The Works of Ausonius

Phoebus, mighty in verses, Tritonian goddess, presiding over wars,

you too, Victory, gliding down in swift flight from the sky,

crown with a double diadem the now-serene brow,

bearing garlands, which are the gifts of the toga, which the rewards of battle.

Augustus, mighty in war and in speech, deserves honor

twice over: that he may double his titles, who tempers battles with the Muses,

and moderates Getic Mars with Apollo.

Amid arms and the fierce Huns, and the Sarmatians

guilty of thieving, however much time is free from war,

he grants that much, amid the camps, to the Clarian Muses.

Scarcely has he laid down the whistling darts, the swift arrows,

when his hand is borne to the Muses' reeds; he knows no leisure,

and, the arrow exchanged, meditates a song.

But a song not soft in measure: he takes up again the grim wars of Odrysian

Mars, and the arms of the Thracian maiden.

Rejoice, Aeacides, you are celebrated again by a proud bard:

a Roman Homer has fallen to your lot.

The wounded beast, unable to yield to the broad iron,

presses on the bloody weapons of the armed man,

what great deaths it suffers under a small wound,

and proves that the hand alone is the power of death!

They marvel at strange chances and sudden ruin:

the fresh wound is sought, and it deceives the eyes.

Nor content to pass lethally through the stricken limbs,

one arrow joins two deaths together.

If very many perish by the common stroke of lightning,

you might think those wounds too were sent from heaven.

I, ruler of the Illyrian waters, second to you, O Nile,

I, the Danube, raise a joyful head from my spring.

I bid the Augusti hail, both son and father,

whom I have nourished for the war-bearing Pannonians.

Now already I wish to run as a messenger to the Euxine sea,

that Valens, the second care of the Gods above, may know this;

that the Suebi have perished, laid low by slaughter, flight, and flames;

and that the Rhine is no longer a boundary for the Gauls.

But if, by the law of the sea, my river ran backward,

I could bring the conquered Goths from thence to you.

I, the Danube, my source hidden in far-off regions,

now flow wholly under your dominion.

Where I pour forth my cold spring amid the Suebi,

where I cut through the Pannonias, heavy with empires,

and where, rich in waters, I release my mouths into the Scythian sea:

I send all rivers under your yoke.

To Augustus shall be given the palm, but the nearest one to Valens.

He too shall find your springs here, O Nile.

Now we have made you of marble, for the sake of cost; but when

your Augustus brother shall have returned, be thou of gold.

That the lion suffers death by so slender a reed,

it is not the strength of the iron, but of the striker, that does it.

Before all other women, yet I shall be called happy in this:

whether as a woman I bore a god, or a man.

It is told that King Agathocles dined on earthenware,

and often loaded his sideboard with Samian clay,

setting forth rough dishes among jeweled vessels;

and mingled riches and poverty together.

To one asking the reason he replied: I, who am king

of Sicily, was begotten of a potter father.

Hold your fortune with reverence, whoever you are that suddenly

come forth rich from a place of exile.

There is jest in my little books, there is much that is serious;

the Stoic plays these parts, the Epicurean those.

So long as the rule of the ancient morals remains safe with me,

let the sober Muse sport with jests intermingled.

An adulterous wife gave poisons to her jealous husband; nor did she believe enough had been given for death.

She mixed in deadly weights of living silver,

that the doubled force might compel a swift death.

If one should divide these, separated they make poison.

He who drinks them combined shall take an antidote.

Therefore, while the harmful cups contend among themselves,

the deadly harm yielded to the health-bringing one.

Straightway they sought the empty recesses of the belly,

the slippery path known by the ejected food.

How pious the care of the gods! A crueler wife does good.

And when the fates so will, twin poisons help.

Vain painter, why do you strive to set a face upon me,

and to trouble with eyes a goddess unknown to sight?

I am the daughter of air and voice, an idle mother

of meaning, who bear a voice without mind.

Drawing back the last measures as they die away at the end,

mocking, I follow words not my own with mine.

I dwell, penetrating, in your ears—I, Echo:

and if you wish to paint my likeness, paint a sound.

Whose work? Phidias's, who made the statue of Pallas,

and who made Jove; I am his third palm.

I am a goddess rare, and known to few—OCCASION.

Why do you stand upon a little wheel? I cannot stand in one place.

Why do you have winged sandals? I am winged. What Mercury

is wont to grant as fortune, I bring speedily, when I have willed it.

You hide your face with hair. I do not wish to be known; but hark you,

you are bald at the back of your head. Lest I be held as I flee.

Who is the companion joined to you? Let her tell you. Tell me, I ask, who you are.

I am a goddess to whom not even Cicero himself gave a name.

I am the goddess who exacts penalties for deeds done and undone.

Indeed, so that one may repent, thus I am called METANOEA.

But tell me, what does she do with you? If ever I have flown by,

she remains; those whom I have passed by, her they retain.

You too, while you ask, while you delay in questioning,

will say that I have slipped from your hands.

Once, as a hare ran along the shore of the Sicilian coast

ahead of the hounds, a blue-gray dog snatched it up.

But the hare said: All the plunder of earth and sea is upon me,

and perhaps of heaven too, if a dog holds the stars.

As sluggish a writer as you were a slow runner, Pergamus,

you fled, and were caught at the very start of the race.

So you bore the marks of writing on your face, Pergamus,

and what your right hand neglected, your forehead suffers.

Pergamus, you were not rightly punished: on your forehead you underwent

the penalty that your slow hands deserved.

But you, who are the master, restrain the offending limbs.

It is unjust to torment false defendants.

Either brand that right hand, which refuses to write,

or bind your fleeing feet with the weight of iron.

When my wife read in my verses the names of Laises and Glyceras, names of wanton repute,

she said that I was playing, and jesting in a feigned love:

so great is her trust in my honesty.

Wife, let us live as we have lived, and let us keep

the names we took up first in the marriage-chamber;

nor let any day bring it about that we be changed with age;

rather may I be young to you, and you a girl to me.

Though I be more advanced in years than Nestor, and though you,

rivaling the years, surpass even the Cumaean Deiphobe;

let us not know what mature old age is.

It is fitting to know that age is uncertain, not to count it.

He who first gave you, MEROE, your name

gave a name likewise to Hippolytus, son of Theseus.

For to compose a name is to divine, since it becomes

a token of fortune, of character, or of death.

Protesilaus, thus did the fates give you your name:

because you were to be the first victim at Troy.

That they call Idmon a seer, that they call Iapis a physician,

their names anticipate the arts they were to learn.

And so it is with you, Meroe: not because you are black in color,

as she who is born in Nilotic Meroe;

but because you do not dilute with water the wine poured in,

being accustomed to drink unmixed wine, sheer wine upon wine.

I was once a stone that the Persians brought, to become

a trophy of war; now I am NEMESIS.

But just as I stood as a trophy for the Greek victors,

so as Nemesis I punish the vainglorious Persians.

A treasure having been found, he who was approaching the threshold of death

left rejoicing the noose by which he was to have perished.

But he who did not find the gold he had hidden in the earth,

found instead a noose, and tied it, and perished.

He who was tying a noose about his neck found gold,

and in place of the treasure he laid down the noose.

But he who had hidden it, after he did not find the gold,

fitted to his neck the noose he found.

You receive seven wounds upon your breast turned to the foe;

you are carried home, Thrasybulus, upon your own arms:

this is no grief for your father, but rather the greater glory,

that he can enjoy so fair a death, a rare thing.

When his comrades had laid him upon the mournful bier,

his great-souled father spoke such words as these:

Weep for others; my son needs no tears at all,

being mine, and such as he is, and a Lacedaemonian.

A Laconian mother, arming her son with a shield, said:

Return either with this, or upon this.

A certain man, proud of his riches and swollen with pride,

and noble only in his words, spurns the illustrious names of the thriving age,

grasping at ancient lineages,

naming Mars, and Remus, and Romulus the founder,

as his first ancestors.

These he has clothed in silken garments;

these he engraves in heavy silver,

branding them in wax upon the thresholds of doors

and upon the paneled ceilings of his halls.

I believe that he himself had no certain father,

and that his mother is truly a she-wolf.

I was the first founder of the Cynics. What is the reasoning here?

Alcides is said to be far earlier;

I was once second to Alcides as my teacher,

now I am first of the Cynics, and he is a god.

No pupil better, no better master ever came together

unto virtue and Cynic wisdom.

He knows that I speak the truth, who knows them both,

both Alcides the god, and Diogenes the dog.

I am Osiris of Egypt, Phanaces of the Mysians,

Bacchus among the living, Aidoneus among the dead,

fire-born, two-horned, Dionysus the destroyer of the Titans.

Ogygian Thebes calls me Bacchus;

Egypt supposes me Osiris;

the Mysians name me Phanaces;

the Indians reckon me Dionysus;

Roman rites call me Liber;

the Arabian race, Adoneus;

Lucaniacus calls me the All-God.

A goat, a she-goat, a wallet, a shepherd, a staff-bearer, an olive-tree—

of all these, I, a single plain stone, am Corydon.

Lesbian Sappho, added as a sister to the Pierian Muses,

I am the ninth of the lyric poets, the tenth of the Aonian maidens.

Born of the sea, taken up by the land, brought forth by a heavenly father,

mother of the sons of Aeneas, here I, gracious Venus, dwell.

If, paper, you must needs suffer moths and decay,

begin to perish first by my little verses.

I prefer the moths, you say. You are wise, wretched little book,

who prefer to undergo the lighter evil.

But I am unwilling to waste the idle hours of my ruinous Muse,

which brings the loss of sleep, and of oil.

It would have been more useful to sleep, than to lose sleep,

and oil. Well do you say. But this is my reason:

I am angry at Proculus, whose eloquence is as great

as his rank. He has written very much, which he keeps hidden.

Him I am eager to avenge; and this vengeance is ready to hand for the poet:

let him who does not publish his own songs, read mine.

It is in his power, whether he bids you grow young with cedar-oil,

or bids you be food for hard worms.

To him I devote whatever ignoble leisure remains to me:

whether he reads what I shall give, or covers something with it.

Lucius indeed is one letter, but separated by twin points:

so the single mark L makes the forename.

After it an M is carved: I suppose that M does not appear whole.

The topmost stroke has split away, damaged by a fragment of the stone.

Nor can anyone know by sure signs whether it is a Marius, or a Marcius, or perhaps

a Metellus who lies here.

The letters lie broken, their shapes shattered,

all have perished, their marks confounded.

Should we wonder that men have perished? Monuments crumble too;

death comes even to stones, and to names.

Whether you approve the garment woven with Tyrian weft,

Or the neatness of the inscribed title pleases you:

The charm of the lady herself fashions both,

One Sabina cultivates these twin arts.

Let the glory of the East praise Achaemenian fabrics:

Weave soft gold into your robes, Greece.

No less let fame celebrate Ausonian Sabina,

Sparing of great expense, equal in skill.

Those who weave threads and songs; songs to the Muses,

Threads they attribute to you, chaste Minerva.

But I will not sunder this allied matter, Sabina:

The verses with which my own weavings are inscribed by me.

Χρηστὸς, Ἀκίνδυνος, εἰσὶν ἀδελφεοὶ, οἰκτρὰ δὲ τέκνα,

Both of evil character, they bear false names.

Οὐδ᾽ οὗτος χρηστὸς, οὐδ᾽ οὗτος ἀκίνδυνός ἐστιν.

One letter can correct them both.

Αἴκεν Χρηστὸς ἔλῃ, Ἀκίνδυνος ἄλφ᾽ ἀπολέσσῃ:

This one will become Κίνδυνος; the brother will be Ἄχρηστος.

They are brothers by blood, Chrestos, the other Acindynos,

A false name for each; but that it may be true for each,

Let Acindynos give his alpha to Chrestos, and let himself

Remain without the alpha; each will bear a true name.

Because your library is stuffed with bought books,

Do you think yourself learned, and a grammarian, Philomusus?

By this same reasoning, buy strings, and plectra, and lyres too.

Having purchased everything, tomorrow you will be a lyre-player.

This is the statue of Rufus the rhetorician. Nothing truer. It is he himself.

Indeed it has no tongue, and no brain.

And it is stiff, and deaf, and does not see. All this is Rufus.

One thing is different. He was softer.

Who painted you speechless, in the likeness of one speaking?

Tell me, Rufus.

You are silent.

Nothing is so like you.

THIS is the panel of Rufus. Nothing truer. Where is Rufus himself?

In his chair. What is he doing? This, which is also in the panel.

RUFUS said REMINISCO in his own verse:

Therefore the verse—nay rather Rufus—has no heart (COR).

He who thinks he can say REMINISCO correctly in Latin:

Here, where CO is written, would read COR, if he had a heart.

Rufus the rhetorician, once invited to a wedding,

At a crowded banquet (as happens),

That he might show himself skilled in the grammatical art,

Spoke these wishes for the marriage:

May you beget children of masculine, and of feminine,

And of neuter gender.

WITH a handsome mouth, and a mute mouth. Do you want to know what I am? I am willing.

The image of Rufus, rhetorician of Poitiers.

But I wish he himself would tell me this, Rhetorician. He cannot.

Why? He himself, the rhetorician, is the image of an image.

This is the statue of Rufus the rhetorician. If it is of stone, it is Rufus.

Why do you say that? He himself was always stony.

Wallet, barley-meal, cloak, staff, cup—scant equipment:

This was the Cynic's; but he thinks even this too much.

For seeing a herdsman drinking from his cupped hands,

He said: Why, cup, do I carry you, superfluous as you are?

Your effigy, King Croesus, richest of kings,

Diogenes the Cynic saw among the shades.

And when he stood at a distance, shaken with a greater laugh

Than usual, he said: What good do your riches

Do you now, O richest king of kings, since you are

Alone just as I am, and poorer than I?

For whatever I had, I carry with me: since you yourself

Carry nothing with you, Croesus, from such great wealth.

Daedalus, why do you spend your labor on a vain art?

Rather, put Pasiphae under me, shut up as she was.

If you wish to give a true cow's allurements, Daedalus,

Myron's cow will be for you a living likeness.

You were mistaken, young bull, gazing at these flanks of mine.

No craftsman's hand gave milk to these udders.

Feed your herds far from here, lest, I beg, herdsman, you drive Myron's

Bronze, as if breathing, along with your cattle.

The calf, seeing me, will bellow. The loving bull

Will rush upon me. The shepherd will drive me off along with the herd.

Myron's bronze cow could give a bellow:

But she fears to wear away the craftsman's skill.

For to fashion something like a living thing is more than to live;

Nor are the wonders of a god, but of the craftsman.

I stood as a bronze cow; the cow of Minerva was sacrificed,

But the goddess transferred her breathed-out soul into me.

And now I am twofold: part bronze, part animate.

This is said to be the craftsman's hand, that the goddess's.

The sun not yet fallen, already toward evening,

When the shepherd at last was driving his own heifers,

Leaving his own, he threatened me, as if I were his.

A shepherd had by chance lost one heifer,

And being ordered to give an account of the number,

Complained that I was missing, since I

Had refused to follow the others.

At Valleba (a new thing, and scarcely to be believed by poets:

But which is set forth from true history)

A male bird turned into female shape:

And a peahen stood before eyes where a peacock had been.

All marvel at the monstrous thing: but a gentler ewe-lamb

Stood forth, turned from the flock into a tender male.

Why do the dull marvel at the sight of a well-known novelty?

Do you not read the songs of Naso?

The offspring of Saturn, Consus, transformed Caenis:

And Tiresias was of ambiguous body.

The spring Salmacis saw the half-man Hermaphroditus.

Pliny saw an Androgyne being wed.

Nor is it recent enough, that in Campanian Beneventum

One of the youths suddenly became a maiden.

Yet I do not wish to summon proofs of ancient report.

Behold, I myself have been made a woman out of a boy.

Thrown aside at the crossroads, unburied, a bald skull lay,

The naked scalp of a man, now stripped of skin.

Others wept: unmoved by weeping, Achillas

Moreover split it open with the blow of a flint.

So the avenging stone, struck from afar, returned from the bone,

And sought the forehead and eyes of its own author.

So may an impious hand always direct its blows,

That the flung weapons strike back at their own author.

To ailing Marcus, Diodorus the soothsayer said

That no more than six days remained for life.

But Alcon the physician, more powerful than gods and fates,

At once proved the soothsaying false,

And handled the hand of one about to live, had he but touched it.

For at once Marcus's six days perished.

Yesterday Alcon touched the statue of Jove. He,

Though of marble, suffers the physician's force.

Behold, today, ordered to be moved from the ancient shrine,

He is carried out: although he is a god, and stone.

Once Eunomus had said that the ailing Caius would die:

He escaped by the help of fate, not of the physician.

A little later he sees him, or thought he saw him,

Pale, and much in the likeness of death.

"Who are you?" "Caius," he says. "Are you alive?" He denies it. "But what

Are you doing here now?" "I come," he says, "sent by Dis,

So that, since I hold knowledge of things and of men,

I might summon physicians." Eunomus grew stiff with dread.

Then Caius said: "Fear nothing, Eunomus; I say, and all say,

That no one with any sense would call you a physician."

You feign the barking of puppies, the neighing of horses,

And the goat-born flock, and the wool-bearing herds

You liken with bleating: you might even say asses bray,

When you wish to feign, Marcus, the Arcadian beast.

The crowing of cocks, and ravens exulting in throat,

And whatever sounds beast and bird possess.

Though you imitate all so truly that the feigned is denied to be feigned:

You cannot possess the sound of a human voice.

Begin. To have begun is half the deed done. Let there remain

The other half. Begin this again: and you will accomplish it.

"A slow-footed favor is a thankless favor."

A favor which is slow is thankless. For a favor,

When it hastens to be done, is a more welcome favor.

If you do some good deed, do it quickly; for what is done quickly

Will be welcome: slow favor makes it thankless.

A happy chance mingled itself with a deceived art.

The actor who danced Capaneus, fell.

The same one, who danced Niobe, turned to stone, so that then

The spectator believed him the true Niobe.

In Canace, he seemed much luckier than she herself:

Because he did not cut open his own entrails with a sword.

The same ape danced Daphne and Niobe,

Wooden as Daphne, stony as Niobe.

The dodra comes from the dodrans. Reckon thus: broth, water, wine,

Salt, oil, bread, honey, pepper, herb—nine.

I am called dodra. What is the reason? I bear nine kinds. What are they?

Broth, water, honey, wine, bread, pepper, herb, oil, salt.

I am the dodra drink, and I have the number: honey, wine, oil,

Bread, salt, herb, broth, water, pepper.

Hylas skilled in boxing, Phegeus cunning in the art of wrestling,

And Lycus famed in the Olympic race-courses,

Whether all of them could win in the coming contest,

Consulted Hammon, god of Libya.

But the god, as one wise, said: "Victory will be given to you

Assured indeed, if you take care," he said,

"That no one outstrip Hylas in boxing, no one outstrip

Phegeus in the wrestling match, no one outstrip you, Lycus, in the race."

If you desired another, you could, Narcissus, possess him.

Now abundance of love is present to you: the fruit is absent.

What would a lover not suffer on account of this one's beauty,

Who himself so perishes for love of his own image?

Resounding Echo dies together with you, Narcissus,

Breathless unto the furthest measures of the voice.

And still following the groan of the dying with her complaints,

She does not even love the last words of him speaking.

Lay down the bow, Paean, and put away your swift arrows:

The maiden does not flee you, but fears your weapons.

Envious bark, why do you hasten to cover the maiden?

The laurel is owed to Phoebus, if the maiden is refused.

Delia, we marvel at you both: and it is a marvel, that you are

So unlike, you and your sister.

This one, in chaste attire, though she is not chaste, seems so;

You, apart from your dress, have nothing of the harlot.

Though chaste morals are yours, and honest attire hers;

Yet dress condemns you, and conduct condemns her.

Behold Cypris just risen from the generative waves of the sea, the work of Apelles' labor:

how, clasping in her hand her locks wet with the water of the sea, with both hands she wrings the foam from her moistened tresses.

Now to you, Cypris, Juno says, and unwedded Pallas, we yield, and we award the prize of beauty.

While nature hesitated whether to make a male or a girl,

you were made, O beautiful one, a boy who is almost a girl.

That Silvius Bonus, who assails our verses,

has deserved our couplets even more, Bonus the Briton.

This Silvius is Bonus. Which Silvius? That Briton.

Either this Briton is not Silvius, or he is bad.

This Silvius is said to be Bonus, and is said to be a Briton:

who would believe that a good citizen has degenerated?

No Briton is good: if Silvius should begin

to be simple, let simple Bonus cease to be.

This Silvius is Bonus. But this same Silvius is a Briton.

Believe me, it is a simpler matter that the Briton is bad.

Silvius, a Briton, Bonus; although you are said to be a man

not good, nor can Briton join itself to Bonus.

Some call you Furippus, others Furippus,

one lengthening, the other shortening the syllable.

Choose whichever you prefer: either stretch out or shorten the name.

Whichever you like will suit you, mad thief.

That which is blessed and eternal, lacking death,

neither causes trouble to itself nor to another.

A healthy lazy man is far worse than one with a fever.

He drinks double, and devours double portions of food.

I am that Dido, of the face which you behold, O stranger,

made like in wondrous manner, and beautiful.

Such I was: but not such was my mind as Maro fashioned for me,

nor was my life glad with unchaste desires.

For Trojan Aeneas never saw me,

nor did he come to Libya with the Ilian fleets.

But fleeing the fury and the arms of insolent Iarbas,

I preserved, I confess, my chastity by death,

my breast pierced through: it was a chaste sword that struck the blow,

not madness, nor cruel grief from wounded love.

Thus it pleases me to have fallen: I lived without a wound to my fame.

Having avenged my husband, my walls established, I met death.

Envious Muse, why did you incite Maro against me,

that he should invent a stain upon my chastity?

Rather believe the historians about me, readers,

than those false-speaking poets

who sing of the thefts and couplings of the gods:

who defile truth with song, and liken the gods to human vices.

Faustulus, mounted on an ant as though on a great elephant,

fell, and gave his back supine to the earth.

And soon he was nearly done to death by its heels,

so undone that he could scarcely retain his breath.

Yet scarcely he spoke: Why do you laugh, wicked Envy,

that I have fallen? Phaethon fell no differently.

When the mind of Timomachus wished to paint Medea,

turning over in her mind the cruel deed against her sons,

he exhausted immense labor upon opposing things,

so as to fashion the mother's ambiguous affection.

Anger lies beneath the tears, pity is not without anger.

You may see one in the other, so that each is within the other.

It is enough that she hesitates; for the mother is worthy of the blood

of her sons; not your right hand, Timomachus.

Which of the painters has portrayed you, worst of Colchian women,

turning over in your mind a cruel crime against your sons?

Are you so thirsty to drain the blood of children,

that you would not spare even in a painted slaughter?

Does no rival goad you? Is there no other Jason,

or another Glauce, the cause of your murder?

Why, are you not even barbarous in the painting? For your

tenacious wax conceives an immoderate force of jealousy.

I praise Timomachus, because he painted the mother hesitating

over the sword, lest she stain herself with her offspring's blood.

Sitting upon the blind man, the lame man, crippled in both feet, walks.

What each lacks, he takes from the other.

For the blind man supplies feet and gait to the lame man:

but the lame man gives his eyes to the blind man in place of feet.

He walks sitting upon the blind man, himself lame in both feet:

and the disability takes on alternating duties.

For the blind man lends his feet to the lame one: he in turn

gives his eyes to the blind man in exchange for feet.

The rich man is not rich in wealth: nor is the poor and needy man

unhappy: neither one needs more than the other.

The rich man needs jewels, the poor man the gift of grain.

But since both are in need, the poor man needs less.

Untouched by suitors, and preserved through so many years,

my kisses were scarcely known even to Telemachus himself.

Hence my virginity has shone for you by the grown-up torches:

and true love, in the presence of a prince, burned with envy.

Often I, a new woman, trembled at false dreams:

and words fell from me undeserved in sound:

and yet, having awakened, I felt unknown pains,

and with fearful hand I tested the dry bedclothes.

For to you, panting and moving your last battles,

my grief yielded indulgently and without a voice,

daring to wound nothing fiercely with tooth, nothing with nails:

for love accomplished its covenant in silent peace.

Finally I did not call my grandmother with trembling cry:

nor did the old serving-woman run first in service.

I myself touched the maidens with a modest paleness,

confessing the work of tender shame laid upon me.

The grammarian is not happy: nor ever was:

Nor is anyone happy under the name of grammarian.

But if anyone, beyond fate, was ever happy:

He indeed has passed beyond the grammarians' rules.

Teaching arms and the man, and skilled in arms and the man,

I did not take a wife, but rather brought arms into my house.

For whole days, and whole nights in succession,

She assaults with quarrels me and my hearth:

And, as if dowered by Mars with perpetual wars,

She takes up arms against me, nor is any rest given.

And now, resisting, I shall give myself up; so that at last, conquered,

She may scold me for this alone, that I flee her quarrels.

What sort of corrected speech can there be for a master

Who pronounces even his own name with a fault?

You call yourself Auxilium, ignorant master;

Give the right case, and you will at once become a Solecism.

Not even in the Stygian light do the brothers, sons of Oedipus,

enter into their pact, wretched offspring of a wretched sire.

For even the flames rising from a single pyre

Leap apart into different directions of their own ash.

O unspeakable youths! Whom not even discord, though it robbed them

Of life, nor in themselves does their fierce spirit leave at peace.

And would that they could have divided Thebes itself as well,

And the boundaries of their kingdoms, as they did the clouds of their ashes!

Nothing worse than an ungrateful man does the earth produce.

Neighbor, guest, acquaintance, stranger, client,

And whatever kinds of citizens there are of that sort,

If you readily grant some aid to one who asks,

So that you may show pity, the gratitude perishes at once.

If you desire to learn, how much may be learned from the learned.

What you know, you should wish to make grow into your mind by meditation.

What you have not yet learned, strive to acquire by learning.

Fortune never remains in the same state.

She is always moving: she varies, and changes her turns,

And turns the highest things to the lowest, and raises up the overturned.

You once shone among the gods above as a star, Lucifer: but now,

Extinguished, deprived of light, you will be an Evening Star.

Enjoy your possessions as one born mortal; but love your possessions

As though you were immortal. In either case one's lot is to be feared.

Boy, skilled servant

Of swift shorthand marks, fly here.

Prepare the double-leaved tablet,

For which there is much abundance of speech,

Accomplished with single strokes,

As soon as a single word is completed.

I unroll copious books,

And, like dense hail,

I make a torrent of noise with my tongue.

Your ears are never in doubt,

Nor is the page ever behind.

And with a sparing motion of the hand

It flies over the waxen plain.

Even now, as I speak,

With a roundabout circling of speech,

You already hold in the wax

The thoughts of my heart, as though spoken.

I could wish my mind had given me

Perception as swift,

As the flight of your swift right hand

By which you outstrip me while I am still speaking.

Who, I ask, who has betrayed me?

Who has already told you

What I was thinking to say?

What thefts does your winged hand

Practice in the innermost heart?

What order of things is so new

That it comes to your ears

Before the tongue has yet finished it?

No teaching has granted this:

Nor is any hand so swift

In fleet-footed abbreviation.

Nature has given you this gift,

And God has handed you this present:

That you might know beforehand what I would say,

And wish the same thing that I wish.

Lest the ages of eternal Rome be unknown to you,

Led on under kings, and under the rule of the fathers,

I have set out the Fasti, and the names of the everlasting age:

Whatever things lie scattered through Latin history.

Let this be your profit, receive these nights spent in vigil.

Our lamp attends upon your studies.

Do you also weave together the Januaries yet to come, in long succession,

As my page has gathered together those past.

You now have your father's example: so that the purple

May at once join you also to the Ausonian consuls.

To eleven hundred years join four more,

And to eleven add one beyond a period of three years:

This will be the whole span of eternal Rome from its origin.

When, Proculus, you receive the sequence of years

Drawn down from king Quirinus of eternal Rome:

A thousand years and a hundred, and twice nine flowing by,

You will read down to the name of the consul Ausonius.

Perhaps it will happen that, when a lustrum has added itself to these,

Proculus will mark the completed Olympiad.

Thus far I have written the Fasti. If fate wills, further

I shall add. If not, you who read shall add it.

Do you wish to know who I am? Seek the title

Which is fourth from the bottom; you will read the name of the Consul Ausonius.

Already bright morning opens the windows;

Already the wakeful swallow chatters at her nest.

You, as though it were still the first, or the middle, of the night,

Parmeno, sleep on.

Dormice sleep through the whole winter,

But they abstain from food. For you the cause of sleep

Is that you drink much, and stretch out

Your fat with excessive bulk.

Hence no sound enters your bent ears:

And deep torpor holds the seat of your mind fast,

Nor do the flashes of gleaming light

Assail his eyes.

Fables tell how once a yearly rest

Was granted to a youth,

Abiding through the alternations of night and day,

For whom the Moon prolonged his slumbers.

Rise, trifler, worthy to be scourged with rods.

Rise: lest a lengthy sleep be given you

From a source you do not fear. Snatch your limbs, Parmeno,

From the soft couch.

Perhaps this very song, set to Sapphic verse,

Persuades you toward sleep.

Drive off the manner of Lesbian repose,

Sharp Iambus.

Boy, come, rise: and give me my shoes,

And the linen garment.

Give me, for my covering, whatever

You have already prepared, that I may go forth.

Give me spring water, that I may wash

My hands, and face, and eyes.

And let the sanctuary be open, see to it,

With no outward preparation.

Pious words, harmless vows—

These are the sufficiency of the divine service.

Nor do I ask for incense to be burned,

Nor honeyed cakes of crust:

And the little hearth of living turf

I leave to vain altars.

God is to be prayed to by me,

And the Son of the Most High God,

A majesty of one and the same kind,

United with the holy Spirit.

And behold, now I begin my vows:

And thought of the Divine Power

Feels, trembling, His presence.

Does hope, does faith, tremble at anything?

Almighty, known to me only by the worship of the mind,

Unknown to the wicked, and unknown to none of the pious,

Lacking beginning and end: older than the age

That was, or that shall come: whose form and measure

Neither mind can grasp, nor tongue declare:

Whom alone it is granted to behold, and to hear commanding face to face,

And to sit beside the fatherly right hand:

Himself the maker of things, Himself the very cause for creating things,

Himself the Word of God, the Word who is God, the forerunner

Of the world which He was about to make: begotten in that

Time in which time did not yet exist: brought forth before

The morning star and the ruddy Dawn illumined the sky:

Without whom nothing was done: through whom all things were made: whose

Throne is in heaven: to whom, as He sits, the earth is subject,

And the sea, and the insuperable chaos of dark night:

Unresting, Himself moving all things, quickener of the inert:

God from an unbegotten Begetter, who, offended

By the deceit of a proud people, called the nations into His kingdom,

To be worshipped by the better offspring of an adopted stock:

Whom it was granted to our forefathers to behold: by whose divine sight seen,

It was given also to have seen the Father: who bore

Our contagions: and, having suffered the mockeries of dread death,

Taught that the way of eternal life is one that can be retraced:

And that not the soul alone returns, but that with the whole body

One enters the heavenly regions, and leaves the empty

Mystery of the tomb, covered over, to the desolate earth.

Son of the Highest Father, and bringer of salvation to our age,

To whom the Father has handed over all His paternal powers,

Withholding nothing out of envy, and full of gifts given,

Open the way to my prayers, and bear these words to the Father's ears.

Grant, Father, a mind unconquered against all crimes,

And turn away the viperous wickedness of harmful poison.

Let it be enough that the serpent destroyed ancient Eve,

And joined deceived Adam to her ruin: let us, the late

Seed of the descendants, the age foretold by truth-speaking prophets,

Avoid the snares which the death-bearing serpent entwines.

Open the way which, after the bonds of this sickly body,

May bear me on high: where the milky path of the pure heaven

Surpasses the wandering clouds of the windy Moon.

Where the pious great ones have departed, and where once,

Caught up whole in a four-horse chariot, Elias

Pierced above the ether, and Enoch went before him with a solid body.

Grant, Father, the hoped-for breath of eternal light:

If I do not swear by stones as gods, and, looking up

To the one altar of the sacred One to be revered, I bring

The unstained offerings of life: if I know You as Father

Of the Lord, and of God, the Only-begotten, and of the One sent by Both,

The Spirit who hovered over the watery waves.

Grant, Father, pardon, and purify my tormented breast:

If I do not seek You in the entrails of cattle, nor in shed blood:

Nor guess at the divine will beneath secret innards:

If I abstain from crime, though liable to error: and if

I wish rather to be proved good and pure than merely to trust that I am.

Deign to accept my confessing soul: if I curse

My perishable limbs, and silently repent: and if the deep

Dread of feeling torments me, and if my wounded mind

Anticipates the delayed torments of hell, and suffers its own shades.

Grant, Father, that these our vows, made in prayer, be ratified.

May I fear nothing, and desire nothing, may I consider this enough,

What is enough. May I wish nothing base, nor be to myself

A cause of shame. May I do to no one what at the same time

I would not wish done to me. Nor may I be wounded by any true crime,

Nor be stained by doubtful suspicion. Little does it seem to differ,

The suspected man, and the truly guilty. Let there be

No power at all to do ill: but let there be calm power to do well.

May I live on slender fare and dress. May I be dear to my friends.

And may I always be a father, without wound to that name,

May I grieve neither in mind nor in body: may all my limbs

Perform the duties of rest: nor, wounded in any

Part, may my use of it miss what is lost.

May I enjoy peace. May I act without care. May I think

No marvel of the earth. When my final hour comes to me,

May a life well-conscious neither fear death nor desire it.

Pure from hidden things, when, by Your indulgence, I shall be seen,

I shall despise all things, since my sole pleasure shall be

To hope for Your judgment. While it defers its own

Times, and the day delays, drive far away the savage

The serpent, ensnarer with pleasing errors.

These pious, but trembling with mournful guilt, vows,

O Christ, present as acceptable before the eternal Father.

Saviour, God, and Lord, mind, glory, word,

Son, true from the true, light from light,

Abiding with the eternal Father, reigning through the ages.

Whom the harmonious songs of David, well-tuned, celebrate:

And with answering voices strikes the air, Amen.

Enough of prayers has been given to God,

Although never enough

Is made by the guilty through prayer to the deity.

Give me the garb of the forum, boy:

I must say Hail to my friends,

And Farewell, which is given in return.

Since through four hours [lacuna]

It bends toward midday,

Sosias must now be reminded.

For the time draws near for calling friends;

Lest we, or they, delay the meal:

Run quickly through the neighboring houses, boy.

You yourself know who they are. And now, while I speak, return.

I have invited five. For six is a fitting banquet

With the host: if more, it is a disgrace.

He has gone; we are left with Sosia.

Sosia, we must dine. The sun is now wholly hot toward the fourth hour: toward the fifth the shadow bends its mark.

Whether the seasoned dishes are steeped with a lively flavor,

(For they are wont to deceive), prove by testing.

Stir the boiling pots with rolling palms,

Dip your fingers quickly in the hot broth:

Which the moist tongue licks in a quivering return.

Of four-footed creatures, and birds, or when earthly monsters

Are mingled with those of the sea: until, by the purifying East winds,

The scattered clouds are thinned into clear air.

Now the forums, now the lawsuits, now the pageantry of the joyful theater

Is seen. And I endure troops of horsemen, and the slaughters of robbers:

A savage beast tears at our faces:

Or we rage with the sword upon the bloody sand.

Through the ship-wrecking sea I walk on foot: and I leap across the straits at a run

And I fly above the air on sudden wings.

Unspeakable lusts also, and the incestuous disgraces of night,

And tragic gatherings we suffer in dreams.

Yet there is refuge, as often as sleep, broken by shame,

Dissolves the portents of slumber, and the mind, free

From the foul image, wakes: the conscious hand

Searches the whole bed in safety. The shameful

Guilt of the bed withdraws, and the crimes of the fleeing dream diminish:

I see myself applauding among the triumphant; again

I am dragged disarmed among captive Alans.

I behold the temples of the gods, and the sacred doors, and golden palaces,

And I seem to recline in Tyrian purple:

And soon I sit as a guest in smoky taverns.

They say the divine poet placed, beneath the leaves of an elm,

The vain phantoms of idle slumbers,

And two gates in number: one, which through an ivory arch

Ever gathers deceptive shapes above into the air:

The other, of horn, which sends forth true visions.

But if the choice is granted us in doubtful things:

Better that joyful things lack credence, than that vain things be feared.

Behold, I would now rather be deceived: for, provided that

Sad things always vanish, it is better to have lacked enjoyments,

Than to tremble at evils. It is enough, if fear be absent.

There are also those who reckon weeping and joys as opposites,

And draw out events by varied interpretation.

Go through the slanting worlds of heaven, evil dreams,

Wandering restlessly where the clouds disperse in unquiet showers.

Dwell in the lunar spheres. Why do you approach our

Thresholds suddenly, and the shadowy chambers of our narrow roof?

Allow me to pass peaceful nights untroubled,

Until the golden morning star return to me with its rosy rising.

But if sleep, gentle in the tranquil air,

Should soothe me, vexed by no shapes in the night;

This grove, which grows green in our field,

This elm grove, I dedicate to be inhabited by your watchful care.

The names of my dear ones, now laid to rest in due burial,

Once mourned with tears, I shall now recall in verses,

Bare, without adornment, and lacking the polish of speech.

The funeral honor suffices for the offerings to the dead.

A dirge, dutiful enough with funereal complaints, lest you silently pass over the yearly gifts:

Which Numa dedicates as solemn rites to kindred shades:

As the degree either of death or of kinship demands.

This is enough for the tombs, enough for the needy earth.

To call forth souls by voice has the effect of a funeral.

The composed ashes rejoice to have their names spoken.

This the monuments also command, inscribed upon their fronts.

He too, for whom the urn of a mournful tomb was lacking,

Will be almost buried when his name is spoken thrice.

But you, whoever you are, reader, who deign

To commemorate the fates of my kin in mournful elegies,

May you pass through the unshaken seasons of your own life:

And weep no deaths save those that are just.

First among these is my father Ausonius. Whom, though his son

Might hesitate to place him first, order commands to be placed first.

The care of God, since he fulfilled the honor of a peaceful old age,

Lived through eleven times two Olympiads.

He who saw all things prosper that he wished: and likewise

Whatever he wished came to pass, as he wished.

Not because of too great an indulgence of the fates: but because

So moderate were the wishes of that man.

Whom his own age matched with the seven sages:

Whose learning he cultivated in his character:

That he might rather live than speak by the art of the sages,

Although he was not unskilled even in eloquent talent.

Endowed also with the reasoning of the art of healing men's lives,

To prolong them, and to enlarge the delays of fate.

Hence this reverence remains for a life fulfilled,

That our age gave him this title:

That as Ausonius had none whom he might follow,

So now he has none who imitates him.

Next you, my mother, Aeonia, of mixed blood,

Of a Tarbellian mother and an Aeduan father.

To whom fell every virtue of a dutiful wife;

Fame of chastity, and hands skilled in wool-work,

Faithfulness of marriage, and care in raising children,

And genial gravity, and cheerful seriousness.

Having embraced forever the peaceful shades of your husband,

You who once, living, cherished his bed, now, dead, cherish his tomb.

Dear to me is devotion, with father first, and mother called upon.

But it becomes a matter of guilt to say who is third, Arborius.

Whom it would be wrong for me to name first, with father second.

Yet again, not to place him first is almost as wrong.

A due measure must be applied [lacuna]

Before others. Although he will be second to my father.

You, brother of my mother, and one in mind with my father:

And what you were to me was both father and mother.

You who adorned me as a nursing infant, as boy, as youth, and as man

With arts which it delights me to have learned.

You the learned toga of Palladian Toulouse preferred for itself:

You Narbonese Gaul set above others,

Whose tribunal you adorned with Latin speech:

And the courts of the Spains, and those of the Novempopulani.

From here as far as Europe, with growing fame, skilled

Constantinople flourished with you as its rhetor.

You, learned in a thousand modes, a thousand oracles of speech,

Learned, eloquent, then quick, and of retentive memory.

You, after I, entrusted to you in my earliest years, pleased you,

Said that, with me as your son, it was enough for you.

Declaring that I would be a bright glory to you, and to our forebears,

You dictated words to be marked for my destiny.

Farewell then, uncle, allotted an Elysian seat.

These songs from your own Muses I pour out to you.

Do not abandon, dutiful page, this pious task.

After these let us commemorate my maternal grandfather

Arborius, a name drawn from Aeduan stock,

Embracing many houses in nobility:

Wherever the province of Lyon, and wherever the powerful

Aedui, and wherever Vienne on the Alpine ridge extends.

But a misfortune too envious of noble lineage and proud wealth

Fell upon him. For grandfather and father

Were proscribed, when Victorinus held the kingdom

As Victor: and the empire fell to the Tetrici.

Then a fugitive in the lands through which the Adour bursts forth,

And the fury of the Tarbellian Ocean roars,

Fearing the darts of long-raging fortune,

The condition of poor Aemilia entangled you.

Soon a modest sum of money, sought with much effort,

Gave comfort to the weary, but not wealth.

You were skilled in the numbers of heaven, and the stars privy to fate,

Practicing your study in secret.

Not unknown to you also was the formula of my own life:

Which you had recorded on sealed tablets;

Never betrayed. But my mother's diligent care

Uncovered what the timid grandfather's care concealed.

When you had led your life through nine times ten years,

Having experienced the darts of the goddess to be feared as strong,

You wept for a son lost after three decades,

Wounded, and bereft of one light of your eyes.

But you said that long consolations sustained you;

That a special honor awaited my fate.

And now, mingled in the assemblies of pious souls,

You surely know the fate of your grandson.

You perceive that I, as quaestor, as prefect, and likewise

Consul, commemorate you with an honorific office.

Now speak of Aemilia, grandmother, dutiful care of a grandson:

Who was the wife of the aforementioned Arborius.

A jesting name was given her: because once, with her dusky skin,

Among her peers she was called Maura.

But not dark in soul, who was brighter than a swan,

And not whiter than trodden snow.

She was not prone to overlook shameful indulgences,

And kept herself and her own to the plumb-line.

She, snatching me from the cradle, and from my mother's breast,

Instilled in me gentleness under stern commands.

Grant tranquil rest to my grandmother's ashes,

Eternal shades, if I speak pious words.

And you, aunt by degree of kin, but in the place of a mother,

To be remembered with a son's pious affection,

Aemilia, who gained in the cradle the surname Hilaria,

Because cheerful, and pleasant in the likeness of a boy,

You truly rendered, without disguise, a young man,

Practicing the medical arts in the manner of men.

You always had a hatred of the female sex: and from this

Grew your love of consecrated virginity;

Which was cultivated by you for nine times seven years.

And the end of your life was itself the end of your chastity.

These rites, because as a mother you cherished me with counsel and love,

I your son return to you in final obsequies.

Remember too in elegiac song my paternal uncles;

Contentus, whom the Rutupian land covers.

Great wealth, sought of varied fortune, was his,

Which, secured under no heir's name, perished.

For, snatched away in glad and still flourishing years,

He died beyond the sea, his brothers unaware.

Julius drew out his fate into long old age,

Afflicted by innumerable losses.

He, genial, and pleasant, and gracious at a rich table,

Held us as heirs in name alone.

Both dutiful, alike in countenance, mixing jest with seriousness,

They did not have an equal fortune of years.

Though you lie apart in tombs, and in honor:

Receive this common tribute of a word, Farewell.

Whoever wishes to celebrate the nobles, and the old Senate,

And the illustrious lineages of Bordeaux from their rise,

Let him remember you and your family, Lucanus Talisius:

Who adorned with your character your ancient forebears.

Handsome in the honor of your countenance, tranquil in heart, genial,

A citizen greater still for eloquent talent.

In hunting, and the cultivation of the countryside, and elegance of living,

Passing your whole life; scorning public affairs.

Wishing to be known among the first, yet refusing to be foremost.

Living yourself apart, by your own judgment.

You wished that I be your son-in-law in the flowering of youth,

Only to wish it, not also to have it granted.

The gods above approve vows: and, favoring holy merits,

The fates fulfill what a good man has wished.

And now, in the honor of an everlasting tomb, you perceive

How reverent I remain toward your daughter, and toward you:

For as a widowed son-in-law I now discharge these pious offices.

For even widowed, I shall never cease to be your son-in-law.

Thus far, as dear ones, so too as mourned with a just funeral,

Our dirge, discharged in dutiful measures, has sung.

Now grief, and torments, and a bolt not to be touched,

The memorable death of a snatched-away wife is mine to tell.

Noble from ancestors, and of illustrious senatorial origin,

Sabina, ever more illustrious in good character.

I mourned you first as a young man, deceived in years,

And through nine olympiads I weep for you, widowed.

Nor is it permitted that grief, overlaid with age, be lulled to sleep.

For the penalty ever grows fresh again for me.

Others admit the solace of ailing time.

For me long days make these wounds heavier.

I torment my gray hairs, deceived, in a widowed life:

And the more alone, the more sorrowful I go on.

The wound is fed, because the house is mute and silent, and the bed grows cold:

Because I share neither ill nor good with anyone.

I grieve, if another's wife is good: I grieve, on the other hand,

If she is bad: for me you are ever present as the model.

You come to me as a torment from both sides: whether she is bad, because

You would have been unlike her: or good, because like you.

I do not lament vain riches,

and empty joys:

But that as a young man I, a young husband, was robbed of you.

Joyful, chaste, dignified, illustrious in lineage and illustrious in beauty,

Both the grief and the glory of your husband Ausonius.

You who were about to complete just now four times seven Decembers,

Left behind two children, our pledges.

They, by God's favor, just as were your prayers,

Flourish, heaped with the good things you wished for.

And I pray that they may thrive: and that at last, with both surviving,

Our own ashes may announce this to your dust.

I will not cheat you, remembered with a mindful lament,

First child called by my name, boy.

You, whom, as you tried to complete murmurs into your first words,

As of a nature already full, we mourned with funeral rites.

You were placed in the lap of your great-grandfather, a shared funeral,

Lest you suffer the loneliness of your own tomb.

You too, child untimely dead, break in upon

Ripe griefs, a bitter one for your mourning grandfather,

Pastor, dear grandson, whose certain hope you were,

The third offspring of your Hesperian father.

By a name which chance had given: because a pipe first

Sang a pastoral melody at your birth.

Too late understood as an omen of a brief life:

That the breath escapes from blown-upon reeds.

You died, struck by the weight of a thrown tile:

Which the hand of a workman had cast down from the roof.

This was not the hand of a workman; that hand was

The sure hand of bloody fate, about to substitute a guilty one.

Alas! What hopes of mine! What joys you break, Pastor!

That tile, once thrown, sought my own head.

O more worthy that you should have mourned the fate of my old age:

And grieved, sorrowful, at my own funeral rites.

If there was any virtue which a prudent woman would wish

To be her own, in this our sister Dryadia shone forth.

Nay, she had many which the stronger sex,

And the nobility of men, would wish to have.

Learned enough to guard both her distaff and her reputation:

Learned in good morals herself, and teaching them to her own.

And to her truth was dearer than life: and her one care,

To know God, and to love her brother above all others.

Still young, she lacked a husband: but in old age

Her serious life matched austere character.

She led a swift life through six decades,

And in the house, and under the roof, where her father died, she too perished.

Avitianus, my Muse, my own brother,

Endow with a funeral lament:

He, younger than I in birth, but earlier in talent,

Drank in our father's arts.

But to enjoy fully the glad flower of youth,

And to pass beyond the bounds

Of adolescent age, hostile Atropos forbade.

Alas! How many graces of life!

What cultivated hope, what grief to the wounded

Young men do you leave behind, brother!

Brother by the law of flesh and by the origin of blood,

Almost a son in love.

O glory of an illustrious lineage, bitter funeral for me,

Euronius, chosen as son-in-law from a company of young men,

You die, snatched from me in the very flower of early youth,

A father scarcely well known to his nursing son.

You, sprung from the stock of great men, and surpassing even them,

From whom your lineage of illustrious nobility was derived.

Comely in face, good in mind, eloquent, and vigorous

In every dexterity, and outstanding above all in faith.

This the seat of the prefecture, this the Illyrian shore

Experienced with you as governor, and the treasury itself as your client.

Nothing, however, of praise was taken from you by the brevity of your age.

Mature in character, you died bitter in your funeral.

You too, brother not by blood, but in the place of a brother,

Maximus, bound to me, our dirge shall sing.

For you, joined as husband to my sister,

Deprive her, a widow, of the fruit of your years.

Not only your household felt this; the wounded curia of Bordeaux

Felt, alas, this bitter fall,

Flourishing while you were foremost, sliding back as you failed:

And falling into decline as you died in Valentinus' time.

Alas! Why, Maximus, snatched from us, do you not enjoy

The fruit of a son, and the flower of grandsons?

But you do enjoy them: if a divine portion dwells in the shades:

And it is granted to know what joys are yet to come.

This too is reckoned a longer fruit of joyful things,

To have long anticipated what you but now share.

You too, Veria, whether by the name of a daughter-in-law to me, or in place of a daughter,

receive this song of final honor.

Whose uprightness, whose beauty and fame, and the fidelity

of a compliant wife, and hands skilled at wool-work,

if now they were to be praised: from the deepest shades

the voice of your great-grandfather Eusebius would have to be summoned from afar.

Who, since he was long ago laid to rest, his age having run its course,

has transferred his part into my words:

receive, wept-for granddaughter, these funeral complaints;

the wife of my Arborius, to be commemorated.

To whom, leaving small solaces for so great a grief,

you abandon a son: by which the more you torment him.

But that care for your beloved husband may not be lacking in you,

you now dwell joined in the tomb to your marriage-chamber.

Here, where first was the marriage-song, there is now the mournful seat of the sepulchre.

You may more be called a bride than one entombed.

Nor let Herculanus, born of my sister,

be left silent and without honor

by this sad dirge's measure;

above whose grown character

there was great abundance of praise.

But it will befit more to recall

than to praise him now departed.

This glory of his mother, and mine,

in the season of his budding youth

an envious violence of fate struck down.

What fruit did you reap, Maximus?

Eloquent, and musical, and keen,

good of mind, mighty in talent,

swift of foot, beautiful in body,

clever of tongue, tuneful of voice,

receive this sad gift of your parents,

the tearful utterances of lament,

which, having set to measure this funeral song,

your grieving uncle offers to you.

You who cultivate jests and cheerfulness, who condemn sad things,

who fear no one, nor act so as to be feared:

who ensnare no one by tricks, nor provoke by lawsuit,

but live a just, and clement, and wise life:

the tranquil shades, and the gentle final rites of Sanctus

invoke with pious mouth, and with good words:

who as a diligent soldier served through no turmoil:

in whose governance the Rutupine land rejoiced.

Whose eighty years of tranquil old age

no worse day ever changed.

Therefore pray with favor: that such as were the seasons of his life,

such leisure too may Sanctus enjoy among the shades.

You too address Pudentilla with final words,

you who have care for reputation, who have care for uprightness.

This noble woman, thrifty, upright, cheerful, chaste, comely,

kept continually her union with Sanctus.

Watching over the inviolate glory of a chaste life,

she managed her own wealth, while her husband was at leisure.

Not thereby reproaching, nor with clouded brow toward her husband,

because she alone as a woman managed the whole household.

Alas! Too young, but glad in the survival of her son

and husband, she met her final fate with patience.

Once sister in one soul with our Sabina,

and called sister to me by an unoffending name.

Now too pious care revisits her placid shades:

and honors Pudentilla with the utterance of praise.

Nor only as your mother's sole hope, young Talisius,

my cousin, will you go unremembered by me.

Snatched away in the first years of flourishing age;

yet already a husband, already, too hastily, a father.

One might think fate hastened: lest this bitter funeral

be borne by the father, made a grandfather so soon.

Slight acquaintance was there for us, Attusia, with you,

and with your husband there was plainly none at all.

But you are the true sister of our Sabina.

You too, Regulus, bear the name of kinsman by marriage.

Therefore, since names so dear have fallen to us by lot,

let us bind them together in the tribute of a mournful song.

Although lying far off in the Santonic land,

this funeral honor reaches you among the shades.

Cease, O ancient names of the Calpurnii, Frugi,

to hold this as the peculiar glory of your race.

Nor let Cato the Censor alone always, nor let

Aristides the Just alone please by these titles.

For whoever was wise, and cultivated truth

and good faith, let him make himself your companion, Censor.

You, grave and courteous, tempered with justice,

learned to join measure to austerity.

You, without adopting me, nor joined by blood,

desired to unite our two houses.

Surely some likeness of your character

our own disposition's image displayed.

Or else already the wheel of fortune was so turning,

that such good wishes might lend weight to the fates.

If you perceive anything among the shades, let this cheer your mind:

that what you had wished to come about, God had willed.

You who bore your father's name and countenance, Paulinus,

who were the image of your lost father:

by reason of whom the grief of your wretched mother

had begun to abate, since your likeness

offered her back her father: it restored

his character, and to that character added

that eloquence which your father Paulinus lacked.

You are snatched away in glad and budding years:

and still you trouble your mother's raw heart.

For we weep for your sister snatched from the marriage-bed,

alas! By an untimely death, Dryadia.

We weep: I especially, who as great-uncle to your mother, love you

as though you were the offspring of my own children.

She died amid her mother's hands, and her father's kisses,

then in the far region of Spain.

How tender, and in earliest, fresh flower of age you are plucked,

young man not yet girded with the ruddy down of cheeks!

Four times had she now, become a mother, given birth:

but twice already she has given funerals to the tombs.

Let this be enough, father Paulinus, the division has been made.

The rest of the offspring is owed to the mother.

Whoever loves a cheerful disposition, whoever loves upright character,

And whoever cultivates faith along with holy devotion:

Let him, revering the shade of Paulinus together with me,

Bedew it with friendly tears, bringing yearly offerings.

Paulinus, of equal age with me, you gained my sister's daughter

For your marriage-bed: so you were almost a son-in-law to me.

Your mother was of Aquitanian stock, for to your father

Cossio of the Vasates was a municipal family.

Having earned the offices of the prefect's chancery, thence

Set over the accounts of Libya, you take rich rewards.

For Iberian Tarraco offered you the tribunal of the Correctorship,

Aspiring to be your client.

You, honoring your mother-in-law in place of your mother, could not

Be counted a relation by marriage, since you enjoyed the place of a son.

You lived faithful among harmonious friends,

Having completed eighteen Olympiads.

You too, Dryadia, my maternal aunt, With tearful strains,

Born of my sister, nearly a son,

I revere with dutiful mouth.

Whom envious death snatched away

From the marriage-bed and the wedding torches:

And funeral honor changed

The bridal couch into that of the bier.

You were learning, aunt, through me,

How to become a mother.

Whence now I bring you this sorrowful

Duty, as a son.

Nay, my Muse, bestow upon my aunt Cataphronia

Also funeral complaints.

She, unmarried, cherished the love of a devoted virginity,

And, sparing, grew old.

And to me, as far as she could, though from a poor sum,

She gave what a mother would.

Therefore, remembered, hail: and, sadly called upon,

In place of a mother, farewell.

But my aunt Veneria died all too swiftly.

For her I sing again these brief measured strains.

That her ash may flourish peacefully above,

And that she, swift-footed, may reach the silent places of Erebus.

Little Idalia too existed,

Endowed with the name of the Paphian,

And she merited the beauty of Venus.

She was born to me almost a sister.

For she was the daughter of my aunt,

Whom this dirge celebrates with dutiful honor,

In a funeral song.

Aemilia, my sister scarcely known to me, receive these complaints,

Which sorrowful Elegy owes to your ashes.

Infancy of equal age joined our cradles:

Although you were older by one consulship.

But all too envious Lachesis hastened and completed

Your time: and gave bitter death-rites to the Shades.

Farewell then, sent ahead: and revere the Shades of our parents,

Whether they came in a greater age, or in a lesser.

A woman of illustrious family, and likewise of ancient manners,

Urbica, ennobled by the marriage-bed of the Censor,

Strong in innate virtues, and increased even by those

Which her husband taught, which her father, and her mother taught:

Which Tanaquil had, which Pythagorean Theano had,

And she who without precedent died at her husband's death.

And if fate had granted you to change this so,

The Censor would still be living in our own time.

But you too, not tormented long under widowhood,

At once followed your husband to the longed-for end.

Now with sorrowful complaints we bring you yearly rites,

I, Ausonius, your fellow father-in-law, together with your son-in-law and children.

You too, whom no kinship joined to me,

But fame, and devotion to our dear fatherland,

And zeal in letters, and diligent care in teaching,

I shall commemorate, men renowned who have met death.

Perhaps it will be that one day this will thus assert our own Shades,

Whoever shall wish to be dutiful after my example.

Minervius, first pillar of eloquence at Bordeaux,

A second Quintilian of the rhetorical gown.

Under your instruction were once made illustrious

Constantinople, Rome, and then our own homeland,

Not indeed vying with the majesty of those two;

But superior in name alone, because it was your homeland.

Let Calagurris claim Fabius as her nurseling still:

Yet let not Bordeaux's chair be counted inferior.

This school gave a thousand youths to the forum; the Senate added

Two thousand more, in number and in purple gowns:

Myself too, but since the toga of office is a matter too vast to tell, I shall be silent:

And I shall sing of you concerning yourself, not from any honor of mine.

Whether it please to contend in Panegyric books,

You must be counted among the Panathenaic orators.

Or if it please to unfold the feigned lawsuits of the schools,

Quintilian holds an uncertain palm beside you.

Yours is a torrent-like abundance of speech: yet one that rolled

Gold, not muddy filth as well.

And that Demosthenic quality, which he thrice called foremost,

So flourished in you, that he himself would yield to you.

Shall I not also add the natural goods of your divine gift,

How retentive a memory you possessed?

So that things heard, or read but once, you held as if fixed:

So that there was but one faith between your ears and books?

We saw too, once, in a long contest at the gaming-board,

You enumerate all the throws that had been made,

Which, alternately, the tumbling dice, cast headlong,

Poured forth through the hollow carved boxwood steps:

Recounting through each faithful point in due order,

What had been given, what had been recalled through long delays.

Your mind had no bile of envy in it, yet much salt of wit

Was on your ready tongue, with pleasing jests free of quarrel.

A table shining bright: which no censor's rule could fault:

Nor would Piso the Frugal refuse to call it his own.

Sometimes rich with birthday feasts and festal banquets:

Yet not so as to thin your modest means.

Though lacking an heir, having completed twelve times five years,

You were wept by us, as a father, and as a young man.

And now, if anything survives after the last fates,

You still live, remembering the age that has perished;

Or whether nothing remains, and long leisure has no sensations,

You lived for yourself: your fame delights us.

Nor will impious grandsons summon me

As guilty of silence, Alcimus.

Nor will they think me less worthy, nor forgetful

As a minister of your memory.

The age of recent time sets you as the one

Whom it opposes to the men of former days.

Glory of the forum, and ornament of the Muses,

A unique example in letters:

Whether learned Greece cultivated them at Athens,

Or Rome cultivates them through Latium.

Shall I tell of your character, and the course of your rule,

Even to the boundary of life?

That, famous for praise, prepared in letters,

You fled from all ambition?

No one was more grave than you, or more gracious,

Or more generous to the needy;

Giving health, if the forum's business demanded it;

With zeal for teaching, if the school did.

They will live through all the memory of posterity,

Those whom you devoted to sacred fame.

And you will give Julian more to fame

Than the sceptre, which he held but briefly.

Your books will confer more upon Sallustius

Than the consulship added.

Of your character, of your grace, and eloquence

You gave the pattern to your sons.

Forgive me, wounded by the service of my pen.

This is the fault of love for you,

That, unable to utter what is worthy, I pursue this office,

Diligent though it injure.

Rest peacefully, and for the loss of your frail body

Repay the loss with glory.

Tell of the rhetorician Luciolus, fellow-student, and master,

And thereafter colleague, in mournful dirge:

Eloquent, and learned man, whether he composed

In the law of meters, or loosed his beginnings in prose measures.

Whom Lachesis snatched from his father by bitter death,

Leaving two children of both sexes.

Whose heir has by no means answered to his merits,

Although now your fame favors the obscure.

Gentle friend, good brother, most faithful spouse,

Dutiful son: father, it grieves that you were.

Courteous to guests, never scolding clients,

Never speaking harsh words to servants.

As you cultivated peaceful manners, so cultivate a tranquil shade,

And take from Ausonius, friend, this gift: Farewell.

Although you surpassed learned men in age before,

Patera, noble in speech:

Yet because you flourished in the age nearest ours,

And I saw you young while yet an old man,

You will not lack the honor of the mournful dirge,

Teacher of powerful rhetoricians.

You, sprung from the stock of the Druids of Bayeux,

If rumor does not betray faith,

Lead your race from the consecrated temple of Belenus:

And thence come your names:

To you, Patera: for so they name the ministers

Of mystic Apollo.

To your brother and father the name was given from Phoebus:

And to your son, from Delphi.

No one in that time had such learning,

And so many courses of speech and of the wheel.

Mindful, eloquent, of clear eloquence,

Endowed with melody and refinement,

Modest in wit, tainted with no bile,

Abstemious of wine and food,

Joyful, chaste, handsome; even in old age, like

The old age of an eagle, or of a horse.

Eloquent, learned, swift in tongue and genius,

Pleasant in jests, Delphidius,

Be woven into the tearful dirge of your father,

As you used to approach him in rivalry of praise.

You, almost from the very cradle,

A noble poet of the god,

Bearing the wreath of the Olympic crown,

As a boy celebrated Jove.

Then soon, in the swift manner of a torrent sea,

You bound together the metric epic:

So that no other book of verses in equal law

Wove together an oration.

Whose eloquence, celebrated variously,

Shone at home and abroad:

Whether you courted the Prefect of the praetorian cohort,

Or the judges of the provinces,

Devoted to the defense of clients,

Wounded in reputation and safety.

Happy, if you had remained with quiet letters,

Cultivating the work of the Muses:

Nor had avenging impulse armed hatreds

Stirred up by great lawsuits:

Nor had you raised yourself to the restless

Palace of a tyrannical time.

While you always summon to yourself a remote hope,

More disdainfully than what lies at hand,

And prefer that the good be your own, rather than fate's,

You desired very many things;

Wandering through all the forms of dignities,

And deserving more than you held.

Whence, after a grave stirring of accusations followed,

Your father was given over to hardships:

Then soon a rhetorician, nor persistent in teaching,

You disappointed the care of your fathers,

Having experienced less of the evils of that gift of God,

Because you were snatched away in the middle of life.

Because you were not wounded by the wandering error of a daughter,

Nor by the penalty of a wife.

O flower of youths,

Glad hope of your father:

Nor was a sure

Thing given to your fatherland;

Adorned with goods

Not destined to remain:

Displayed to view,

And snatched away at once,

As the solstitial

Grass is wont to be,

Rhetor of Alethis.

You at Bordeaux

Joyful for your fatherland,

Bearing the bright

Standards of the cohort

In your youthful age [lacuna]

And after Patera,

Greater than both:

You, in your earliest

Years, a teacher,

And instructor,

At the time when for you

To learn, though grown,

Would not have been shameful,

You had all

The advantages of fate.

Prætextatus,

Already to your father

Was compared.

He, of proud

Rome's walls,

By fame and merits,

Not without the sting

Of heavy envy,

Renowned, increased them.

The vows of your kin

For your ripened flower,

And Rhetoric

Lacking its fruit,

And the noble marriage

Of your father-in-law,

Without your father's peace:

And the riches

Of both, without

An heir of your own,

You left behind.

All these things premature

Fortune gave you,

And snatched away.

How prophetically spoken

Was that saying

The verse of Horace:

Nothing is from every

Side blessed.

You who cultivate glad and cheerful manners,

Who love feast days, jests, vows, sport,

Recall the yearly dirge in the name

Of Leontius, now departed.

This man endured being called LASCIVUS,

A name unworthy of the honesty of his life,

He never refused: because it was pleasing to

Friendly ears.

In letters he attained only such a title

As is enough for a slender chair:

So that he might seem to be inserted

Into the number of grammarians.

You, always the companion of my youth,

Though weighed down with more years,

Even now grow warm again in my marrow,

Charming Leontius:

And it pleases me with sad care to celebrate

The tearful song of remembering complaint:

A thankless gift, yet owed to you

By my song.

After these shall I recall Romulus, or earlier,

Or of Sperchius, and likewise born

The Attic Muses of Menestheus,

Of the grammarians?

Diligent zeal for teaching in all of them;

Slender fruit, and thin discourse:

But, because they taught in our age,

They are to be remembered.

The third of these was not my teacher;

The rest taught in my earliest years,

Lest I should be untrained in words, or in speaking:

But without polish.

It was hindered, I believe, by my mind's

Rather slow perception: nor did the harmful

Error of a boyish age drive me

To Greek studies.

May a light turf cover you, and may the roofs

Of the tomb defend your hidden ashes:

But may the inscription of my voice render

The final honor.

And you, whom they say rashly usurped the chair,

And think did not deserve the name of Grammarian:

Yet will I call upon you with my voice, simple, good friend, comrade;

Jucundus, dearer for this very reason,

Because, though unequal, you loved so noble a name,

You are to be remembered among deserving men.

Now, as each one to me

The tearful duty

Of religious honor

Shall suggest, I will set forth.

Who, although of humble

Stock, place, and merit,

Nevertheless brought in

The study of grammar

To the untrained minds

Of the men of Bordeaux.

Let the sequence continue.

Let Macrinus be among these,

Sober amid boys,

And for the talents of boys

Useful. To him first

Was my boyhood entrusted.

Nor will I keep silent about the old man

By name Phoebicius,

Who, as keeper of the temple of Belenus,

Got no help from that.

Yet nevertheless, as was agreed,

Sprung from the stock of the Druids,

Of the Aremorican race,

He obtained the chair at Bordeaux

By his son's efforts.

And you, Concordius,

Who, a fugitive from your homeland,

Exchanged a barren chair

For one in another city,

And you, son of Sucuro,

Freedman's offspring,

Who to unformed boys

Gave the first elements,

Sing, O Muse, for Anastasius

A tearful strain:

And in this dirge remember

The humble grammarian.

Born at Bordeaux,

Ambition carried him off,

And gave him to the Pictones.

Where, poor, and cultivating

A slender living and dress,

He lost even the small glory

Of both homeland and chair

In his old age:

Slight in learning,

Unamiable in manners,

And so, as was deserved,

He had but a slight fame.

Yet nevertheless our honor

Has commemorated him.

For it is a pious duty

To commemorate the grammarian

Of my own homeland,

Lest the same tomb

Cover both name and bones together.

Herculanus, who, having gone forth from my bosom and school,

Offered to your uncle hope to enjoy rather than the reality,

A partaker of my school, and almost the successor of my chair,

Had not the slippery turnings of youth cast you headlong,

Not keeping to the straight path of the Pythagorean way:

Be at peace, and cherish a seat among the quiet Shades;

Now long since numbered among my kindred names.

Your office, and your name, earliest Thalassus,

I heard as a small child: I scarcely even recall

What manner or merit was yours, of what stock of parents.

No later age celebrates anything of you.

Only that as a young grammarian fame carried your name,

And even then so slight, as now none remains at all.

But whoever you were, since in our time

You lived as a teacher, take this as my gift. Farewell.

And you too, Citarius, dear to me, shall be remembered, worthy

To be celebrated among the good grammarians.

Yours would be the glory of Aristarchus, and of Zenodotus

Of the Greeks, if the ancient honor still held sway.

To your poems, composed in your earliest years,

The Muse of Simonides of Ceos yields.

Born in a Sicilian city, you came to ours as a stranger:

Which, cultivated by your studies, you had almost made your own.

Having quickly gained a noble and wealthy marriage,

By the envy of fate you die not as a father.

But we, now that you are dead, celebrate you with mindful honor:

As we cherished you living with the gift of friendship.

Worthy by merit of eloquence to be ranked among the first,

You, Agricius, have here been placed in a later position:

Since, being born and having lived in a more recent age,

You were deferred by me, not omitted.

In whatever number, you shall be remembered with a sorrowful dirge.

The one honor of the tomb is granted late, though earned before.

As lofty as the peak of your lineage, so was the glory of your speech,

A glory known in the seat of the Athenaeum;

Once brought to Nazarius, and to the famous Patera,

You splendidly trained many young men.

Now, with wife, and children, and son-in-law surviving,

You cherish the shades and monuments of your ancestors.

Witty, affable, an old man with a youthful spirit,

Whose mind, steeped in no gall but much honey,

Mixed nothing bitter through the whole of life:

The medicine of my heart, Nepotianus,

Sharer alike of serious things and jests,

Silent one, who by your silence surpassed the Amyclaeans.

Ulysses would not have left you as you talked,

He who left even the melodious singing maidens.

Upright, and modest, sparing, frugal, abstemious,

Eloquent, yielding to no rhetorician in style,

And a disputant after the manner of Cleanthes the Stoic:

Skilled in your inmost heart in Scaurus and Probus:

And more mindful still of Cineas of Epirus.

A companion, and messmate, ever a guest:

Not merely a guest; but the mover of my mind.

No one gave counsel with a purer mind,

Or clothed what was given with a deeper covering.

Illustrious in the honor of the presidency you held,

Having completed ninety revolving years,

Leaving behind two children, you meet death,

With much grief, both of your own and of mine.

Already mourned among kindred Shades, uncle,

Now among the Rhetoricians you shall be remembered.

Let that work be piety's, let this be the names of men revered

Held for the religion of the fatherland.

Let us celebrate with double honor a father twice deserving,

Arborius, with father Arborius, and grandfather Argicius.

Your father's lineage was Æduan: your mother's origin

Was Tarbellican Maura; both of noble stock.

A noble and dowered wife, a home, and a school, refined

Friendships with princes fell to the young man's lot.

While opulent Toulouse kept confined

The brothers of Constantine, under the guise of exile:

Thence the fame of thee drove to the citadel of Byzantium, and to the city

Of Thracian Propontis, Constantinople.

There, rich in wealth, and honored under a learned Caesar,

You died, O Magnus, your fathers still surviving.

But the piety of the Augustan prince restored you

To your homeland as your seat, and to the monuments of your kin.

Hence, with tears, and a mournful office, the yearly day

Renews the cause, in unrewarded devotion.

Exuperius, worthy of my remembrance, eloquent without art,

Grave in bearing and mighty in words, of countenance

Fair, and, to sum up, graceful in movement and demeanor,

To whom belonged the far most beautiful copiousness of speech; which, if

You received it only by hearing, would please when merely blown forth:

Once examined, you would know it produced nothing of solid sense.

First the toga of Palladian Toulouse revered you,

Soon drove you out with like fickleness. Then Narbonne received you.

There you formed, for great fee, the sons of Dalmatius, names

Fateful for kings, boys to be taught,

Rhetor, near the goal of their adolescent age.

They, soon having obtained the title of Caesar, bestowed on you

The honor of governor, and a Spanish tribunal.

Withdrawing, you finished a peaceful character and the tranquil

Seasons of life, most wealthy, in your seat at Cahors.

But the laws of your fatherland call you, and your ancestral origin,

That you might again render at Bordeaux the name of Rhetorician.

Nor will I be silent of you, Marcellus, son of Marcellus,

Whom a harsh mother-city drove from home.

But potent fortune quickly restored all things, and increased them.

First Narbonne gave you your lost fatherland.

Here the noble host Clarentius, moved by your character,

Bestowed his excellent daughter in marriage.

Soon a school, and many hearers, and youth in the toga praetexta,

Gave you the name of Grammarian, and riches.

But fortune never favors a steady course,

Especially when it has gotten hold of a man of depraved character.

But I ought not to burden myself: I undertook to record

Your fate; it is enough to have said that all things perished together.

Yet not even the name, of which I do not defraud you, was withheld,

Received among Grammarians of very slight merit.

It would be a sin, Sedatus, if I should leave you unmentioned in silence,

Although you obtained abroad the office of teaching.

The fatherland is common to you and me: by the chance of powerful

Fate you obtained Toulouse as the seat of your school.

There was marriage, and children, and a wealthy old age, and fame, such as is equal to a great Rhetorician.

Yet though from a foreign region, your fatherland

Brings you back, and claims you as citizen when death has come.

And though you bestowed your wandering labor on a divided city,

Your origin claims its right over you.

Now your offspring is yours, and following the custom of the father,

Ennobles Narbonne, and Rome too, with studies [lacuna]

Whether fame wills it or not, it will refer you back to Bordeaux.

Thus far I have observed the law of recording

Citizens, whether they taught at home or abroad.

But it is right to join to our citizens one foreigner,

You, Staphylius, born of the stock of the Novempopuli.

You were to me what a father, what an uncle would be: one man being both.

As the other was Ausonius, the other Arborius.

Grammarian, most ready pupil of Scaurus and of Probus, and a Rhetorician,

Skilled in the history of Livy and Herodotus.

The whole system of learning was known to you: as much

As Varro stored up in six hundred volumes.

Golden was your mind, persuasive your voice, then your speech was calm.

You were neither a delayer, nor of hurried sound.

A beautiful old age, a shining habit, anger and guile far off,

Was the fitting end for a peaceful life.

You too, Crispus, will come

Remembered into future ages

By the office of this mournful song.

You who taught the first-born, still unversed in speech,

The first signs of new-learned

Elements.

Once believed to seethe with wine,

So that in the passages of Virgil and Flaccus

You might bear rival honors.

And to you, set after Latin discourses,

Urbicus, famous among the Greeks, a song

Thus, "I twine round."

For you, joined with your Crispus,

Were wont to speak in prose, and in verse

With the same impulse;

So that the ancient heroes once

Recorded in the song of Homer

You might recall in speech:

As, sweet among few, the son of Plistheus,

And as the snow-white sayings

Of the Dulichian torrent,

And with the nectar of a honeyed voice

Singing sweet words to speak,

King Nestor.

Both easy in speech, both learned in every kind of song,

Skilled in the shapings of myth, and in history.

Both freeborn by descent: but such as deserved

To obtain what would prove worthy of their freeborn fathers.

Victorius, diligent, ever mindful, swift, unceasingly among unknown

Books, reading nothing but what was hidden;

To unroll pages eaten by moths, and archaic writings,

Was a greater care to you than ready studies.

What law of the Pontiffs, what treaties, what pedigree once

Had belonged to the priestly Cures before Numa:

What Castor had set forth concerning all doubtful kings, what

His wife Rhodope had brought forth from her books:

What law of the Pontiffs, what statutes of the ancient Romans,

What decrees of the fathers; what Draco, or what Solon

Had sanctioned; and what laws Zaleucus gave the Locrians;

What Minos gave under Jove, what Themis before Jove;

Were known to you rather than our Tully and Maro,

And whatever is stored up in Latin history.

Perhaps long reading would have given you these things too,

Had not Lachesis hastened your final journey.

Adorned with the slight honor of our chair,

A humble one, having tasted only the name of Grammarian.

Afterward you died at Rome on distant shores,

To which you had crossed over from the Sicilian coast,

But now, remembered in the company of the noble, rejoice,

If any pious care reaches your shade.

But neither will I cheat you, Dynamius, of a mournful complaint,

Fellow-citizen of my homeland and pleader of my cause;

Whom, wounded, rumor of adultery drove into flight;

Whom little Ilerda cherished in her hiding-places;

Whom a Spanish wife enriched while he lay hidden;

For there, under a changed name, you were a Rhetor.

A Rhetor disguised under the surname Flavinius,

Lest guilt might betray its fugitive.

Though a late longing had restored you to your homeland,

Soon idle Ilerda's house drew you back again.

Whatever your flight and the report of your life may have been,

You are joined to me by old friendship.

And my duty—if any feeling remains for the shades—

Accept now, true Dynamius, though death has come.

Although you lie dead on distant shores,

Pious care recalls you in mournful elegies.

Fallen with equal brevity of learning and of life,

Glabrio, I shall recall you in mournful elegies.

A name drawn down from the lineage of noble ancestors,

Glabrio, offspring of the Dardan Aquilinus.

You were once my fellow pupil as a boy: then,

When I had become a Rhetor, you a Grammarian.

And in the forum a defender of the accused, and in the fields a farmer,

Worthy long to enjoy the goods you had gained.

Agreeable, cheerful, kind, abstemious, as good at giving

Counsels as you were silent about those given.

You, who were all glory to your own, soon became all grief; snatched away

By a bitter death, Glabrio, you leave all things behind:

Wife and children, father and mother left behind,

Alas! Lost under how many names!

Weep for you long, we shall never weep enough; receive this bitter

Farewell, Glabrio, to be remembered forever.

Those whom you read drawn out from the first page of this book,

Know that they were teachers of my homeland,

In the study of Grammar, or of Rhetoric, or in both,

Whom it is enough for me to have recorded, now that death has come.

Praise is an enticement for the living; for the dead

It will suffice merely to call their names by voice over their tombs.

Therefore you who read the sad leisure of my page,

Do not seek eloquence, but duty,

By which pious care performs rites for illustrious and learned men:

While it recalls the glories of an outstanding homeland.

Farewell, shades of renowned Rhetors:

Farewell, upright teachers.

King of kings, son of Atreus, avenger of a brother's wife,

I myself fell by the hands of my own wife.

What good is it to have punished, grieving, the rape of Helen,

When Clytemnestra slays the avenger of adultery?

O happy Menelaus, to whom a seat among the gods is owed,

And Elysium decreed for pious shades.

Beloved son-in-law of Tyndareus, beloved of the Thunderer:

Avenger of marriage, avenger of adultery:

Mighty with eternal age, and eternal youth,

Suffering neither the time of death nor of old age.

Together with Ajax's tomb I, Virtue, am covered, buried,

Myself weeping over the pyre of my own death:

My hair torn and unkempt, because wicked Atrides

Forced me to yield by contrived treachery.

Now shall I give a purple flower from noble blood,

Bearing witness with a groan to the crimes of that judgment.

No single land holds the son of Aeacus; his bones are covered

By the shore of Sigeum, Larissa burned his hair.

Part of his mound [lacuna]

But in all the world [lacuna] Homer [lacuna] Here in this tomb is buried Ulysses, son of Laertes.

Read through the Odyssey, if you wish to know all things.

Here is buried Diomedes, better than his good father,

Driven out from his dowered lands because of his wife's crime.

He who founded Argyripa, and Arpi famous for its men:

More illustrious for the new city than for his old ancestral seat.

Good in counsel and in war, a rare combination,

Dear to the sons of Atreus, dear also to the son of Aeacus:

Having gained at once the rewards of valor and of piety,

I, Antilochus, died having saved my father Nestor.

This was not the natural order: but he was more justly the survivor,

Without whom treacherous Troy could not have been taken.

If history, or the poetic pen,

Or the forum has made any men noble:

If the medical art, or Platonic teaching,

Has given them to everlasting glory:

And if any care for all the living is pleasing,

And honor for survivors gives joy:

Receive the mournful tribute of my song,

Woven with tearful lament,

Let unmoved ash keep its seat in the tombs.

May the memory of their names live on:

Until that age returns, by the gift of the judging God,

An age shared in common with the gods.

In this tomb I am covered, already lavish of a fourth generation,

Nestor, famed for counsel and for eloquence,

For whose death's sake my son offered himself and was slain,

And I, the father, lived on with my son's wound.

Alas! Why does it please the fates to apportion life so,

So long for us: so short for Antilochus?

I am covered in the middle of the world, greater in valor than my father's,

Since as a boy I, Pyrrhus, bore off a king's rich spoils.

Whom impious Orestes slew by treachery before the altars.

What wonder? Already raging from having slain his mother.

Pleuronia does not deem me unworthy of the title:

For with Diomedes I shared a common house,

With Euryalus, and Sthenelus. For I as the third

Possessed this realm: of which now a mound is enough.

The sea holds Guneus, the mound holds only his name, no body.

Fame among men; his soul seeks again the sky.

For so great a leader all the elements are a common tomb.

What elements? Sky, and earth, and sea, and the mouths of men.

A fatal name was inscribed for me, Protesilaus.

For I, first of the Greeks, perished in the Phrygian war,

Having leapt with bold onset onto the Sigean shores,

Caught by the treacherous snares of the son of Laertes.

That I might not press with my foot the shores of the Trojan land,

I myself leapt down upon my own shield.

Why do I complain? Already then my fate sang of this death,

When my father imposed on me such a name.

Betrayed to punishment, by the fraud of the wicked Laconian woman,

And with body disfigured, I, Deiphobus,

Have no tomb, except the one which, at the voice of one calling me,

Both pious Aeneas and Maro composed for me.

This is the tomb of Hector: with whom his own Troy was buried.

Together are buried those who perished together—the flower of Asia, I alone surviving of so great a race,

A little child, yet already to be feared by the Argives because of my father,

Here I lie, Astyanax, cast down from the high Scaean gates.

Alas, the grief! The Neptunian walls of the Ilian rampart

Saw something more cruel than Hector dragged.

I, Sarpedon the Lycian, begotten of Jove, by my father's divine will

Hoped for heaven; but I am covered by this mound,

Wept with bloody tears. Alas, iron fates!

Even he who could forbid grief, himself suffers it?

Nastes and Amphimachus, illustrious offspring of Nomion,

Once leaders, we are now dust and shadow.

With Hector laid low, matched neither by the gods nor by equal strength,

Troilus, having clashed with the savage grandson of Aeacus,

Dragged behind the chariot, I am joined to my brother's honor:

By whose example, even to me the punishment is not grievous.

Withdraw far off, and unknowing, stranger, flee that myrtle,

It is a crop of weapons grown ripe with my blood.

Pierced through with javelins, and buried even in the midst of my own slaughter,

I, Polydorus, am laid twice in this mound.

Pious Aeneas knows it, and you, impious king, know that

Thracian punishment weighs me down, Trojan care covers me.

Euphemus, leader of the Cicones, the Trojan land

Buried beside the image of spear-bearing Mars.

Nor is it enough to have carved the epitaph on the tomb's stone:

They further burden his brow with the mass of a statue.

More swiftly do these things collapse, which are thus heaped up in placement.

Where the adornment is greater, a greater ruin lies beneath.

The lowest earth holds Hippothous and Pylaeus in its bosom.

With cabbages and mallows their upper backs grow green.

Nor does the tending of the garden disturb their quiet ashes:

While with sparing hand the soft vegetable is cultivated.

Here lie Ennomus and Chromius, whose kingdom was Mysia,

Whose father was Alcinous, and Oceanus their forefather.

What good does such great nobility do? The more illustrious

Is their lineage, the heavier the condition of their death.

Here is not the tomb of Priam, nor am I buried in this

Place: the Greeks tore apart my head.

But when I, a mangled corpse without a name, had no burial,

I, the father, fled for refuge to the ashes of Hector.

There I found both my sons, and Troy, and buried Asia,

And whatever of ours lies anywhere.

Whoever seeks the tomb of Priam, let him first read that of Hector.

That is mine, which I myself first gave to my son.

Of Hector, and of the father together, is the common tomb,

Since the ruin of both was joined together.

I who was queen, who was born of illustrious Dymas, who was the wife of Priam, who bore Hector,

Here I, Hecuba, perished, overwhelmed and buried by stones cast upon me.

But by the rage of my tongue I nonetheless first avenged myself.

Trust not in kingdoms, nor in offspring, nor in the stock of parents:

Whoever you are who read this, our σῆμα κυνὸς (tomb of the dog).

I, Trojan Polyxena, joined to the tomb of Achilles,

Would have preferred to be covered by no sod at all.

You do not do well, Achaeans, to mingle discordant tombs:

This was more to violate than to bury.

I was queen of Thebes, the Sipylean crag

Is what I now am: I offended the divine power of Latona's children.

A joyful and proud mother of twice seven children,

So many funerals I led, as many as I bore.

Nor was this enough for the gods. Encircled by hard stone

I lost the form of a human body.

But grief, though my vital powers are stopped up, still clings:

And with a devoted spring it waters perpetual tears.

Alas, the crime! Are heavenly minds capable of such great wrath?

The mourning endures still, the mother's image perishes.

I was living. I was made a flint, which then, polished

By the hands of Praxiteles, I, Niobe, live again.

The artist's hand restored everything, but without feeling.

This I did not have, when I offended the gods.

The tomb does not have the dead one within it.

Nor does the dead one herself have a tomb above her.

But she herself is here both tomb and dead one.

Unhappy Dido, well married to no husband:

By this one's dying you flee, by this one's fleeing you perish.

Tell me, dog, whose tomb is this? A dog's. But who is this dog?

Diogenes. Did he die? He did not die, but he departed.

Diogenes, for whom a wallet was his larder, for whom a tub was his dwelling,

Has he gone to the shades? Cerberus forbids his going.

Whither then? Where the star of bright Leo blazes,

The dog has now been added to just Erigone.

32. On the tomb of a sixteen-year-old matron

All things that are desired in a long span of life,

Anicia used up before four full lustra were complete.

As an infant she nursed at the breast, as a girl and maiden she grew up.

She married, conceived, gave birth. Already a mother, she died.

Who shall accuse death? Who would not accuse it in the case

Of such an age? In merits she was an old woman, in age a girl.

Already, grown Glaucia, under the sixteenth consul, joyful youth

Was girding your tender cheeks with down.

And already you had ceased to seem a boy—or was it a girl?—

When a hastened day took away all your beauty.

But you shall not be mingled as a companion with the common dead,

Nor, weeping shade, shall you fear the Stygian lakes.

Rather, you shall go to Persephone as Cinyras’ Adonis,

Or you shall be the catamite of Elysian Jove.

For twenty-nine years to my mother Callicratea

Death of neither sex seemed visible to me.

But I have well completed a hundred and five harvests,

My trembling hand not yet needing a staff.

Phosphorus, accustomed to traverse, victorious, the spacious tracks

Of the roaring Circus seven times over:

Unhurried in driving your first courses from the starting-gate,

So that you might overtake the horses that had gone ahead, though strong.

It was easy for you to outstrip the swift four-horse teams:

To conquer even the conquerors was a greater glory.

Take this inscription as the solace of an empty tomb,

And go, swift one, to the winged steeds of Elysium.

Let Pegasus run at your right; let Arion’s

Rein go at your left; let Castor give you a fourth horse.

Ausonius to his son Hesperius. Greeting.

RECEIVE the Caesarean princes, into whose realms, under favorable

Consuls, Roman power long since passed,

Twice six, each marked by his own single verse,

Whose names, deeds, life and death Suetonius once

Set forth in a full sequence.

First Julius caesar threw open the royal hall,

And transferred the name, and the citadel, to AUGUSTUS.

After him reigns his stepson Nero claudius, from whom

CAESAR, whom the camps gave the surname of Caligula.

Thence CLAUDIUS gains the throne, after whom savage NERO,

The last of the sons of Aeneas. After him three, and not for three years each:

Old GALBA, trusting in vain in a feeble ally;

Soft OTHO, degenerate through luxury in an infamous age;

And VITELLIUS, worthy neither of the throne nor of a man’s death.

Tenth after these, VESPASIAN was summoned by fate.

And TITUS, happy in the brevity of his rule, was followed

By his brother, whom his own Rome called the Bald NERO.

JULIUS, as they say, reigns three years as the deified one.

AUGUSTUS, after ten lustra, extends it by sixteen more years,

And Nero claudius adds twenty-one to thrice seven.

Sprinkle my ashes with wine, and with sweet-smelling ointment of nard,

Stranger, and add balsam to the crimson roses.

An unweeping urn maintains for me an everlasting spring.

And I have exchanged the ages, not perished.

None of the old joys of my life have perished:

Whether you think I remember all things, or nothing.

Carus set me up as a common tomb for himself,

His wife, and his children, for a later funeral.

And now for a long while the monument stands empty—may this complaint

Be long continued: and let each come in his own order,

As given by the law of birth: and in a peaceful age

Let him be buried first who was born first.

Not my name, not by whom begotten, not whence, not what I did.

I am mute forever, ash, bones, nothing.

I am not, nor had I been: yet I was begotten from nothing.

Let it go, and do not reproach me point by point—such you shall be.

The third winter ends the raging times of GAIUS.

CLAUDIUS drags on a double week of years: and dire NERO

As much again: but one consul was lacking to the total.

Old GALBA, wanton OTHO, and infamous VITELLIUS,

A third summer does not know you reigning in Latium,

Your deaths worthy of your hastening, shameful life.

VESPASIAN fills out a fateful decade for himself.

Three times, while TITUS rules, new laurel wreathes the Janus:

Fifteen times, while his BROTHER holds the savage reins.

Julius caesar perished as the senate rose against him.

Mature old age added AUGUSTUS to the gods.

Old NERO, an exile at Capri, met his fate late.

Soft Chaerea exacted punishment from CAESAR.

CLAUDIUS ended his fate by an uncertain poison.

The matricide NERO endured the force of his own sword.

Old GALBA perished, laid low by savage OTHO.

Soon infamous Otho, but attained a famous death.

The wasteful sceptre of VITELLIUS follows, to be destroyed.

Praised was the rule, gentle the death, of VESPASIAN.

But TITUS, the love of the world, was snatched away in the flower of his years.

Late, but just atonements, destroy the grievous BROTHER.

Now I shall also set forth those already mentioned, and those who follow

By the lot of rule, whom the sequence of empire holds.

I shall begin from the Divine one, and run through all in order,

As many as I know, mindful of Roman history.

The rule, which once had been solemnly held by pairs

Of consuls, Julius Caesar obtained.

But brief was his right of reign, held for only three years;

The savage faction of armed toga struck him down.

Avenger, and thereafter successor, Octavius, likewise

Caesar: but more noble under the name of Augustus;

A power long-lived, and never violated by doubtful means,

Was believed to be a god set upon the earth.

Nero, having gained the praenomen of Tiberius, in the first times

Of his youth conducted a praised rule.

In vain thereafter, shut up alone in the cave of Capri,

He believed hidden by the place what his vices betray.

After him succeeded Caesar, named from the camp-boot,

More savage in temper than the savage before:

Thereafter stained with slaughters and disgraces, and one who surpassed

His grandfather, polluted with every crime.

Claudius, mocked in his private life,

In his reign gave proof of talent.

Yet a freedwoman's crimes, and the crimes of wives, he suffered,

Guilty not by doing, but by enduring.

Nero, the sixth and last heir of the race of Aeneas,

Defiled and closed the rites of the Julian line.

As many names as piety has, so many crimes of life he has.

Learn from Tranquillus: it grieves me to remember.

An old man, deceived in hope, seemed as a private citizen to deserve the sceptre;

But once betrayed by rule, he proved inferior:

Your fame was better in youth: but the more just order is

To have pleased afterward, having displeased before.

About to bear a sceptre rivaling defiled Nero's,

Otho is overwhelmed, snatched away by swift ruin.

Yet at his end he shall be praised: who by a noble death

Made this alone noble, that he perished.

Foul was the lot of your life, Vitellius, and unworthy

That you should become Caesar. So the fates please themselves.

Yet the shadow of empire was brief: because the rewards of kingship

Often an unworthy man approaches, but only the worthy possesses.

Attentive to gain, agreeable in moderate use,

Vespasian increases, and does not suppress, wealth.

He who once, in private life, had a doubtful reputation—

Rare among others—as emperor turned it to the better.

Happy in empire, happy in the brevity of his rule,

Free of civil blood, the love of the world;

You said, dying, that you had one crime,

But of you no one else, we believed, believed it of yourself.

Thus far the Flavian race had given just lords.

Why did the third snatch away what the two had given?

It is scarcely worth having had them, since the gifts of the good

Are brief. Forever, the things that harmed grieve.

Next, when the tyrant was slain, old Nerva rules the sceptre with moderation,

A prince in name, a parent in mind.

No offspring had the man. Adoption imitates offspring,

Whom it delights to have chosen, whom it wishes to have begotten.

Trajan takes up rule in the green of his age,

First in the praise of war, having the rest of his father's qualities.

He too, lacking offspring, joins to himself by the lot of choosing

One whom you would confess good, though deny his equal.

Aelius then succeeded, distinguished in the midst of his deeds:

A weightier fame marks his beginnings and his end.

He too was childless: and he joins to himself a man who would give

Proof how much the adopted may surpass the born.

Antoninus thereafter takes up rule: he by the calling

And by the Senate's counsel was named PIOUS, bearing a name of merit.

No son had he by fate: but by the law of his own

He took from the fatherland one who should rule the fatherland.

After him guardianship is given to Marcus; who bent the decrees of Plato

To empire, better than his father PIUS.

Dying, he left as his successor, but a wicked prince,

Harming his country in this alone, that he begot him.

Commodus follows, stained with the arena's blows,

A prince stirring wars with the Thracian gladiator's sword.

At last paying the penalty, his throat crushed;

Confessing among his crimes his mother's adultery.

Helvius, chosen by the judgment and counsel of the Senate,

A prince put forward by decrees, not by factions.

This the faithless cohort resented; the error being proved,

That the Curia had yielded command to the camps.

The gods be thanked, that Didius does not rejoice in rich spoils:

And swiftly from the perjured old man the rewards were taken away.

And you, father Severus, do not dread the title of an innovator.

Your force does not seize the empire, but recovers it.

Tireless, Severus moves his arms from the chill Hister,

That he might take the kingdom from the parricide Didius.

His origin was Punic: but one who would prove by virtue

That place is no hindrance, when talent avails.

Unlike your father in virtue, and much more unlike him

Whose adoptive name you bear.

Guilty of your brother's death, punished with a bloody end,

You, Caracalla, are more so through the people's mockery.

This guardian of the prince, the sword taken up in Caesar's name,

Sluggish Macrinus turns by murder against its author.

Soon he falls with his offspring. Let him cease to strike

Treachery with heavy complaints. What he suffers, he has deserved.

Then too did you defile even the inner sanctuaries of the Augustan seat,

Bearing falsely the names of the Antonines?

First among cities, home of the gods, golden Rome.

Carthage rises up against Constantinople as first,

Not to yield by the whole degree: because she disdains

To be called third, not daring to hope for the second place,

Which belonged to both. Ancient wealth prefers this one,

Recent fortune prefers that one. This one was, that one succeeds, and, excelling

By new merits, dims the ancient honor;

And compels Elissa to yield to Constantine.

Carthage, now full of shame, accuses the gods,

If even now she should yield, having scarcely endured Rome as first before.

Let ancient fortune settle your rivalries.

Go forth equals, mindful at last, that by the will of the gods

You have exchanged narrow resources and names: you when

You were Byzantine Lygos, you Punic Byrsa.

Third home of Phœbus' laurel, Antioch,

Should Alexander's Colony wish to be set as fourth.

The place of both is one: and mad ambition

Drives these into rivalry. Both are turbulent

With the vices of the common crowd, and unwholesome with the mad tumult of a senseless people.

This one, because it is fortified by the Nile, and inserted

Deeply in hidden places, fruitful and safe, is proud.

That one, because it is set as rival against the faithless Persians.

And you, go forth as equals: raise high the name of the Macedonians.

Great Alexander founded you: that one Seleucus

Names, whose noble sign was the anchor,

(Such as is wont to be branded), a sure mark of descent.

For through the whole line of offspring the native image has run.

War-mighty Gaul has long desired to be celebrated:

And the seat of the city of Trier, which is nearest to the Rhine,

As it rests secure in the bosom of divine peace:

Which nourishes the strength of empire, which clothes and arms it.

Broad walls run forward over an extended hill.

The generous Moselle glides by with tranquil stream,

Carrying the far-off commerce of every kind of land.

And at Milan all things are wonderful: abundance of goods;

Countless and cultivated houses, the eloquent

Talents of men and cheerful manners; then, by a double wall

The aspect of the place enlarged, and the delight of the people,

The Circus, and the wedge-shaped mass of the enclosed theatre:

Temples, and the Palatine citadels, and the wealthy Mint,

And the district famed under the honor of the Herculean baths,

And all the peristyles adorned with marble statues,

And walls surrounded in the form of a rampart's edge,

All things which, as if rivaling great forms of works,

Excel: nor does the nearness of Rome, though joined, press upon it.

Nor will I keep silent about Capua, mighty by sea, by cultivation, and by store,

By delights, by wealth, by former fame,

Fortune varying her turns: which, trusting to favorable winds,

Knew not how to keep measure. Now subject to Rome,

Then a rival. Mindful of loyalty, or faithless—doubting

Whether to scorn the senate or to honor it—she dared to hope for the consulship

Under Campanian auspices, and with one of her own

As consul: that she might raise up the empire of a divided world.

Nay, she even attacked the mistress of things, the mother of Latium,

In war, trusting not in toga-clad leaders,

Bound by oath to the arms of Hannibal: and, deceived

Under the guise of an enemy, madly passed into servitude to a master.

Soon, as they were driven toward ruin by common vices,

They fell—the Carthaginians by luxury, Campania by pride,

(Alas, pride has never obtained a stable seat!)

That city, once powerful, strong in wealth, once a second Rome,

Which could adorn her pinnacles with equal cones,

Cast down, now scarcely holds the eighth place.

This was not that place: yet deservedly increased by recent fame,

You shall be called Aquileia, ninth among the famous cities,

An Italian colony set opposite the Illyrian mountains,

Most renowned for its walls and harbor: but more than this

Stands out, that in the last age it chose you,

For whom Maximus, once under the name of an armor-bearer's camp-follower,

Paid a late penalty after a lustrum had passed.

Happy city, which as a joyful witness of so great a triumph

Punished the Rutupian robber with Ausonian war.

Open wide, O double Arles, your gentle hospitable harbors,

Little Gallic Rome, Arles: whom Narbo of Mars dwells near, and whom

Wealthy Vienne, with her Alpine settlers, dwells beside.

So cut through by the rushing streams of the Rhône

That you make its midst a street by a bridge of ships.

Through which you receive the commerce of the Roman world,

And do not withhold it: you enrich other peoples and walls:

Which Gaul enjoys, and Aquitania in her broad bosom.

Famous shall you be remembered by me, next after these, name of the Iberians,

Emerita, past which a sea-fed river glides,

To whom all Spain submits her fasces.

Neither Cordova, nor Tarraco, mighty in citadel, contends with you,

Nor rich Bracara, who boasts herself in the bosom of the sea.

Now let us also recall Athens, with her earth-born fathers,

Once the citadel of the contest of Pallas and Poseidon.

The first to whom the peace-bearing olive tree fell.

Attica, whose pure glory is of the eloquent tongue.

Whence through the peoples of Ionia, and the name of Achaea,

The Greek band, having spread abroad, poured itself into a hundred cities.

Who would keep silent about Catina? Who about fourfold Syracuse,

This one famed for the piety of the burnt brothers,

That one embracing the miracles of a fountain and a river.

Which, passing beneath the salt shallows of the Ionian Sea,

Unite fresh waters in a place pleasing to themselves,

Mingling the kisses of uncorrupted waters.

Never shall I keep silent about Toulouse, nurse of my youth,

Which a vast circuit surrounds with baked-brick walls,

And along whose side glides the Garonne with its lovely stream:

Cultivated by countless peoples, near the borders

Of the snowy Pyrenees, and the piny Cevennes,

Among the Aquitanian tribes and the name of the Iberians.

Which, though she has but lately poured forth from herself fourfold cities,

Feels no loss of her drained populace:

Embracing in her bosom all the settlers she has begotten.

Nor shall you be silent, Martial Narbo: in whose name

A province once spread through an immense realm,

Held many settlers by right of dominion.

Where the Allobroges insinuate themselves into the Sequanian shores:

And the Alpine peaks shut out the Italian borders:

Where the Iberians are divided by Pyrenean snows:

Where the headlong Rhône is swept along, begotten of father Lemannus,

And the Cevennes press more closely upon the Aquitanian fields,

Even unto the Tectosages, the rustic names of the Volcae,

All this was Narbo. You, first Gaul of the toga-clad,

You raise up the fasces of a Latin proconsul in the name.

Who could tell of your harbors, your mountains, your lakes?

Who of the peoples of varied dress and varied countenance?

And that temple of Parian marble which once was yours,

Of such mass as Tarquin would not once have scorned,

Nor Catulus a second time, nor lastly he,

The Caesar who raised the golden summits of the Capitol?

The merchandise of the Eastern sea and the Iberian waters

Enrich you: the fleets of the Libyan and Sicilian deep:

And whatever by varied course through rivers, through straits

Is brought in, sails to you from the whole world as its landing-place.

I long since condemn my impious silence, in that you,

O my fatherland, distinguished by Bacchus, by rivers and by men,

By manners, by the genius of your people, by the senate of your nobles,

I do not recall among the first cities. As though, being conscious of my

small city, I should hesitate to touch upon unearned praises.

There is no shame in this for me. For I have no barbarous home

on the shores of the Rhine, nor an icy dwelling in the Arctic Haemus.

Burdigala is my native soil: mild is the mercy of its sky,

and generous the abundant favor of its well-watered earth;

long is the spring, and short the winter, wooded ridges lie beneath

seething, imitating the flowing courses of the sea.

Fourfold is the aspect of its walls, so lofty with high towers

that their summits enter the airy clouds.

Within, you would marvel at the distinct streets, the arrangement

of the houses, and the broad avenues that keep their name:

then the gates answering in straight lines to the crossroads,

and through the middle of the city the channel of the fountain-fed river.

Which, when father Ocean has filled it with the returning tide,

you will see the whole water-surface glide along covered with fleets.

Why should I tell of the spring covered with Parian marble

seething like the strait of Euripus; how great the shadow of its depth!

How great the swelling in the stream! With how great a rush does the current

plunge headlong, contained within its banks, through twelve mouths,

never exhausted for the countless uses of the people!

This, O Median king, you would have wished to bring to your camp,

when the rivers failed you, their course consumed:

to carry the waters of this spring through foreign cities,

you who were accustomed to carry the one Choaspes through them all.

Hail, spring of unknown origin, sacred, nourishing, perennial,

Glassy, gray-green, deep, resounding, unsullied, shaded.

Hail, genius of the city, drinkable with healing draught,

DIVONA in the Celtic tongue, spring added to the gods.

Not Aponus in its draught, not Nemausus in its glassy light,

Is purer; not the sea-fed Timavus is fuller.

Let this final effort gather together famous cities.

And as illustrious Rome is the head of the tally, so let Burdigala,

with its own twofold summit, confirm its seat at that head.

This is my fatherland: but Rome surpasses all fatherlands.

I love Burdigala: I revere Rome. In the one I am a citizen,

in both a consul. My cradle here, there my curule chair.

Whether you should think these things to be pardoned, or to be examined,

read them through, Drepanius, with attentive judgment.

I shall be content with your verdict: whether you think

the poems I have given worthy to be read,

or worthy to be hidden away.

For the first thing is to have earned your favor, Pacatus:

the next care will be the defense of my modesty.

I can bear the censure of a severe reader:

and I can also please myself with modest praise.

The horse knows how to love the sound of a patted neck:

and knows too how to endure the slow lash unafraid.

Such polish as Aristarchus the critic and the rule of Zenodotus

sought for Maeonian Homer.

Set then the obelisks, the marks of spurious verses.

I shall reckon them as merits, not as faults, of mine.

And I shall call them corrected rather than condemned,

whatever the file of a learned man applies to me.

Meanwhile, about to undergo the weight of so great a judgment,

I shall wish to please; but if not, to remain hidden.

The Seven Wise Men, to whom that name

an earlier age gave, and a later age did not take away,

today come forth into the orchestra clad in the pallium.

Why do you blush, you Romulus in the toga,

that men so illustrious should enter upon the stage?

This should be shameful to us, not also to the Athenians,

for whom the theater serves in place of the senate-house.

For our own affairs their proper places have been allotted by lot:

the Campus for the assemblies, as the Curia for the Conscript Fathers:

the Forum and the Rostra for the separate business of citizens.

There is one seat at Athens, and in all Greece,

for public deliberation in a common place:

which in our city luxury only lately established.

Once the aedile provided the stage on scaffolding

suddenly raised, with no mass of stone.

So did Muraena, and Gallius. I will tell what is known.

After men in power, not sparing expense,

Believed the name would be everlasting, if once

a structure built upon a stone foundation

should establish for all time a place for the games:

this wedge-shaped vastness of the theater grew.

Pompey gave this one, and Balbus, and Caesar

Octavianus, vying with one another in expense.

But why do I say this? It was not for this cause that I came forth here,

to explain who built the theaters, who the forum,

who founded the separate parts of the walls:

but that I might go before these men, worthy of reverence and praised

by the gods,

and report what they meant by their sayings.

They are wont to pronounce their own maxims,

each one whichever of the foresighted men uttered first.

You surely know what they are; but if memory

closes itself against ancient matters, Ludius will come,

the expounder of these, which I hold less well.

But he, seized, himself the very image of his own funeral.

The report is that Attic Solon wrote at Delphi,

Γνῶθι σεαυτόν, which in Latin is, Know thyself.

Many think this to be the saying of Chilon the Laconian.

Whether it be yours, Spartan Chilon, or not, men dispute,

that which is brought in, ὅρα τέλος μακροῦ βίου,

bidding you look upon the end of a long life.

Many think Solon said this to Croesus.

And it is reported that Pittacus of Lesbos said,

Γίγνωσκε καιρόν: he bids you know the season.

But this καιρός is the timely time.

Bias of Priene said, οἱ πλεῖστοι κακοί:

Which is in Latin, Most men are bad:

But know that he called the ignorant bad.

What reason he had for stirring up the name,

Μελέτη τὸ πᾶν, is of Periander the Corinthian,

Who thinks that Practice is everything.

"Αριστον μέτρον" Lindius said to be,

Cleobulus, that is, The best is moderation in all things.

Thales brought forth, Ἐγγύα, πάρεστι δ᾽ ἄτη,

Which forbids us to stand surety, since loss attends the pledge.

This warns us that lending at interest is not pleasing.

I have spoken. I shall withdraw. Solon the lawgiver comes.

Solon.

After the Greek custom I come forth upon the stage, Solon,

Behold, Chilon comes. Farewell to you, and applaud.

The one to whom the fame of the Seven Sages gave the palm.

Chilon.

But fame is not the strictness of judgment.

Nor do I think myself either the first among you, or the last,

Since equality knows not how to endure order.

Rightly of old did the Delphic god command a foolish man

Who was asking which of the wise men was first,

That he should engrave their names upon a rounded circle,

So that none might be first, nor any be last.

From the midst of their circle I, Solon, come forth.

As for what I am thought to have said to King Croesus,

Let every sect of men suppose it said to itself.

In condensed Greek: ὅρα τέλος μακροῦ βίου:

Which, if you set it forth in Latin, becomes longer:

I bid all to look to the end of life.

Therefore to call men wretched, or blessed,

Avoid: for they are always in an uncertain state.

So indeed it is. If I can, I will speak briefly.

Croesus was king, or rather tyrant, of Lydia

Among these blessed ones, rich to a mad degree,

Who used to give to the gods temples with golden sides.

He summoned me. I come, obedient to his word,

So that the Lydians might have the use of a better king.

He asks that I declare a blessed man, if I know any;

I name Telanus, a citizen not without renown.

He, fighting for his country, had thrown away his life.

He scorned this. He seeks another. I found Aglaus;

Who had never gone beyond the boundaries of his own little field.

But he, laughing, said, In what place then do you set me,

I who alone in all the world am called blessed?

I say that the end of life must first be looked to:

Then it must be judged, whether happiness remains.

Croesus received the saying with displeasure. But I

Leave the king. He prepares war against the Persians.

He set out, was conquered, was bound, was surrendered to the king.

By which flame it spread itself through the whole circuit,

Rolling smoky masses upward in a surge of heat.

But almost too late Croesus, with a mighty cry,

"O truly a prophet," said he, "O Solon, Solon!"

Three times with a great shout he calls upon Solon's name.

Moved by this cry, Cyrus orders it to be quenched

Throughout the whole circle, and the burning pyre to be destroyed.

And just then a shower poured down from the clouds

Checked the fire. Croesus was straightway

Led before the king by a chosen band of attendants,

Asked whom he meant by Solon:

And

He recounts the whole sequence of events to the king.

The king pities him: and seeing the power of fortune,

Praises Solon: he holds Croesus among his friends.

And bound with golden fetters he bids him

Spend the rest of his life, whatever remained of it, with him.

I, praised by the testimony of two kings,

Was approved by both alike.

And what was said to one, let each man think said to himself.

I have now finished the reason for which I came forth here.

My loins ache from sitting, and my eyes from watching,

While I wait for Solon to withdraw himself.

Ah, how few things, and how long, the Attic men speak.

One single thought, in three hundred verses,

He has at last finished; and looking back at me, he has gone away.

I am Chilon the Spartan, who now come forth.

By the brevity known, which we Laconians use,

I commend our γνῶθι σεαυτὸν, Know thyself,

Which is now held fast upon the Delphic column.

This troublesome labor is of the best fruit,

To distinguish what you can bear, and what you cannot:

To inquire, night and day, into what you do, what you have done,

Down to the fineness of a mere point.

All duties, modesty, honor, constancy,

Rest in this: and that other glory we have despised.

I have spoken. Farewell, and remember. I do not delay your applause.

Cleobulus.

I am Cleobulus, citizen of a small island,

But author of a great saying, for which I am renowned:

"Αριστον μέτρον" they think I said.

Do you interpret, you who sit nearest the orchestra,

On the fourteen rows nearest in seating:

Whether "Αριστον μέτρον" means the best measure.

Say, you have nodded assent, I thank you, I shall proceed

In order, the poet seems to have said this in this place,

Your African, Nothing too much.

And a certain one of ours, μηδὲν ἄγαν, pertains to this same point,

Both meanings, whether Italian, or Dorian:

There is a measure of speaking, of keeping silent, of sleep, of waking,

Of benefits, of thanks, of injury,

Of study, of labors. In all of life, whatever there is,

It requires this measure of the best pause.

I have spoken, I shall withdraw, that there be measure. Thales comes.

Thales.

I am Thales of Miletus; I who said WATER

Was the first principle of all created things, as the poet Pindar says.

Your comic poet too, Terence,

Says that fishermen drew it up out of the sea.

For these, at the bidding of the Delian god, had chosen me:

Because he had sent this gift to the wise man.

I, refusing, did not accept it: but sent it back

To be carried to others, whom I believed to be prior to me.

Then, sent through all seven wise men,

And sent back again, they refer it back to me.

I have consecrated the receiver to Apollo.

For, if Phoebus commands the wise man to be chosen,

He should be believed to be no man, but a god.

I therefore am he. But the reason for my

coming upon the stage was, as it had been for two before me:

that I might become the champion of my own opinion.

This will displease—yet not the prudent,

whom experience has taught, and made skilled.

Νος ἐγγύα, πάρεστι δ᾽ ἄτη, we say:

in Latin it is, Pledge: harm is at hand for you.

I could run through a thousand examples, to prove

that sureties and bail are guilty of repentance.

But I do not wish to name anyone by name.

Let each of you say to himself, and think within himself,

to how great loss and evil pledging has been.

Yet let this service remain pleasing to both.

Some part applaud, therefore; some part, offended, hiss.

The sayings of the seven sages,

set forth in seven verses each by the same Ausonius.

Bias of Priene.

What is the highest good? A mind conscious to itself of right.

What is the greatest ruin to man? Only another man.

Who is rich? He who desires nothing. Who is poor? The greedy man.

What is the fairest dowry of a matron? A chaste life.

Who is chaste? She of whom rumor fears to lie.

What is the work of the prudent man? When he is able, to be unwilling to harm.

What is proper to the fool? To be unable, and yet to wish, to harm.

Bias.

Bias of Priene said, οἱ πλεῖστοι κακοί.

In Latin, I suppose, this is said: The many are evil.

I would not wish to have said, Truth breeds hatred.

But I called the evil ones unlearned, and barbarous:

those who neglect justice, and equity, and sacred customs.

For this people, by whom the theater is surrounded,

is wholly of good men: the land of enemies holds

those whom you believe me to have called, The many evil.

But let no judge be so evil

that he does not join himself to the party of the good.

Whether he is truly good, or strives to be called so,

already he flees that hateful name of evil.

I depart, farewell, and applaud, ye who are the many good.

Pittacus.

I am Pittacus of Lesbos, born at Mitylene,

Γίγνωσκε καιρὸν, which saying I uttered.

But this καιρὸς, that you may know the meaning, admonishes

that καιρὸς is also that which they call timely.

The Roman saying is thus: Come in time.

He declares that time is the first of all things,

at which Dromo the slave came to Antiphila,

unhindered, keeping his watch upon the time.

Consider, all of you, how often one falls into offense

for whom the opportune moment has not been observed.

It is time for me to depart, lest I be troublesome: applaud.

Periander.

I, Periander, born at Ephyra, come forth here,

who said, Μελέτη τὸ πᾶν: and who approve the saying,

that practice is the whole of what you do.

For he alone is effective in conducting affairs

who first practices every undertaking.

The comic poet Terence declares that adverse

or favorable circumstances must be practiced by all.

Whether one wishes to establish a dwelling, wage war, or make peace:

great and moderate matters, and small ones too,

he who wishes to do them should always practice beforehand.

For all are slower in new undertakings,

if practice for conducting the matter has been lacking.

There is nothing that demands greater care

than to think what is to be done; for after that

chance, not counsel, rules the unthinking.

But I now betake myself back to the fathers: applaud,

you who have practiced, that you may attend to your public affairs.

Pittacus of Mitylene.

He will not know how to speak, who does not know how to be silent.

Better to be approved by one good man, than by many bad ones.

The foolish man envies the fortunate proud.

The foolish man laughs at the grief of the unfortunate.

Obey the law, whoever has established a law.

Gather many friends in prosperity.

Test few friends in adversity.

The more one is permitted, the less should one wish.

The undeserving wretch is the envy of fortune.

No one will long be fortunate in crimes.

Forgive much in others: nothing in yourself.

Whoever spares the wicked wishes to destroy the good.

Glory is not given for the merits of ancestors.

Base reputation is often given to lesser men.

The useful never differs from the seemly.

The more anxious one is, the more blessed.

To wish for death is bad, to fear it is worse.

Make it pleasing to you, what is necessary.

Terrible to many, beware of many.

If fortune favors, beware of being lifted up.

If fortune thunders, beware of being sunk.

I call life blessed only when its fated course is finished.

Let like be yoked with like as spouse. Whatever is unequal, is at discord.

You should censure a kinsman secretly, praise him openly.

It is far fairer to be made noble than to be born so.

If the lot is fixed by decree, what use is it to take care?

Or if all things are uncertain, what use is it to fear?

I do not wish that a lesser man fear me, and a greater despise me.

Live mindful of death, that you may also be mindful of salvation;

overcoming all sorrows either by spirit, or by a friend.

If you do a good deed, it is right not to remember it.

Good deeds done to you, remember forever.

Old age is pleasant to a man when it is like youth;

that youth is graver which is like old age.

Fear to do a shameful deed even without a witness:

life perishes, the glory of death does not die.

What you are about to do, refrain from telling.

It is a torment, if you fear what you cannot overcome.

When you rebuke truly, thus you help as an enemy would.

When you praise falsely, thus you harm as a friend would.

Nothing too much is enough, lest even this be too much.

I shall set forth in sevenfold verses the fatherlands, the names, the sayings of the wise men: each shall be declared by his own single verse.

Chilo, whose fatherland is Lacedaemon: Know thyself.

Periander of Corinth: Master a trembling anger.

Pittacus, from the shores of Mitylene: Nothing too much.

Cleobulus of Lindus says: Measure is best in a matter.

Solon, born at Athens, teaches: Look to the end.

Bias, whom illustrious Priene bore: Most men are wicked.

Thales, nurtured by Miletus: Avoid pledges of surety.

The holy solemnities of Christ the bringer of salvation return:

and the devout mystics celebrate their pious fasts.

But we, holding fast eternal worship in our breast,

continue the strength of unblemished honors.

Yearly is our care for sacred things, unceasing our reverence.

Great Father of all things, whom earth, and sea, and air,

and Tartarus, and the painted milky tract of heaven serve:

whom the guilty crowd of the wicked trembles before, and again the nourishing

throng of pious souls celebrates with vows:

Thou grantest this brief course of a fleeting age, and the swift

end of the soul the gift of eternal life.

Thou dost impart to the human race gentle admonitions of the laws, and the sacred prophets,

and dost preserve their descendants,

pitying deceived Adam: whom Eve, ensnared and caught by poisons,

entangled as his companion with sweet-seeming errors.

Thou, gracious Father, dost grant to the earth thy Word, thy Son, and God,

whole, alike, and equal,

true from the true, and living from a living source.

He, taught by thy admonitions, added this one thing:

that the Spirit which swam upon the watery waves

should quicken sluggish limbs with the immortal washing.

A threefold faith, from one author; sure hope of salvation

for him who embraces this number with united virtues.

Such an example too is beheld in earthly regions:

the Augustan father, begetter of a twin pair of Augusti.

Who, embracing brother and son alike with pious

divinity, divides the kingdom, yet does not divide the one,

himself possessing all things, and yet bestowing all things.

These therefore, thriving in threefold piety,

gentle rulers of the earth and ministers of heaven,

do thou, O Christ, being merciful, commend to the eternal Father.

I, Ausonius by name, not last in the art of healing:

and if you knew my times, I was first.

I dwelt in neighboring cities, both my native place and my home,

Vasates my fatherland, but Bordeaux my hearth.

Both councils, and both senates, held me

exempt from office, yet a participant in name.

Not wealthy, nor needy, I lived frugally without meanness.

My food, my dress, my manners I always kept the same.

Not ready of speech in Latin: but the Attic tongue

sufficed me for the words of cultivated eloquence.

I offered aid to all who sought it, of an art not bought:

and my service was joined with piety.

I strove to secure the judgment of good men concerning me:

I myself, with myself as judge, was never pleased with myself.

Duties owed to many, in various degrees of regard,

I distributed according to persons, merits, and occasion.

I abstained from lawsuits: I neither increased nor diminished my estate.

No one perished by my accusation, nor by my testimony.

I never envied. I shrank from desiring and from seeking favor.

To swear, or to speak falsely, I held as equal,

No faction, no conspiracy joined me to itself.

I cultivated friendships with sincere covenant.

I knew him happy, not who had what he wished:

but who, by fate, did not desire what was not given.

Not a busybody, not talkative, seeing things before me,

I did not approach things hidden behind doors and curtain.

A rumor that could tear apart the life of good men

I did not invent: and if I knew it to be true, I kept silent.

Anger far off: vain hope far off: far off anxious care;

and among the goods of men, false joys far off.

Gatherings avoided, tumults forsworn,

and the ever-feigned friendships of princes.

I never thought it praise to have done no wrong,

and I set good morals before the laws.

Quick to anger, I hastened to lay the disturbance to rest:

and I paid the penalty myself for my own levity.

For nine lustra I had one marriage, concordant, without fault:

we brought forth four children.

The first died at the breast; but the last of my age

perished, not unripe in mind, though raw in early youth.

The eldest reached the highest summit of honors,

Prefect of the Gauls, and of Libya, and of Latium,

tranquil, gentle, serene in eyes, in voice, in countenance,

in mind and spirit a father even toward his own father.

Of this one I saw both son and son-in-law as proconsul.

That he himself should be consul, was my sure hope.

A daughter possessed matronly honor. Whose

praise was distinguished both as bride and as widow:

who saw the illustrious houses, in manifold honor,

of her son, and of her son-in-law, and of her grandson-in-law all at once.

I myself, neither seeking nor scorning honors,

am named Prefect of the great Illyricum.

This lavish indulgence of fortune persuaded me,

having adored the divine will, to seek the departure of life.

Lest any day, with fatal bite,

should cut short the inviolable span of a fortunate life.

I obtained it: my prayers were heard: hope, vows, fear,

I leave to others, being lulled by a peaceful end.

Among mourning, but not myself mournful, friends

I lay, the arrangements of my funeral already ordered.

Ninety years, without a staff, with body whole,

I completed, sound in all my duties to the last.

Whoever shall read this, will not scorn to say:

May such a life be yours, as were my prayers for it.

Hail, little inheritance, realms of my forefathers,

which my great-grandfather, which my grandfather, which my father cultivated.

Which now, already grown old, he leaves to me, by a hastened death.

Alas! I had not wished to be able to enjoy it so soon.

Just indeed is the order of succeeding one's father: yet truly

to be masters at the same time is a more welcome order for the devoted.

Now labor and cares are mine. Before, pleasure alone

was in our share. The rest belonged to my father.

A small inheritance, I confess, but no thing was ever

small to equanimous hearts: add too, to hearts of one mind.

I think it fair that the thing should stand from the mind, not the mind from the thing.

Croesus desires all things, Diogenes nothing;

Aristippus scatters gold in the midst of the Syrtes;

All golden Lydia is not enough for Midas.

He who has no limit to desiring has none to possessing.

That is the measure of wealth which you fix in your mind.

But how great is that field of mine, know: know me also,

And know yourself too, if you are able:

Though it is difficult to know oneself. Γνῶθι σεαυτόν Know thyself.

As quickly as we read it, so quickly do we neglect it.

I cultivate two hundred jugera of field; a vineyard

Is tended over a hundred jugera, and meadows half that.

Woodland more than double the meadows, vineyard, and arable land together.

A tenant of the field neither is superfluous to me nor is lacking.

Nearby is a spring and a shallow well, then a clear river.

This navigable, ebbing stream carries me out and back again.

Fruits are always stored up for me for two years at once.

He who has no long-stored provisions also has hunger close at hand.

This estate of mine is situated neither far from the city, nor right at the city:

So that I may not suffer the crowd, and yet enjoy its advantages.

And whenever weariness compels a change of place,

I cross over, and enjoy the countryside and the city in turn.

The little book which I had playfully composed for my little grandson, your sister's son, in the manner of an exhortation, I have sent ahead for him to read before I myself arrive. For I preferred this to reciting it myself, so that your judgment might be freer, which is usually hindered by two causes: because things heard pass by our ears more swiftly than things read, and because sincerity of judgment is burdened by the presence of the one reciting. Now you have both intact (my modesty is no obstacle). But listen, sweetest son, I have something to warn you of: if some parts are composed with much more coloring than truth, and seem to have more color than substance, I knowingly allowed them to flow so, that they might be more charming than sturdy, after the manner of maidens whom mothers strive to keep with sloping shoulders and slender waist, that they may be graceful. You know the rest.

It remains for you to say, Why do you delay my judgment on what you yourself declare to be faulty? I will say, of course, that I blush outwardly at verses of this kind; I wrote these things more for his years than for mine, or perhaps for mine too, δὶς παῖδες οἱ γέροντες old men are twice children. In sum, let your severity be gone; my business is with a child. Farewell, sweetest son.

The Muses too have their playthings; leisure is mingled

With the Camenae, honeyed grandson; nor does the harsh voice

Of the stern master always drive the boys.

But rest and study keep their fixed alternating times.

And it is enough for a mindful boy to have read gladly.

And it is permitted to rest. The Greeks named the School

So that just leisure might be granted to the labor-bearing Muses.

That you may the more surely proceed to the alternate lesson,

Learn gladly. To soothe long toil

We give intervals. A boy's zeal for study grows weary,

Unless joyful feast days are varied with austere working days.

Learn gladly, grandson, nor detest the reins

Of a stern teacher. Never is a master's form truly dreadful.

Though he be sad with age, and not serene of voice,

Though he threaten harsh scoldings with a knitted brow,

He who has once won affection will never seem monstrous

Once the settled habit of his face is accepted. He who flees his mother

Will come to love the wrinkles of his nurse. Grandfathers, and trembling grandmothers,

Late-born grandchildren, in their newfound care, prefer before their fathers.

So neither did Chiron, mingled with the Thessalian horse,

Terrify Achilles, son of Peleus; nor did pine-bearing Atlas

Terrify the boy son of Amphitryon: but each, gentle,

Soothed his tender fosterlings with mild speech.

Do you too not fear: though the school resound with much of the lash,

And the old master wear a fierce countenance.

Fear betrays base spirits: but stand firm

Undaunted, and let not the clamor, nor the sounding blows,

Nor the dread of the morning hours disturb you:

That the scepter of the rod is brandished, that much furniture

Of birch is there, that a deceptive strap of leather sheathes the whip:

That your benches seethe with trembling tumult.

Let the pomp of the place and the show of vain fear be shunned.

This once your father, and your mother too, having followed,

Soothed my carefree old age with placid comfort.

You, whatever old age the fates shall grant

As the years slip by, you who bear your grandfather's name in your first character,

First grandson, grant me to enjoy either in fact or in hope.

Now I see you a boy: soon in youthful years,

And now a man I shall behold, if fortune so ordains; or if

Envy forbids it, still I shall hope, nor shall my prayers grow faint,

That, mindful of your father and of me, you may always

Desire the lofty rewards of the Muses: and that one day, eloquent,

You may walk this same road by which we have gone before: you for whom

A proconsul father, a prefect uncle, press onward.

Read through whatever is memorable. I shall counsel particulars.

The founder of the Iliad, and the lovely beginnings of Menander

Must be unrolled by you. With the bending and sharpening of voice

Bring forth countless rhythms with learned accents.

And as you read, impart feeling. Punctuation increases

Sense, and pauses give vigor to sluggish passages.

When will these gifts fall to my old age?

When, forgotten by me, will you renew for me, through your lifetime,

So many poems, so much history linked together, the comic buskins and courtly hangings,

And the lyric and melic measures, reciting them beforehand,

And make the dulled senses of an old man grow young again?

With you leading, grandson, it is right to learn again

The measured poems of Flaccus, and lofty-sounding Maro.

You too, who through the well-chosen speech of Terence

Move gracefully, and traverse the stage in the tightened comic sock,

Scarcely compel my forgetful old age to new dialogues.

Now, Catiline, your crime, and Lepidus' uprising,

Beginning from Lepidus and Catulus, I connect the course

Of Rome's affairs and times through twice six years.

Now I read the civil war mingled with Mars' strife,

Which the exile Sertorius stirred up with his Iberian ally.

Nor as an unskilled grandfather do I counsel these things, but having tested,

Through teaching, a thousand minds. Many, in their nursing years,

I myself have nourished: cherishing them in my lap, and loosening their murmurs into speech,

I snatched their tender age away from the coaxing nurses.

Then, by gentle admonition and mild fear,

I enticed boys, that they might mildly seek advancement through bitter things,

Destined to pluck the sweet fruit of the bitter root.

The same I have led on, in the footsteps of their now maturing age,

To good morals, arts, and vigor of speech;

Though they refused to bear the yoke upon their necks,

Nor would offer their mouths to the inserted bit.

Steep is the tempering, hard the experience, rare

The outcome, tested by long usage of affairs,

That a gentle censure might rule untrained youth.

Which was tolerated by me, until the toil itself now pleased me,

And good habit through use eased the labor.

Until I was summoned to the pious duties of imperial instruction,

And, increased, was girded with varied honor:

When the golden palace was bidden to obey me.

Let Nemesis stand aside; let fortune bear me even as I jest.

I presided over the empire, while, clad in purple with the toga praetexta,

He set the laws of a master above scepter and throne,

And the Augustus deemed our honors greater than his own.

Which honors soon, grown mature, he brought forth to a lofty increase:

That I should be created quaestor for the Augusti, father and son;

That I should don the double prefecture, and the curule chair,

That I, as consul, should put on the trabea and the embroidered toga—my rewards—

And be reckoned as set before my own annals.

By these things I, as consul-grandfather, sought how great a merit for my grandson:

And I shine as the light before your life.

Although, already famed by your father's name of old,

You could be held adorned, you could be held honored:

Yet from us there has come an illustrious honor. Do you

See to it that it be not a burden: that through yourself, striving upward,

You may climb on high, and hope that the fasces will be yours, with you as consul.

When first the care of a constant tutor, soothing you,

handed over to you verses in your boyish years,

and imbued your new ears and receptive senses,

so that your untrained tongue, corrected, might bring forth from its rude palate

sounds to be answered even in a docile murmur—

we old men added nothing harsh: lest the care of admonishing

should injure, or spoil the sweet taste with bitterness.

But now, since you flourish in the vigor of adolescent age,

and can yourself distinguish strong things from tender ones, and seem

to yourself an admonisher of your own morals and speech:

receive not indeed precepts, but the vows of a grandfather

who prays and gives thanks, on the solemn festival of his grandson.

Grant that I may lead back a safe old age from the end appointed by the fates,

and behold the festive day, and the stars once doubted,

laid down almost as one already given up, in an age near its close.

This, my honeyed grandson, gained with doubled interest

as your birthday approaches: a fuller gift of health for me,

since now the honor of your adolescent age grows,

and I, an old man, now behold my grandson already a youth.

This sixth three-year cycle returns to you from your first year,

bringing back the Ides of September, marked by your birth,

the Ides, a kindly day, honored also by the geniuses of the gods.

The Latonian Hecate claims the Sextile Ides;

Mercury is joined to the honor of the gods on the Ides of May.

Maro, born of old, dedicates the Ides of October.

May you often keep all the Ides through the twelve months,

whoever you are that shall celebrate the Ides of my Ausonius.

Farewell, sweetest grandson.

Have you ever seen a cloud painted on a wall? You have surely seen it, and you remember it. For at Trier, in the dining-room of Aeolus, this painted picture is displayed: women in love crucify Cupid—not those of our age, who sin of their own accord, but those heroines of old, who pardon themselves and punish the god, some of whom our Maro numbers among those in the mourning fields. This image I admired both for its appearance and for its subject. At last I transferred the stupor of my admiration into the ineptitude of versifying. To me nothing pleases except the theme. But I commend to you my error: we love our own faults and scars; and, not content to have sinned only by our own fault, we strive that we may also be loved for it. But why do I so zealously defend this eclogue? I am certain that whatever you know to be mine you will love—which I hope for more than that you should praise it. Farewell, and love your father.

In the airy fields, which the Muse of Maro recalls,

where a myrtle grove shades the maddened lovers,

the Heroines led their rites, and each bore

the tokens of the death by which she once had perished,

wandering in the great forest, and beneath a malign light,

among the reedy fronds, and the heavy-laden poppy,

and silent lakes without stain, and streams without murmur:

along whose banks, in a misty light, droop

the flowers once wept for, the names of kings and boys,

Narcissus the admirer of himself, and Oebalian Hyacinthus,

And golden-haired Crocus, and Adonis painted with purple,

And Salaminian Ajax, inscribed with a tragic groan.

All these things, anxious with tears and sorrowful loves,

work over remembered griefs though death is already past,

and call the Heroines back again into a vanished age.

Semele, deceived mother, weeps for her lightning-struck offspring,

and, tearing at the scorched cradle amid the emptiness,

fans the feeble fire of a feigned lightning-bolt.

Caeneus, complaining of vain gifts, though rejoicing once in manly sex,

grieves, called back into her ancient form.

Procris still dries her wounds; and she loves

even the bloodied hand of Cephalus that struck her. The Sestian maiden

bears her lights in a smoking shard from the topmost tower.

And from the cloudy Leucate, mannish Sappho,

about to perish by Lesbian arrows, threatens the leap.

Sorrowful Eriphyle refuses the adornment of Harmonia,

unhappy in her son, nor fortunate in her husband.

The whole Cretan legend of Minos also, an airy fable,

trembles like the semblance of paintings under a slight image.

Pasiphae follows the footprints of the snow-white bull.

Forsaken Ariadne carries in her hand the gathered threads.

Phaedra, despairing, looks back at the discarded tablets.

This one bears a noose; that one, the semblance of a vain crown:

this one is ashamed to have entered the hiding-place of the Daedalian heifer.

Laodamia laments the snatched-away nights of vain joy,

of two husbands, the living and the dead.

On another side, fierce, all with drawn blades,

both Thisbe, and Canace, and Sidonian Elissa shudder.

This one bears the sword of her husband, this of her father, this of her guest.

And she herself also wanders, as once among the Latmian rocks,

accustomed to seek the slumbers of Endymion,

the two-horned Moon, with her torch and star-crowned diadem.

A hundred others, recalling the wounds of old loves,

renew their torments with sweet and mournful complaints.

In the midst of whom, thoughtless Love, with whirring wings,

scattered the shadow of dark gloom.

All recognized the boy: and, by a remembering recall,

felt him as their common culprit, although the dewy

clouds around, and the belt gleaming with golden studs,

and the quiver, and the fire of the ruddy torch darkened him:

yet they recognize him: and they begin to brandish

their vain strength: and, the one enemy having found a place not his own,

while he was making sluggish flights beneath the thick night,

they press him in a made cloud; and, as he trembles and prepares empty

Refuges, the middle bands drew them into the assembly.

There is chosen the myrtle well known in the mournful grove,

Hateful to the gods for its punishments. There once

Proserpina, scorned, had tormented Adonis, ever mindful of Venus.

On its lofty trunk they hang suspended Love,

His hands bound behind his back, and his feet tightly bound

With fetters, mourning, they fasten him with no restraint upon the punishment:

He is guilty without a crime, accused Love, with no judge.

Each woman is eager to acquit herself,

That she may transfer her own faults onto another’s crimes.

All of them, reproaching him, display the marks of the death they endured,

And set them forth. These they think their weapons, this their sweet revenge,

That each should strive to punish him with the very pain by which she perished.

This one holds a noose, that one thrusts before him

The empty semblance of a sword-point: another shows hollow rivers, and a broken cliff,

And the terror of the raging sea, and a calm sea without waves.

Some brandish flames, and threaten the trembling one

With hissing torches that bear no fire. Myrrha rends open

Her grown womb with mourning tears: and against him, terrified,

She hurls the amber tears of her weeping trunk.

Some, under the guise of forgiving, wish only for sport:

As when the slender stylus, with its sharp point,

Draws forth the tender blood, from which the Rose was born.

Or they bring wanton lamp-lights near to his young flesh.

Even the mother herself, guilty of a like fault,

Gracious Venus, enters unafraid into such great tumults.

Nor, hastening to plead for her ensnared son,

Does she redouble the terror, and with bitter goads

Kindle the wavering furies: rather she herself adds

Her own disgrace to her son’s crimes: for the blind fetters

Her husband bore,

When Mars was caught: for the shameful form

Of Hellespontine Priapus is mocked for its indecent member.

For cruel Eryx; for the half-man Hermaphroditus.

Nor is it enough in words. Golden Venus with a rosy garland

Strikes the mourning boy, who dreads still worse.

On him, his body chastised, the woven rose,

Struck again and again, drew forth a crimson dew: which, already

Dyed before, took on a still more fiery, ruddy hue.

Then the fierce threats subsided: and the vengeance seemed

Greater than his offense, and about to make Venus herself guilty.

The Heroines themselves intercede, and each

Prefers to ascribe her own death to cruel fate.

Then the loving mother gives thanks that their grief has yielded,

And that the boy’s faults are pardoned and dismissed.

Such visions once, in nightly shapes,

Vex a trembling rest with empty terror,

Which, after Cupid has endured much through the long night,

He flees; and at last, the darkness of sleep dispelled,

He flies up to the gods above, and escapes through the gate of ivory.

AUSONIUS to his PAULUS, greeting.

Yet you prevail, and you break into the hidden things of my Muses, which the obscurity of their initiations veiled, although, dearest Paulus, you burst in not as one profane. For although I do not consider you to be of that crowd which Horace forbids to enter, still each man has his own rites. Nor is the same thing due to Ceres as to Liber, even under the same worshippers. The poems which I had sportively composed for my foster-child, rough and unfinished, for the solace of a domestic little song, since they enjoyed themselves without fear and in secret security, you have forced to be brought forth into the light still dim: you have desired, it seems, to despoil my modesty, or to show how much right you have over me even against my will. You have surpassed even the obstinacy of Alexander of Macedon, who, when he could not loose the reins of the fated yoke, cut them; and who penetrated the cave of the Pythia, which it was forbidden to seek.

Use them, then, as your own by equal right, but with unequal confidence. For your works can afford not to fear the public; but at mine I blush even within myself.

As you wished, Paulus, you have all the verses of Bissula: which we composed in jest for the favor of a little Suevian girl, cherishing leisure rather than seeking glory. You, a troublesome dun, read troublesome verses. What you have kneaded, you must eat; so the old saying bids: that the smith himself should wear the fetters he himself has made.

You who are about to read this slender little book of unadorned song,

Lay aside your frown.

Weigh serious poems with contracted wrinkles.

We follow Thymele.

In this trifle Bissula will be sung, or Erasinus.

I warn you, drink first.

I write nothing for the fasting; if anyone reads my work after his cups,

Let him be wise in this.

But he will be wiser still if he sleeps: and thinks these things

Dreams sent to him.

Bissula, sprung across the icy Rhine in stock and home,

Bissula, witness to the birth of the Danube,

Taken captive by the hand, but released by the hand, reigns

In the delights of him whose war-spoil she was.

Lacking a mother, wanting a nurse, she knew not

The rule of a mistress [lacuna]

And felt no reproach of fortune or of fatherland,

At once free from untried servitude.

Thus, changed by Latin blessings, yet remaining German

In face, blue in eyes, golden in hair.

Her tongue makes her now, her form now, an ambiguous girl,

This proclaiming her born of the Rhine, that of Latium.

Delight, blandishment, sport, love, pleasure,

Barbarian, yet you, foster-child, surpass the Latin dolls,

Bissula, the rustic name of a tender girl,

A little rough to those unaccustomed, but charming to her master.

Bissula cannot be imitated by any wax, by any pigment,

Her natural beauty lends itself not to feigned art.

Sandyx and white lead may counterfeit other girls,

But no hand knows this blending of countenance; come then, painter,

Mingle red roses, and mix in lilies.

And whatever color shall come of these, let that be the color of her face.

If you contemplate, painter, painting our foster-child,

Let your rival art imitate the Cecropian bees.

You are about to behold the Latin curule chair of consul Ausonius.

Have you now, next after the Augustan majesty,

Anything you might marvel at? That Rome, and the house of Quirinus,

And the toga with its purple border gleaming in the senate,

With this head mark their own seasons in the eternal Fasti.

O year, begun under good auspices, grant in truly wholesome spring

Sunny breaths of the winds, grant dewy

Solstices to Cancer, and cold Boreas in the hours of September.

Let Autumn bite with subtle cold and frosts;

And let Summer, tempered in moderate measure, cease its heat.

Let the south wind moisten the sowing. Let Winter be snowy,

While March, father of the ancient year, is renewed.

Let the new grace of flowers breathe fragrant in May,

And let July ripen the crops, and temper the sea with East winds.

Let Sirius not increase the burning Lion with its fire.

Let Pomona of varied hue diversify the fruits of trees.

Let autumn mellow what summer has ripened,

And let genial winter enjoy the dowry gained for itself.

Let the world keep peace: let no turbulent stars reign.

Let no star offend your household gods, Gradivus,

Which is not favorable to you: not Cynthia; not the swift Arcadian

neighboring the earth; not you, Saturn, last

in the outermost circuit. Removed far from Pyroeis

you will hasten on a tranquil path. Come near, you,

star of health-bringing Jove, and Cytherean Evening Star.

Let Cyllenius sometimes be present, gracious to guests.

Janus, come; come, new year; come renewed, O Sun.

Where, enemies subdued, Francia mixed with Suevi

strives toward obedience, that it may serve under Latin arms:

where the wandering Sauromatae had joined to themselves the Chuni's bands,

And where the Getae with their Alan allies were assaulting the Hister.

This, victory announces to me on swift wings.

Now Augustus comes, to adorn our honors,

Distinguishing with office those whom he had wished to share.

Janus, come; come, new year; come renewed, O Sun.

Grant golden joys, O Sun, to the coming Janus:

Caesar will succeed to the Ausonian fasces for the year,

About to hold the fifth praetexta of Romulean honor.

Behold where my purple heaps itself up (hear this

with gentle ears, Nemesis), after me deigns to arise

Augustus as consul. He seems to confer more

upon himself: he who ordered our fasces to precede.

Janus, come; come, new year; come renewed, O Sun;

Drive the months, twice six, to follow through their gates,

Grant that the tropic yield to the sun; and again that he

turn his back, so that the double tropic may be varied by the star,

and the change may hasten four times through thrice three signs.

Drive on the summer days, and let the promised

year of Caesar hasten the lingering winter with its nights.

If I shall behold him, then thrice and four times blessed,

then I shall be twice consul, then I shall touch heaven with my head.

O Janus, begun under good auspices, do you behold the happy

beginnings of Ausonius' consulship? Put forth your gleaming

head, eternal Sun: and more illustrious than usual, with kindly

light send forth the purple radiance of eastern day.

O Janus, father of the things which in the month of two-faced Janus

you roll on into wintry December with its icy end,

Janus, come, and new, look upon the feast of old Janus.

Traverse the solemn paths, and varying the twelve

courses for the world through the seasons with equal signs,

carry your headlong course with eternal whirling;

So that Phoebus, swept along by the downward-tending pole in the opposite direction,

may bring back the moments preserved from the other part of the days,

and, new, restore his own light by the wintry drive.

While the horns of the Moon return thirty times a month,

you will roll the risings and settings with turning hand,

confining the lawful course of Phoebus through the signs.

I had crossed the swift Nava with its clouded light,

marveling at new walls added to the old town:

where once Gaul equaled the Latin Cannae:

and unwept, destitute troops lie over the fields.

Whence, entering my journey through wooded pathless places, alone,

and seeing no traces of human cultivation,

I pass by Dumnissus, parched, though the lands all around are thirsty,

and Tabernae, watered by its perennial spring,

and the fields of the Sauromatae, lately measured out for settlers:

and at last, on the first borders of the Belgae, I catch sight of

Nivomagus, the renowned camp of the deified Constantine.

Here the air is purer over the fields: and Phoebus with serene

light, now clear, opens up the purple heaven of Olympus.

Nor now, through branches interlaced in mutual bonds,

is the sky sought, shut out by green gloom:

but the free breeze of the transparent day does not begrudge to those who look

the liquid radiance and the ruddy heaven.

When everything struck me with a pleasing sight of my homeland's appearance,

and the cultivation of shining Bordeaux,

the roofs of villas, set high on overhanging banks,

And the hills green with Bacchus, and the pleasant streams

of the Moselle gliding beneath with a quiet murmur.

Hail, river praised by fields, praised by settlers,

to whose imperial dignity the walls of the Belgae owe their being:

river with hills planted with fragrant Bacchic vine,

river most green, with grassy banks planted along your course:

navigable, like the sea; sloping down into your waves,

like a river; and, with your glassy depths, rivaling lakes;

and able to equal streams in their trembling course,

and to surpass cold springs in liquid draught,

You alone have all that a spring, a stream, and a river have,

and a lake, and the sea flowing back with its two-way tide.

You, gliding along with placid waters, endure

no murmurs of wind, nor struggles with hidden rock.

Compelled by no overwhelming shallow to renew your rapid

course, you hold no lands standing out in the midst of your waters,

cut off from your stream: lest the honor of a just

name be diminished, if an island should divide and shut out the river.

You are allotted double paths, and, when with the current

you flow down, so that swift oars strike the driven shallows:

And when along the banks, the towline never ceasing,

sailors strain the ropes bound to the masts' neck.

How often do you yourself marvel at your own retracings in the stream,

and think that your lawful course goes almost too slowly?

You do not fringe your bank with mud-born sedge,

nor sluggishly flood the shores with unclean mire,

but sprinkle dry footprints with the first touch of water.

Go now, and lay smooth floors with Phrygian slabs,

stretching a marble field through paneled halls.

But I, having despised what wealth and riches have given,

I shall marvel at a work of nature, not, care of my grandsons,

And glad emptiness luxuriates where losses lie waste.

There solid sands strew the moist shores,

Nor do the pressed footprints keep their remembered shapes.

You are beheld through the glassy depths across smooth backs,

Having nothing of secrecy, river. And as the nourishing air

Is spread open to view for liquid gazes,

Nor do gentle winds bar the eyes through the void:

So, with sight enduring, we discern things sunk far within,

And the inmost chamber of the hidden stream lies open:

When the shallows move gently, and the gliding of the clear waters

Reveals scattered shapes by its cerulean light:

How the sand, furrowed, ripples with light current;

How the leaning grasses tremble on the green bed.

And as the stirred herbs beneath native springs

Endure the quivering waters: and the pebble

Now shines, now hides: and the gravel marks off the green moss.

Such a picture is known to the Caledonian Britons,

When the tide bares the green seaweeds, and red corals,

And the whitening seed-pearls of shellfish,

And the wealthy delights of men; which beneath the waves

Resemble, in imitation, our own ornaments.

Not otherwise have I gone beneath the glad shallows of peaceful Moselle,

Where grass of differing hue reveals the pebbles mixed within.

Yet the darting swarms of slippery fish, interweaving,

Tire the eyes fixed upon them ever with their wandering.

But neither so many kinds, nor their slanting swimmings,

Nor the troops that come up against the current of the river,

Nor the names, nor all the nurslings of their numerous stock,

Is it granted me to tell. He does not permit it, to whom the care of the second

Lot, and the guardianship of the watery trident, has fallen.

You, Naiad, dweller on the river's banks, to me

Tell forth the choruses of the scaly host, and beneath the liquid channel

Recount the troops that float along the cerulean stream.

The scaly Chub gleams through the grassy sands,

Crowded thick with tender flesh, full of bones,

Not lasting past six hours upon the table.

And the Trout, its back starred with purple spots,

And the Roach, harmless with no sharpness of spine,

And the light Umbra, escaping the eyes with its swift swimming.

And you, Barbel, tossed through the throat of the winding Saar,

Where twice three mouths roar amid rocky piers,

When you have flowed down into the river of greater fame,

You ply your freer, looser swimmings.

You are better in a worse age; to you alone has fallen,

Of all breathing things, an old age not without praise.

Nor would I pass you by, Salmon, ruddy with your crimson flesh,

Whose broad tail's roving lashings

From the midst of the deep are carried back to the topmost waves,

When your hidden pulse is betrayed in the calm surface.

You, scaly one with a breastplate breast, smooth

Of brow, destined to furnish dishes for an uncertain feast,

You bear unspoiled the seasons of long delay,

Marked out by the spots upon your head: for whom the lavish belly

Sways, and the flowing paunch with its rich underside.

And you, Mustela, caught by the tokens of your foam

Throughout Illyricum, through the pools of the double-named Ister,

Borne up into our strait, lest the broad

Streams of the Moselle be defrauded of so famed a nursling.

What color has nature painted upon you? Dark spots above

Mark your back, which a yellow rainbow encircles.

A cerulean dye draws along your slippery back.

Toward the middle of your body you grow richly fat; but from there

Even to the very tail the skin lies dry and rough.

Nor will I keep silent about you, Perch, delight of tables,

Worthy to be ranked among river-fish with those of the sea,

Alone fit to rival the crimson mullets:

For your taste is not dull, and in your solid body the parts

Join in sections, not sundered by bones.

Here too, one laughed at even by his Latin name, dweller

Of the pools, a most hostile force to the complaining frogs,

The Pike besets dark hollows of sedge and mud.

He, chosen for no uses of the table,

Seethes with smoky, rank stench in the cook-shops.

Who does not know the green Tench too, solace of the common folk,

And the Bleak, prey for boyish hooks,

And the Shad, hissing on the hearths, the fare of the plebs?

And you, between two kinds, neither and both,

Who are not yet Salmon, nor yet Trout, ambiguous,

Caught in mid-course between the two ages, the Fario?

You too, among the river's troops worthy of mention,

Gudgeon, no bigger than two spans without the thumb,

Very fat, round, more heavy with egg-laden belly;

And the Gudgeon that imitates the trailing mane of the Barbel.

Now shall you be celebrated, great Sheat-fish, cattle of the water:

Whom I deem, with your back as if anointed with Attic oil,

A river-dwelling Dolphin. So through the straits, great one,

You glide, and scarcely unfold the columns of your long body,

Whether defended by shallow shoals or by the river's sedges.

But when you set your peaceful course upon the stream,

The green banks marvel at you, the cerulean crowd of swimmers marvels,

The clear waters marvel; the flood spreads out over the channel,

And the outermost waves run forward at the margin.

Such once was the whale of the Atlantic deep,

When, driven by wind or by its own motion, toward the shores of land

It is pushed, it pours forth the excluded sea, and great

Waters rise, and the neighboring mountains fear to sink.

Yet here, here the gentle Whale of our Moselle

Is far from ruin, and honor is added to the great river.

Now it is enough to have beheld the liquid pathways, and the slippery

Troops of fish, and to have numbered sufficiently their manifold companies.

Let the spectacles of the vine bring in another pageant:

And let the gifts of Bacchus solicit the wandering gaze:

Where the lofty peak, over its long stretch on high,

And the rocks, and the sunny heights of the ridge, and the bends, and the hollows

Rise up with vines, as if in a natural theater.

So the kindly vintage clothes the Gauran ridge,

And Rhodope, and Pangaea gleams with its own Lyaeus.

So the Ismarian hill grows green above the Thracian waters.

So my vineyards paint the yellowing Garonne.

For along the topmost ridges stretching to the furthest slope,

The riverside margin is planted thick with green Lyaeus.

The glad crowd of workers, and the hurrying farmers,

Now hasten on the very summit, now along the sloping ridge,

Vying with foolish shoutings. Thence the traveler,

Treading the path beneath the banks, and here the boatman gliding by,

Shout taunts to the late-working husbandmen: and to them in turn resounds

And the crags, and the trembling wood, and the hollow river.

Nor does the scene of places alone delight men.

Here I shall believe that even the rustic Satyrs, and the grey-eyed

Naiads, gaze upon each other and rush together on the farthest banks,

When the joyous wantonness stirs the goat-footed Pans,

And they leap upon the shallows, and terrify the trembling sisters

Beneath the stream, beating the wave with unskilled blows.

Often too, having stolen grapes from the midst of the hills,

Panope of the river, amid her Oread friends,

Flees the lascivious rustic deities, the Fauns.

It is said too, when the fiery sun has stood in the middle of its orb,

That the Satyrs and the glassy sisters keep company in dances

At the common strait; when the more burning heat

Has afforded hours withdrawn from the gathering of men.

Then the Nymphs, leaping through their waters, play,

And the Satyrs plunge into the shallows, and, unskilled in swimming,

Come forth through the midst of their hands: while they seek

The slippery limbs of the salt water, and cherish the liquid waves in place of a body.

But these things have been beheld by none, nor known by sight;

May it be lawful for me to speak of them only in part; let the secret be veiled,

And let the reverence entrusted to their own streams lie hidden.

That sight is to be enjoyed openly, when the grey-green river

Answers the shady hill; the river’s waters seem

To grow leafy, and the stream seems planted with vine-shoots.

What is that color of the shallows, when Hesperus has brought forth

The late shadows, and pours down Mosella from the green mountain?

The whole ridges swim with rippling motions, and the absent

Vine-leaf trembles, and the vintage swells in the glassy waves;

The deluded boatman counts the green vines,

The boatman floating over the waters in his hollowed log-boat,

Where, through the middle of the stream, the image of the hill

Blends with itself, and the river weaves together the confines of the shadows.

What sweet processions too do these sights celebrate,

When oar-footed skiffs contend in the midst of the stream,

And enter into various windings, and along the green banks

Graze the budding shoots of the shorn meadows!

And the eager helmsmen at stern and prow rejoice,

While they watch the boyish band wandering over the river’s back

Pass by, then set aside their serious cares for play:

New delight excludes old anxieties.

Such games Liber looks down upon in the Cumaean waters,

When through the ridges planted with vines of sulphurous Gaurus,

And through the vineyards of steaming Vesuvius he walks;

When Venus, rejoicing in Augustus’ Actian triumphs,

Bade the wanton Loves play at fierce battles,

Such as the Nile’s fleets and the Latin triremes

Waged beneath Apollo’s citadel of Leucas;

Or such as the Euboean skiffs recall, through the resounding Avernus,

The Mylasean perils of the Pompeian war,

The harmless clashings of vessels, and the mock battles

Of the naval fight, such as, with Sicilian Pelorus looking on,

The blue sea renews beneath a green image.

No other appearance does the wanton youths’ ripening age add,

Nor the river, nor the painted beaks of the little skiff.

When the sun has drenched these with its Hyperionian heat,

It gives back nautical forms beneath the glassy deep,

And renders the bent shadows of the inverted body.

And as they ply their nimble motions to right and left,

And alternate the weights with changing oars,

The wave gives back other sailors as watery images.

The young sailors themselves rejoice in their own likeness,

Marveling that deceptive figures return from the river.

So, when about to display her arranged hair,

When first the nurse has brought to her dear foster-child

The gleaming, wide-spread splendor of the exploring mirror,

The little girl joyfully enjoys the game unknown to her,

And thinks she beholds the form of a sister girl:

She gives kisses to the shining metal that cannot be returned,

Or tries out the fixed pins, or at the edge of her forehead

Begins, with fluttering fingers, to spread out her hair:

Such is the nautical youth in the sport of shadows,

Enjoying ambiguous figures, both true and false.

But now, where the bank affords easy approach,

The ravaging crowd searches the whole deep,

Alas! For the fish, ill-defended in the innermost stream!

Here, drawing wet lines far off in the midst of the river,

He turns over the shoals deceived by knotted snares;

But here, where the river glides in a tranquil train,

He draws floating nets marked with cork.

That one, however, leaning over the rocks above the waves below,

Bends the curved tips of a slender rod,

Casting hooks clothed with deadly baits.

Which, after the wandering crowd of swimmers, ignorant of the trick,

Has seized with gaping jaws, and through their inmost throats

Have felt the late wounds of the hidden steel,

While they tremble, the sign steals in, and to the quivering shudder

Of the vibrating line the nodding rod responds in sympathy.

No delay: and with a hissing lash the boy snatches

The shaken prey sideways with his right hand. The blow receives

Breath, as once when whips crack through the void,

The air rattles, and the wind hisses as the air is stirred.

The wet plunder leaps upon the dry rocks,

And dreads the deadly weapons of the light of day.

And the vigor that remained beneath its own stream, in our air

Grows sluggish, and consumes its life in gasped breaths.

Now the sluggish flapping is shaken with a feeble body;

The numbed tail now suffers its last tremors,

Nor do the jaws close together; but the gills, breathing out

The air drawn in through their gaping mouths, return deadly gasps.

So, when the breath drives the smith’s fires,

The woolen bellows, playing at the reed-holes,

Receives and holds back the winds through alternating openings.

I myself have seen some, trembling at the very end of death,

Gather their breath: then, suddenly darted upward,

Give their bodies headlong, plunging down into the river beneath,

Regaining possession of the waters they had despaired of.

Whom the rash boy, unmindful of his loss, from on high

Attacks, and tries foolishly to seize by swimming.

So Glaucus of Anthedon, through the Boeotian straits,

After he had tasted Circe’s deadly herbs,

Took up the plants plucked amid the dying fish,

And, a new dweller, entered the Carpathian sea.

He, once mighty with hooks and net, the searcher of hidden

Nereus, accustomed to turn about the sea-goddess Tethys,

Now floated as a plunderer amid the captive throngs.

Such things they look down upon along the long blue stretch

Hanging from the rocks, with the villa's roof pressing upon them.

Which a river, wandering in winding curves, divides in the midst,

And the palaces adorn the alternate banks.

Who now would marvel at the Sestian sea, the strait of Nephele's Helle,

Or the waters of the Abydene youth?

Who at the sea bridged from the Chalcedonian shore,

The work of the great King, where in the midst of the waves the Euripus

Forbids the lands of Europe and Asia to meet?

Here is no dire raging of the strait, no savage

Battles of the raving north winds. Here one may join

The commerce of speech, and weave discourse with alternating utterance.

The soft shores mingle salutary voices,

Voices, and almost hands. Echo, meeting in the midst of the waves,

Returns the words resounding from either side.

Who could unfold, unraveling the innumerable adornments and fashions,

The architectural forms through each estate!

Let not the Gortynian wing-footed one, the builder of the Euboean temple,

Scorn this work—he who, attempting to fashion in gold

The fall of Icarus, was driven back by a father's grief.

Not Cecropian Philo; not he who, praised by his enemy,

Drew forth the famous contests of the Syracusan war.

Perhaps even the notable labors of men and of works

Were held here, celebrated in the tenth volume of Marcus'

Week; here flourished the arts of famed Menecrates,

And the hand admired at Ephesus, or on the citadel of Minerva

Ictinus, for whom an owl smeared with magic dye

Lures every kind of bird, and destroys it by its gaze.

Perhaps here was the builder of the Ptolemaic hall,

Dinochares, for whom into a square cone the summit

Rises, and the Pyramid itself consumes its own shadows,

He who, once bidden because of the compact of incestuous love,

Suspended Arsinoe in the air of the Pharian temple.

For indeed the true Magnesian stone breathes beneath the vault of the roof,

And draws the fastened girl by her iron-bound hair.

These, then, or men like these, it is worthy to believe

Set the scenes of houses in the lands of the Belgians,

Building lofty villas as ornaments of the river.

This one stands lofty upon a ridge of native rock;

This one is founded on the ledge of a projecting bank;

This one draws back, and claims for itself in its bosom the captured river.

That one, holding the hill which looms high above the stream,

Commands easy views over cultivated and rugged ground alike;

And thus a rich outlook enjoys its own lands.

Nay, even one set with humble foot in watered meadows

Compensates for the natural blessings of the lofty mountain,

And threatening, bursts with its lofty roof into the heavens,

Displaying a tall tower, as Memphian Pharos does.

It is proper to this one to catch fish enclosed in a walled pool

Among the sunny new-plots of the rocks.

This one, resting on the highest ridges, gazes down below

Upon the gliding rivers, with a view already growing dim.

Why should I recount the halls set beside the greening meadows?

And the roofs nodding above innumerable columns?

Why the baths that steam, built upon a sulphurous ledge,

When Mulciber, drawn in from the boiling covered place,

Rolls his panting flames through the hollow walls,

Gathering the enclosed vapor with exhaling heat?

I myself have seen men, wearied with much sweat of the bath,

Disdain the pools and the cold of the fish-ponds,

That they might enjoy living waters; then, refreshed by the river,

With applauding swimming strokes drive back the cold stream.

But if a guest from the Cumaean shores should come hither,

He would believe that Euboean Baiae had given her image in exile

To these places: such is the culture and the splendor

That allures, and no luxury breeds mere indulgence.

But what, finally, is the limit for me in telling of your blue-green waters,

And in recounting the Moselle worthy to be named with the sea?

That innumerable rivers, through different mouths, far and wide,

Rush into you? Though they might delay their courses;

But they hasten to spend their name in you.

For the Sura, too, aided in its course by the shrines of Pronaea and Nemesis,

Hastens not to prove unworthy beneath your waves,

The Sura, gracing you with its beginnings of flow:

More nobly mingled under your name, than if

It should confound its unknown mouths with its father sea:

To you the swift Celbis, to you the Erubris, famed for its marble,

Hasten to lap you as soon as possible with their servant waters,

The Gelbis, celebrated for its noble fish: that one

Turning the millstones of Ceres in headlong whirl,

And drawing the shrieking saws through smooth marble slabs,

Hears perpetual tumults from either bank.

I pass over the slender Lesura, and the thin Drahonus,

Nor do I claim the not-to-be-scorned streams of the Salmona.

The ship-bearing Saravus, long since with its wave-sounding mass,

Calls me with its twisted garment: it, which long delayed its stream,

That it might roll its weary mouths beneath the walls of Augusta.

No less is he, who, gliding silently through the rich fields,

Grazes the fruit-bearing banks, the happy Alisontia,

A thousand others, as each is more urged by its own impulse,

Desire to be yours. So great is the sweep, or the mass, of the hastening waves.

But if to you, divine Moselle, Smyrna had given her own poet,

Or famed Mantua had given hers:

The Simois, remembered on the Trojan shores, would yield,

Nor would the Tiber dare to prefer its own honors.

Grant me pardon, mighty Rome. Let envy, I pray, be driven off and depart,

And Nemesis, unknown to the Latin tongue,

Guard the seat of empire, and the parents of Rome.

Hail, great parent of crops and of men, Moselle.

You, famed nobles adorn; you, youth trained in war;

You, an eloquence rivaling the Latin tongue, adorns.

Nay, even character, and a genius joyful beneath a stern brow,

Nature has granted to your nurslings.

Nor does Rome alone display ancient Catos:

Nor does Aristides alone, sole observer of the just and equitable,

Prevail and give luster to ancient Athens.

But why have I wandered too far with loosened reins,

Overcome by love of you, wearing away my praises? Put away,

My Muse, the lyre, its strings struck for the last song.

The time will come, when, soothing my cares with the pursuits of humble leisure,

And warming myself in the sunny old age,

The honor of my subject shall commend me: when man by man

I shall sing the deeds of the Belgians, and the famed glories of ancestral customs.

The Pierian maidens shall spin for me soft songs with a fine thread,

And shall run through webs fitted with a slender weft:

To my spindles too shall purple be given.

Who then shall not be named by me? I shall recall the peaceful

Farmers: and the shrewd in law, and the mighty in speech,

A lofty defense for the accused: whom the council of townsmen beheld as their highest nobles, and their own senate:

Whom the celebrated eloquence of the toga-clad school

Brought to the renown of the ancient Quintilian.

And those who governed their own cities, and made illustrious

Their tribunal pure of blood, and their axes innocent;

Or held the peoples of Italy, or the north-born Britons,

Under the second title of the prefectures.

And he who ruled Rome, the head of affairs, the people and the fathers,

Under almost the first name: although

He had presided over the foremost. Fortune hastens at last to discharge

Her own error: and, making up for the rewards

Already tasted, she will now restore the summit of true honor

To be sought again by noble grandsons. But now let the work

Begun be unfolded: and, the praise of men deferred,

Let us speak, along a joyful course through the green countryside,

Of the happy river, and let us dedicate it in the waves of the Rhine.

Now, Rhine, spread your blue bays, and your veil

Green with glass-like sheen, and mark out the space of the new stream,

To be swelled by brotherly waters. Nor are the rewards in the waves

Alone, but because, coming to the walls of the Augustan city,

It beheld the joined triumphs of Son and Father,

The enemy driven out beyond the Neckar, and Lopodunum,

And the source of the Danube unknown to Latin annals.

This laurel has just come from the war brought low:

Soon it will bear others and others still. Go forward joined together,

And drive the purple sea forward with your twin course.

Nor fear to seem the lesser, most beautiful Rhine:

The guest has nothing of envy in him. You shall possess an everlasting

Name: adopt your brother, secure in your fame.

Rich in waters, rich in nymphs, generous to both,

Your channel will extend its parting waters between twin banks,

And will pour forth common paths through different mouths.

Strength will be added to you, which Francia, and the Chamavi,

And the Germans will tremble at: then you will be held the true frontier.

So great a river will add to you a twin name.

And though you flow as one from your source, you shall be called two-horned.

I, tracing my origin from the Bituriges Vivisci people,

Now known through new alliances by the hospitality of the Belgae,

Ausonius, a Latin name, by fatherland and home

Set among the farthest of the Gauls, and lofty Pyrene,

Where fertile Aquitania tempers noble manners,

Sing boldly with slender confidence. It is granted me

To have brushed lightly this sacred river with a slight libation of the Muse.

Nor do I aim at praise; I ask for pardon. You have many,

Kindly river, who are wont to stir the sacred streams

Of the Aonian maidens, and to drain the whole of Aganippe.

But I, whatever measure my vein of eloquence has given itself,

When my father Augustus and my son, my greatest care,

Shall send me back to Bordeaux, my homeland and the nest of my old age,

Adorned with the Ausonian fasces and curule honor,

After the season of my completed service,

I shall pursue more fully the praises of the northern river.

I shall add the cities beneath whose silent channel you glide:

And the walls that look out upon you from ancient ramparts:

I shall add, founded as defenses against uncertain affairs,

But now, for the Belgae freed from care, not camps but granaries.

I shall add the happy settlers on either bank,

And you amid the labors of men and oxen,

Binding your banks close, and cutting through the rich tilled fields.

Not the Loire will set itself before you, nor the headlong Aisne;

Not the Marne, set between the borders of Gaul and Belgica;

Not even the Charente, flowing back with Saintonge's tide.

You will yield to the river rolled down from the cold mountain of the Dordogne:

And Gaul will set the gold-bearing Tarn after you.

And rushing madly through far-rolling rocks

Into the purple sea, yet, having first adored

The divine power of mistress Moselle, the Tarbellian Adour will go.

The horned Moselle, to be celebrated through foreign shores,

Nor to be celebrated only in the places where, at your highest source,

You put forth the golden honor of a bull's brow:

And where, winding, you draw your peaceful courses through the fields:

Or where, beneath the Germanic harbors, you release your mouths:

If any honor will deign to breathe upon my slender muse,

If anyone will deem it worthy to lose his leisure in these songs,

You shall go into the mouths of men, and be cherished with joyful song.

The springs, the living lakes, the blue rivers shall know you:

The ancient groves, the glory of the countryside, shall know you;

The Drôme, and the Durance, uncertain with its scattered banks, shall know you,

And the Alpine rivers shall honor you, and the Rhone, which flows through

The double city, and gives its name to the right-hand bank.

I shall commend you to the blue pools, and to the great Garonne,

Loud with resounding rivers, and to the sea.

Ausonius to symmachus, greeting.

There lay hidden among my trifles an ignoble little book—would that it had stayed hidden, and had not perished, like a shrew-mouse, by its own betrayal. When I, like Euclio's hen, had dug it out from the dust and mold of its pages, I shook it out and read it over again, and, like a greedy money-lender, I preferred to take up the base coin rather than bury it. Then, thinking to myself not that Catullian line, "To whom do I give my charming new little book?" but the harsher and truer one, "To whom do I give my charmless, rough little book?" I did not search long. For you came to mind—you whom, if I had the power of choosing from among all men, I would always choose alone. So I have sent to you trifles emptier than Sicilian nonsense, so that when you are doing nothing you may read these, and so that you may not be doing nothing, you may defend them.

This trifling little book, then, torn already for some time by private, and now by public reading, will at last come into your hands. You will either, like Aesculapius, restore it to life, or, like Plato, with Vulcan's help, free it from disgrace—if it ought not to attain to fame. The occasion of this little foolery was as follows: on campaign—a time, as you know, of military license—there was an invitation made at my table, not that of the drinking-bout kind, to be drunk in the Greek fashion, but that from Horace's eclogue, in which, because of the middle of the night, and the new moon, and Murena's augurship, the bard, astonished, calls thrice for thrice three cups. My poetic itch at once began to carve out this passage concerning the number three; and since that disease is easily contagious, I wish the itching might spread to you too, and that you, adding the tint of your correction, might apply the sponge that finishes off the unfinished work of the ill-foaming horse.

And lest you deny me my boast, I finished the verses, begun during breakfast, before the hour of dinner—that is, while I was drinking, and a little before I began to drink. Let the judgment, then, be proportioned to the matter and the time. But do you also read this very thing a little more cheerfully and sweetly: for it is unjust to judge a not-quite-sober poet by an abstemious reader. Nor does it escape me that there will be someone who will condemn this jest of ours with a sharp nose and wrinkled brow, and deny that I have touched upon everything pertaining to the numbers three and nine: to him, if he speaks truly, I shall admit it; if unjustly, I shall deny it. For if he is fair-minded, let him reckon that what I omitted was not forgotten by me, but passed over. Then, whatever sort of man he is, let him consider with himself how many things concerning these matters he would not have found, had he himself sought them.

Let him know too that I have not used up everything I dug out, and that of some things offered I made no use. For how many things concerning the number three did I knowingly neglect—the tenses, and persons, genders, and degrees, the nine natural meters along with trimeters, all of grammar and music, and the medical books, thrice-greatest Hermes, and the first lover of philosophy, and Varro's numbers, and whatever the profane crowd does not know. Finally—and this is easy—since he himself will have found many things, let him compare himself with me: the busy man with the idle one, the well-fed with the abstemious, my jest and play with his diligence and fault-finding. For one man may find more in one respect, another in another; no one finds everything.

But if to someone I shall also seem obscure, before him you shall defend me thus: first, that idylls of this kind, unless they are somewhat obscure, will amount to nothing; then, that the nature of numbers is not a bulrush, to be without knots. Finally, if I shall have seemed obscure even to you, to whom nothing is either neglected or not understood, then indeed shall I be happy, having achieved what I aimed at—that you should seek me out, long for me, think of me. Farewell.

Drink thrice, or as many times three; such is the mystic law,

Whether three to the drinker, or thrice three multiplied,

By uneven nines to weave together the cube.

The same right belongs to three as to thrice three. In these are all things:

The form of man begun, and the completion of the full-term birth,

And whoever holds, by nine times nine, the final limit of fate.

Three brothers born of Ops, three Fates in order

Vesta, Ceres, and Juno, sisters after the manner of women.

Thence come the three-forked thunderbolts of Jove. Thence Cerberus.

Thence the Trident: and the threefold egg of Helen with her brothers.

Thrice the fresh purple filled the spindles of Nestor.

And thrice as long-lived, by thrice the age, is the crow.

Whom, spinning out the ages nine times three,

The bronze-footed stags surpass by thrice three Nestors,

Whose three ages the bird of Phoebus outlives.

Whom the Gangetic bird, nine times older still, outstrips,

The bird whose temples are radiant with its nest of cinnamon.

Threefold is Hecate, threefold the faces of the virgin Diana.

Three Graces, three Fates, threefold voice, threefold elements,

Three Sirens in Trinacria. All things in threes.

Three birds, three demigoddesses, three demi-maidens.

Bidden to contend for the palm, thrice three against the Camenae,

Singing with mouth, hand, breath, boxwood, lyre, voice.

Three parts of wisdom, three Punic wars, the trimestral

Changes of years and of the heavens, and through the shadow of night

The threefold watches. Thrice the clear signs of the coming dawn

The late sentinel proclaims, having caught Mars.

And he who was conceived on the eve of a threefold-lengthened night,

Fixed the commanded spoils upon four times three trophies.

And the lyric bards are equal in number to the Muses,

Whom once Phoebus's right hand held, three alone:

But Cithaeron consecrated thrice three of bronze

By the religion of the fathers, who feared to slight the six.

Three triple-night festivals were celebrated at the Terentine games:

Such as the biennial rites at Thebes for twice-born Bacchus.

The first three battles of the Thracians, in three wars in order,

The sons of Junius sent as offerings to their father's tomb.

She too, seeking her marriage-bed through a threefold riddle,

Who was two-footed, and four-footed, and alone three-footed in all,

Terrified Boeotia—bird, lion, maiden, threefold

Sphinx, a bird in wings, a beast in feet, a maiden in face.

Three-fold companies gleam in the Tarpeian temple.

Human dwellings are made complete by arts of three kinds,

That which sets the stones for walls, that which lays the beams for the roof,

And that which adorns the plastering with its final finish.

Hence the Bromian quadrantal, and hence the Sicilian medimnus.

The one is explained by threes, the other by twice three, in practice.

In Physics there are three first things: God, the world, the given form.

Thrice the universal kind: begetter, begetress, begotten.

Through three species the rule of triangles runs,

Equilateral, or with paired sides, or unequal in all.

The perfect number comes together in three parts: so that the same

May be resolved, gathered thrice threefold, through thrice three.

Three, the first, has both even and odd, and a middle: but this same

One divides five as well as seven, as it does three.

And, placed in the whole number beneath the point of the center,

It marks off the solid thirds as the cube proceeds,

Separating equal parts out of the odd number three,

And for even numbers a triple middle: since four and six

And twice four alike share the same navel-point.

Threefold law, which the twelve tables thrice sanctioned,

Sacred, private, and that which is common to the people everywhere.

Threefold is the kind of interdicts: whence I shall have been repelled

By force, or "in which of the two," or "of whose goods."

Threefold is freedom, and threefold the diminution of civil status.

Threefold is the manner of speaking: the sublime, the moderate,

And the plain-spun. Threefold too is the form of healing,

To one belongs reason, to another method, to another the name of experience.

And medicine is threefold: to preserve, to guard against, to heal.

Three styles of orators: that which Rhodes, ruled by the Colossus,

Loved, and that which you, Attic Athens, cherished,

And that which from the stage-boards to the stern benches drew

The prose of Asia, imitating in its clauses the rhythms of choral song.

Hence the tripods of Orpheus, because there are three things, earth, water, flame.

Threefold the position of the stars, their distance, their form.

And their measure, and threefold the mother-music of measures,

Mingled in books, hidden in the stars, published on the stages.

Martial Rome threefold, in cavalry, plebs, senate.

By this number the tribes, and the Tribunes from the sacred mount.

Three troops of horsemen: three names of the more noble.

Three names belong to the strings: three names belong to the month.

Threefold Geryon: threefold the frame of the Chimaera.

Scylla threefold, compounded of three, dog, maiden, fish.

The Gorgons, and the Harpies, and the Erinyes in a triple band.

And the three fate-telling Sibyls share one common name:

Whose threefold books hold their fated songs:

Which the care of thrice five men preserves.

Drink thrice. Three is the number above all, three the one God.

Here too, lest this game run on with an idle number,

Let it have thrice ten threes, and ten times nine.

Ausonius to his Paulus, greeting. I have sent to you a technopaegnion, a useless little work of my idle leisure. The little verses are begun with monosyllables, and ended with monosyllables. Nor did the rocky difficulty stop here, but there was added to the wretchedness of contriving this, that the same monosyllable which was the end of the last verse should become the beginning of the next. Say then, O delay, and O punishment, indeed I have taken pains over a vain thing. It is a small matter, and is disdained when unconnected, and is entangled when it is something out of nothing, or is caught out. Yet I have labored, that it might have something historical, or something dialectical. For the necessity of this observance excluded any poetic or sophistic lightness.

In sum, there is nothing for you to marvel at, but—with a few letters added—there is something for you to pity, and not to wish to emulate: and if you too should descend to this, you would gain greater trouble, to the detriment of your wit and eloquence, than delight from the desire of imitation.

Verses begun and ended with monosyllables, so that they run back from the end of the verse to the beginning.

Fragile things of men chance nourishes, and rules, and destroys.

Chance, doubtful and ever tottering: which flattering hope cherishes.

Hope bounded by no age: whose limit is death.

Death, greedy, plunges into infernal darkness, which night follows.

Night, about to yield her turn: when golden light shall return.

Light, granted as a gift of the gods: whose forerunner is the sun.

The sun, from whom not even Mars, mighty in arms, hides the theft of Venus.

Mars, sprung from no father: whom the Thracian people worship.

A people unbridled among men: for whom all wrong rushes into what is lawful.

It is lawful for men to be slaughtered in sacrifice: such is the fierce custom of the place.

The fierce custom of a bold people: whom no law restrains.

Law, which right established by natural authority.

Right, born of the piety of men, right, the fixed mind of God.

Mind, which waters with heavenly sense the deserving heart.

Heart, lively, having the likeness of the world, the vigor and force of the soul.

Force, however, there is none here: it is truly a jest and a thing of nothing.

As in the old saying, spring follows winter, where now I weave the wantonness of similar trifles, and these little verses end with monosyllables, though free at the beginning, yet lawful at the end. But I have labored, so that, as far as it could seem to the most indulgent ears, absurd things might sound in harmony, tasteless things might be admitted, disjointed things might fit together: in short, that even bitter things might have sweetness, and unpleasant things charm, and rough things smoothness. All of which, since unpleasing material takes away their grace, let a kindly reading reconcile. Trust your own to me more confidently too, since they are better. But, as we began with a proverb, let us end with a proverb: mules scratch each other in turn.

Rival of the gods, imitator of nature, all-producing art.

That my game may strive toward a peaceful end, be the guide of the work.

Strict, though unpleasant, and a law ill-suited to verses.

Yet under so great a judge it will receive the right to speak.

Indeed glory is given even to trifles, unless chance forbids it.

A new tooth marks the first seven years in boys.

A stronger voice anticipates the years of puberty.

Unconquered by winds and by suns is the brow of men.

Sinews together with flesh form the hard bone.

The restless, lively, smooth, keen, warm heart palpitates.

Whence the senses thrive, which the ruling mind quickens.

And the talkative mouth turns them into words by a measured law.

How strong is it, what a small portion of man, the dark-blue bile!

How slender, and how great a mass the leg bears of the body!

Under what weight the foot guides our journey!

Often in marriages a dowry becomes harmful, if too great.

Each sex is powerful, but the male prevails in command.

He who will do rightly, not he who lords it, will be king.

Strife vexes friendships, and dissolves treaties.

Begin, whatever you do: the first part is as good as the whole of the work.

Praise inserts the deserving into heaven, and joins them with the gods.

A city is crowded both with learning and with vices.

Among safe cities, a citadel is more fortified than cities.

Great is the honor of gold. Yet the price of gold is bronze.

The long day is laborious for man, but night brings mildness.

Where the region of the Ethiopians lacks it, a sleepless, restless people,

Where always, by eternal turning, bright light shines.

There are also monosyllables of the sky-dwellers. First of the gods, Right,

Which is Themis among the Greeks. After her, Rhea, who is Ops among the Latins.

Then the brother of Jove and Consus, Tartarean Dis.

And the sister and wife of her brother, queen of the gods, Force.

And he who is borne on a four-horse chariot, the father, Sun.

And he who stirs the fierce motions of war, mighty in arms, Mars:

Whom never piety, never good Peace disturbs,

Nor shall you be passed over in silence, worshipper of the groves, Mænalian Pan,

Nor the Genius of houses, the Lar born of Larunda.

And, prevailing among the rivers of Italy, sulfurous Nar.

And she who expiates the perjuries of the gods, night-colored Styx.

And Libs, the sail-borne sea's stiller, dark South-wester.

And Hope, never failing the good of men in doubtful times.

Nor will I pass over in silence our foods, which ancient custom holds,

To which sea-salt is added as a stimulant.

Once the common food of cattle, and of man, was the acorn.

Indeed, before the grain-eared crop was available in the fields.

Then spelt, and from the flour of spelt, purifying grain-meal.

With which once the plebs of the sons of Romulus furnished their tables.

Hence food, hence drink, when porridge was diluted with water.

Among grains there is a seed matching pepper in bite, git.

And from Pelusian seed, flat, smooth lentil.

And the five-kinded nut, defended by a double shell.

And that which pleases both food and drink, the sharp labor of bees, honey.

That liquid of a new nature: on whose top the dregs float.

A new solace was given to thee, Phoebus, by the Oebalian flower.

By another flower is the sacred fountain guilty of the death of Narcissus.

The lightning-swift boar is the evil glory of the slaying of Adonis.

The Junonian cloud makes sport of the perjured Lapith.

The Parnassian Delphic lot mocks even the son of Aeacus.

The Thracian, Libyan, and Cimmerian straits are cleft by the ox.

Not without the fate of a Hamadryad falls the tree-trunk beam.

By which the Saturnian sickle cut off the parts whence Venus was born.

Dry among the Scythian rocks stood the cross for the birds.

Whence from the body of Prometheus came the bloody dew.

It sprinkles the crags, and the whetstone breeds dire aconite.

When Ibycus perished, the high-flying crane was his avenger.

At the tomb of the son of Aeacus, the sister-in-law of Andromache was slain.

In the Argive prison a slow death came upon Philopoemen.

The third spolia opima were given by the despoiled Aremorican Lar.

A late death by poisoned draught took away Hannibal.

How great the affairs of Asia which treachery gave undeservedly to death!

The avenging torch blazed from the Euboean rocks.

He stands at the cup of Jove, whom the Dardanian Tros begot.

The Cretan man was borne aloft through the air on swift wings.

The savage Thracian brought upon thee, Philomela, incestuous violence.

The Lydian is barbarous, the Getan a slave, the Phrygian effeminate.

The Ligurians are deceitful: the Carian is held in no esteem.

The garment-flowing Chinese combs out woodland fleeces.

Known among portents is the Theban three-bodied Sphinx.

Known too to the cradles of little ones is the woman-formed Strix.

When the year at its rising unlocks the flower-bearing spring,

All things flourish: every grove grows green: the golden-haired countryside gleams.

And the stock, which is to cast its shade, is drawn up from its very roots.

No snow flows down to earth gathered in dense falling.

The scent of flowers breathes forth, as the glory of Mount Libanus, frankincense.

Who submits to punishment in a capital trial? The surety.

What if the suit be about money—who then shall be given? The pledge.

Who is matched against the Mirmillo? The Thracian of equal hand.

What name among the virtues belongs to Mercury? Thief.

Censers and bowls—what is the third kind of vessel of the gods? The dish.

What land, girt by the sea, produced Hippocrates? Cos.

Does the flock, or rather the kingdom, trouble the daughter of Minos? The flock.

What besides a cloud was set upon the Phaeacians? A mountain.

Say, when food ceases, who is the fatter for sleep? The dormouse.

Say what makes hides fit for shields? Glue.

What will be the nominative of the ablative case "sponte"? "spons."

What four-footed creature is joined with omens of birds? The mouse.

What floats upon the sea, which does not swim in a river? Pitch.

What contains twice-six equal parts? The as.

If a third part be lacking, what remains? The bes.

I, the leader of the elements, flourish in Latin studies.

And I am inscribed last among the Argolic characters, Omega.

As I am what the Aeolians' ε is, so I avail as this Latin E.

I stand for what E is in Latium, ever short, the Doric voice E.

This smooth and clear sound the Attic race denies, O.

What Omega and Greek O together yield, the Roman voice compensates, O.

I am a letter like Iota, a full-voiced command, I.

Unknown to Cecropian characters, sounding a mournful note, U.

I lie open at Pythagoras's forked path with ambiguous branches, Y.

Among Greek words I am never seen at the end, M.

Zeta lying down, if it rises, will be the character read as N.

Imitating the Maeander and its wandering bends, I wander, Ξ.

The divided monosyllabic Italian form of Beta, B.

Not the shape, but the sound of Delta I bear, the Roman D.

The shape of a hostile yoke will make this letter, Π.

If you write Ausonian P, I shall be the Cecropian P.

And the Greek Rho will be changed into the Latin P.

As a mast bears a yard-arm at its top, so, T.

This breath, quickening the most delicate things with its blast, H.

This letter added only to three names in Latium, K.

After it prevailed, having served formerly in place of Gamma, C.

And gave another in its place, doubled upon its inscription, Q.

Girt with two loops, together with Iota, you shall read Θ.

In Latium the number ten, in Argolic script, X.

This crane-like shape is stretched forth, the Palamedic Φ.

I was once Boeotian Cappa, now the Latin κ.

A forked shape, three-horned in form, nearly the last, Ψ.

You who now hiss too fiercely, wordsmith of elegant trifles,

Do you condemn trifles? By no means: when the merchandise has a price, "merx,"

As Ennius records, it fills you with joyful "gau."

Let the livid mind of men boil up curdled bile, "pus."

Say, what do the "catalecta" of Maro signify? Among them he set "al,"

Of the Celts, and there follows nothing clearer than "tau."

And what is that "min," ill-mixed with "germano," death-bringing?

Why does one thing, "res," denote command, lawsuit, and love?

Is "fil" a foreign word, or a Latin one, for "son"?

When a bridge is laid upon twin boats over the sea, is it a "pons"?

Maro in the Bucolics said "sepes"—why does Cicero say "seps"?

The usual word, and most known to all, if you recall, is "lac,"

Why should the reasoning be condemned that makes it rather "lact"?

Or is the deadly Libyan beast, "seps," a Roman word?

If "sons" (guilty) is good, its opposite, then "insons" is guilty too, the contrary.

Why does he who is rich in wealth bear the name "Dis," from Stygian Jove?

Whence does the Rudine poet say, "the high-sounding home of the gods, coel"?

And by whose custom does he add "do" to build up "endo suam"?

Or speaking of foliage, why does he say "frus" for poplar-leaf?

But whither do I proceed? What is the end, what the measure, and the "calx"?

Forgive me, Pacatus, good, learned, gentle man.

This whole work is scattered, like the hair of Antiphila; peace, "pax."

AUSONIUS greets Paulinus. Read through this also, if you have the time, a frivolous and worthless little work: which neither labor has hammered out, nor care has polished: without acuteness of wit, and without the ripeness of delay. Those who first amused themselves with this sort of patchwork call it a Cento. It is the sole business of memory to gather scattered things and make whole what has been torn apart: a thing you might laugh at rather than praise. For it, if it were put up for sale at the sigillaria auction, neither would Afranius offer a farthing, nor would Plautus offer his Stichus in exchange. For it irks me to have dishonored the dignity of Virgilian verse with such playful material. But what was I to do? It was commanded: and—the most powerful kind of command—he who could have commanded, asked instead; namely the Emperor Valentinian, a man learned in my judgment, who had once described a wedding in a game of this sort, in verses indeed apt, and in a festive arrangement.

Then, wishing to test how much he excelled by comparison with our effort, he ordered me to compose something similar on the same subject. Understand how scrupulous a matter this was for me. I did not wish to be preferred, nor to be placed second: since, in the judgment of others too, either foolish flattery would be exposed, if I yielded, or insolence, if I stood out as a rival. I therefore undertook it as one who refuses, and happily, while remaining obedient, I kept his favor, and as victor gave no offense. This was hastily composed in one day, with an added night's work, and when I lately found it among my scribbled papers, I have such confidence in your candor and affection that I did not withhold even things to be laughed at from your severity.

Receive, then, a little work continuous out of disconnected pieces, one out of diverse things, a jest out of serious matters, ours out of another's: lest, among sacred things and fables, you marvel either at Thyonianus or at Virbius, the one refashioned from Dionysus, the other from Hippolytus: and if you allow me to teach, though I myself need teaching, I will explain what a Cento is. From various places, and from diverse senses, a certain structure of verse is solidified, so that into one line either two half-lines cut off come together, or one and the following with the middle one. For to place two whole lines side by side is inept, and three in a row is mere nonsense.

It is spread, however, through all the caesuras that the heroic verse admits: so that either a penthemimeres may join with the remaining anapaest, or a trochaic segment with the latter part; or seven half-feet with the choric anapaest; or, after a dactyl and a half-foot, whatever remains of the hexameter: you might say it is like the game the Greeks called ostomachia. Those little bones indeed have in all fourteen geometric shapes. For they are equilateral or triangular, with extended lines, or right angles, or oblique ones. They themselves call them isosceles, or isopleura, and also orthogonia and scalena. By various combinations of these little pieces are simulated a thousand kinds of shapes: an elephant beast, or a wild boar, a flying goose, and a gladiator crouching in his armor, a hunter and a barking dog, indeed even a tower and a cup, and other such innumerable figures, which one arranges more skillfully than another. But the arrangement of the skilled is a marvel, the joining of the unskilled a joke.

Having said this beforehand, you will know that I have imitated the latter. This little work of a Cento, then, is handled just as that game is: in like manner diverse senses, so that they agree; things adopted, so that they seem akin; foreign matter, that it not shine through; borrowed pieces, that they not betray force; density, that it not bulge out beyond measure; gaps, that they not lie open. If all these things seem to you as has been prescribed, you will say that I have composed a cento, and, since I then served under my emperor, you will order my pay to proceed among the many. But if otherwise, you will strike me off the rolls, so that, the whole heap of verse being returned to its own treasury, the lines may go back whence they came. Farewell.

Receive these things into your minds: and turn your glad thoughts,

Both alike in spirit, both distinguished by outstanding arms:

Both in their flower, a race unconquerable in war.

And you, the elder: for that you go forth under greater

Auspices is manifest and trustworthy. None more just than

He, nor greater in piety, nor in war and arms.

And you, his boy, the second hope of great Rome,

Flower of the ancients, and valor of men, my greatest care,

Recalling your grandsire by name, and your father in spirit

and hands.

I sing not unbidden. Its own beginnings will bring

to each man his labor and his fortune: for me it is right to take up what is bidden.

The awaited day was at hand; and for the worthy nuptials

Mothers and men, and youths before the faces of their parents

Gather; and they recline upon the spread purple.

Servants pour water over hands, and load with baskets

The gifts of laborious Ceres; and the roasted flesh

Of rich game they bring, a very long series of things:

The kind of birds and beasts, and the following roe-deer

Are not absent from these, nor sheep, nor wanton kids,

And the watery race, does, and fleeing stags.

Before the eyes, and between the hands, are mellow fruits.

After hunger was removed,

and the desire for eating restrained;

They set up great mixing-bowls, and serve Bacchus.

They sing sacred songs. They clap in dances: and speak verses.

And the Thracian priest with his long robe

Answers with measures the seven differences of tones.

But on another side, the double pipe gives forth its song,

For all a single rest from their labors: and all, leaving

The tables, rise up. Through the joyful thresholds, thronging,

They run about, and vary their turns—people and elders,

Matrons, boys—and they roll their voices through the wide

Halls; lamps hang down from the golden panelled ceilings.

At last there comes forth Venus' most rightful charge,

Now ripe for a husband, now marriageable in the fullness of her years:

Bearing the face and bearing of a maiden. Upon whom a great

Blush cast fire; and it ran across her heated face,

Rolling her intent eyes: and it burns by the seeing.

Her all the youth, poured out from houses and fields,

And the crowd of mothers admire, the traces of her first

White foot, and she had let her hair be spread to the winds.

She wears garments embroidered with a woof of gold,

The adornment of Argive Helen: and such as she is wont

To appear

To the heaven-dwellers, and as great as golden Venus opposite:

Such was her appearance. Such, glad, she carried herself

To her in-laws; and, raised high, she sat upon the throne.

But on the other side, through the lofty doors, brought himself in

A boy marking his first unshorn youth upon his face,

With a golden cloak embroidered with the needle, around which

Very much Meliboean purple ran in a double meander,

And a tunic which his mother had woven with soft gold:

His face, his shoulders like a god's, and the light of youth.

Just as when Lucifer, bathed in Ocean's wave,

Lifted his sacred face to heaven, so he bore his face,

So his eyes, and, mad with haste, stretched toward the threshold.

Love troubles him, and fixes his gaze upon the maiden.

He tasted kisses, and clung fast, embracing her right hand.

The boys march forward, and likewise before the faces of the parents

Bring gifts, a mantle stiff with figures and gold,

Carrying offerings, talents of gold and ivory,

And a chair, and a covering painted with saffron acanthus.

Vast silver upon the tables, and about the neck a necklace

Of pearls, and a double crown of gems and gold.

To her is given a slave-woman, and twin sons at the breast.

To him, four young men, and as many unwed maidens:

On all alike, hair cut short, and upon the top of the breast

A pliant ring of twisted gold about the neck.

Then the mothers, poured forth in eagerness, lead the way to the threshold.

But the equal chorus, boys and unwedded girls,

Play with rough verses and utter songs.

O joined to a worthy husband, most welcome bride,

Be happy, having tried the first labors of Lucina,

And, a mother, take the cups of Maeonian Bacchus.

Scatter, bridegroom, the nuts; wreathe these altars with the fillet,

Flower of the ancients, and manly virtue. To you a wife is given,

That she may spend with you, for such deserts, all her years,

And make you a father by fair offspring.

Fortunate both, if the pious powers can do anything.

"Live happily," said the Fates, in concordant will of destiny fixed,

"Run on, ye spindles, unwavering."

The day was breathing forth, borne back with saffron morn.

A keener breeze had gone before the Eastern steeds,

Urging the summer-bearing day to come the sooner.

I was wandering through the well-watered crossways of the fourfold gardens,

Desiring to quicken myself with the ripened day.

I saw the congealed frosts hanging along the bent grasses,

Or standing upon the tops of the herbs;

And round drops playing together on the spread cabbage leaves,

Then heavy with the weight of heavenly water.

I saw the rose-gardens rejoicing in Paestan culture,

Dewy, as the new morning-star was rising.

A rare gem gleamed white among the frosted shrubs,

Doomed to perish at the first rays of day.

You would doubt whether the dawn was stealing the blush from the roses,

Or giving it, and whether the rising day was tinting the flowers.

One dew, one color, and one morning for both,

For one goddess, Venus, is mistress of the star and of the flower.

Perhaps too one scent; but that loftier one flows abroad

Through the air; this nearer one breathes out more strongly.

The goddess of Paphos, common to star and to flower,

Ordains that the hue of a single purple-shell should be theirs.

There was a difference of moments in which the newborn

Buds of the flowers parted into equal spaces.

This one is green, covered by a narrow cap of leaves;

That one purple-red marks with a slender leaf.

This one opens the lofty summits of its first obelisk,

Releasing the point of its purple head.

That one was unfolding the folds gathered at its crown,

Already planning to count itself among its own petals.

Without delay, it laid open the glory of its laughing cup,

Revealing the dense seeds of enclosed saffron.

This one, which had just glowed with the whole fire of its tresses,

Pale, is now forsaken, its petals fallen.

I marveled at the swift plunder of fleeting age,

And that even as they were born, the roses had grown old.

Behold, even as I speak, the crimson tress of the ruddy flower has fallen,

And the earth, covered, gleams with its blush.

So many forms, so many births, and so many varied changes

One day discloses; one day brings to an end.

We complain, O Nature, that the grace of flowers is brief,

You snatch away at once the gifts just shown to our eyes.

As long as one day, so long is the age of roses,

Which, scarcely come to bloom, joined old age presses down.

The rose which ruddy Dawn beheld but now being born,

That same, returning at late evening, she saw grown old.

But well is it that, though doomed to perish within a few days,

It prolongs its own age by that which succeeds it.

Gather, maiden, the roses, while the bloom is new and youth is new,

And remember that thus your own age hastens on.

There are the forums; if the house is anxious with cares; if the care

of the household follows the traveler abroad; if fresh

losses ever await the merchant; if base want forbids idleness;

if toil vexes the farmer, if shipwrecking horror disgraces

the sea; and heavy are the penalties of the unmarried life,

and heavier still the vain watchfulness of cautious husbands.

Is not the work of Mars bloody? Are not the base gains

of usury, and swift interest, the slaughter of the poor?

Every age has its care; to all their own age is displeasing.

Sense is absent from little suckling babes; and for boys

hard are the first lessons, and rash is the youth of young men.

Fortune afflicts men through wars, through the sea,

through wraths and ambushes, and chained labors

ever to be exchanged for heavier ones. Old age itself,

long awaited, and desired by ill-omened prayers,

exposes the body, torn by countless diseases.

We all alike despise the present; and it is agreed

that certain men would not wish to become gods. Juturna cries out against it:

to what end did she give eternal life? Why was the condition

of death taken away? So under the Caucasian crag Prometheus

calls Saturn's son to witness, and never ceases by name

to accuse Jove, because everlasting life was given him.

Look too to the cultivation of the mind: thus indeed

an unhappy care for chastity destroyed the chaste Hippolytus.

But on the other hand, whoever delights to lead a life

stained with allurements, look also to the punishments and crimes of kings,

of incestuous Tereus, or soft Sardanapalus.

Three Punic wars warn us to avoid treachery;

but ruined Saguntum forbids us to keep faith.

Live, and always cultivate friendships. For this crime

the learned school of the Pythagorean sages perished.

Fearing this, therefore, cultivate none. For this crime

Timon was once stoned in Palladian Athens.

The mind, ever at odds with itself, opposes its own ambiguous wishes,

nor is it enough for a man to have wished; he refuses what he desired.

It is pleasing to be in honor, soon he repents, and that he may

rule, he will wish to serve. The same man, increased in honor,

is exposed to envy; sleepless is the care of the eloquent;

but the unpolished man lacks the adornment of life. Be a patron,

and defend the accused: but rare is the gratitude of a client.

Be a client: heavy is the authority and person of a patron's power.

The prayers of fathers weigh upon this man. Soon harsh

anxiety of cares steals in. Childless old age is despised,

and the needy man becomes the prey of the heir who lies in wait for him.

Live sparingly, you shall be torn by the reputation of greed.

But censure will mark the lavish giver more severely still.

All things are contrary to themselves amid adverse chances. Therefore

best is the opinion of the Greeks: for they say that for man

it is good not to be born, or, being born, to meet death quickly.

Consulted by thousands of men, Apollo,

himself the judge of himself, examines himself thoroughly, down to the nail.

What do the great men, and what does the opinion of the vain crowd bring—

untroubled, having the likeness of the universe, smooth, and rounded—

Lest any speck of foreign flaw settle through the smooth surface.

He ponders how long the day will be under the sign of Cancer,

And how great a night stretches out in tropic Capricorn,

And weighs himself in the just balance of the scale,

Lest any part gape open, lest any part protrude, so that the angle

May meet in equal parts, so that the plumb-line err in nothing.

Let whatever lies beneath be solid: nor let the stroke, when fingers

Push and test it, betray any hollow beneath.

He does not turn his eyes to sweet sleep before

He has reckoned over all the deeds of the long day.

What have I passed over? What was done in its time? What was not done?

Why did honor attend this deed, or reason that one?

What have I let slip by? Why did this opinion settle in me,

Which it were better to change? Pitying one in need,

Why did I feel some pain with a shattered mind?

What did I wish, which it would have been good not to wish? Why, wicked,

Did I prefer the useful to the honorable? Was anyone struck

By a word, or at last by a look of mine? Why does nature draw me more than

Discipline? Thus going through all things said and done,

And unwinding everything from evening back to its rise,

Offended at what is wrong, he gives the palm and rewards to what is right.

Yes and No—all frequent these well-known monosyllables.

Take these away, and there is nothing that the speech of men can turn over;

In these are all things, and from these all things arise, whether it be a matter

Of business or of leisure, whether of tumult or of quiet.

Sometimes both together, often set apart, they meet

The pursuits opposed to them: as contention has found characters and minds

Either easy or difficult.

But if they agree, no delay intervenes—it is “Yes, Yes.”

But if it is in dispute, disagreement will throw in “No.”

Hence the law-courts burst apart with clamors: hence the mad

Quarrels of the Circus; hence the joyful uproar of the wedge-shaped theater;

And such disputes the senate-house too stirs up.

Marriages, and children with their fathers, sow these words

In pursuits of quiet, speaking while duty is preserved.

Hence too the school, in harmony with its accepted teachings,

Stirs up dogmatic disputes in peaceful contest.

Hence the whole dialectical crowd of sages contends:

Is there light, is it then day? That does not follow.

For as often as light comes to a man by night, through many torches

Or through lightning-flashes, that light is not the light of day.

Yes and No, then, as often as it must be admitted that there is light,

But it must not be admitted that it is day. From this a thousand contests arise:

Hence a few, and many too, pondering over such things,

Gnaw at raging silences in stifled murmuring.

Such is the life of men,

which two monosyllables turn about!

Three times two and ten times nine over and above passes into years,

Which the just life of aging men fulfills.

These the chattering crow outlives ninefold:

And the stag passes beyond the crow's ages fourfold.

The swift-footed stag the raven thrice surpasses: and him

The Phoenix, the bird that renews itself, multiplies ninefold.

And you, Hamadryad Nymphs, whose life is longest,

Outlast that bird tenfold through everlasting age.

These bounds contain the life-spans of living creatures.

The rest of the times God, the arbiter of hidden ages, knows:

What Stilbon revolves, what ages Phaenon spans,

What circuits Pyrois holds, what circuits Jupiter with kindly fire

Completes: with what recurring return kindly Venus hastens:

What labors remain for Phoebe, how many for Titan.

Until, the year that is called the Great Year being consumed,

The wandering stars come again into their ancient course:

Such as they had stood arranged from the origin of the world.

The first labor endured was the Cleonaean Lion.

Next, with sword and fire, he crushed the Lernaean hydra,

Then the third feat struck down the Erymanthian boar.

Fourth, he bore off the golden horns of the bronze-footed stag.

Fifth, he drove off the Stymphalian birds in a dangerous contest.

Sixth, he despoiled the Thracian Amazon of her belt.

Seventh, his labor was spent in the stables of Augeas.

Eighth is counted the glory of the expelled bull.

Ninth, victory over the chariot-teams of Diomedes.

With Geryon slain, Spain gives the tenth palm.

In the eleventh triumph the apples of the Hesperides were plucked.

Cerberus is the final goal of the last labor.

CLIO, singing of deeds, restores the times that are past.

MELPOMENE cries aloud in mournful tragic clamor.

Comic thalia delights in wanton speech.

EUTERPE presses the sweet-sounding pipes with her breath.

TERPSICHORE stirs the passions with the lyre, commands, incites;

ERATO, bearing the plectrum, dances with foot, song, and face.

CALLIOPE commits heroic songs to books.

URANIA scrutinizes the motions of heaven, and the stars.

POLYHYMNIA signals all things with her hand, speaks with gesture.

The power of the Apollonian mind moves these Muses on every side.

Phoebus, sitting in their midst, embraces all of them.

You who marvel that the huge bodies of the world remain,

Surrounded by heaven's lofty circuit,

And that no flaw intrudes upon so great a mass:

Hear what you may marvel at more. The most slender first-beginnings

For such vast things, ones not admitting our sight,

Consist, joined together, in a series of tiny atoms.

But solid in small things, a segment cut by nothing,

Whence force and strength remain, and the eternal

Mobility of things: never to be overcome by any age.

It is permitted to compare human things with divine. So it is

That the As is solid, since it consists of twice six equal

Parts: and in the smallest equal parts one force still remains.

For if anything be diminished from the number, the sum totters,

And the parts, torn apart, collapse with the whole body weakened:

As if someone should pull out the middle stone from an arch,

On which everything rests, at once all the rest, sloping down, will follow,

And will draw the general collapse from the summit.

The balance-pound is no different. If an ounce is missing, the whole

Will not be an as; and the name "deunx" it will now have, having lost that share.

Nor does the "dextans" keep its name, once the sixth part is removed.

And the "dodrans," sprung from the "quadrans," will lack its author.

And the "triens," torn away, prevents the "bes" from persisting.

Now the "quincunx" will be nothing for you, if you pull away the first part.

And a half, to which a half shall be, out of the remaining parts of the as

Semis-parts, and whose seventh part of a pound, septunx?

Therefore a pound, if it wavers in no part. Rum

Of weight, and of number, and of morals, and of works, and of water—

A pound: nor is there any measure which you may not signify by this name.

The earth, which hangs balanced in mid-air, is a balance.

And its own balance restrains the paths of Sun and Moon.

A balance determines the equal hours of day and sleep.

A balance holds the Caledonian tides without a shore.

Do thou also remain to me a sure balance of my morals.

All things which we measure in the varied action of affairs

The dominion of the stars drives, and only the earthly

Limbs to man—from the powers above comes fortune, and the breath of the spirit,

To be governed by the sevenfold choir: but over them presides

The golden sun, allotted rule of the shining upper air.

Nor does it alone regulate the seasons of our life,

While we anxiously draw out the brief span of our age:

It is believed that, by its watching, it shapes even the hidden begettings, and the times of life

To be spent in the mother's womb, forming them,

And composes the laws of a life not yet risen.

For when the conception has settled in the generative womb,

There is no doubt that the sun rests upon some sign.

When it has taken up its station in the neighboring star,

It pours no light into the adjoining risings.

But when, the reins turned about after the monthly period,

It now mounts the third stars in its purple chariot:

An oblique line sends forth a slight light,

Breathing faint motions through the inert masses.

In the fourth station flourishes the indulgence of the first sun.

And, being infused, it persuades the tender embryo to coalesce.

A vital gleam flashes in the square aspect,

Bright and softly shining: which, from the pivot of the fifth sign,

Strikes the astonished mother with a quickened infant.

For in the sixth place there is no force: because no rule

Of an equal side is marked out for Phoebus to observe.

But when, in the middle region of the sign-bearing host,

The seventh boundary has received the fiery ramparts

In a right position: it sees the compact of the swelling birth

Already in full light: nor, aiming flashes of sparing

Light, does it favor with the whole fire of its crown.

Hence it is that Lucina anticipates the lawful

Labors; and the hastening mother-to-be feels the heavy pangs

Steal upon her before the expected vow.

Which unless, when it has poured forth light from the seventh star,

It has driven back the resisting bars of the slow birth;

The later cannot succeed, the earlier can: is it because the sixth,

Rivalling the aspect of the eighth star, is useless

And knows not how to form matching figures of its sides?

But leaning upon the ninth sign, it lightens the lingering

Vows of mothers, the following trine joining its strength.

But if difficult Ilythyia drags out the delay,

The square aspect will loose the bonds of doubtful delays.

Toward the regions of the North are joined the Bears, and the Serpent.

After these, the Bear-Keeper, and likewise the Crown, and the Kneeling

Fallen One, the Lyre, the Bird, Cepheus, and Cassiopeia,

The Charioteer, and Perseus, the Triangle, and the star of Andromeda,

Pegasus, and the Dolphin, the Arrow, the Eagle, and the Serpent-Holder.

Then below is the Zodiac: twice six stars fill it out.

Here are the Ram, the Bull, the Twins, the Crab, the Lion, the Virgin,

The Balance, the Scorpion, the Bowman, the Sea-Goat, and the one who holds

The Urn, and the Fishes. After these, in the regions of the South,

Orion, the Little Dog, the Hare, blazing Sirius, the Argo,

The Water-Snake, Chiron, the Censer also, and the great Fish.

This is followed by the Whale, together with the streams of Eridanus.

But besides these, seven wandering lights are said to be,

The Moon and Mercury, Venus, and the Sun, and blazing Mars too.

Here too the star of Jupiter, shining above all stars.

Higher than these is Saturn, slower than all the stars.

Ninety days and four, and a half, the Sun

Completes, while it passes from tropic to tropic star,

Going from the Phryxean Ram into the eight-footed Crab.

In this span is the summer solstice’s thrust, and the day's turning-point.

And half a day, and two days, and ninety dieces novenos,

From the Crab to the Claws (Scales), the seasons of equal night

And day, in its other course the golden Sun accomplishes,

Mingling together the borders of autumn and summer at once.

Whence, running through the autumn months in order,

It proceeds to the tropic sign of cold Capricorn,

Adding eight days upon eighty,

And a quarter of a day: which, presently in the fifth year,

In the last month of Numa, takes the name of the intercalary (embolismic) month.

Thence hastening toward the horns of Agenor's bull,

The golden Sun climbs to the tropic star of the Wool-Bearer,

Restraining ninety days within its appointed end.

This shall ever be your circle, as the years turn round,

Three hundred, and sixty and five days.

The names which the year has, fitted to the seven turning days,

As many wandering planets have made them.

Whom the World, revolving with unwearied whirl,

Bids wander in oblique station among the signs.

The radiant Sun holds the first and highest day.

Next succeeds the Moon, of her brother's crown.

Third, Mars follows the Titanian lights.

Mercury claims for himself the stars of the fourth day.

The golden stars of Jupiter illumine the fifth zone.

Sixth, kindly Venus follows her health-bringing father.

Surpassing all, the seventh light is Saturn's.

The revolving orbit restores the eighth as the Sun's.

This verse is without an author.

What ought to be taken from the body on each day.

Nails belong to Mercury, beard to Jove, hair to Cypris.

This must be refuted thus.

Mercury always approves of nails sharp for theft,

And does not allow the edge of the joints to be lessened.

The beard is Jove's, the hair Venus's adornment: therefore it is necessary,

That they should not wish these removed, by which each pleases himself.

Mars, you have loved the beardless, and Luna the bald.

These do not forbid the head and cheeks to be adorned.

Sun and Saturn offer no objection to the nails; therefore

Remove this monostich, which is not pleasing to the gods.

The eternal months, and the four seasons of the year,

These four monostichs subjoined shall tell you.

March, April, May are the season of spring.

July, August, and likewise June, are summer.

September, October make autumn, and all November too.

The wintry months are January, February, and December.

First thou beginnest with the Roman Kalends, O January.

Numa established the Februa in the following month.

March brought forth the beginnings of the ancient year.

Kind Venus claims fruitful April for her own.

May is named from the name of the greater fathers.

June is next in the title of its age.

Julius enlarges Quinctilis with the name of Cæsar.

Augustus follows with the name of Cæsar.

September, Pomona makes rich thy autumn.

October enriches the fields with the wheaten interest.

Thou, unseasonable November, dost hurl the stars headlong into the sea.

Thou, festive December, dost keep genial winter.

New Janus, who givest thy name to the first month,

Two-faced Janus, thou lookest upon two times at once.

After the worship of the gods above, in the following month Februa

Numa gives offerings to the kindred Manes.

March, thou wast president both of the Roman race and of the year,

Thou didst give the first season to the Latin consuls.

Venus, mother of the sons of Aeneas, gives her name to the following April,

For Aphrodite is companion to Mars.

Whether the goddess Maia, or the greater age, made thee, May, I doubt,

But either is a good author for the month.

June follows, to be celebrated with double honor,

Whether Juno or Juventa gave the name.

Then Julius, shining with the star of Dione,

Holds the fixed season of mid-summer.

Augustus follows with a name akin from Cæsar:

Thus next in order of the year, as of lineage.

After these are linked, and mark the number in order:

September, watering the wine-presses with the gift of Bacchus:

And he who, through the season of sowing, glad with interest,

October, fosters the hope of the eager farmer:

And November, plunging the solemn signs into the sea,

Hurls them down, soon to return to their own sky.

Closing the number, December ends the genial feasts,

That from the winter solstice the new year may soon go forth.

June, and April, and November with September

Fill thirty lights each in their monthly course.

Add one more, heaped upon thrice ten days,

For seven months, at the Kalends of Janus and of Mars,

And those which May keeps, which July, and Augustus,

And those which October keeps, and December set at the end.

There will be but one of twenty-eight days,

Which Numa wished to follow after Janus, placed before it.

Thus the year reckons for itself thrice a hundred and sixty days,

And a quarter, and five days besides.

Lucina renews twice six Kalends in the year:

And Jupiter grants as many mid-Ides to run.

And the day of the Nones is made by eight days following after.

These are the only three names for the Roman month,

The rest are surnames of the days according to number.

But now the fourth light opens the Nones, now the sixth reports them.

The sixth reports them at the return of May, October, and March,

And of July, which brings in its season at the solstice.

The rest of the months are endowed with Nones on the fourth day.

But all the Ides return on the eighth light.

After the Ides, which each month has in its own order,

The differing Kalends return with varying number,

[lacuna] While again and again they are called,

That at last they may come forth at the rising of the desired season.

For thrice six and one day it extends the genial feasts,

That the new winter solstice may summon the lingering Janus.

By this number returns the month of Numa, and September,

Foster-child of Bacchus, marking the beginning of autumn.

July, and May, and December set at the end,

And October, are recalled one day later.

Then return, one day less, four more beyond,

Which I shall add to the number, Sextilis, and June,

And April, after which November is the second-to-last goal.

For thrice five days and one, Junonian Mars,

Thou art roused to return, and to bring back thy first beginnings.

By this number, the year, turning full circle, will be restored.

The tropic Capricorn ordains the beginning of Janus.

In the middle of Numa's month stands the trusty solid Aquarius.

The double Fishes proceed into the season of March.

Thou lookest back, O Phryxean Ram, upon the Kalends of April.

May admires the horns of Agenorean Taurus.

June sees the equal Laconian twins go across the sky.

July bears the star of blazing Cancer at the solstice.

Fervid Leo scorches the month of August with fire.

Under thy sign, Virgo, September enriches Bacchus.

And October equalizes Libra at the season of sowing.

Wintry November bids the Scorpion go headlong.

The Archer ends his signs in the middle of December.

The verses of Q. Cicero pertain to this, that we may know in what season each sign is illustrious: which is also set forth above in our own verses.

The Fishes rouse the spring floods with dim light.

And the Ram equalizes the course of night and day.

Whom the Bull adorns his horns, harbinger of flowers.

And the Twins lay open the dry beginnings of summer.

And now bright Cancer diminishes the long lights.

And fierce Leo, languor-bringing, breathes forth heats from his mouth.

Then Virgo, arising, shaking a little the vapor, puts it to flight.

Libra opens the gates of autumn and equalizes the daily

Times with the nightly, with balanced sign.

And the flame of the Scorpion strips bare the fruitful boughs.

Sluggish Sagittarius hurls cold upon the earth.

Winter, freezing with ice, breathes under the star of Capricorn.

Whom the deep water of Aquarius follows, dripping with mists:

Above and around these, where the rivers of the world are strong.

But on the right hand and the left the bright wheel of the Sun stirs,

Having contended in the forum: now the sand bears

Its own moving course, and the likenesses of the Moon.

The twisted scale of the Dragon stands out

Under the eternal gaze. Amid these the great

Starry Bear shakes the shining stars: whom, watching,

Boötes, late, is hidden with his light on the deep bank of Ocean.

Achaia celebrated four ancient games.

The reckoning of the solstice to the equinox.

The Sun, having set out from the mild equinox of spring,

After the half-day and after ninety-four whole days,

blazing with burning reins, it brings the summer heat to its end. C

Then Autumn, balancing the hours of night with equal light,

completes eighty-eight days, and beyond that a space of three hours.

Parnassus consecrated the Pythian games to Clarian Phoebus.

Then flowery Spring returns, its cycle turned back,

two circuits being added to these previous days.

On the Roman Festivals.

On the founders of the games.

Now I shall tell also of the Apolline games at the Tiberine mouth,

and of the hidden rites of the Megalesian mother.

And the days of Vulcan at the beginning of autumn,

and the Quinquatrus of the goddess Pallas I shall set forth:

and the midmost Ides, at the return of May and of August,

which Mercury claims for himself, and which Diana claims.

With twofold worship of gods and of buried men.

What rites the matrons observe for the praise of their husbands,

when the first days of Mars have returned.

I shall recall the festival celebrated at the Caprotine Nones.

When the stola, removed from the matrons, covers the handmaids.

Those four solstices too, marked off in distinct parts of the year,

and the days when night and day are equal.

Nor is it right for Romans to keep silent

about the Regifugium, when the tyrants were driven from the city,

a joyful day for the Romans.

Do you wish that I tell of the sacrifice before Ops, or of the Saturnalia,

and the festival of the slaves, when masters serve their servants?

And the festivals that never return on fixed days,

when each man honors his own crossroads-shrine throughout the neighborhoods?

Or the twofold cult which they call the Neptunalia,

and that which they name from Consus and from counsels?

These festivals, celebrated with ships, or with four-horse chariots,

which join Roman and neighboring leaders?

I shall add the foreign cults and rites of the gods,

the birthday of Hercules, or of the Isiac ship:

and also the joyous Floralia of the wanton theater,

which those who deny wanting to watch, still wish to watch.

Now also the ancient Equirian games are celebrated.

The Roman Circus holds these as its first name.

And Rome honors the Dionysiac games, called by a Latin name,

which Liber claims as vows made to himself.

The plebeian aediles too, and the curule aediles,

observe the rites called by the name of the Sigilla.

And it is known that gladiators claim funeral combats

There are two festivals of the heaven-dwellers, and two of men.

The rites of Jupiter, of Phoebus, of Palaemon, and of Archemorus:

for which the wreaths are of pine, apple, olive, and parsley.

Jupiter was the first to consecrate the festivals of the Olympic crown,

at the longest racetrack of the Argive Circus.

Next Alcides consecrated the honor at Nemea.

These sacred five-yearly rites too, marked by their seasons—

the Isthmian given to Neptune, and the Pythian to Phoebus—

Because the same games are held as both sacred contests and funeral games.

Elis dedicates a mournful honor to Pelops, son of Tantalus.

Thebes celebrates the five-yearly Nemean games for Archemorus.

It is known that the Isthmian games were celebrated for the dead Palaemon.

The Delphians established the Pythian games to appease the Dragon.

by the name of a twin begetter I now love you.

A title has been added, by which your reverence may grow:

by which I may teach the son what it is to love a father.

Indeed I seem equal to you, because that little one,

honored by this same name, ennobles me as well:

and because our age is the same: for I am of an age

close to yours, and can hold the place of a brother.

Nor is so great a span set between our years,

as usually divides other men's ages.

I have seen, then, the birthdays of brothers differ by as many years

as ours do. Titles do not burden age.

Thus fair youth joins old age to you, so that

what came first may remain: and what is now beginning, may begin.

And I think it has pleased both ages, that each

should give itself without hastening time.

Let this one flow gently, let that one come unhurried,

bearing ripe fruit while the blossom still remains.

I swear that I do not know your years, best of fathers,

and think them as many as I reckon my own to be.

Let the son not know this—let a more hurrying heir count them,

cherishing testaments more than pious wishes:

and teaching by a wicked example that sons should grow up

so that they would not wish their fathers, too, to be old.

But I, born of a very young father, will confess

that these years, close to my own age, are welcome to me.

I owe this because I am a son. Pious care for a grandson urges

that something be added to "father," by which we may honor a grandfather.

You too, my father, rejoice in your doubled titles,

made a grandfather by the name of a very young son.

It is a small thing to be a grandfather. May the kindly powers of the gods favor it,

and from his grandson may the grandfather become a great-grandfather.

The fates could indeed prolong old age still further:

but I think those vows more likely fulfilled, which are the more moderate.

A story: although not worthy of a cheerful title

has been the anxious lament of sorrowful matters.

Already, over the ice-cold, stagnant back of the Moselle,

had it carried you forth, my son, on rafts: and the envious river

had parted a sorrowing father's kisses and embraces.

I alone; and though surrounded by a friendly company,

I was alone: and I offered pious vows for the fleeing boat,

still seeing you alone, my son: and I blamed

the hurrying courses of the swift towline against the current stream.

What day was that? That year is not longer,

which the learned care of Attic Meton gathered together.

Forsaken, I am kept busy in empty and solitary places.

Now I lash the budding leaves of the willows:

now I break the grassy couches: and through the green sedge

I balance my slipping steps on scattered pebbles.

So the first light departed; so the second goal of the day;

so alternating turning brings round twin darknesses,

so others: and thus the whole year will pass from me,

until the fates restore you, my parent, to yourself.

This I would bargain for, even on such terms, or even with death:

While you, the son, survive to honor your father's last rites.

Just as the thrush, plunderer of the Picenian olive,

Fattens its waxen haunches:

Or as the one that snatched gleaming grapes from the vines,

And hangs entangled in nets:

Which flutter cloudy in the evening hours,

Or hang taut with dew in the morning:

Such birds, wanting to be caught themselves, from the wintry

Hedges have I sent to you,

Twice ten: for so many did headlong flight bring in

Beneath the dusky dawn light.

Then, which the plunder of the nearby pool supplied,

I have joined married ducks,

Oar-footed, plundering the blue waters with broad beak,

And red at the leg with Punic dye.

Which the rainbow-colored feather has painted with varied hue,

Rivalling doves in the neck.

These dishes have not been withheld from my table.

While you eat, I enjoy the more.

Farewell well, that I too may fare well.

AUSONIUS, whose rod even sceptres now revere,

Bids his marrow-friend THEON, the countryman, good health.

What are you doing, placed on the farthest shores of the land,

You tiller of the sands, poet? You whose shore must be plowed

Next to Ocean's end, and the setting sun:

Whom a cheap shed of reed-thatched roofs confines:

And whose tearful farm-cottage is dyed with pitch-black smoke.

What do the Muses do, and Apollo the singer?

Muses not born on Helicon, nor from the horse's spring:

But those which from the fruitful breast of Clementinus

Breathe upon empty poets with a mind not their own.

Rightly so: for who would rather have his own poems called such,

Who could tear you apart with untroubled laughter?

Lest these things too may weigh upon my own modesty,

Recite them yourself: and truly your words will seem your own.

Yet what life do you lead on the shore of the Medulians?

Do you carry on trade, catching at a lighter coin

What a mad auction soon sells at heavy prices?

White globes of tallow, and fat

Weights of wax, and Narycian pitch, and split papyrus,

And once-smoking rustic torch-lights?

Or, engaged in greater matters, do you through the whole region

Pursue wandering thieves, who, fearing the worst,

Call you into partnership, and into the spoils? You, gentle, and a hater

Of human blood, forgive crimes for money,

And call it error, and set a price on stolen

Oxen, and pass from judge into partner of crimes?

Or with your brother do you enclose wandering stags

Through pathless thickets with nets, and much encircling of feathers?

Or do you press on with shouts the course of the foaming boar,

And stand your ground against the beast? Yet I warn you, ever refuse

To thrust the hunting-spear at close quarters against the lightning-swift foe,

Take warning from your brother's example, who, his garment drawn back,

Displays foul wounds near shameful parts,

And bares his pierced buttocks with the nearby rump laid open.

Thence he flies about showing it off: so that Gedippa may marvel at him,

And his own Ursinus, and the offspring of Jovinus,

And Taurinus, matching him to heroes of old:

Such as was the Calydonian victor over the Olenian boar,

Or the Attic youth against the Erymanthian monster.

But do spare the wild hunts, and flee the known

Crimes of the woods: lest you become the offspring of Cinyras,

And come again to Venus as a lamented Adonis.

So surely, blond of hair, and snowy of arms,

You let your ruddy locks flow down over your white neck:

So tender of breast, so slim of smooth belly,

Through the rounded curves of your thighs, and gleaming calves

You descend, beautiful from crown to lowest ankles.

Just as once, in flowery-crested Aetna, the plunderer,

Amid the maiden dances, snatched up the daughter of Deo,

Orcus, emerging from the Stygian furnaces.

Or, since you avoid hunting because of such great dangers,

Are you drawn to the pursuit of fishing? For the whole gear

Of Dumnotinus was accustomed to show such treasures:

Knotted garments of the creatures of Nereus,

And spears, and nets, and the rustic names of flax,

And strainers, and hooks clothed with earthly worms.

Puffed up, do you trust in these riches? Every house abounds,

Rich with shore-spoils, brought back from the wave

By Carrocus, the deadly stingray, and soft plaice,

Burning tunnies, and badly-covered spiny skates,

And crows that will not last past two three-hour periods.

Or does it please you to defile with poems the tuneful

Daughters of Mnemosyne, whether three, or eight sisters?

And since we have come to this point, if you wish to know what lies

Between learning, and Muses fit to be laughed at:

Receive these frivolous trifles heaped together as mysteries,

Which, however, you could not unravel even with unfolded pages,

Not even if purged ten times with squill vinegar,

And should you anticipate the acuteness of the Samian Lucumo:

Or let your interpreter be present,

Who was the reader

Of my riddles: when to you

The black daughters of Cadmus,

The white daughter of Melon,

And the known marks of the dusky cuttlefish,

And the knots of Cuidius he revealed.

Now let him be present: and surely, having just now

Been made a master of letters,

He will straightway explain

What we write while soldiering.

I shape for you well-known verses, poet:

Which you know are called hendecasyllables:

But you do not know they are moved by three measures.

These Phalaecus once composed,

Which have a penthemimer first:

And after a half-foot two iambs.

There are those which broken hexameters create:

So that the penthemimer is placed first.

Then what the bucolic caesura leaves behind.

There are also those which the maiden Sappho engenders:

Which a first Hippian foot governs, a second:

So that an antibacchius closes the choriamb.

But now you cannot be taught, Theon:

Nor is it right for me, a royal master,

To teach the plebeian mob its verses.

But tell at once what I ask.

I seek nothing but what is contained in books:

And what uncouth papyri do not cover.

If you solve these trifles, O poet,

I will hand over to you at once the whole of Vacuna,

Nor will you fear thereafter that it is said everywhere,

This is that false poet Theon,

The wretched tavern of good poems.

How you flee my house, sweet friend.

Ninety days I have dragged out without you, dearest one:

Add to this the summer days: this is for me almost double.

Would you have me say nine times ten, and ten times nine

Days have passed? A fourth part of the year has gone.

Sixty hours besides, and two thousand one hundred,

I have consumed without you: without whom even the hour is heavy.

Twice nine hundred thousand the measure of the laws orders

The accused, once reckoned, to endure through so many days.

By now I could have gone to Rome on foot, and returned on foot,

Since a few thousand paces separate you from me.

Is the reed-thatched dwelling of the bard of Domnotonus worth so much?

My villa at Pauliacus would not be worth so much to me.

Or is it because, by a tablet marked while the doctor disputed,

A sum is owed me; lest we ask it back, are you away?

Twice seven ruddy royal coins, Philips,

Rather than that they be worth so much, I would rather lose them, Theon:

Than that you, bound up within our very marrow,

Should be absent for so long a stretch of time.

Therefore either now write back the aforesaid Darics;

And redeem yourself, so that the delay may be free of sloth:

Or I will give as many others myself; provided that of the dear

Man's face I may catch sight, poor though I be.

Hasten quickly by ship, and spread the curving sails of the canvas.

Pandion. The breeze of Medullinus will bear you,

Laid out beneath the awnings, and lying on a couch:

So that the burden of so great a body need not be moved.

One tide will carry you along the shore of Domnotonus

To the port of Condate: if only you make haste.

And in turn, whenever your winds fail,

Bid the oar-footed boat go forward at once:

You will find ready at hand carts yoked to mules.

Soon you will possess the villa of Lucanus with its needle-point.

Learn to compose verse by cutting off a name.

Thus you will be an imitator of the poet Lucilius.

Who would think these are of one mass?

One name for both: but there is a difference between the two:

As you would call apples "mala," so also bad songs "mala."

Farewell, Theon, whose name comes from the blessed gods.

But this "Metoche" often shows one running.

In the sweet pools the tide of the reflowing sea fattens them,

I have received, beloved Theon, a countable gift.

But how many there were, the appended monostichs signify.

As many as the index finger, wrestling three times, reckons against the thumb.

As many as the Geryons were, if multiplied tenfold.

Three times as many as the decades numbered in the Phrygian war.

Or three times as many months as the fire-haired Sun holds for the Aeolid.

As many nights as wandering Cynthia has from her first horns.

As many signs as Titan runs through in days.

And as many years as lofty Phaenon spends in his ages.

As many as the number of years the Vestal virgin serves,

And as many years as the Dardanian grandson extended his reign.

As many as the sons of Priam were, if twice ten be subtracted.

And twice as many men as you count who keep the Amphrysian fates.

As many young as the Alban sow bore beneath the holm-oaks.

And as many asses as there are, where there are ninety thirds.

Or as many oiled horses as the Vasatic carriage has.

But if the figures shadowed forth in fables,

And the number wrapped in learned riddles,

The dull mind, thick in its deep marrow, does not know:

At least learn to count in the manner of the common folk.

I will unfold the sums twisted back upon themselves.

Thrice ten, I think, and five times six.

Or twice five, then, ten and ten.

Or six four times, and add twice three.

Seven four times, add one and one.

Lead twice ten, and once ten.

Or add thrice four to twice nine.

Eight four times, then let two withdraw.

Twice thirteen, once four.

And add six to nine, or eight to seven.

Or join twice seven to twice eight.

Or, lest I be troublesome to you with too many,

Thirty in number were they all.

The mussel, joined with the mud-dwelling oysters,

Composed the first courses at the early meal,

A food pleasing to the delicacies of nobles,

And modest in expense for the poor man's hearth.

This is not sought in a shipwrecking sea,

That its price should grow great through dangers:

But at the first shoal, after the sea has retreated,

It is gathered, of like color, from the seaweed-covered shore.

For it is hidden in the cave of a double shell,

Which, warmed by the vapors of boiling water,

Reveals the flesh of its milk-white inward part.

But too costly a field is spread open.

Bid the Muse fold up the papyrus plain:

Nor let the furrow of the cloven-footed reed

Range further along the paths of the Cnidian stalk,

Painting, beneath the dry page,

The dark-colored little children of Cadmus.

Or let the milk-colored sponge blot out equally

The dusky cuttlefish-ink from all the verses at once.

Let us spare the fault of the Dumnotine house:

Lest paper be dearer to me than oysters.

I have left behind the soft allurements of Bordeaux,

And have approached the town of the Santones over the neighboring countryside.

If this is pleasing to you, best Paulus, approve it.

Let horn-footed mules snatch away the laden cart:

Or, if you please, leap into a three-horse chariot:

Or mount a swift pony, or a post-horse with torn back,

Provided only that you come quickly.

Because the approaching solemnities of Easter call us back,

Nor is delay of idleness free to us.

Bring in your hasty course even three thousand paces of the epode,

Or false lawsuits, which your school sows.

With us you will find none. For we have left there

The old leftovers of trifles along with their wit.

Oysters, known at the banquets and expense of noblemen's spendthrift sons, and defended by various depths of the sea,

either stripped bare on receding shoals, or beneath rocky

caverns, and sunk in the purple-shelled hollows of the crags,

which green moss, which unsightly seaweed conceals,

which cling together, fused with their own shells, like rocks,

which, moved from their place, soon buried in rich mud,

a hidden moisture of enclosed dampness nourishes,

you bid me enumerate, O Paulus, my old comrade,

accustomed to my playful verse of trifles,

I shall attempt it; although these things do not trouble

an old man's care, nor be thought worthy of a serious man.

For to me there is no Salian banquet, no sumptuous feast,

such as the table of Penelope's worthless suitors had,

or the oiled youth of Alcinous's shining skin.

Yet I shall enumerate, following report and witnesses,

since men's tastes always approve different things.

But to me above all the richest are those which the Ocean

rears among the Medulli, whose fame, called Burdigalian,

has reached even to the Caesar's tables,

praised no less than the glory of our wine.

These among all have earned the first palm,

all others yielding by a long way. These are of rich

and snowy flesh, and most tender with sweet juice,

mingling the sea's flavor, tinged with delicate salt.

Next let there be whatever others, but far, far behind,

by a wide interval: those which Massilia's port,

which Narbo, sacred to Venus, nourishes; and those, lacking cultivation,

which the sea of Hellespontian Abydos shelters:

or those which hang floating on Baiae's stakes:

those covered by the Santonic sea: those known of Genon:

or those which the river, mingled with the sea, shelters at Eburovices,

so that they lie overspread with a deep recess of seaweed;

rough in shell, and sweet with rich meat.

There are also those who praise the oysters of the Armorican sea:

and those which the dweller of the Pictonic shore gathers: and those

which the Caledonian tide sometimes marvelously uncovers.

There are added those which (a recent report) beneath the

Byzantine shores, and born on the raging strand of Propontis,

celebrated from the name of Promotus the general, men praise.

These things I tell you not as a poet, not as a historian, nor as a guest

wandering over the whole world, but as things handed down by many:

as is my custom, whenever the invitation of a gracious table

stirs the gentle Lycaeus with kindly talk.

These things were known to me not through the common crowd, nor through taverns,

or the guilds of Plautine parasites:

but because I myself have often kept the festive days,

partly of my own household, and in turn, invited as a guest, I have gone,

if by chance it was a friend's solemn birthday,

or a wedding feast, or the sacred second-day banquets of fathers,

I have heard, and I remember that good men praised them often.

If any faith is ever to be placed in lying poets,

and they do not always smear on false coloring,

Paulus, most famous nursling of the Castalian Muses

once, now father,

or grandfather, or older than great-grandfathers, as once was

the little king of the Tartessians:

remember that your promises to me shall remain unbroken.

Phoebus bids the truth be spoken.

And if he allows the Pierian sisters to make crooked furrows,

he himself never twists the furrow.

Let it not irk you too, to honor our sworn pact: and now

come quickly, by oar or by wheel.

Where the wave of the surging sea, multiplied by its return,

the Garonne challenges the deep.

Or where the gravel, worn by the repeated tracks of travelers,

carries the military road to Blaye.

For we, in the first days after holy Easter,

long to visit our estate.—

For, disdaining the crowds of the people and the crossroads

foul with brawls, we see

the narrow streets seething, and, with the crowd massed together,

the squares losing their very names.

Echo is struck back turbid with piled-up voices:

"Hold him, strike, drive, give, beware":

the muddy sow flees, the rabid dog with savage rush,

and oxen unequal to the cart.

Nor does it help to withdraw into the inner recesses of the house:

the shouting passes through the roofs.

These things, and whatever can offend peaceful manners,

compel one to leave the city walls:

that the sweet leisure of the secluded countryside may be sought again,

pleasant with serious trifles.

Arrange your time as you wish there: and let it be your right

to do nothing, or whatever you please.

If you hasten to this, come quickly with the whole stock

of your Camenae.

Dactylic verses, elegies, choriambic song, epodes,

the music of sock and buskin,

load onto your carriages: for the whole furniture

of pious poets is made of paper.

With us you will find "catenoplia," if you wish to use them,

not with Punic, but with Greek faith.

My verses, concealed with a useful and self-conscious modesty,

which by your song and prose you thought to draw forth,

you have in fact suppressed. For he who is himself eloquent and musical, in the publication

of another's work entices boldness, but frightens away by the very counsel with which he persuades. The listener ought to conceal his own learning, if he wishes to urge on a trembling speaker to speak: nor should veteran cunning brandish arms retired from service against raw recruits. Venus felt this, when the palm of beauty had long been enlarged by an ambiguous judgment. For modestly, as before her father, she had contended veiled, and equal adornment did not deter her rivals. But after the case of the goddesses was brought to the shepherd's judgment, just as she had emerged from the sea, or as she had met with Mars, she both overwhelmed the judge and crushed the contest of her rivals.

Therefore, unless your madcap delay—no small labor spent on a slight matter—had held back my little works, which you had been eager to bring forth, I myself, like too bold a vine-shoot, would long ago have driven forth my wanton growth still into the wintry cares, about to undergo the risk of a severe judgment through rash haste. Finally, the discordant thing, which I reckon is properly called by the grammarians "colonomon," I added, as you bade, upon a fresh reading of your verses, not daring to send those things which had already been recited to you in passing. For this you demanded, and I preferred it thus: that you, by your own fault, should stumble twice against the same stone, but I, whatever the outcome might be, should blush but once.

See, my Paulus, how foolish a fight you would provoke, against one rude in words, halting in expression, at variance with what he sets out to say, lacking all neatness in his verses, ungraceful by nature in banter and unpolished by art, of watery wit and feeble venom, no clown of the mime, no actor of comedies. And unless you were to read these things sent by me yourself, you would laugh even at the delivery. Now they are of a more fortunate lot, because, though genuine with us, with you they will pass as adopted.

I shall provide wine with a two-yoked wagon
to be carried to Santones at the first season,
you too the egg of the sea-sparrow,
which now the steward says is left far away
in the depths of the Bigerritanian countryside.

Sharing in the Greek Muse and the Latian Camena,

I, Ausonius, banter with you, worthy Paulus, in a two-tongued speech.

Muses, what are we doing? Why do we thus, in vain and empty hopes,

play foolishly, growing old amid the day?

In the Santonic fields, where the cold is unspeakable,

we wander, trembling and stiff poets, in the icy frost,

idle servants of the soft-tressed Pierian maidens.

Frost holds everything—of feet, and chill of teeth—

since there is no warmth in this snowy land,

and we double the cold by devising chill songs.

Beginning then the wrath of the dawn ... [lacuna]

I shall send to our Paulus the honey-sweet first-fruits.

The very renowned children of veil-tressed Mnemosyne,

the nine wordy, lily-crowned maidens.

Come then, my much-desired verses, my maiden song,

before my cares, bring forth the winged little book,

... a verse ... [lacuna]

Fit to Paulus a mingled ... [lacuna] song.

For it is not right for me, remaining in this region,

that Axius be found wanting from our Camenae.

He is a sharer of all things with me, who knows how to handle

both our serious matters and our jests, in every kind of contest.

And now, set apart in a lonely, chilly countryside,

in a grapeless place, he holds sorrowful converse,

neither suited to dear companions, nor fit for anyone's table,

because he has spoken ... to muses that charm not the mind.

Now enough, dear Paulus, we have made trial of toils

both in bitter causes and in thankless seats,

and in rhetorical games there was no profit at all.

But now all that enduring sweat of limbs

has been poured out, and trembling old age has seized my glance,

and my light purse provides less for expense.

For a helpless man has not ... [lacuna]

nor the old client ... [lacuna]

If you should be equable in mind, in all things you would rather

sleep soundly; there will be forgetfulness of toil, and of poverty.

And this is most beautiful of all, that at every table everywhere,

with a bowl or a cup, companion of the Muses,

you should seek sweet solace for a grieving heart.

Here too will be the fruit of bright-fruited Demeter.

There may you have food, and, setting out capacious cups,

mix, if you wish, the nectar of goodly wine.

So then let us both lay our lives' leisure side by side,

while means, and age, and the sisters'

purple threads are spun.

Ausonius, consul of the Romans, hastens to see his dear friend,

Paulus the storyteller and poet.

I left the sea-washed Garonne on your account, my friend.

On your account I dwell in the Santonic fields.

Seek then our meeting. If you have as much care for it

as I do, you shall soon have my presence.

Only hasten as much as your body, and your years, allow:

that I may see you safe, I see you soon enough.

If after the unlucky reins your vigor has been restored,

and its own mobility has now returned to your limbs;

if you again visit the well-watered Pimplean spring with joyful Muses,

now a poet, and not a whip-bearing Automedon,

drive off the sluggishness of drowsy old age, and its cloud of torpor:

and with brisk vigor take the middle of the road.

But mount cautiously a light carriage, or a slow post-horse.

Let there be no love in you for a chariot, nor for a fiery steed.

I advise you to avoid the ill-famed cart drawn by a gelding,

nor should you yourself, like Metiscus, drive swift mules.

So may the Muses be kind to you, your memory ready and quick,

and may the honey of fluent eloquence flow.

So may Crebennus, who has been for sale so long

without finding a buyer, serve you in place of a price.

Yet, that you may come more quickly, and travel more lightly,

leave history, mimes, and poems at home:

a heavy burden in the Muses; so many ages stored up in writings,

which their own times can scarcely bear, weigh down ours.

With us you will find, as it comes upon you, a manifold multitude,

the intricacies of grammarians and word-craft,

the heroic dactyl, and the song-making choriamb,

together with the chorus of Thalia and the trailing robes of Terpsichore,

the tablets of the Sotadics, the Ionic on both sides,

the rightful sweet-speech of Pindaric rhythms,

the limping elegiac, and the unlimping trimeter,

eight books of Thucydides, nine of Herodotus,

the wondrous and glorious tribes of skilled rhetoricians,

all, if you wish, and more, if you wish.

This I offer you as a friendly greeting from my books.

Farewell. If you wish me to fare well, come now.

O you who with rich eloquence season graceful

wit, Tetradius,

and take care that mingled combination be not sad

and lacking in sweetness, nor bitter;

who, tempering song with gall and honey,

do not allow the Muses to grow numb,

and equally give color both to what is dull in taste,

and to what is harsh in flavor:

who surpass the rude Camenae of Suessa,

and yield to time, not to style.

Why do you shun me, though near the walls of the Santones,

As once the Roman youth,

Rekindled to battle, fled the fierce Lucanian oxen?

Not with the onset of a tiger, nor of a lion,

But with dear love do I seek you.

I long to see the face of my foster-child,

And to enjoy the promised talent.

Once, unwilling, I devoured

The necessity of former absence,

When Iculisma once hid you,

Bound by the heavy duty of teaching.

And I begrudged that in so remote and solitary a place

The wealth of the Muses should lie hidden.

But now, when you flourish among men,

Frequent and famous, and not far off,

And the wind bears our breath to you,

And speech strikes your ears:

Why, swollen with the supine pride of your breast,

Do you scorn the poet-consul?

And do you, forgetful, in lofty disdain, neglect one

Who loves you, admires you, and longs for your songs?

Worthy of punishment by your own example,

Unless the steadfast faith of my heart, through the ages,

Loves even those who refuse it.

Farewell: if you wish me well, fly hither

With your writing-case and your Muses.

Delay caused by the copyists, I know, has consumed the pleasure of my promise through waiting, most excellent Probus. Yet I count it as favorable that I have not failed you. I have sent to your nobility the Fables of Titianus, and the chronicles of Nepos as though other fables (for they too are in the manner of fables), rejoicing, and even glorying, that something may come of my diligent zeal which may contribute to the instruction of your household. Yet to the little book of fables I have prefixed a few epodes, most shameless in the zeal of my devotion to you: few indeed, as I, being talkative, judge them; but when you have read them, you will think them even too many. I call your goodwill to witness my modesty, that these flowed from me by a sudden impulse (for who would ponder over such things for long?), which they themselves will surely prove.

Perhaps, if life be granted me, I shall, though unpolished, strip off something of your own themes: which, even if you do not approve when read, you will yet look kindly upon as written. And since I have imitated the madness of Choerilus, may you forgive it with the magnanimity of Alexander. These, then, as Plautus says, will meanwhile be the counter-argument of fables, garrulous and deceptive, which, though composed in honor and homage, have gathered only to offend the ears. Farewell, and love me.

Go forth, O little book, to Sirmium,

And say to my lord, and to yours,

Hail and greeting, very much.

Who this lord of ours may be,

Do you not know, little book? Or, though you know,

Do you gladly hear what pleases you?

I could say it plainly:

But more sweetly will I speak around it,

And long in the telling, take my full delight.

This one I mean, who, powerful in tongue,

Surpasses the younger Atrides,

In speaking with few and musical words.

Who the hailstorms of Ulysses,

The honey-flowing Nestor,

And the eloquent Tully,

He alone, save three lords,

Is first among lords,

And greatest in the praetorian office.

I mean this president of the senate,

Prefect too, and consul as well

(For "consul" he is called forever),

Colleague of the Augustus-consul,

Pillar of the Roman curule chair,

First among those of the second fasces.

For first of all he shall be

Consul, second only to the prince.

This man, surviving a golden race,

And sower of a golden offspring,

Convicts the old man of Ascra:

Who called this whole age one of iron:

Who conquers the injury of time;

Renewer of the Annian stock:

And adorns with equal fillets

The lineage of the Anicii.

I speak of Probus. You know full well,

Whom no one has ever named in speech

Without first praising him.

Go forth, O little book, and enjoy

Unending felicity.

Nay, even ask, if he will allow

To speak with dutiful restraint:

Come, true offspring of Romulus,

Declare the reason for your name.

Did your character give you this name,

Or did this name become,

Through the ages, the rule of conduct?

Or did that supreme arbiter of the world,

Knowing the future,

Command him to be called by a name

Such as He created him in character?

A name given by proclamation,

And by the testimony of his life.

Happy little book: whom so great a man

Will unfold in his own bosom,

Nor will he complain that his hours

Are taken up by so pleasant a leisure.

Whom, with a thousand tones of voice,

He will favor now with gentle whisper:

And to whom the watchful pupils of his eyes

Will deign to give their leisure.

Whom, with mind and ear both conscious,

Certain things being passed over, he will read through.

Whatever fortune is yours,

Go forth, O little book, and enjoy

Unending felicity.

Say that I am well, and that I live.

Say that I live according to a pious wish,

Praying with holy words,

That whom the Consulship, nearest,

Gave to the College of his son:

This one again let Augustus, the elder,

Perpetuate with his own fasces.

Add also this gently:

Behold, fables were sent to you

From all the way from the border of the Rhine

By Ausonius, an Italian name,

Preceptor of your Augustus,

An Aesopic trimeter poem:

Which he turned into slender style,

Composing a pedestrian work,

Titianus, artificer of speech.

As here the glory of grandfather and father,

Shining with mingled blood,

Both Probianus and Anicius;

(As once within the walls of Alba

The last-born son of Aeneas

Mingled the Silvii with the Julii:)

So this one, who is your son,

The flower of the little flowers of Romulus,

Amid the sayings of his nurse,

And the sleep-bringing tunes of lullaby,

Let him grow accustomed to skillful fables,

Both to jest and to learn at once.

And add the prayer which we,

Devoted, have conceived for the pious God:

That as the father Augustus gave

Probus to the College of his son:

So may Gratian join this new one

To the stock that is to come.

What I say shall be ratified as future.

So merit, so fate commands.

But now, that Julius may speak,

Receive, unwilling, the limit of speech,

The swift-footed dimeter.

And having said "hail," say "farewell."

not given by the emperor on the Kalends of January, to be restored.

The first pleasant fruit of this honor for you was

To have the fortunate gift of an august hand.

The next step, after a long interval, is that the care of a friendly Quaestor

Has kept watch on your behalf for your New Year's gifts.

Therefore, receive the intercepted royal coin, the Philips,

In number as many as the two Geryons,

As many as three pairs of yoked steeds, with a third part subtracted from Camena:

And as many as the hours you teach, and the hours you rest at home.