighted, Diespiter has joined the guiltless to the guilty; rarely has Punishment, lame of foot, let the wicked, going on ahead of her, escape.
Angustam amice pauperiem pati robustus acri militia puer condiscat et Parthos ferocis vexet eques metuendus hasta vitamque sub divo et trepidis agat in rebus. illum ex moenibus hosticis matrona bellantis tyranni prospiciens et adulta virgo suspiret "eheu, ne rudis agminum sponsus lacessat regius asperum tactu leonem, quem cruenta per medias rapit ira caedes." dulce et decorum est pro patria mori: mors et fugacem persequitur virum nec parcit inbellis iuventae poplitibus timidoque tergo. Virtus, repulsae nescia sordidae, intaminatis fulget honoribus nec sumit aut ponit securis arbitrio popularis aurae. Virtus, recludens inmeritis mori caelum, negata temptat iter via coetusque volgaris et udam spernit humum fugiente penna. est et fideli tuta silentio merces: vetabo, qui Cereris sacrum volgarit arcanae, sub isdem sit trabibus fragilemque mecum solvat phaselon; saepe Diespiter neglectus incesto addidit integrum, raro antecedentem scelestum deseruit pede Poena claudo.
The just man, tenacious of his purpose, neither the heat of citizens commanding wrong, nor the face of the threatening tyrant, shakes from his solid mind, nor the South wind, turbulent lord of the restless Adriatic, nor the great hand of thundering Jupiter: if the broken globe should fall in, its ruins will strike him unafraid. By this art Pollux and wandering Hercules, striving, reached the fiery citadels, among whom Augustus, reclining, will drink nectar with crimson lips; by this, father Bacchus, your tigers bore you, deserving, dragging the yoke with untaught neck; by this Quirinus escaped Acheron on the horses of Mars, when Juno had spoken what pleased the gods in council: "Ilion, Ilion, a fated and lustful judge, and a foreign woman, turned to dust — condemned to me and to chaste Minerva, with its people and its fraudulent leader, ever since Laomedon cheated the gods of the agreed wage. No longer now does the infamous guest of the Spartan adulteress shine, nor does the perjured house of Priam break the warring Achaeans by Hector’s strength, and the war, drawn out by our own quarrels, has died down. Henceforth I will give up to Mars both my heavy wrath and the hated grandson whom the Trojan priestess bore; I will let him enter the shining seats, learn the juices of nectar, and be enrolled in the quiet ranks of the gods. While a long sea rages between Ilion and Rome, let the exiles reign, blessed, in whatever region; while the herd tramples on the tomb of Priam and of Paris, and the beasts hide their cubs unpunished, let the Capitol stand gleaming, and let fierce Rome be able to give laws to the Medes she has triumphed over. Dreaded far and wide, let her stretch her name to the farthest shores, where the middle water divides Europe from Africa, where the swollen Nile waters the fields. Stronger to scorn the gold undiscovered — and so the better placed, while earth conceals it — than to gather it for human uses with a hand that snatches all things sacred, whatever boundary has stood against the world let her reach with her arms, eager to see in what quarter the fires rage, in what the mists and rainy dews. But to the warlike Romans I pronounce the fates on this condition: that they not, too dutiful and trusting in their power, wish to rebuild ancestral Troy’s roofs. Troy’s fortune, reborn under a mournful omen, will be repeated in grim disaster, with me, the wife and sister of Jupiter, leading the victorious bands. Thrice, should the bronze wall rise again with Phoebus as its builder, thrice let it perish, cut down by my Argives; thrice let the captive wife bewail her husband and her sons." This will not suit the playful lyre — where, Muse, are you tending? Cease, stubborn one, to report the talk of the gods and to thin out great things in small measures.
Iustum et tenacem propositi virum non civium ardor prava iubentium, non voltus instantis tyranni mente quatit solida neque Auster, dux inquieti turbidus Hadriae, nec fulminantis magna manus Iovis: si fractus inlabatur orbis, inpavidum ferient ruinae. hac arte Pollux et vagus Hercules enisus arcis attigit igneas, quos inter Augustus recumbens purpureo bibet ore nectar, hac te merentem, Bacche pater, tuae vexere tigres indocili iugum collo trahentes, hac Quirinus Martis equis Acheronta fugit, gratum elocuta consiliantibus Iunone divis: "Ilion, Ilion fatalis incestusque iudex et mulier peregrina vertit in pulverem ex quo destituit deos mercede pacta Laomedon, mihi castaeque damnatum Minervae cum populo et duce fraudulento. iam nec Lacaenae splendet adulterae famosus hospes nec Priami domus periura pugnacis Achivos Hectoreis opibus refringit nostrisque ductum seditionibus bellum resedit; protinus et gravis iras et invisum nepotem, Troica quem peperit sacerdos, Marti redonabo; illum ego lucidas inire sedes, discere nectaris sucos et adscribi quietis ordinibus patiar deorum. dum longus inter saeviat Ilion Romamque pontus, qualibet exsules in parte regnanto beati; dum Priami Paridisque busto insultet armentum et catulos ferae celent inultae, stet Capitolium fulgens triumphatisque possit Roma ferox dare iura Medis. horrenda late nomen in ultimas extendat oras, qua medius liquor secernit Europen ab Afro, qua tumidus rigat arva Nilus. aurum inrepertum et sic melius situm, cum terra celat, spernere fortior quam cogere humanos in usus omne sacrum rapiente dextra, quicumque mundo terminus obstitit hunc tanget armis, visere gestiens, qua parte debacchentur ignes, qua nebulae pluviique rores. sed bellicosis fata Quiritibus hac lege dico, ne nimium pii rebusque fidentes avitae tecta velint reparare Troiae. Troiae renascens alite lugubri fortuna tristi clade iterabitur ducente victrices catervas coniuge me Iovis et sorore. ter si resurgat murus aeneus auctore Phoebo, ter pereat meis excisus Argivis, ter uxor capta virum puerosque ploret" non hoc iocosae conveniet lyrae — quo, Musa, tendis? desine pervicax referre sermones deorum et magna modis tenuare parvis.
Come down from heaven, and on the pipe, queen Calliope, sing a long song, whether now you would rather with high voice or with the strings and the cithara of Phoebus. Do you hear? Or does a sweet madness mock me? I seem to hear, and to wander through hallowed groves, into which pleasant waters and breezes pass. Me, as a boy on Apulian Vultur, beyond the threshold of my nurse Pullia, worn out with play and with sleep, the storied wood-doves with fresh leaves covered over — a marvel it would be to all who hold the nest of lofty Acherontia, the glades of Bantia, and the rich lowland soil of humble Forentum — that I slept, my body safe from black vipers and from bears, that I lay heaped with sacred laurel and gathered myrtle, a spirited infant, not without the gods. Yours, Camenae, yours, I am borne up to the steep Sabine hills, whether cool Praeneste, or sloping Tibur, or limpid Baiae has pleased me. A friend to your springs and your dances, me the line turned back at Philippi did not, nor the accursed tree, put out, nor Palinurus with its Sicilian wave. Whenever you are with me, gladly as a sailor I will brave the raging Bosphorus, and as a traveler the burning sands of the Assyrian shore; I will visit the Britons, savage to guests, and the Concanian glad with horse’s blood, I will visit the quivered Geloni and the Scythian river, unharmed. You refresh exalted Caesar in the Pierian grotto, the moment he stows in the towns his cohorts wearied of soldiering and seeks to end his toils. You give gentle counsel and rejoice in the giving, nurturing ones. We know how he swept the impious Titans and the monstrous horde away with the plunging bolt, he who tempers the sluggish earth, who tempers the windy sea, and cities and the gloomy realms, and gods and the throngs of mortals governs, alone, with even sway. Great terror that band had brought upon Jupiter, a brood bristling, trusting in its arms, and the brothers straining to set Pelion on shadowy Olympus. But what could Typhoeus and strong Mimas, or what Porphyrion in his menacing stance, what Rhoetus, and Enceladus, bold hurler of uprooted trunks, avail, charging against the ringing aegis of Pallas? On this side stood eager Vulcan, on this the matron Juno, and he who will never lay the bow from his shoulders, who washes his loosened hair in the pure dew of Castalia, who holds the thickets of Lycia and his native wood, Apollo of Delos and of Patara. Force void of counsel falls by its own mass; force tempered the gods themselves advance to greater things; that same strength they hate which moves all wickedness in its heart. Witness to my judgments is hundred-handed Gyas, and well-known Orion, who assailed the unstained Diana, subdued by a maiden’s arrow. Earth, flung upon her own monsters, grieves and mourns her offspring sent by the bolt to lurid Orcus; nor has the swift fire eaten through the Aetna laid upon them, nor has the bird abandoned the liver of incontinent Tityos, set there as warden of his lust; three hundred chains hold Pirithous the lover fast.
Descende caelo et dic age tibia regina longum Calliope melos, seu voce nunc mavis acuta seu fidibus citharave Phoebi. auditis? an me ludit amabilis insania? audire et videor pios errare per lucos, amoenae quos et aquae subeunt et aurae. me fabulosae Volture in Apulo nutricis extra limina Pulliae ludo fatigatumque somno fronde nova puerum palumbes texere, mirum quod foret omnibus quicumque celsae nidum Aceruntiae saltusque Bantinos et arvum pingue tenent humilis Forenti, ut tuto ab atris corpore viperis dormirem et ursis, ut premerer sacra lauroque conlataque myrto non sine dis animosus infans. vester, Camenae, vester in arduos tollor Sabinos, seu mihi frigidum Praeneste seu Tibur supinum seu liquidae placuere Baiae. vestris amicum fontibus et choris non me Philippis versa acies retro, devota non extinxit arbor nec Sicula Palinurus unda. utcumque mecum vos eritis, libens insanientem navita Bosporum temptabo et urentis harenas litoris Assyrii viator, visam Britannos hospitibus feros et laetum equino sanguine Concanum, visam pharetratos Gelonos et Scythicum inviolatus amnem. vos Caesarem altum, militia simul fessas cohortes abdidit oppidis, finire quaerentem labores Pierio recreatis antro. vos lene consilium et datis et dato gaudetis, almae. scimus, ut inpios Titanas immanemque turbam fulmine sustulerit caduco qui terram inertem, qui mare temperat ventosum et urbis regnaque tristia divosque mortalisque turmas imperio regit unus aequo. magnum illa terrorem intulerat Iovi fidens iuventus horrida bracchiis fratresque tendentes opaco Pelion inposuisse Olympo. sed quid Typhoeus et validus Mimas aut quid minaci Porphyrion statu, quid Rhoetus evolsisque truncis Enceladus iaculator audax contra sonantem Palladis aegida possent ruentes? hinc avidus stetit Volcanus, hinc matrona Iuno et numquam umeris positurus arcum qui rore puro Castaliae lavit crinis solutos, qui Lyciae tenet dumeta natalemque silvam Delius et Patareus Apollo. vis consili expers mole ruit sua, vim temperatam di quoque provehunt in maius; idem odere viris omne nefas animo moventis. testis mearum centimanus Gyas sententiarum, notus et integrae temptator Orion Dianae virginea domitus sagitta. iniecta monstris Terra dolet suis maeretque partus fulmine luridum missos ad Orcum; nec peredit inpositam celer ignis Aetnen incontinentis nec Tityi iecur reliquit ales, nequitiae additus custos; amatorem trecentae Pirithoum cohibent catenae.
We have believed that Jupiter reigns, thundering in heaven; a present god Augustus shall be held, the Britons added to the empire, and the grievous Persians. Has the soldier of Crassus lived, the shameful husband of a barbarian wife — O Senate-house, O ways turned upside down! — and grown old in the arms of his fathers-in-law, the foe, beneath a Median king, the Marsian and Apulian, forgetful of the sacred shields, of the name, of the toga, and of eternal Vesta, while Jupiter and the city of Rome stood unharmed? This the foreseeing mind of Regulus had guarded against, dissenting from the shameful terms, from a precedent that would drag ruin down into the age to come, if the captive youth were not to perish unpitied. "The standards fixed to Punic shrines," he said, "and the arms torn from our soldiers without bloodshed, I have seen — I have seen the arms of citizens twisted behind their free-born backs, and the gates left unshut, and the fields once ravaged by our war now tilled. Ransomed back with gold, the soldier returns the keener, I suppose: to disgrace you are adding loss; nor does the wool once dyed bring back its forfeited colors, nor does true valor, when once it has slipped away, care to be restored to the degraded. If the doe disentangled from the close nets will fight, then he will prove brave who has trusted himself to treacherous foes, and he will crush the Carthaginians in a second war who has felt the thongs on his pinioned arms, a sluggard, and has dreaded death. This man, ignorant of where to take his life from, has confounded peace with war. O shame! O mighty Carthage, raised the higher upon Italy’s disgraceful ruins!" He is said to have put from him the kiss of his chaste wife and his little sons, as one diminished now in his rights, and grimly to have bent his manly face to the ground, until by his counsel he might steady the wavering senators with advice given on no other occasion, and amid his mourning friends might hasten on, an illustrious exile. And yet he knew what the barbarian torturer was preparing for him; for all that, he pushed aside the kinsmen who blocked his way and the people delaying his return no otherwise than if he were leaving the long suits of clients, the case adjudged, making his way to the fields of Venafrum or to Lacedaemonian Tarentum.
Caelo tonantem credidimus Iovem regnare; praesens divus habebitur Augustus adiectis Britannis imperio gravibusque Persis. milesne Crassi coniuge barbara turpis maritus vixit et hostium, pro curia inversique mores! consenuit socerorum in armis sub rege Medo Marsus et Apulus, anciliorum et nominis et togae oblitus aeternaeque Vestae, incolumi Iove et urbe Roma? hoc caverat mens provida Reguli dissentientis condicionibus foedis et exemplo trahentis perniciem veniens in aevum, si non periret inmiserabilis captiva pubes. "signa ego Punicis adfixa delubris et arma militibus sine caede" dixit "derepta vidi, vidi ego civium retorta tergo bracchia libero portasque non clausas et arva Marte coli populata nostro. auro repensus scilicet acrior miles redibit: flagitio additis damnum; neque amissos colores lana refert medicata fuco nec vera virtus, cum semel excidit, curat reponi deterioribus. si pugnat extricata densis cerva plagis, erit ille fortis qui perfidis se credidit hostibus et Marte Poenos proteret altero; qui lora restrictis lacertis sensit iners timuitque mortem, hic, unde vitam sumeret inscius, pacem duello miscuit. o pudor! o magna Carthago, probrosis altior Italiae ruinis!" fertur pudicae coniugis osculum parvosque natos ut capitis minor ab se removisse et virilem torvus humi posuisse voltum, donec labantis consilio patres firmaret auctor numquam alias dato interque maerentis amicos egregius properaret exul. atqui sciebat, quae sibi barbarus tortor pararet: non aliter tamen dimovit obstantis propinquos et populum reditus morantem quam si clientum longa negotia diiudicata lite relinqueret tendens Venafranos in agros aut Lacedaemonium Tarentum.
For the sins of your fathers, though undeserving, you will pay, Roman, until you restore the temples and the crumbling shrines of the gods, and the images foul with black smoke. Because you bear yourself lesser than the gods, you rule: from them every beginning; to them refer the end: the gods, neglected, have dealt many woes to grieving Hesperia. Already twice Monaeses and the band of Pacorus have beaten back our ill-omened assaults and grin to have added our plunder to their meager necklaces. The Dacian and the Ethiopian nearly destroyed our city, taken up with its factions — the one a terror with his fleet, the other better with the flying arrow. Ages teeming with guilt first defiled marriage, the bloodline, and the home: from this spring the disaster, drawn off, has poured upon fatherland and people. The ripe maiden delights to be schooled in Ionic dances, and is molded in such arts, and even now, from her tender nail, broods upon unchaste loves. Soon she seeks younger adulterers amid her husband’s wine, nor is she choosy to whom she’ll grant, in haste, the forbidden joys when the lights are taken away, but, summoned, openly, not without the knowing husband, she rises — whether a peddler calls or the master of a Spanish ship, the lavish buyer of her shame. Not from such parents was the youth sprung that dyed the sea with Punic blood and cut down Pyrrhus and gigantic Antiochus and dread Hannibal, but the manly stock of rustic soldiers, taught to turn the clods with Sabine mattocks, and, at a strict mother’s bidding, to carry the cut firewood, when the sun would shift the mountains’ shadows and lift the yokes from the weary oxen, ushering in the kindly hour with his departing car. What has ruinous time not brought low? Our parents’ age, worse than our grandfathers’, bore us, more worthless still, soon to yield an offspring more corrupt again.
Delicta maiorum inmeritus lues, Romane, donec templa refeceris aedisque labentis deorum et foeda nigro simulacra fumo. dis te minorem quod geris, imperas: hinc omne principium, huc refer exitum: di multa neglecti dederunt Hesperiae mala luctuosae. iam bis Monaeses et Pacori manus inauspicatos contudit impetus nostros et adiecisse praedam torquibus exiguis renidet. paene occupatam seditionibus delevit urbem Dacus et Aethiops, hic classe formidatus, ille missilibus melior sagittis. fecunda culpae saecula nuptias primum inquinavere et genus et domos: hoc fonte derivata clades in patriam populumque fluxit. motus doceri gaudet Ionicos matura virgo et fingitur artibus iam nunc et incestos amores de tenero meditatur ungui. mox iuniores quaerit adulteros inter mariti vina neque eligit cui donet inpermissa raptim gaudia luminibus remotis, sed iussa coram non sine conscio surgit marito, seu vocat institor seu navis Hispanae magister, dedecorum pretiosus emptor. non his iuventus orta parentibus infecit aequor sanguine Punico Pyrrhumque et ingentem cecidit Antiochum Hannibalemque dirum, sed rusticorum mascula militum proles, Sabellis docta ligonibus versare glaebas et severae matris ad arbitrium recisos portare fustis, sol ubi montium mutaret umbras et iuga demeret bubus fatigatis amicum tempus agens abeunte curru. damnosa quid non inminuit dies? aetas parentum, peior avis, tulit nos nequiores, mox daturos progeniem vitiosiorem.
Why do you weep, Asterie, for the man whom the bright West winds, at the first of spring, will give back to you rich with Bithynian wares, a youth of constant faith, Gyges? He, driven by the South winds to Oricum after the mad stars of the Goat, passes the cold nights sleepless, not without many tears. And yet a messenger from his anxious hostess, telling that Chloe sighs and, poor thing, burns with the same fires as you, tries him slyly a thousand ways: he tells how a treacherous woman drove credulous Proetus, with false charges, to hasten the death of all-too-chaste Bellerophon; he recounts how Peleus was nearly given to Tartarus while, abstaining, he fled Magnesian Hippolyte, and, all guile, he trots out histories that school one in sin. In vain: for, deafer than the rocks of Icarus, he hears the voices, still untouched. But you — take care your neighbor Enipeus not please you more than is right; though no one else, so skilled at wheeling a horse, is watched on the grass of the Field of Mars, nor does anyone swim as fast down the Tuscan channel. At nightfall shut your house, and do not look down into the streets at the plaintive pipe’s song, and, though he often call you hard, stay difficult.
Quid fles, Asterie, quem tibi, candidi primo restituent vere Favonii Thyna merce beatum, constantis iuvenem fide Gygen? ille Notis actus ad Oricum post insana Caprae sidera frigidas noctis non sine multis insomnis lacrimis agit. atqui sollicitae nuntius hospitae, suspirare Chloen et miseram tuis dicens ignibus uri, temptat mille vafer modis: ut Proetum mulier perfida credulum falsis inpulerit criminibus nimis casto Bellerophontae maturare necem, refert; narrat paene datum Pelea Tartaro, Magnessam Hippolyten dum fugit abstinens, et peccare docentis fallax historias movet. frustra: nam scopulis surdior Icari voces audit adhuc integer. at tibi ne vicinus Enipeus plus iusto placeat cave; quamvis non alius flectere equum sciens aeque conspicitur gramine Martio, nec quisquam citus aeque Tusco denatat alveo. prima nocte domum claude neque in vias sub cantu querulae despice tibiae et te saepe vocanti duram difficilis mane.
What I, a bachelor, am about on the Kalends of March — what the flowers mean, and the censer full of incense, and the coal laid on the living turf — you wonder, learned in the lore of both tongues? I had vowed sweet feasts and a white goat to Liber, when I was all but buried by a tree’s blow. This festal day, as the year comes round, will draw the cork made fast with pitch from a jar set to drink the smoke in Tullus’s consulship. Take, Maecenas, a hundred ladlefuls for your friend’s deliverance, and keep the wakeful lamps burning till daylight: far off be all clamor and anger. Drop the citizen’s cares for the city: the column of Dacian Cotiso has fallen, the Mede, hostile to himself, is split by mournful arms, the Cantabrian, old enemy of the Spanish coast, serves us, mastered by a late chain, now the Scythians, their bows unstrung, are minded to yield from the plains. Careless, for once, whether the people somewhere suffer, a private man, do not take too much pains, and gladly seize the gifts of the present hour, and leave grave matters be.
Martiis caelebs quid agam kalendis, quid velint flores et acerra turis plena miraris positusque carbo in caespite vivo, docte sermones utriusque linguae? voveram dulcis epulas et album Libero caprum prope funeratus arboris ictu. hic dies anno redeunte festus corticem adstrictum pice dimovebit amphorae fumum bibere institutae consule Tullo. sume, Maecenas, cyathos amici sospitis centum et vigiles lucernas perfer in lucem: procul omnis esto clamor et ira. mitte civilis super urbe curas: occidit Daci Cotisonis agmen, Medus infestus sibi luctuosis dissidet armis, servit Hispanae vetus hostis orae Cantaber, sera domitus catena, iam Scythae laxo meditantur arcu cedere campis. neglegens, ne qua populus laboret, parce privatus nimium cavere et dona praesentis cape laetus horae, linque severa.
"As long as I was pleasing to you, and no more favored youth gave his arms to your white neck, I flourished happier than the king of the Persians." "As long as you burned for no other more, and Lydia did not rank behind Chloe, Lydia of the great name, I flourished more renowned than Roman Ilia." "Me now Thracian Chloe rules, skilled in sweet measures and mistress of the lyre, for whom I will not fear to die, if the fates will spare her, my soul, to outlive me." "Me Calais, son of Thurian Ornytus, scorches with an answering torch, for whom I will twice endure to die, if the fates will spare the boy to outlive me." "What if the old love comes back and forces the parted under a bronze yoke? if golden Chloe is shaken off and the door stands open for rejected Lydia?" "Though he is fairer than a star, and you are lighter than cork and touchier than the brutal Adriatic: with you I would love to live, with you gladly die."
"Donec gratus eram tibi nec quisquam potior bracchia candidae cervici iuvenis dabat, Persarum vigui rege beatior." "donec non alia magis arsisti neque erat Lydia post Chloen, multi Lydia nominis, Romana vigui clarior Ilia." "me nunc Thressa Chloe regit, dulcis docta modos et citharae sciens, pro qua non metuam mori, si parcent animae fata superstiti" "me torret face mutua Thurini Calais filius Ornyti, pro quo bis patiar mori, si parcent puero fata superstiti." "quid si prisca redit Venus diductosque iugo cogit aeneo? si flava excutitur Chloe reiectaeque patet ianua Lydiae?" "quamquam sidere pulchrior ille est, tu levior cortice et inprobo iracundior Hadria: tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam lubens."
If you drank the farthest Tanais, Lyce, married to a savage husband, still you would weep to throw me, stretched before your harsh doors, to the native North winds. Do you hear with what a din the door, with what the grove planted among the fair buildings, bellows back in the winds, and how Jupiter, with his cloudless power, glazes the fallen snow? Lay aside the pride that Venus hates, lest the rope run back as the wheel spins: no Tyrrhenian father bore you a Penelope, hard upon her suitors. O though neither gifts nor prayers nor your lovers’ violet-tinted pallor nor your husband, smitten with a Pierian mistress, bend you, spare your suppliants — no softer than the rigid oak, no gentler in spirit than the Moorish snakes: this body of mine will not forever endure your threshold or the rain of heaven.
Extremum Tanain si biberes, Lyce, saevo nupta viro, me tamen asperas porrectum ante foris obicere incolis plorares Aquilonibus audis, quo strepitu ianua, quo nemus inter pulcra satum tecta remugiat ventis et positas ut glaciet nives puro numine Iuppiter? ingratam Veneri pone superbiam, ne currente retro funis eat rota: non te Penelopen difficilem procis Tyrrhenus genuit parens. o quamvis neque te munera nec preces nec tinctus viola pallor amantium nec vir Pieria paelice saucius curvat, supplicibus tuis parcas, nec rigida mollior aesculo nec Mauris animum mitior anguibus: non hoc semper erit liminis aut aquae caelestis patiens latus.
Mercury — for, with you as master, teachable Amphion moved the stones by singing, and you, tortoise-shell, skilled to ring out on your seven strings, once neither talkative nor welcome, now a friend to the tables of the rich and to temples, sound the measures to which Lyde may turn her stubborn ears, who, like a three-year-old mare on the broad plains, frisks skittishly and dreads the touch, a stranger to marriage, still unripe for a forward mate. You can lead tigers and the woods that follow, and stay the swift streams; to you, coaxing, the monstrous doorkeeper of the hall gave way, Cerberus, though a hundred snakes fortify his Fury’s head, and a foul breath and gore ooze from his three-tongued mouth; nay, even Ixion and Tityos smiled with unwilling face, the urn stood dry a little while, as long as with pleasing song you soothed the daughters of Danaus. Let Lyde hear the crime and the notorious punishment of those maidens, and the cask drained of water perishing at the very bottom, and the late doom that waits upon their sins even under Orcus. Impious — for what worse could they do? — impious, they could destroy their bridegrooms with the hard sword. One out of many, worthy of the bridal torch, was splendidly false to her perjured father, a maiden glorious for every age, who said to her young husband: "Rise, rise, lest a long sleep be given you from where you do not fear it; cheat my father and my wicked sisters, who, like lionesses that have caught calves, tear them one by one, alas: I, softer than they, will neither strike you nor pen you within the bars. Let my father load me with savage chains because I mercifully spared my poor husband, or let him ship me off to the farthest fields of the Numidians: go where your feet and the breezes carry you, while night and Venus favor; go with a good omen, and carve upon my tomb a lament that remembers me."
Mercuri, nam te docilis magistro movit Amphion lapides canendo, tuque testudo resonare septem callida nervis, nec loquax olim neque grata, nunc et divitum mensis et amica templis, dic modos, Lyde quibus obstinatas adplicet auris, quae velut latis equa trima campis ludit exsultim metuitque tangi nuptiarum expers et adhuc protervo cruda marito. tu potes tigris comitesque silvas ducere et rivos celeres morari; cessit immanis tibi blandienti ianitor aulae Cerberus, quamvis furiale centum muniant angues caput eius atque spiritus taeter saniesque manet ore trilingui; quin et Ixion Tityosque voltu risit invito, stetit urna paulum sicca, dum grato Danai puellas carmine mulces. audiat Lyde scelus atque notas virginum poenas et inane lymphae dolium fundo pereuntis imo seraque fata, quae manent culpas etiam sub Orco. inpiae, (nam quid potuere maius?) inpiae sponsos potuere duro perdere ferro. una de multis face nuptiali digna periurum fuit in parentem splendide mendax et in omne virgo nobilis aevum, "surge" quae dixit iuveni marito, "surge, ne longus tibi somnus unde non times detur; socerum et scelestas falle sorores, quae velut nactae vitulos leaenae singulos eheu lacerant: ego illis mollior nec te feriam neque intra claustra tenebo. me pater saevis oneret catenis, quod viro clemens misero peperci, me vel extremos Numidarum in agros classe releget: i pedes quo te rapiunt et aurae, dum favet nox et Venus, i secundo omine et nostri memorem sepulcro scalpe querelam."
It is the lot of wretched girls to give no play to love, nor wash their troubles away with sweet wine, or else to be scared half to death of the lashings of an uncle’s tongue. From you the winged boy of Cytherea takes the work-basket, from you the loom and the zeal of busy Minerva, Neobule, the gleam of Liparean Hebrus, once he has washed his oiled shoulders in the waters of Tiber, a horseman better than Bellerophon himself, beaten neither by fist nor by laggard foot, shrewd too at spearing the stags as they flee over the open ground when the herd is harried, and quick to take the boar that lurks in the close thicket.
Miserarum est neque amori dare ludum neque dulci mala vino lavere, aut exanimari metuentis patruae verbera linguae. tibi qualum Cythereae puer ales, tibi telas operosaeque Minervae studium aufert, Neobule, Liparaei nitor Hebri, simul unctos Tiberinis umeros lavit in undis, eques ipso melior Bellerophonte, neque pugno neque segni pede victus, catus idem per apertum fugientis agitato grege cervos iaculari et celer arto latitantem fruticeto excipere aprum.
O fountain of Bandusia, brighter than glass, worthy of sweet wine, and of flowers too, tomorrow you shall be given a kid, whose brow, swollen with its first horns, marks him out for love and for battles; in vain: for he will dye your cold streams with red blood, this offspring of the frolicking flock. You the fierce hour of the blazing Dog-star cannot touch; you offer a lovely coolness to the bulls worn out by the ploughshare and to the wandering herd. You too shall become one of the storied fountains, as I sing of the ilex set upon the hollow rocks, from where your chattering waters go leaping down.
O fons Bandusiae splendidior vitro, dulci digne mero non sine floribus, cras donaberis haedo, cui frons turgida cornibus primis et venerem et proelia destinat; frustra: nam gelidos inficiet tibi rubro sanguine rivos lascivi suboles gregis. te flagrantis atrox hora Caniculae nescit tangere, tu frigus amabile fessis vomere tauris praebes et pecori vago. fies nobilium tu quoque fontium me dicente cavis inpositam ilicem saxis, unde loquaces lymphae desiliunt tuae.
Caesar, O commons, lately said, in Hercules’ fashion, to have sought the laurel that is bought with death, comes home, a victor, to his household gods from the Spanish shore. Let the wife, rejoicing in her peerless husband, come forth, her due rites performed, and the sister of the famous leader, and, graced with the suppliant’s fillet, the mothers of the maidens and of the youths lately brought home safe; you, O boys and girls who have now known a man, spare your ill-omened words. This day, a true holiday for me, will drive out black cares: I will fear neither riot nor death by violence while Caesar holds the lands. Go, fetch perfume, boy, and garlands, and a jar that remembers the Marsian war, if any cask could slip past the roaming Spartacus. And bid clear-voiced Neaera make haste to bind her myrrh-dark hair in a knot; if delay is made by the hateful doorkeeper, come away. Whitening hair softens the spirit once greedy for quarrels and headstrong brawling; I would not have borne this, hot with youth, in Plancus’s consulship.
Herculis ritu modo dictus, o plebs, morte venalem petiisse laurum Caesar Hispana repetit penatis victor ab ora. unico gaudens mulier marito prodeat iustis operata sacris et soror clari ducis et decorae supplice vitta virginum matres iuvenumque nuper sospitum; vos, o pueri et puellae iam virum expertae, male nominatis parcite verbis. hic dies vere mihi festus atras exiget curas ego nec tumultum nec mori per vim metuam tenente Caesare terras. i pete unguentum, puer, et coronas et cadum Marsi memorem duelli, Spartacum siqua potuit vagantem fallere testa. dic et argutae properet Neaerae murreum nodo cohibere crinem; si per invisum mora ianitorem fiet, abito. lenit albescens animos capillus litium et rixae cupidos protervae; non ego hoc ferrem calidus iuventa consule Planco.
Wife of poor Ibycus, set a limit at last to your wantonness and your notorious toils; nearer now to a ripe funeral, cease to play among the maidens and to spread a mist across the bright stars. What may suit Pholoe well enough does not suit you too, Chloris: more rightly your daughter storms the houses of the young, like a Thyiad roused by the beaten drum. Her, the love of Nothus drives to play, like a wanton she-goat; you, the wool shorn near famous Luceria befits — not the lyre, nor the purple flower of the rose, nor the wine-jars drained to the dregs, you old woman.
Uxor pauperis Ibyci, tandem nequitiae fige modum tuae famosisque laboribus; maturo propior desine funeri inter ludere virgines et stellis nebulam spargere candidis. non, siquid Pholoen, satis et te, Chlori, decet: filia rectius expugnat iuvenum domos, pulso Thyias uti concita tympano. illam cogit amor Nothi lascivae similem ludere capreae, te lanae prope nobilem tonsae Luceriam, non citharae decent nec flos purpureus rosae nec poti, vetulam, faece tenus cadi.
Danae shut away, a tower of bronze and oaken doors and the grim watch of wakeful dogs had guarded well enough from adulterers in the night, had not Jupiter and Venus laughed at Acrisius, the frightened guardian of the hidden maiden: for the road would be safe and open, once the god was turned to a bribe. Gold loves to go through the midst of sentries and to break through stone more potently than a stroke of lightning: the house of the Argive seer collapsed, sunk in ruin, for greed of gain; the man of Macedon split the gates of cities and undermined his rival kings with gifts; gifts ensnare the rough captains of ships. Care follows growing money and a hunger for more. Rightly have I shrunk from lifting a head conspicuous far and wide, Maecenas, glory of the knights. The more a man has denied himself, the more he will gain from the gods. Naked, I make for the camp of those who crave nothing, and as a deserter I long to leave the party of the rich, a more splendid lord of a despised estate than if I were said to hoard in my barns whatever the tireless Apulian ploughs, a pauper amid great wealth. A stream of pure water, a wood of a few acres, and the sure trust of my crop outshine — happier in its lot, though he never knows it — the man who dazzles in the rule of fertile Africa. Though no Calabrian bees bring me honey, nor does Bacchus mellow for me in a Laestrygonian jar, nor do fat fleeces thicken for me in Gallic pastures, still burdensome poverty is far away, nor, should I want more, would you refuse to give. By drawing in my desire I shall stretch my small revenues the better than if I joined the realm of Alyattes to the Mygdonian plains. To those who seek much, much is wanting: well is it with the man to whom the god has offered, with sparing hand, what is enough.
Inclusam Danaen turris aenea robustaeque fores et vigilum canum tristes excubiae munierant satis nocturnis ab adulteris, si non Acrisium virginis abditae custodem pavidum Iuppiter et Venus risissent: fore enim tutum iter et patens converso in pretium deo. aurum per medios ire satellites et perrumpere amat saxa potentius ictu fulmineo: concidit auguris Argivi domus ob lucrum demersa exitio; diffidit urbium portas vir Macedo et subruit aemulos reges muneribus; munera navium saevos inlaqueant duces. crescentem sequitur cura pecuniam maiorumque fames. iure perhorrui late conspicuum tollere verticem, Maecenas, equitum decus. quanto quisque sibi plura negaverit, ab dis plura feret nil cupientium nudus castra peto et transfuga divitum partis linquere gestio, contemptae dominus splendidior rei, quam si quidquid arat inpiger Apulus occultare meis dicerer horreis, magnas inter opes inops. purae rivos aquae silvaque iugerum paucorum et segetis certa fides meae fulgentem imperio fertilis Africae fallit sorte beatior. quamquam nec Calabrae mella ferunt apes nec Laestrygonia Bacchus in amphora languescit mihi nec pinguia Gallicis crescunt vellera pascuis: inportuna tamen pauperies abest nec, si plura velim, tu dare deneges. contracto melius parva cupidine vectigalia porrigam quam si Mygdoniis regnum Alyattei campis continuem. multa petentibus desunt multa: bene est cui deus obtulit parca quod satis est manu.
Aelius, noble from ancient Lamus — since they say both the earlier Lamiae were named from him, and the whole line of descendants down the remembering records — you draw your origin from that founder who is said, first, to have held the walls of Formiae and the Liris that floods over Marica’s shores, a lord far and wide: tomorrow a storm sent down from the East wind will strew the grove with many leaves, the shore with useless weed, unless the aged crow, prophet of rain, deceives me. While you can, lay up the dry firewood: tomorrow you will indulge your genius with wine and a two-month pig, your household freed from their tasks.
Aeli vetusto nobilis ab Lamo, quando et priores hinc Lamias ferunt denominatos et nepotum per memores genus omne fastos, auctore ab illo ducis originem, qui Formiarum moenia dicitur princeps et innantem Maricae litoribus tenuisse Lirim, late tyrannus:— cras foliis nemus multis et alga litus inutili demissa tempestas ab Euro sternet, aquae nisi fallit augur annosa cornix. dum potes, aridum conpone lignum: cras genium mero curabis et porco bimenstri cum famulis operum solutis.
Faunus, lover of the fleeing Nymphs, over my boundaries and my sunny fields may you pass gently, and depart kindly to my little nurslings, if a tender kid falls at the year’s full round, and the wine is not lacking, brimming the bowl, Venus’s comrade, and the old altar smokes with much fragrance. All the flock plays on the grassy field when the Nones of December come round for you; the village, at leisure, keeps holiday in the meadows with the idle ox; the wolf wanders among the unafraid lambs, the woodland scatters its country leaves for you, and the ditcher rejoices to have struck the hated earth with a triple beat of his foot.
Faune, Nympharum fugientum amator, per meos finis et aprica rura lenis incedas abeasque parvis aequus alumnis, si tener pleno cadit haedus anno larga nec desunt Veneris sodali vina craterae, vetus ara multo fumat odore. ludit herboso pecus omne campo cum tibi nonae redeunt Decembres, festus in pratis vacat otioso cum bove pagus, inter audacis lupus errat agnos, spargit agrestis tibi silva frondes, gaudet invisam pepulisse fossor ter pede terram.
How far Codrus, not afraid to die for his country, stands from Inachus you tell us, and the line of Aeacus, and the wars fought out beneath sacred Ilium: but at what price we may buy a jar of Chian, who will warm the water at the fire, under whose roof and at what hour I may be free of the Paelignian cold — you say nothing. A toast, boy, and be quick, to the new moon, a toast to midnight, a toast to the augur Murena: the cups are mixed with three or nine ladles, as suits. The poet who loves the odd-numbered Muses, enraptured, will call for thrice three ladles; beyond three the Grace, fearing brawls, forbids the touch, joined to her naked sisters. It is sweet to run wild: why do the breathings of the Berecyntian pipe fall idle? Why does the panpipe hang with the silent lyre? I hate hands that hoard: scatter roses; let envious Lycus hear the demented din, and the neighbor-girl ill-matched to old Lycus. You, gleaming with your thick hair, you, Telephus, like the clear Evening-star, ripe Rhode is after; me a slow love for my Glycera scorches.
Quantum distet ab Inacho Codrus pro patria non timidus mori narras et genus Aeaci et pugnata sacro bella sub Ilio: quo Chium pretio cadum mercemur, quis aquam temperet ignibus, quo praebente domum et quota Paelignis caream frigoribus, taces. da lunae propere novae, da noctis mediae, da, puer, auguris Murenae: tribus aut novem miscentur cyathis pocula commodis. qui Musas amat imparis, ternos ter cyathos attonitus petet vates; tris prohibet supra rixarum metuens tangere Gratia nudis iuncta sororibus. insanire iuvat: cur Berecyntiae cessant flamina tibiae? cur pendet tacita fistula cum lyra? parcentis ego dexteras odi: sparge rosas, audiat invidus dementem strepitum Lycus et vicina seni non habilis Lyco. spissa te nitidum coma, puro te similem, Telephe, Vespero tempestiva petit Rhode; me lentus Glycerae torret amor meae.
Do you not see, Pyrrhus, with what danger you stir the cubs of a Gaetulian lioness? In a little while, a faint-hearted raider, you will flee the hard fight, when through the bands of young men blocking her way she comes, seeking her splendid Nearchus back: a grand contest, whether the prize fall to you or rather to her. Meanwhile, while you draw out your swift arrows, she whets her fearsome teeth — the umpire of the bout is said to have set the palm beneath his bare foot, and to cool in a soft breeze his shoulder strewn with scented hair, such as Nireus was, or he who was snatched from watery Ida.
Non vides, quanto moveas periclo, Pyrrhe, Gaetulae catulos leaenae? dura post paulo fugies inaudax proelia raptor, cum per obstantis iuvenum catervas ibit insignem repetens Nearchum: grande certamen, tibi praeda cedat, maior an illa. interim, dum tu celeres sagittas promis, haec dentis acuit timendos, arbiter pugnae posuisse nudo sub pede palmam fertur et leni recreare vento sparsum odoratis umerum capillis, qualis aut Nireus fuit aut aquosa raptus ab Ida.
O born with me in Manlius’s consulship, whether you carry complaints or jests or brawling and mad loves or easy sleep, dutiful jar, on whatever pretext you keep your chosen Massic, worthy to be stirred on a good day, come down, since Corvinus bids me draw out the mellower wines. He, though steeped in Socratic discourses, will not churlishly neglect you: even old Cato’s virtue, they say, often grew warm with wine. You apply a gentle torment to the wit mostly hard; you lay bare the cares of the wise and their hidden purpose through jesting Lyaeus; you bring back hope to anxious minds, and add strength and horns to the poor man, who after you trembles neither at the angry crowns of kings nor at the soldiers’ arms. You Liber, and Venus, if she comes in gladness, and the Graces, slow to loose their knot, and the living lamps will draw on, until returning Phoebus routs the stars.
O nata mecum consule Manlio, seu tu querellas sive geris iocos seu rixam et insanos amores seu facilem, pia testa, somnum, quocumque lectum nomine Massicum servas, moveri digna bono die, descende Corvino iubente promere languidiora vina. non ille, quamquam Socraticis madet sermonibus, te neglegit horridus: narratur et prisci Catonis saepe mero caluisse virtus. tu lene tormentum ingenio admoves plerumque duro, tu sapientium curas et arcanum iocoso consilium retegis Lyaeo, tu spem reducis mentibus anxiis virisque et addis cornua pauperi post te neque iratos trementi regum apices neque militum arma. te Liber et si laeta aderit Venus segnesque nodum solvere Gratiae vivaeque producent lucernae, dum rediens fugat astra Phoebus.
Guardian of the mountains and the groves, virgin, who, called three times, hear the girls laboring in childbirth, and snatch them from death, goddess threefold: let the pine that overhangs my villa be yours, which gladly, through the rounded years, I will present with the blood of a boar practicing its sidelong stroke.
Montium custos nemorumque, virgo, quae laborantis utero puellas ter vocata audis adimisque leto, diva triformis, imminens villae tua pinus esto, quam per exactos ego laetus annos verris obliquum meditantis ictum sanguine donem.
If you lift upturned hands to heaven at the birth of the new moon, country Phidyle, if you appease the Lares with incense, this year’s grain, and a greedy sow, neither will the fruitful vine feel the pestilent South wind, nor the crop the barren blight, nor your sweet nurslings the grievous season in the fruit-bearing year. For the victim that grazes on snowy Algidus, vowed, among the oaks and ilexes, or grows fat in the Alban grasses, will dye the pontiffs’ axes on its neck: it concerns you not at all to tempt the small gods with much slaughter of two-tooth sheep, crowning them with rosemary and brittle myrtle. If a hand free of guilt has touched the altar, no more winning with a costly victim, it has softened the estranged Penates with pious meal and a leaping grain of salt.
Caelo supinas si tuleris manus nascente luna, rustica Phidyle, si ture placaris et horna fruge Laris avidaque porca: nec pestilentem sentiet Africum fecunda vitis nec sterilem seges robiginem aut dulces alumni pomifero grave tempus anno. nam quae nivali pascitur Algido devota quercus inter et ilices aut crescit Albanis in herbis victima, pontificum securis cervice tinguet: te nihil attinet temptare multa caede bidentium parvos coronantem marino rore deos fragilique myrto. inmunis aram si tetigit manus, non sumptuosa blandior hostia, mollivit aversos Penatis farre pio et saliente mica.
Though richer than the untouched treasures of the Arabs and of wealthy India, though with your masonry you crowd all the land and the common sea: if dread Necessity drives her adamantine nails into the topmost roofs, you will free neither your mind from fear nor your head from the nooses of death. Better do the Scythians of the plains live, whose wagons duly draw their roving homes, and the rugged Getae, for whom the unmeasured acres bear free fruits and grain, nor does a tillage longer than a year please them, and a substitute, with an equal lot, relieves the man discharged from his labors. There the woman, blameless, is gentle to the stepchildren bereft of their mother, nor does the dowered wife rule her husband nor trust in a glossy adulterer; the great dowry is the parents’ virtue, and a chastity that, by a sure bond, shrinks from another man, and to sin is forbidden, or the price is death. O whoever would take away impious slaughter and the madness of civil strife, if he would have himself inscribed beneath his statues as Father of the Cities, let him dare to rein in unbridled license, glorious to those born after: since — alas, the shame — we hate virtue while it stands unharmed, and, envious, seek it once taken from our eyes. What good are sad complaints, if the fault is not cut back by punishment? what good are laws, empty without morals, if neither the region of the world shut in by burning heats, nor the side that borders on Boreas, nor the snows packed hard on the ground, turns the merchant back — the cunning sailors master the bristling seas — and poverty, a great reproach, bids one both do and suffer anything, and quit the path of steep virtue? Let us, then, into the Capitol, where the shout and the crowd of cheerers call, or let us into the nearest sea fling the gems and the stones and the useless gold, the stuff of the greatest evil, if we truly repent our crimes. The seeds of crooked desire must be scraped away, and minds too soft must be shaped by harsher disciplines. The free-born boy, untrained, does not know how to keep his seat on a horse and is afraid to hunt, more skilled at games, whether you bid him with a Greek hoop or you prefer the dice the laws forbid, while his father’s perjured honor cheats his partner and his guests, and hurries money on for an unworthy heir. No doubt dishonest riches grow, and yet some little something is always missing from the stunted estate.
Intactis opulentior thesauris Arabum et divitis Indiae caementis licet occupes terrenum omne tuis et mare publicum: si figit adamantinos summis verticibus dira Necessitas clavos, non animum metu, non mortis laqueis expedies caput. campestres melius Scythae, quorum plaustra vagas rite trahunt domos vivunt et rigidi Getae, inmetata quibus iugera liberas fruges et Cererem ferunt nec cultura placet longior annua defunctumque laboribus aequali recreat sorte vicarius. illic matre carentibus privignis mulier temperat innocens nec dotata regit virum coniunx nec nitido fidit adultero; dos est magna parentium virtus et metuens alterius viri certo foedere castitas, et peccare nefas aut pretium est mori. o quisquis volet inpias caedis et rabiem tollere civicam, si quaeret pater urbium subscribi statuis, indomitam audeat refrenare licentiam, clarus postgenitis: quatenus, heu nefas virtutem incolumem odimus, sublatam ex oculis quaerimus invidi. quid tristes querimoniae, si non supplicio culpa reciditur, quid leges sine moribus vanae proficiunt, si neque fervidis pars inclusa caloribus mundi nec Boreae finitimum latus durataeque solo nives mercatorem abigunt, horrida callidi vincunt aequora navitae, magnum pauperies opprobrium iubet quidvis et facere et pati virtutisque viam deserit arduae? vel nos in Capitolium, quo clamor vocat et turba faventium, vel nos in mare proximum gemmas et lapides aurum et inutile, summi materiem mali, mittamus, scelerum si bene paenitet. eradenda cupidinis pravi sunt elementa et tenerae nimis mentes asperioribus formandae studiis. nescit equo rudis haerere ingenuus puer venarique timet, ludere doctior, seu Graeco iubeas trocho seu malis vetita legibus alea, cum periura patris fides consortem socium fallat et hospites indignoque pecuniam heredi properet. scilicet inprobae crescunt divitiae, tamen curtae nescio quid semper abest rei.
Whither do you sweep me, Bacchus, full of you? Into what groves, what caves am I driven, swift with a new mind? In what grottoes shall I be heard rehearsing the eternal glory of illustrious Caesar, to set him among the stars and the council of Jove? I will speak something signal, fresh, as yet unspoken by another mouth. Just so, sleepless on the ridges, the Bacchant stands amazed, gazing out on the Hebrus, and Thrace white with snow, and Rhodope ranged by a barbarian foot; just so it delights me, straying, to marvel at the river-banks and the empty grove. O lord of the Naiads and of the Bacchae, strong enough to overturn tall ash-trees with their hands: nothing small, nothing in a humble strain, nothing mortal will I speak. Sweet is the danger, O Lenaeus, to follow the god who binds his temples with the green vine-shoot.
Quo me, Bacche, rapis tui plenum? quae nemora aut quos agor in specus, velox mente nova? quibus antris egregii Caesaris audiar aeternum meditans decus stellis inserere et consilio Iovis? dicam insigne, recens, adhuc indictum ore alio. non secus in iugis exsomnis stupet Euhias Hebrum prospiciens et nive candidam Thracen ac pede barbaro lustratam Rhodopen, ut mihi devio ripas et vacuum nemus mirari libet. o Naiadum potens Baccharumque valentium proceras manibus vertere fraxinos, nil parvum aut humili modo, nil mortale loquar. dulce periculum est, o Lenaee, sequi deum cingentem viridi tempora pampino.
I have lived till lately fit for girls, and soldiered not without glory; now this wall, which guards the left flank of sea-born Venus, will hold my arms and my lyre, discharged from the war. Here, here lay down the bright torches, and the crowbars, and the bows that threatened barred doors. O goddess who hold blessed Cyprus and Memphis free of Sithonian snow, queen, with your lifted lash touch arrogant Chloe—once.
Vixi puellis nuper idoneus et militavi non sine gloria; nunc arma defunctumque bello barbiton hic paries habebit, laevum marinae qui Veneris latus custodit. hic, hic ponite lucida funalia et vectis et arcus oppositis foribus minacis. o quae beatam diva tenes Cyprum et Memphin carentem Sithonia nive, regina, sublimi flagello tange Chloen semel arrogantem.
Let the omen of the screeching lapwing guide the impious on their way, and a pregnant bitch, or a tawny she-wolf running down from the Lanuvian field, and a fox with young; and let a snake break off the journey begun, if, slantwise like an arrow, it has startled the ponies. But I—for whom shall I fear?— a provident augur, before the bird that foretells oncoming rains seeks again the standing marshes, will rouse with prayer the croaking raven from the sun’s rising. Be fortunate, wherever you would rather be, and live mindful of us, Galatea; and let no left-hand woodpecker forbid you to go, nor a roving crow. But you see with what tumult plunging Orion trembles. I know well what the black gulf of the Adriatic is, and what mischief the clear Iapyx works. Let the wives and children of our enemies feel the blind heavings of the rising South wind, the roar of the blackened sea, and the shores quivering under its lash. So too Europa trusted her snowy flank to the treacherous bull, and, for all her daring, paled at the sea teeming with monsters and the snare laid all around. Lately, in the meadows, intent on flowers and crafting the garland owed to the Nymphs, in the glimmering night she saw nothing but stars and waves. And as soon as she touched Crete, mighty with its hundred cities: "Father," she said, "O name of daughter forsaken, and duty mastered by madness! Whence, and whither, have I come? One death is too light for a maiden’s fault. Awake, do I weep for a shameful thing committed, or does a vain image mock me, who am guiltless— an image that, fleeing through the ivory gate, brings on a dream? Was it better to go through the long waves, or to pluck the fresh flowers? If someone now would hand me, in my anger, that infamous bullock, I would strive to mangle with iron and break the horns of the monster I lately loved so much. Shameless, I left my fathers’ household gods; shameless, I keep Orcus waiting. O if any of the gods hears this, would that I might wander naked among lions before foul wasting seizes my comely cheeks, and the juice drains from the tender prey—while still I am lovely I long to feed the tigers." "Worthless Europa," her absent father urges, "why delay to die? You can, from this ash-tree, with the girdle that luckily followed you, hurt your hanging neck. Or if cliffs and rocks sharp for death delight you, come, trust yourself to the swift gale—unless you would rather card a mistress’s portion of wool, you of royal blood, and be handed to a barbarian mistress as a concubine." As she lamented, Venus was at hand, laughing treacherously, and her son with bow unstrung. Soon, when she had had her sport: "Refrain," she said, "from anger and hot quarreling, when the hated bull gives you back his horns to break. You do not know you are the wife of unconquered Jove. Have done with sobbing; learn to bear great fortune well. A part of the world, cut off, shall take your name."
Inpios parrae recinentis omen ducat et praegnans canis aut ab agro rava decurrens lupa Lanuvino fetaque volpes; rumpat et serpens iter institutum, si per obliquum similis sagittae terruit mannos: ego cui timebo, providus auspex, antequam stantis repetat paludes imbrium divina avis imminentium, oscinem corvum prece suscitabo solis ab ortu. sis licet felix, ubicumque mavis, et memor nostri, Galatea, vivas teque nec laevos vetet ire picus nec vaga cornix. sed vides, quanto trepidet tumultu pronus Orion. ego quid sit ater Hadriae novi sinus et quid albus peccet Iapyx. hostium uxores puerique caecos sentiant motus orientis Austri et aequoris nigri fremitum et trementis verbere ripas. sic et Europe niveum doloso credidit tauro latus et scatentem beluis pontum mediasque fraudes palluit audax. nuper in pratis studiosa florum et debitae Nymphis opifex coronae nocte sublustri nihil astra praeter vidit et undas. quae simul centum tetigit potentem oppidis Creten, "pater, o relictum filiae nomen pietasque" dixit "victa furore! unde quo veni? levis una mors est virginum culpae. vigilansne ploro turpe conmissum an vitiis carentem ludit imago vana, quae porta fugiens eburna somnium ducit? meliusne fluctus ire per longos fuit an recentis carpere flores? siquis infamem mihi nunc iuvencum dedat iratae, lacerare ferro et frangere enitar modo multum amati cornua monstri. inpudens liqui patrios Penates, inpudens Orcum moror. o deorum siquis haec audis, utinam inter errem nuda leones. antequam turpis macies decentis occupet malas teneraeque sucus defluat praedae, speciosa quaero pascere tigris "vilis Europe" pater urget absens: "quid mori cessas? potes hac ab orno pendulum zona bene te secuta laedere collum. sive te rupes et acuta leto saxa delectant, age te procellae crede veloci, nisi erile mavis carpere pensum regius sanguis dominaeque tradi barbarae paelex."" aderat querenti perfidum ridens Venus et remisso filius arcu. mox ubi lusit satis, "abstineto" dixit "irarum calidaeque rixae, cum tibi invisus laceranda reddet cornua taurus. uxor invicti Iovis esse nescis. mitte singultus, bene ferre magnam disce fortunam; tua sectus orbis nomina ducet."
What better could I do on Neptune’s festal day? Bring out the hoarded Caecuban, brisk Lyde, and lay siege to entrenched good sense. You feel the noon decline, and yet, as though the winged day stood still, you spare to drag from the loft the lingering jar of Bibulus’ consulship. We will sing in turn of Neptune and the sea-green hair of the Nereids; you will sing back on the curved lyre of Latona and the arrows of swift Cynthia; and in the last song she who holds Cnidos and the shining Cyclades and visits Paphos with yoked swans shall be sung—and Night too her due dirge.
Festo quid potius die Neptuni faciam? prome reconditum, Lyde, strenua Caecubum, munitaeque adhibe vim sapientiae. inclinare meridiem sentis et, veluti stet volucris dies, parcis deripere horreo cessantem Bibuli consulis amphoram. nos cantabimus invicem Neptunum et viridis Nereidum comas; tu curva recines lyra Latonam et celeris spicula Cynthiae; summo carmine quae Cnidon fulgentisque tenet Cycladas et Paphon iunctis visit oloribus dicetur, merita Nox quoque nenia.
Offspring of Tuscan kings, for you a mellow wine in a jar not yet tipped, with the bloom of roses, Maecenas, and balsam pressed for your hair, has long been waiting at my house. Tear yourself from delay; do not forever gaze at watered Tibur, the sloping field of Aefula, and the heights of Telegonus the parricide. Leave the cloying plenty and the pile that climbs near the lofty clouds; cease to marvel at the smoke and wealth and din of prosperous Rome. Often a change is welcome to the rich, and a clean dinner under a poor man’s small roof, without tapestries and purple, has smoothed the careworn brow. Now the bright father of Andromeda shows his hidden fire; now Procyon rages, and the star of frenzied Leo, as the sun brings round the parching days; now the weary shepherd with his languid flock seeks the shade and the brook and the thickets of bristling Silvanus, and the bank, hushed, is empty of the straying winds. You fret what condition befits the state, and, anxious for the city, you fear what the Seres and Bactra, once Cyrus’s realm, are plotting, and the Tanais at strife within itself. Wisely the god buries in cloudy night the outcome of the time to come, and laughs if a mortal trembles beyond what is right. What is at hand, remember to settle with an even mind; the rest is borne along like a river, now in mid-channel gliding in peace down to the Tuscan sea, now rolling along gnawed stones and torn-up trunks and cattle and houses, all together, not without the roar of the mountains and the neighboring wood, when a wild flood goads the quiet streams. Master of himself and glad will he live who can say, day by day, "I have lived: tomorrow let the Father fill the sky with black cloud or with clear sun; yet he will not undo whatever lies behind, nor reshape and render unmade what once the fleeting hour has carried off." Fortune, glad in her cruel business, and stubborn to play her insolent game, shifts her uncertain honors, kind now to me, now to another. I praise her while she stays; if she shakes her swift wings, I give back what she gave, and wrap myself in my own virtue, and seek honest poverty, undowered. It is not my way, if the mast groans under African gales, to run down to abject prayers and bargain with vows lest my Cyprian and Tyrian wares add riches to the greedy sea: then the breeze and the twin Pollux will carry me safe through the Aegean tumults in the shelter of a two-oared skiff.
Tyrrhena regum progenies, tibi non ante verso lene merum cado cum flore, Maecenas, rosarum et pressa tuis balanus capillis iamdudum apud me est: eripe te morae ne semper udum Tibur et Aefulae declive contempleris arvum et Telegoni iuga parricidae. fastidiosam desere copiam et molem propinquam nubibus arduis, omitte mirari beatae fumum et opes strepitumque Romae. plerumque gratae divitibus vices mundaeque parvo sub lare pauperum cenae sine aulaeis et ostro sollicitam explicuere frontem. Iam clarus occultum Andromedae pater ostendit ignem, iam Procyon furit et stella vesani Leonis, sole dies referente siccos; iam pastor umbras cum grege languido rivumque fessus quaerit et horidi dumeta Silvani, caretque ripa vagis taciturna ventis. tu civitatem quis deceat status curas et urbi sollicitus times quid Seres et regnata Cyro Bactra parent Tanaisque discors. prudens futuri temporis exitum caliginosa nocte premit deus ridetque, si mortalis ultra fas trepidat. quod adest memento conponere aequos; cetera fluminis ritu feruntur, nunc medio alveo cum pace delabentis Etruscum in mare, nunc lapides adesos stirpisque raptas et pecus et domos volventis una, non sine montium clamore vicinaeque silvae, cum fera diluvies quietos inritat amnis. ille potens sui laetusque deget cui licet in diem dixisse "vixi: cras vel atra nube polum pater occupato vel sole puro; non tamen inritum quodcumque retro est efficiet neque diffinget infectumque reddet quod fugiens semel hora vexit." Fortuna saevo laeta negotio et ludum insolentem ludere pertinax transmutat incertos honores, nunc mihi nunc alii benigna. laudo manentem; si celeres quatit pennas, resigno quae dedit et mea virtute me involvo probamque pauperiem sine dote quaero. non est meum, si mugiat Africis malus procellis, ad miseras preces decurrere et votis pacisci ne Cypriae Tyriaeque merces addant avaro divitias mari: tunc me biremis praesidio scaphae tutum per Aegaeos tumultus aura feret geminusque Pollux.
I have finished a monument more lasting than bronze and higher than the royal pile of the pyramids, which no devouring rain, no raging north wind can pull down, nor the unnumbered succession of the years and the flight of time. I shall not wholly die: a great part of me will escape Libitina. On and on I shall grow, fresh in the praise of those to come, as long as the pontiff climbs the Capitol beside the silent virgin. I shall be named where the violent Aufidus roars and where Daunus, poor in water, ruled over rustic peoples—out of low estate grown powerful, the first to have led Aeolian song into Italian measures. Take the pride earned by your merits, and with the Delphic laurel, Melpomene, graciously wreathe my hair.
Exegi monumentum aere perennius regalique situ pyramidum altius, quod non imber edax, non aquilo impotens possit diruere aut innumerabilis annorum series et fuga temporum. non omnis moriar multaque pars mei vitabit Libitinam; usque ego postera crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex. dicar, qua violens obstrepit Aufidus et qua pauper aquae Daunus agrestium regnavit populorum, ex humili potens, princeps Aeolium carmen ad Italos deduxisse modos. sume superbiam quaesitam meritis et mihi Delphica lauro cinge volens, Melpomene, comam.
After long truce, Venus, do you stir up wars again? Spare me, I beg, I beg. I am not what I was under the reign of kind Cinara. Cease, cruel mother of sweet Desires, to bend with soft commands one now hardened, near the close of ten lustra: away with you, where the coaxing prayers of young men call you back. More seasonably will you revel, borne on your gleaming swans, into the house of Paullus Maximus, if you seek a fit liver to inflame; for, both noble and comely, and not silent for anxious defendants, a boy of a hundred arts, he will carry the standards of your warfare far, and, whenever, more potent, he has laughed at the gifts of a lavish rival, beside the Alban lakes he will set you in marble, under a citron-wood roof. There you will draw deep into your nostrils much incense, and take delight in the blended strains of the lyre and the Berecyntian flute, not without the pipe; there twice a day boys with tender girls, praising your godhead, will beat the ground with white foot, thrice, in the Salian manner. Me neither woman nor boy now pleases, nor the credulous hope of a heart returned, nor to contend in wine, nor to bind my temples with fresh flowers. But why, ah, Ligurinus, why does a stray tear trickle down my cheeks? Why does my eloquent tongue, mid speech, fall into unbecoming silence? In my dreams at night now I hold you captive, now I pursue you, winged, across the grass of the Field of Mars, you across the rolling waters, hard one.
Intermissa, Venus, diu rursus bella moves? parce, precor precor. non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cinarae. desine, dulcium mater saeva Cupidinum, circa lustra decem flectere mollibus iam durum imperiis: abi, quo blandae iuvenum te revocant preces. tempestivius in domum Pauli purpureis ales oloribus comissabere Maximi, si torrere iecur quaeris idoneum; namque et nobilis et decens et pro sollicitis non tacitus reis et centum puer artium late signa feret militiae tuae et, quandoque potentior largi muneribus riserit aemuli, Albanos prope te lacus ponet marmoream sub trabe citrea. illic plurima naribus duces tura lyraeque et Berecyntiae delectabere tibiae mixtis carminibus non sine fistula; illic bis pueri die numen cum teneris virginibus tuum laudantes pede candido in morem Salium ter quatient humum. me nec femina nec puer iam nec spes animi credula mutui nec certare iuvat mero nec vincire novis tempora floribus. sed cur heu, Ligurine, cur manat rara meas lacrima per genas? cur facunda parum decoro inter verba cadit lingua silentio? nocturnis ego somniis iam captum teneo, iam volucrem sequor te per gramina Martii campi, te per aquas, dure, volubilis.
Whoever studies to rival Pindar, Iullus, relies on wings waxed by Daedalus’ craft, and will give his name to a glassy sea. Like a river rushing down a mountain, which the rains have swollen above its known banks, Pindar seethes and rushes, measureless, with deep mouth, worthy of Apollo’s laurel, whether through bold dithyrambs he rolls down new words and is borne on rhythms freed from rule, or sings of gods and kings, the blood of gods, by whom the Centaurs fell in a just death, and fell the flame of the dread Chimaera, or tells of those whom the Elean palm brings home celestial—boxer or horse— and grants them a gift more precious than a hundred statues, or weeps for a youth snatched from his weeping bride, and lifts to the stars his strength and golden spirit and ways, and grudges them to black Orcus. A great gust lifts the Dircaean swan, Antonius, whenever he strains into the high tracts of cloud; I, after the manner and the way of the Matine bee that gathers the sweet thyme with much toil about the grove and the banks of well-watered Tibur, fashion my slight songs laboriously. You, a poet of a greater quill, will sing of Caesar, whenever, glorious with deserved garland, he drags the fierce Sygambri up the sacred slope; than whom nothing greater or better the fates and good gods have granted to the earth, nor will grant, though the times return to the old gold. You will sing of glad days and the city’s public games over the granted return of brave Augustus, and of the forum emptied of lawsuits. Then, if I have anything worth hearing to say, a good part of my voice will join in, and "O fair sun, O praiseworthy!" I will sing, glad at Caesar restored. And as you go in procession, "Io Triumphe!" not once will we say, "Io Triumphe!" the whole city, and we will give to the kindly gods our incense. You ten bulls and as many cows shall acquit; me a tender calf shall free, which, left by its mother, grows in the rich grasses toward my vows, copying with its brow the curved fires of the moon as she brings back her third rising— where it bears a mark, snowy to look on, in the rest tawny.
Pindarum quisquis studet aemulari, Iulle, ceratis ope Daedalea nititur pennis vitreo daturus nomina ponto. monte decurrens velut amnis, imbres quem super notas aluere ripas, fervet inmensusque ruit profundo Pindarus ore, laurea donandus Apollinari, seu per audacis nova dithyrambos verba devolvit numerisque fertur lege solutis, seu deos regesque canit, deorum sanguinem, per quos cecidere iusta morte Centauri, cecidit tremendae flamma Chimaerae, sive quos Elea domum reducit palma caelestis pugilemve equomve dicit et centum potiore signis munere donat, flebili sponsae iuvenemve raptum plorat et viris animumque moresque aureos educit in astra nigroque invidet Orco. multa Dircaeum levat aura cycnum, tendit, Antoni, quotiens in altos nubium tractus: ego apis Matinae more modoque grata carpentis thyma per laborem plurimum circa nemus uvidique Tiburis ripas operosa parvos carmina fingo. concines maiore poeta plectro Caesarem, quandoque trahet ferocis per sacrum clivum merita decorus fronde Sygambros; quo nihil maius meliusve terris fata donavere bonique divi nec dabunt, quamvis redeant in aurum tempora priscum. concines laetosque dies et urbis publicum ludum super inpetrato fortis Augusti reditu forumque litibus orbum. tum meae, si quid loquar audiendum, vocis accedet bona pars et "o sol pulcher, o laudande!" canam recepto Caesare felix. teque, dum procedis, "Io Triumphe" non semel dicemus, "Io Triumphe" civitas omnis dabimusque divis tura benignis. te decem tauri totidemque vaccae, me tener solvet vitulus, relicta matre qui largis iuvenescit herbis in mea vota, fronte curvatos imitatus ignis tertium lunae referentis ortum, qua notam duxit, niveus videri, cetera fulvos.
He whom you, Melpomene, once have looked on at birth with a serene light, him no Isthmian toil will make famous as a boxer; no tireless horse will draw him, victor, in an Achaean car; nor will the business of war show him to the Capitol, a general adorned with Delian leaves for crushing the swollen threats of kings; but the waters that flow past fruitful Tibur and the thick foliage of the groves will fashion him noble in Aeolian song. The offspring of Rome, first of cities, deigns to set me among the beloved choirs of bards, and already I am less bitten by the envious tooth. O Muse who tune the sweet clamor of the golden tortoise-shell, O you who could give, if you pleased, the swan’s note even to mute fishes: all of this is your gift— that I am pointed out by the finger of passers-by as the player of the Roman lyre; that I breathe and please, if I please, is yours.
Quem tu, Melpomene, semel nascentem placido lumine videris, illum non labor Isthmius clarabit pugilem, non equos inpiger curru ducet Achaico victorem neque res bellica Deliis ornatum foliis ducem, quod regum tumidas contuderit minas, ostendet Capitolio: sed quae Tibur aquae fertile praefluunt et spissae nemorum comae fingent Aeolio carmine nobilem. Romae principis urbium dignatur suboles inter amabilis vatum ponere me choros et iam dente minus mordeor invido. o testudinis aureae dulcem quae strepitum, Pieri, temperas, o mutis quoque piscibus donatura cycni, si libeat, sonum, totum muneris hoc tui est, quod monstror digito praetereuntium Romanae fidicen lyrae: quod spiro et placeo, si placeo, tuum est.
Like the winged minister of the thunderbolt, to whom the king of gods gave rule over the wandering birds, having proved him faithful in golden Ganymede— once youth and his father’s vigor drove him, ignorant of toils, from the nest, and the spring winds, the rain-clouds now removed, taught him, afraid, unwonted efforts; soon a lively onset sent him down as an enemy into the sheepfolds; now love of feast and of fight has driven him against the writhing serpents; or like a lion, just weaned from the udder of his tawny mother, whom a roe, intent on glad pastures, has seen—doomed by the young tooth: such the Vindelici saw Drusus waging war beneath the Raetian Alps. Whence the custom came that arms their right hands, through all time, with the Amazonian axe, I have put off asking—nor is it permitted to know all things—but the troops, long and widely victorious, vanquished by the counsels of the youth, felt what a mind duly disposed, what a nature nourished beneath auspicious roofs, what Augustus’ fatherly heart toward the boys, the Neros, could do. The brave are begotten of the brave and good: there is in bullocks, there is in horses the worth of their sires; nor do fierce eagles breed an unwarlike dove. But training advances inborn power, and right cultivation strengthens hearts; whenever morals have failed, faults disgrace what was well born. What you owe, O Rome, to the Neros, the river Metaurus is witness, and Hasdrubal overthrown, and that fair day, the darkness driven from Latium, the first to smile with kindly victory, when the dire African rode through the Italian cities like flame through pine-torches, or the East wind through the Sicilian waves. After this, with labors ever prospering, the Roman youth grew, and the shrines laid waste by the impious tumult of the Carthaginians had their gods set upright again. And at last perfidious Hannibal said: "Deer, the prey of ravening wolves, we hunt of our own accord those whom to cheat and escape is the richest triumph. The race that, brave, from burned Ilium, tossed on the Tuscan seas, bore its sacred things, its children, and its aged fathers to the Ausonian cities, like an ilex shorn by the hard axes on Algidus, rich in dark foliage, through losses, through slaughters, draws strength and spirit from the very steel. The hydra, its body cut, grew no stronger against Hercules, who grieved to be beaten; nor did Colchis or Echionian Thebes send up a greater monster. Plunge it in the deep, it comes out fairer; wrestle it, and with much glory it will hurl down the unbeaten victor and wage battles for wives to tell of. To Carthage I will now send no more proud messengers: fallen, fallen is every hope and the fortune of our name, with Hasdrubal cut down. Nothing will the hands of the Claudii fail to accomplish, which both Jupiter with kindly will defends, and shrewd cares bring safe through the sharp edges of war."
Qualem ministrum fulminis alitem, cui rex deorum regnum in avis vagas permisit expertus fidelem Iuppiter in Ganymede flavo, olim iuventas et patrius vigor nido laborum propulit inscium, vernique iam nimbis remotis insolitos docuere nisus venti paventem, mox in ovilia demisit hostem vividus impetus, nunc in reluctantis dracones egit amor dapis atque pugnae; qualemve laetis caprea pascuis intenta fulvae matris ab ubere iam lacte depulsum leonem dente novo peritura vidit: videre Raetis bella sub Alpibus Drusum gerentem Vindelici. quibus mos unde deductus per omne tempus Amazonia securi dextras obarmet, quaerere distuli nec scire fas est omnia, sed diu lateque victrices catervae consiliis iuvenis revictae sensere, quid mens rite, quid indoles nutrita faustis sub penetralibus posset, quid Augusti paternus in pueros animus Nerones. fortes creantur fortibus et bonis: est in iuvencis, est in equis patrum virtus neque inbellem feroces progenerant aquilae columbam. doctrina sed vim promovet insitam rectique cultus pectora roborant; utcumque defecere mores, indecorant bene nata culpae. quid debeas, o Roma, Neronibus, testis Metaurum flumen et Hasdrubal devictus et pulcher fugatis ille dies Latio tenebris, qui primus alma risit adorea, dirus per urbis Afer ut Italas ceu flamma per taedas vel Eurus per Siculas equitavit undas. post hoc secundis usque laboribus Romana pubes crevit et inpio vastata Poenorum tumultu fana deos habuere rectos. dixitque tandem perfidus Hannibal: "cervi, luporum praeda rapacium, sectamur ultro quos opimus fallere et effugere est triumphus. gens, quae cremato fortis ab Ilio iactata Tuscis aequoribus sacra natosque maturosque patres pertulit Ausonias ad urbis, duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus nigrae feraci frondis in Algido, per damna, per caedis ab ipso ducit opes animumque ferro. non hydra secto corpore firmior vinci dolentem crevit in Herculem monstrumve submisere Colchi maius Echioniaeve Thebae. merses profundo, pulchrior evenit; luctere, multa proruet integrum cum laude victorem geretque proelia coniugibus loquenda. Carthagini iam non ego nuntios mittam superbos: occidit, occidit spes omnis et fortuna nostri nominis Hasdrubale interempto. nil Claudiae non perficient manus, quas et benigno numine Iuppiter defendit et curae sagaces expediunt per acuta belli".
Born of good gods, best guardian of Romulus’ race, you are absent now too long; you promised an early return to the sacred council of the fathers—return. Restore the light to your country, good leader: for, like spring, when your face has shone on the people, the day goes more gladly and the suns shine the better. As a mother calls her young son, whom the South wind with envious blast keeps lingering, beyond a year’s full span, across the Carpathian waters, away from his sweet home, with vows and omens and prayers, and does not turn her face from the curved shore: so, struck with faithful longings, the fatherland seeks Caesar. For the ox roams the fields in safety, Ceres and kindly Faustitas nourish the fields, the sailors fly across a pacified sea, good faith fears to be blamed, the chaste home is polluted by no defilements, custom and law have tamed the stained crime, mothers are praised for offspring like their sires, punishment presses close on guilt. Who would dread the Parthian, who the icy Scythian, who the brood that bristling Germany brings forth, while Caesar is safe? Who would care for the war of fierce Iberia? Each man sees out the day on his own hills and weds the vine to the widowed trees; thence he returns glad to his wine, and at the second course brings you in as a god; you with many a prayer, you he attends with wine poured from the bowls, and mingles your godhead with the Lares, as Greece, mindful of Castor and great Hercules. "O may you grant long holidays, good leader, to Hesperia!" we say, dry-mouthed, in the morning when the day is whole; we say it, mellow, when the sun is beneath the Ocean.
Divis orte bonis, optume Romulae custos gentis, abes iam nimium diu; maturum reditum pollicitus patrum sancto concilio redi. lucem redde tuae, dux bone, patriae: instar veris enim voltus ubi tuus adfulsit populo, gratior it dies et soles melius nitent. ut mater iuvenem, quem Notus invido flatu Carpathii trans maris aequora cunctantem spatio longius annuo dulci distinet a domo, votis ominibusque et precibus vocat curvo nec faciem litore dimovet: sic desideriis icta fidelibus quaerit patria Caesarem. tutus bos etenim rura perambulat, nutrit rura Ceres almaque Faustitas, pacatum volitant per mare navitae; culpari metuit fides, nullis polluitur casta domus stupris, mos et lex maculosum edomuit nefas, laudantur simili prole puerperae, culpam poena premit comes. quis Parthum paveat, quis gelidum Scythen, quis Germania quos horrida parturit fetus incolumi Caesare? quis ferae bellum curet Hiberiae? condit quisque diem collibus in suis et vitem viduas ducit ad arbores; hinc ad vina redit laetus et alteris te mensis adhibet deum; te multa prece, te prosequitur mero defuso pateris et Laribus tuum miscet numen, uti Graecia Castoris et magni memor Herculis. "longas o utinam, dux bone, ferias praestes Hesperiae!" dicimus integro sicci mane die, dicimus uvidi, cum sol Oceano subest.
God, whom the brood of Niobe felt the avenger of a great tongue, and Tityos the ravisher, and Phthian Achilles, near victor of high Troy— greater than the rest, to you an unequal soldier, though son of sea-born Thetis, though he shook the Dardanian towers, fighting with his fearsome spear— he, like a pine struck by the biting iron, or a cypress driven by the East wind, fell far and laid his neck in the Trojan dust; he would not, shut in the horse that feigned Minerva’s rites, have cheated the Trojans, ill at their feast, and Priam’s court glad in its dances, but openly grievous to his captives—ah, the horror, ah!— would have burned with Achaean flames the children not yet able to speak, even the one hidden in its mother’s womb, had not the father of the gods, won over by your voice and gracious Venus’, granted to the fortunes of Aeneas walls drawn under a better omen. Lyrist and teacher of clear-voiced Thalia, Phoebus, who wash your hair in the river Xanthus, defend the honor of the Daunian Muse, smooth-cheeked Agyieus. Phoebus gave me breath, Phoebus the art of song and the name of poet. You first of maidens, and you boys sprung from illustrious fathers, wards of the Delian goddess who checks with her bow the fleeing lynxes and stags, keep the Lesbian measure and the beat of my thumb, duly singing the boy of Latona, duly the Night-shiner waxing with her torch, prosperer of the crops, and swift to roll the headlong months. Married, you will one day say: "I rendered the song dear to the gods, when the age brought back its festal lights—I, taught the measures of the bard Horace."
Dive, quem proles Niobea magnae vindicem linguae Tityosque raptor sensit et Troiae prope victor altae Pthius Achilles, ceteris maior, tibi miles inpar, filius quamvis Thetidis marinae Dardanas turris quateret tremenda cuspide pugnax— ille, mordaci velut icta ferro pinus aut inpulsa cupressus Euro, procidit late posuitque collum in pulvere Teucro; ille non inclusus equo Minervae sacra mentito male feriatos Troas et laetam Priami choreis falleret aulam, sed palam captis gravis, heu nefas, heu, nescios fari pueros Achivis ureret flammis, etiam latentem matris in alvo, ni tuis victus Venerisque gratae vocibus divum pater adnuisset rebus Aeneae potiore ductos alite muros. doctor argutae fidicen Thaliae Phoebe, qui Xantho lavis amne crinis, Dauniae defende decus Camenae, levis Agyieu. spiritum Phoebus, mihi Phoebus artem carminis nomenque dedit poetae. virginum primae puerique claris patribus orti, Deliae tutela deae, fugacis lyncas et cervos cohibentis arcu, Lesbium servate pedem meique pollicis ictum rite Latonae puerum canentes, rite crescentem face Noctilucam, prosperam frugum celeremque pronos volvere mensis. nupta iam dices "ego dis amicum saeculo festas referente luces reddidi carmen docilis modorum vatis Horati."
The snows have scattered, now the grass returns to the fields and the leaves to the trees; earth changes her turns, and the dwindling rivers flow past within their banks; the Grace, with the Nymphs and her twin sisters, dares to lead the dances naked. Hope nothing immortal—so the year warns, and the hour that snatches the kindly day. The cold softens with the Zephyrs, summer tramples spring, itself to perish soon, once fruit-bearing autumn has poured out its harvest, and back returns sluggish winter. Yet the swift moons repair their heavenly losses: we, when we have gone down where dutiful Aeneas, where rich Tullus and Ancus have gone, are dust and shadow. Who knows whether the gods above will add tomorrow’s times to today’s sum? All that you give to your own dear soul will escape the greedy hands of your heir. Once you have perished and Minos has passed his splendid judgment on you, not your birth, Torquatus, not your eloquence, not your piety will restore you; for neither does Diana free chaste Hippolytus from the infernal darkness, nor can Theseus break the Lethean chains from his dear Pirithous.
Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis arboribusque comae; mutat terra vices et decrescentia ripas flumina praetereunt; Gratia cum Nymphis geminisque sororibus audet ducere nuda choros: inmortalia ne speres, monet annus et almum quae rapit hora diem. frigora mitescunt Zephyris, ver proterit aestas interitura, simul pomifer autumnus fruges effuderit, et mox bruma recurrit iners. damna tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae: nos ubi decidimus quo pius Aeneas, quo dives Tullus et Ancus, pulvis et umbra sumus. quis scit an adiciant hodiernae crastina summae tempora di superi? cuncta manus avidas fugient heredis amico quae dederis animo. cum semel occideris et de te splendida Minos fecerit arbitria, non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te restituet pietas; infernis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum liberat Hippolytum nec Lethaea valet Theseus abrumpere caro vincula Pirithoo.
I would freely give bowls and pleasing bronzes, Censorinus, to my comrades; I would give tripods, the prizes of brave Greeks, and you would carry off not the worst of gifts—were I, that is, rich in the arts that Parrhasius brought forth, or Scopas, the one in stone, the other in flowing colors, skilled to set down now a man, now a god. But this is not my power, nor is your estate or temper in want of such delights. You delight in songs; songs we can give, and name the value of the gift. Not marbles graven with public records, through which breath and life return to good generals after death—not "the swift flights and the threats of Hannibal hurled back," not "the burning of impious Carthage"— declare the praises of him "who came back having won his name from conquered Africa" more brightly than do the Calabrian Pierides; nor, if the pages keep silent the good you have done, would you win your reward. What would the son of Ilia and Mavors be, if envious silence had stood in the way of Romulus’ deserts? The worth and favor and tongue of mighty bards snatch Aeacus from the Stygian waves and consecrate him on the islands of the blessed. The Muse forbids the man worthy of praise to die; the Muse blesses him with heaven. So tireless Hercules shares the longed-for feasts of Jove; the Tyndarids, a bright star, snatch shattered ships from the lowest waters; and Liber, his temples adorned with green vine-shoot, brings vows to good ends.
Donarem pateras grataque commodus, Censorine, meis aera sodalibus, donarem tripodas, praemia fortium Graiorum, neque tu pessuma munerum ferres, divite me scilicet artium quas aut Parrhasius protulit aut Scopas, hic saxo, liquidis ille coloribus sollers nunc hominem ponere, nunc deum sed non haec mihi vis, nec tibi talium res est aut animus deliciarum egens. gaudes carminibus; carmina possumus donare et pretium dicere muneri. non incisa notis marmora publicis, per quae spiritus et vita redit bonis post mortem ducibus, non "celeres fugae reiectaeque retrorsum Hannibalis minae" non "incendia Karthaginis inpiae", eius, "qui domita nomen ab Africa lucratus rediit", clarius indicant laudes quam "Calabrae Pierides" neque, si chartae sileant quod bene feceris, mercedem tuleris. quid foret Iliae Mavortisque puer, si taciturnitas obstaret meritis invida Romuli? ereptum Stygiis fluctibus Aeacum virtus et favor et lingua potentium vatum divitibus consecrat insulis. dignum laude virum Musa vetat mori, caelo Musa beat. sic Iovis interest optatis epulis inpiger Hercules, clarum Tyndaridae sidus ab infimis quassas eripiunt aequoribus ratis, ornatus viridi tempora pampino Liber vota bonos ducit ad exitus.
Do not, perhaps, suppose that the words will perish which I, born by the far-sounding Aufidus, speak to be wedded to the strings through arts not published before: not, though Maeonian Homer holds the foremost seats, do the Muses of Pindar and of Ceos lie hidden, or Alcaeus’ menacing and Stesichorus’ weighty strains; nor has time blotted out whatever Anacreon once played; the love still breathes, and the ardors live, that the Aeolian girl entrusted to her lyre. Not alone did Spartan Helen burn, marveling at an adulterer’s combed hair and the gold smeared on his clothes and his royal trappings and his retinue; nor was Teucer the first to aim his arrows from a Cydonian bow; not once was Ilium harried; not alone did mighty Idomeneus or Sthenelus fight battles to be told by the Muses; not fierce Hector or keen Deiphobus first took heavy blows for chaste wives and children. Many brave men lived before Agamemnon; but all of them, unwept and unknown, are pressed by the long night, because they lack a sacred bard. Valor concealed differs little from buried sloth. I will not, in my pages, leave you unadorned and silent, nor suffer envious oblivions to gnaw, Lollius, your many labors unavenged. You have a mind both shrewd in affairs and upright in seasons fair and doubtful, an avenger of greedy fraud and abstinent of money that draws all things to itself, a consul not of one year only, but as often as, a good and faithful judge, it has preferred the honorable to the useful, spurned with lofty look the gifts of the guilty, and through the crowding ranks, victorious, carried out its own arms. You would not rightly call a man "happy" for possessing much; more rightly does he take the name of the blessed who knows how to use the gifts of the gods wisely and to bear hard poverty, and dreads disgrace worse than death— that man, not afraid to perish for dear friends or for his country.
Ne forte credas interitura quae longe sonantem natus ad Aufidum non ante volgatas per artis verba loquor socianda chordis: non, si priores Maeonius tenet sedes Homerus, Pindaricae latent Ceaeque et Alcaei minaces Stesichorique graves Camenae nec siquid olim lusit Anacreon delevit aetas; spirat adhuc amor vivuntque conmissi calores Aeoliae fidibus puellae. non sola comptos arsit adulteri crinis et aurum vestibus inlitum mirata regalisque cultus et comites Helene Lacaena primusve Teucer tela Cydonio direxit arcu; non semel Ilios vexata; non pugnavit ingens Idomeneus Sthenelusve solus dicenda Musis proelia; non ferox Hector vel acer Deiphobus gravis excepit ictus pro pudicis coniugibus puerisque primus. vixere fortes ante Agamemnona multi; sed omnes inlacrimabiles urgentur ignotique longa nocte, carent quia vate sacro. paullum sepultae distat inertiae celata virtus. non ego te meis chartis inornatum silebo, totve tuos patiar labores inpune, Lolli, carpere lividas obliviones. est animus tibi rerumque prudens et secundis temporibus dubiisque rectus, vindex avarae fraudis et abstinens ducentis ad se cuncta pecuniae, consulque non unius anni, sed quotiens bonus atque fidus iudex honestum praetulit utili, reiecit alto dona nocentium voltu, per obstantis catervas explicuit sua victor arma. non possidentem multa vocaveris recte beatum; rectius occupat nomen beati qui deorum muneribus sapienter uti duramque callet pauperiem pati peiusque leto flagitium timet, non ille pro caris amicis aut patria timidus perire.
O cruel still, and powerful in the gifts of Venus, when the unhoped-for down comes to your pride, and the locks that now flutter on your shoulders have fallen, and the color that now surpasses the bloom of the crimson rose, changed, has turned Ligurinus into a bristling face, you will say, "Alas," as often as you see your altered self in the glass, "why was the mind I have today not mine as a boy, or why do my cheeks not come back unspoiled to these feelings?"
O crudelis adhuc et Veneris muneribus potens, insperata tuae cum veniet pluma superbiae et, quae nunc umeris involitant, deciderint comae, nunc et qui color est puniceae flore prior rosae mutatus Ligurinum in faciem verterit hispidam, dices "heu," quotiens te speculo videris alterum, "quae mens est hodie, cur eadem non puero fuit, vel cur his animis incolumes non redeunt genae?"
I have a jar full of Alban wine past its ninth year; I have in the garden, Phyllis, parsley for weaving garlands; there is a great store of ivy, by which, your hair bound, you shine; the house laughs with silver, the altar, wreathed with chaste vervain, longs to be sprinkled with a slain lamb; every hand is in haste, here and there the boys and girls run mingled together, the flames quiver, rolling sooty smoke at their crown. Yet, that you may know to what joys you are summoned: you must keep the Ides, the day that splits Venus-born April, the month of the sea; a day rightly solemn to me, and almost more sacred than my own birthday, since from this light my Maecenas reckons his flowing years. Telephus, whom you reach after, a youth not of your station, a rich and wanton girl has seized, and holds him bound in a pleasing fetter. Burned-up Phaethon frightens greedy hopes, and winged Pegasus gives a grave example, weighed down by his earthly rider Bellerophon, that you may always follow what befits you, and, by counting it wrong to hope beyond what is allowed, may shun an unequal match. Come now, last of my loves (for after this I shall warm to no other woman), learn the measures that you may render with your lovely voice: dark cares will be lessened by song.
Est mihi nonum superantis annum plenus Albani cadus, est in horto, Phylli, nectendis apium coronis; est hederae vis multa, qua crinis religata fulges, ridet argento domus, ara castis vincta verbenis avet immolato spargier agno; cuncta festinat manus, huc et illuc cursitant mixtae pueris puellae, sordidum flammae trepidant rotantes vertice fumum. ut tamen noris, quibus advoceris gaudiis: Idus tibi sunt agendae, qui dies mensem Veneris marinae findit Aprilem, iure sollemnis mihi sanctiorque paene natali proprio, quod ex hac luce Maecenas meus adfluentis ordinat annos. Telephum, quem tu petis, occupavit non tuae sortis iuvenem puella dives et lasciva tenetque grata compede vinctum. terret ambustus Phaethon avaras spes et exemplum grave praebet ales Pegasus terrenum equitem gravatus Bellerophontem, semper ut te digna sequare et ultra quam licet sperare nefas putando disparem vites. age iam, meorum finis amorum, (non enim posthac alia calebo femina) condisce modos, amanda voce quos reddas: minuentur atrae carmine curae.
Now the comrades of spring, that temper the sea, the Thracian winds, fill the sails; now neither do the meadows stiffen nor the rivers roar, swollen with winter snow. The unhappy bird builds her nest, mourning Itys piteously, the eternal disgrace of the house of Cecrops, because she punished too cruelly the barbarous lusts of kings. The keepers of fat sheep on the tender grass sing songs upon the pipe and delight the god whom the flocks and the dark hills of Arcadia please. The season has brought on thirst, Vergilius: but if you long to draw down wine pressed at Cales, a client of noble youths, you will earn your wine with nard. A little onyx box of nard will draw out a jar that now reclines in the Sulpician storehouses, generous to grant fresh hopes, and potent to wash away the bitterness of cares. If you hasten to these joys, come quickly with your share: I do not mean to dip you in my cups scot-free, as a rich man in a full house. But put aside delay and the pursuit of gain, and, mindful of the black fires while you may, mix into your counsels a brief folly: sweet it is to be foolish in season.
Iam veris comites, quae mare temperant, inpellunt animae lintea Thraciae, iam nec prata rigent nec fluvii strepunt hiberna nive turgidi. nidum ponit, Ityn flebiliter gemens, infelix avis et Cecropiae domus aeternum opprobrium, quod male barbaras regum est ulta libidines. dicunt in tenero gramine pinguium custodes ovium carmina fistula delectantque deum, cui pecus et nigri colles Arcadiae placent. adduxere sitim tempora, Vergili: sed pressum Calibus ducere Liberum si gestis, iuvenum nobilium cliens, nardo vina merebere. nardi parvus onyx eliciet cadum, qui nunc Sulpiciis adcubat horreis, spes donare novas largus amaraque curarum eluere efficax. ad quae si properas gaudia, cum tua velox merce veni: non ego te meis inmunem meditor tinguere poculis, plena dives ut in domo. verum pone moras et studium lucri nigrorumque memor, dum licet, ignium misce stultitiam consiliis brevem: dulce est desipere in loco.
The gods have heard, Lyce, my prayers, the gods have heard, Lyce: you grow an old woman, and yet you wish to seem lovely, and you play and drink, shameless, and with quavering song, drunk, you provoke slow Cupid. He keeps watch on the fair cheeks of green and well-taught Chia, skilled to pluck the lyre. For, fastidious, he flies past withered oaks, and shrinks from you, because yellowed teeth, because wrinkles and the snows of your head, disfigure you. Now no Coan purples, no costly gems bring back to you the seasons that, once buried in the known calendars, the winged day has shut away. Whither has your charm fled, alas, whither your color, whither your graceful motion? What have you left of her, of her who breathed loves, who had stolen me from myself, fortunate, and, after Cinara, a face known and full of pleasing arts? But to Cinara the fates gave brief years, meaning to keep Lyce a long while, matched to the years of an aged crow, that hot young men might come to see, not without much laughter, a torch crumbled into ashes.
Audivere, Lyce, di mea vota, di audivere, Lyce: fis anus et tamen vis formosa videri ludisque et bibis inpudens et cantu tremulo pota Cupidinem lentum sollicitas. ille virentis et doctae psallere Chiae pulcris excubat in genis. inportunus enim transvolat aridas quercus et refugit te quia luridi dentes, te quia rugae turpant et capitis nives. nec Coae referunt iam tibi purpurae nec cari lapides tempora, quae semel notis condita fastis inclusit volucris dies. quo fugit venus, heu, quove color, decens quo motus? quid habes illius, illius, quae spirabat amores, quae me surpuerat mihi felix post Cinaram notaque et artium gratarum facies? sed Cinarae brevis annos fata dederunt, servatura diu parem cornicis vetulae temporibus Lycen, possent ut iuvenes visere fervidi multo non sine risu dilapsam in cineres facem.
What care of the fathers or of the Quirites, with full bestowals of honors, could eternize for the age your virtues, Augustus, through inscriptions and remembering records— O greatest of princes, wherever the sun illumines habitable shores— you, whom the Vindelici, strangers to Latin law, have lately learned what you can do in war? For with your soldiery Drusus cast down the Genauni, an unquiet race, and the swift Breuni, and the citadels set upon the dread Alps, fierce, with more than a single requital; soon the elder of the Neros joined grievous battle, and under favoring auspices drove back the monstrous Raeti, glorious to behold in the contest of Mars, with what destruction he wearied the hearts devoted to a free death— much as the South wind harries the untamed waves, when the dance of the Pleiades splits the clouds, tireless to vex the squadrons of the foe and to drive his roaring horse through the midst of the fires. So tauriform Aufidus rolls, flowing past the realms of Apulian Daunus, when he rages and plots a horrendous deluge for the cultivated fields, as Claudius, with vast onset, tore down the iron ranks of the barbarians, and, mowing first and last, strewed the ground, a victor without loss, while you furnished the forces, you the plan, and your own gods. For on the day when suppliant Alexandria opened to you her harbors and her empty court, Fortune, prosperous in the third lustrum, brought the wars to favorable issues and granted praise and the longed-for honor to commands fulfilled. You the Cantabrian, not tamable before, the Mede and the Indian, you the fugitive Scythian admire, O present guardian of Italy and mistress Rome. You the Nile, that hides the springs of its sources, you the Danube, you the rapid Tigris, you the monster-teeming Ocean that roars about the far-off Britons, you the land of Gaul, that does not fear death, and of hardy Iberia hears; you the Sygambri, that delight in slaughter, their weapons laid aside, revere.
Quae cura patrum quaeve Quiritium plenis honorum muneribus tuas, Auguste, virtutes in aevum per titulos memoresque fastos aeternet, o, qua sol habitabilis inlustrat oras, maxime principum, quem legis expertes Latinae Vindelici didicere nuper quid Marte posses. milite nam tuo Drusus Genaunos, inplacidum genus, Breunosque velocis et arcis Alpibus inpositas tremendis deiecit acer plus vice simplici; maior Neronum mox grave proelium conmisit immanisque Raetos auspiciis pepulit secundis, spectandus in certamine Martio devota morti pectora liberae quantis fatigaret ruinis, indomitas prope qualis undas exercet Auster Pleiadum choro scindente nubis, inpiger hostium vexare turmas et frementem mittere equum medios per ignis. sic tauriformis volvitur Aufidus, qui regna Dauni praefluit Apuli, cum saevit horrendamque cultis diluviem meditatur agris, ut barbarorum Claudius agmina ferrata vasto diruit impetu primosque et extremos metendo stravit humum sine clade victor, te copias, te consilium et tuos praebente divos. nam tibi quo die portus Alexandrea supplex et vacuam patefecit aulam, Fortuna lustro prospera tertio belli secundos reddidit exitus laudemque et optatum peractis imperiis decus adrogavit. te Cantaber non ante domabilis Medusque et Indus, te profugus Scythes miratur, o tutela praesens Italiae dominaeque Romae. te fontium qui celat origines Nilusque et Hister, te rapidus Tigris, te beluosus qui remotis obstrepit Oceanus Britannis, te non paventis funera Galliae duraeque tellus audit Hiberiae, te caede gaudentes Sygambri conpositis venerantur armis.
Phoebus, when I wished to speak of battles and conquered cities, rebuked me with his lyre, that I might not spread my little sails over the Tuscan sea. Your age, Caesar, has brought back rich harvests to the fields, and restored to our own Jove the standards torn from the proud doorposts of the Parthians, and shut the temple of Quirinal Janus, empty of wars, and put a rein on license straying beyond the straight order, and driven out faults, and recalled the old arts through which the Latin name and the strength of Italy grew, and the fame and majesty of empire was stretched to the risings of the sun from its western bed. With Caesar guarding affairs, neither civil frenzy nor violence will drive out repose, nor anger, that beats out swords and sets wretched cities at enmity. Not those who drink the deep Danube will break the Julian edicts, not the Getae, not the Seres, nor the faithless Persians, nor those born by the river Tanais. And we, on workdays and on holy days alike, amid the gifts of merry Liber, with our children and our wives, having duly first prayed to the gods, will sing, in the manner of our fathers, with song mingled to the Lydian flutes, of leaders who did their duty in valor— of Troy, and Anchises, and the offspring of kindly Venus.
Phoebus volentem proelia me loqui victas et urbis increpuit lyra, ne parva Tyrrhenum per aequor vela darem. tua, Caesar, aetas fruges et agris rettulit uberes et signa nostro restituit Iovi derepta Parthorum superbis postibus et vacuum duellis Ianum Quirini clausit et ordinem rectum evaganti frena licentiae iniecit emovitque culpas et veteres revocavit artis, per quas Latinum nomen et Italae crevere vires famaque et imperi porrecta maiestas ad ortus solis ab Hesperio cubili. custode rerum Caesare non furor civilis aut vis exiget otium, non ira, quae procudit ensis et miseras inimicat urbis. non qui profundum Danuvium bibunt edicta rumpent Iulia, non Getae, non Seres infidique Persae, non Tanain prope flumen orti. nosque et profestis lucibus et sacris inter iocosi munera Liberi cum prole matronisque nostris, rite deos prius adprecati, virtute functos more patrum duces Lydis remixto carmine tibiis Troiamque et Anchisen et almae progeniem Veneris canemus.