Genethliacon ad Ausonium Nepotem
Genethliacon ad Ausonium Nepotem Late Antiquity Ausonius, Decimus Magnus Latin- A BIRTHDAY POEM TO HIS GRANDSON AUSONIUS: AUSONIUS THE GRANDFATHER TO AUSONIUS THE GRANDSON. When the assiduous care of your master, soothing you, gave you your first songs in your boyish years, and steeped your new ears and pliant senses, so that your tongue, corrected, might carry through, with its still-untrained palate, the sounds to be repeated in docile murmur, we old men added nothing sad, lest the care of admonishing should hurt, or should taint the sweet tastes with bitter ones. But now, since you are strong with the stir of grown age, and can yourself distinguish the brave from the tender, and seem to yourself a monitor of your own conduct and of speech, receive — not precepts, indeed, but the prayers of a grandfather entreating and giving thanks, at the festal solemnity of his grandson. He (God) has granted that I may pass my old age, brought back from the end of the fates, safe, and behold the festal day and the stars I had despaired of, all but mourned as dead in a life now nearly gone. This, my honey-sweet grandson, won at a doubled interest, your birthday drawing near, and this gift of my well-being is the fuller, in that now the honour of grown age increases for you, and I, an old man, now behold my grandson a young man. This sixth triennium returns to you from your first year, bringing back, with its well-known birthdays, the September ides. The ides are a kindly day, honoured too by the guardian spirits (genii) of the gods. Latonian Hecate claims the August ides, Mercury the May ones, joined to the honour of the gods above. The October ides Maro, once born on them, dedicates. May you often keep all the ides through the twice six months, whoever you are who shall have celebrated the ides of my Ausonius. Farewell, sweetest grandson.