Parentalia
Parentalia Late Antiquity Ausonius, Decimus Magnus Latinpr1. Preface, in prose. I know it happens to my little verses that they are read with distaste: indeed, such is their desert. But the subject-matter is wont to commend some, and sometimes perhaps the mere heading of the title attracts the reader, so that, won over by its charm, he is content to bear the ineptitude. This little work is neither pleasant in its matter nor agreeable in its name: it has a mournful sanctity, in which I commemorate the deaths of my dear ones with sad affection. The title of the little book is Parentalia. This is a day of ancient designation, instituted from Numa's time onward for the funeral rites of kindred; and the reverence of the surviving has nothing more sacred than to remember reverently those it has lost.
pr2. Likewise, a preface set down in verse. The names of my dear ones, now buried with due funeral, wept before with tears, I shall now commemorate in measures — bare, without ornament, and lacking the cultivation of fine speech: the funeral honour suffices for the dead. O dirge, dutiful enough with funereal complaints, do not pass over the yearly gifts with silence — those rites which Numa dedicates to kindred shades, as the degree of death or of birth demands. This is enough for the tombs, enough for those who lack earth: to summon the souls by voice has the worth of a funeral. The buried ashes rejoice to have their own names spoken; the monuments too command this with their inscribed fronts. He too, for whom the urn of a sad sepulchre was wanting, will be almost buried when his name is thrice spoken. But you, whoever you are, reader, who deign to commemorate the fates of my own in sad elegies, may you run through the unshaken times of your life, and weep no deaths beyond what is just.
JULIUS AUSONIUS, MY FATHER. First among these is my father Ausonius, whom, though a son might hesitate, order bids me set first. A care of God, who, having enjoyed the honour of a peaceful old age, lived eleven times two Olympiads (eighty-eight years). All that he wished, he saw prosperous; whatever he desired fell to him as he wished — not because of any excessive indulgence of the fates, but because that man's wishes were so moderate. His own age compared him with the seven sages, whose doctrine he cultivated by his conduct, so as to live it rather than speak it, by the art of the wise — though he was not unpractised in eloquent genius — and, gifted, both to prolong the lives of men by the method of healing and to enlarge for the fates their delays. Hence too this reverence remains for his completed life, that our age gave him this title: as Ausonius had no one whom he might follow, so he has no one now who might imitate him.
AEMILIA AEONIA, MY MOTHER. Next, you, my mother Aeonia, of blood mingled from a Tarbellic mother and an Aeduan father. To you fell all the virtue of a compliant wife: the fame of chastity and of the wool-working hand, and fidelity in marriage, and the care of guiding your children, and a courteous gravity and a glad seriousness. Having forever embraced the peaceful shade of your husband — once alive, cherish his bed; now dead, cherish his tomb.
AEMILIUS MAGNUS ARBORIUS, MY UNCLE. My piety has been cultivated, my father first being named and my mother; but a third, Arborius, shrinks from being named, whom it would be wrong for me to commemorate first, my father being second, yet again almost wrong not to place first. A balance must be applied, and he must be called next before the others, though he will be second to my father. You, my mother's brother and of one mind with my father, and who were to me what father and mother were, who adorned me — suckling, boy, young man, and man — with the arts which it is a joy to have learned; you whom the learned gown of Palladian Toulouse preferred before itself, whom Narbonese Gaul set foremost, whose tribunal you adorned with Latin speech, and the forums of the Iberians and of the Nine Peoples; whence, your fame growing, you, sought as far as Europe, made Constantinople flourish as its rhetor. You, learned in a thousand modes, in a thousand oracles of speech, eloquent, swift, and retentive; you, after, entrusted to you in my first years, I pleased you, said that I was son enough for you. Me you professed to be a glory to yourself, to my forefathers a bright honour, and you dictated words for my fates to mark. Therefore farewell, my uncle, who have gained an Elysian seat: these songs I pour to you as a libation from your own Muses.
CAECILIUS ARGICIUS ARBORIUS, MY GRANDFATHER. Do not forsake your pious task, O dutiful page: after these let us commemorate my mother's father, Arborius, a name drawn from an Aeduan pedigree, embracing many houses in nobility, where the province of Lyons is, and where the powerful Aedui, and where Vienne lies on its Alpine ridge. But too envious an affliction lay upon his race and his proud wealth; for his grandfather and father were proscribed, when Victorinus held the leadership of the realm, and the empire fell to the Tetrici. Then, a fugitive in the lands through which the Adour bursts forth and the fury of the Tarbellic ocean roars, long dreading the shafts of marauding fortune, the condition of a poor Aemilia entangled him. Soon a slender sum, sought with much effort, gave you a solace for your weariness, but not wealth. You were skilled in the numbers of the heaven and the stars privy to fate, pursuing your study in concealment; not unknown to you was the formula of my life too, which you had stored in sealed tablets, never betrayed; but my mother's care unfolded it, the assiduous care which a timid grandfather kept hidden. When you had drawn out your life nine times ten years, having experienced the shafts to be guarded against of the goddess Fortune, you wept your son lost through three decades, wounded; by that death you were bereft of your light. But you said that long solace cherished you, that a special honour awaited my fates; and now, mingled in the councils of the souls of old, you surely know the fates of your grandson. You feel that, as quaestor, as prefect, and the same as consul, I commemorate you with this honorific gift.
AEMILIA CORINTHIA MAURA, MY GRANDMOTHER. Now tell of my grandmother Aemilia, the pious care of a grandson — she who was wife to the aforesaid Arborius. A jesting name was given her, because once, dark of skin, she was called Maura (the Moor) among her companions. But she was not black in soul, which was brighter than a swan and whiter than untrodden snow; and not ready to pardon shameful indulgences, she kept herself and her own to the plumb-line. She, when I was snatched from the cradle and from my mother's breast, schooled me, kind beneath her stern rule. Grant a tranquil ash to my grandmother, O shades eternally at rest, if I speak pious words.
AEMILIA HILARIA, MY AUNT, A VOWED VIRGIN. And you, by degree of kinship my aunt, but to be commemorated in a mother's stead with a son's pious affection, Aemilia, who got in the cradle the surname Hilarius, because, glad and courteous, you resembled the image of a boy: you gave back truly, not in disguise, the likeness of a youth, in the manner of men practising the arts of medicine. Hatred of the female sex was ever yours, and thence grew the love of vowed virginity, which you cultivated through nine times seven years; and the end of your life was the very end of your chastity. These last rites I, your son, render, because, like a mother, you cherished me with counsels and love.
CLEMENS CONTEMTUS AND JULIUS CALLIPPIO, MY UNCLES. And recall my uncles too, O elegy, in your song: Contemtus, whom the Rutupine land (Britain) covers; for whom a great sum, sought by various chance, perishes, unprotected by the name of any heir; for, snatched in glad and still-flourishing years, he died across the sea, his brothers unaware. Julius prolonged his fate into a long old age, afflicted with countless losses; who, courteous and charming and obliging at his rich table, had us as heirs in name only. Both dutiful, alike in face, mingling jest and earnest, they had not an equal fortune of life; though you lie apart in tombs and in honour, take this gift common to you both. Farewell.
ATTUSIUS LUCANUS TALISIUS, MY FATHER-IN-LAW. Whoever shall wish to celebrate the chiefs and the old senate and the bright pedigrees of Bordeaux from its rise, let him record you and your race, Lucanus Talisius, who adorned your old forefathers by your character: fair in the honour of your face, courteous with a tranquil breast, though greater for your eloquent genius; passing your whole age in the hunt and the cultivation of the land and the elegance of your living, despising public affairs; wishing to be known among the first, refusing to be first, living apart by your own judgement. You wished me for a son-in-law in my flourishing youth: to wish this only, not also to have it, was granted. The gods above approve our prayers, and the fates, favouring holy minds, fulfil what good men have wished. And now you feel, beneath the honour of a perpetual tomb, how reverent I remain toward your daughter and toward you. For, a widowed son-in-law, I now pay these pious gifts; for I shall never cease to be both widowed and a son-in-law.
ATTUSIA LUCANA SABINA, MY WIFE. Thus far our dirge, performing its rites in pious measures, has sung of those dear, and likewise wept with due funeral. Now my grief and torments and the wound not to be touched — the death of my wife, snatched away, must be commemorated by me. Noble from your forefathers and of the bright origin of the senate, but more bright, Sabina, for your good character: you I, a young man, mourned, cheated in my first years, and for nine Olympiads, widowed, I weep you. Nor is it permitted to lull the grief, overlaid with age, to sleep; for it ever grows raw for me, almost fresh. Others admit the solaces of a grieving time: long days make these wounds heavier. I torment my grey hairs, cheated by a celibate life; and the more alone I am, the more sorrowful I pass my days. The wound is fed by the silent, mute house and the cold bed, because I share my ills with none, my goods with none. I grieve if another's wife is good; I grieve, on the other hand, if she is bad: as a pattern you are ever before me. From either side you come to me as a torment: whether she is bad, because you would have been unlike her; or good, because like. I do not lament empty wealth and idle joys, but that you, young, were snatched from me, your young husband. Glad, chaste, dignified, renowned in race and renowned in beauty, both the grief and the glory of Ausonius your husband: you, about now to complete four times seven Decembers, left behind two children, our pledges. They, by the favour of God, as your prayers were, flourish, heaped with the goods you desired; and I pray that they thrive, and that at last, both surviving, my embers may announce this to your ash.
AUSONIUS, MY LITTLE SON. I will not defraud you, unwept, of a mindful complaint, you, my firstborn son, called a boy by my name: whom, while you were practising to loose your murmurs in your first words, of full promise, we mourned with funeral rites. You, set in your great-grandfather's bosom, a shared funeral, that you might not suffer the reproach of a tomb of your own.
PASTOR, MY GRANDSON BY MY SON. You too, untimely boy, broke off the ripe griefs, a bitter mourning for your grandsire, dear grandson Pastor, whose sure hope you would have been, the third offspring of your father Hesperius. The name, which chance had given (because a shepherd's pipe first piped a pastoral melody at your birth), was late understood as a token of a brief life: because the breath flees from the reeds blown upon, you die, struck by the weight of a hurled tile, which a workman's hand cast down from the roof. This was no workman's hand: that was the sure hand of bloody fate, that would put up a guilty one. Alas, what vows of mine, what joys you break, Pastor! That tile, hurled, sought my own head; O worthier you, who would have bemoaned the fates of my old age and complained, mourning, at my funeral!
JULIA DRYADIA, MY SISTER. If there was any virtue which a prudent woman would wish to be her own, my sister Dryadia by no means lacked it; nay, she had many which the stronger sex and the nobility of men would wish to have: learned enough to guard her life by the distaff and her good name, learned in good morals, herself teaching her own; to whom truth was dearer than life, and her one care to know God and to love her brother before all others. While still young she lost her husband, but, shunning frivolity, she equalled the austere old in character, and prolonged a cheerful life through six decades, and died in the home and under the roof where her father had died.
AVITIANUS, MY BROTHER. Avitianus, my own brother, O Muse, present with a funeral complaint. He, younger than I in birth, but my elder in genius, took up our father's arts. But hostile Atropos forbade him to enjoy the glad flower of youth and to pass beyond the bounds of grown age. Alas, what grief for his companions! Alas, how great the glories of life, what cultivation of hope, O brother, you, a young man, forsake — my brother by the law of the flesh and by the rise of blood, but almost a son in love!
VALERIUS LATINUS EUROMIUS, MY SON-IN-LAW. O glory of an illustrious race, O bitter death to me, Euromius, son-in-law chosen from the company of young men, you die, snatched from me in the flower of your earliest youth, scarcely well known as the father of a glad child. You, sprung from the stock of chiefs, and surpassing even those from whom the race of bright nobility came; comely of face, good in genius, eloquent and vigorous in every dexterity, and outstanding in fidelity. This the prefecture's seat, this the Illyrian shore experienced with you as governor, and the treasury itself as your client. Yet nothing of your praise was taken by the brevity of your life: ripe in disposition, you die, bitter in your funeral.
POMPONIUS MAXIMUS, MY KINSMAN. And you, my brother not by blood but in a brother's stead, Maximus, now dead, our dirge shall sing; for you, allied to me as the husband of my sister, leave her a widow, robbed of the fruit of your years. Not your house alone felt this: the wounded senate-house of Bordeaux, alas, felt the bitter calamity, thriving while you were foremost, sinking when you failed, and, at your death, falling into the rank of a Valentinus. Alas, why, Maximus, snatched from us, do you not enjoy your son, in the fruit and flower of grandchildren? But you do enjoy them, if a divine portion dwells among the shades, and it is granted to know what joys shall one day be: here too a longer fruition of glad things is held — to have anticipated long what now you share.
VERIA LICERIA, WIFE OF ARBORIUS, MY SISTER'S SON. You too, whether mine by the name of daughter-in-law or in a daughter's stead, Veria, have the song of the last honour. If your uprightness, if your beauty and fame and fidelity, the wool-working hands of a compliant wife, were now to be praised, the voice of your great-grandfather Eusebius would have to be summoned from afar, from the depths of the shades. Since he, long since buried, his life now done, has transferred his part into my words, receive, my niece, wept over, the funereal complaints, wife of my Arborius, to be commemorated; to whom, leaving small solaces of a great grief, you forsake your children, whereby the more you torment me. But, that the care of your beloved husband may not be wanting to you, you cultivate the monuments now joined to your marriage-chamber. Here, where was your first wedding, there is the sad seat of your tomb: you may be called a bride more than one entombed.
POMPONIUS MAXIMUS HERCULANUS, MY SISTER'S SON. Nor let the dirge, with its sad modulation, leave you, my sister's son, silent and without honour — you, upon whose grown promise there was a great abundance of high praise. But it will befit rather to commemorate than to praise the dead. This glory, my mother's and mine, in the time of grown age the envious force of fate struck down. Alas, what a fruit, Maximus, eloquent and musical and keen, good in mind, vast in genius, swift of foot, fair of body, shrewd in tongue, melodious in voice! Take the sad gifts of your forefathers, the beginnings of a tearful complaint, which, in funereal modulation, your sorrowing uncle offers you.
FLAVIUS SANCTUS, HUSBAND OF PUDENTILLA, WHO WAS SISTER OF MY SABINA. You who cultivate jest and gladness, who condemn sad things and fear no one and do nothing to be feared, who catch no one with snares nor provoke with lawsuit, but lead a just and clement and wise life: revere with pious lips and good words the tranquil shade and the gentle end of Sanctus, who passed his military service assiduously without any storm, governor under whom the Rutupine land (Britain) rejoiced, whose tranquil old age of eighty years no worse day altered. Therefore pray, favouring, that such repose as were the seasons of his life, Sanctus may pass among the shades.
NAMIA PUDENTILLA, MY KINSWOMAN. And you address Pudentilla with the last words, you who have care for fame and for uprightness. Noble, thrifty, upright, glad, chaste, comely — she held continuously the marriage of Sanctus. Keeping inviolate the praises of a chaste life, she ruled her own wealth while her husband lived at leisure; not for that reason reproaching, nor with brow clouded against her husband, that a woman alone managed the whole house. Alas, too young, but glad with her son and husband surviving, she met, patient, her last fates: of one mind with our Sabina, and once her sister, and called by me sister with an unblemished name. Now too pious care recalls her peaceful shade and honours Pudentilla with the honour of speech.
LUCANUS TALISIUS, THEIR SON. Nor now shall you, sole hope of your mother, the youth Talisius, my cousin, be unremembered, snatched in the first years of flowering age — yet already a husband, already too soon a father. You might think that fate had hastened, lest your father, so quickly made a grandfather, should call this a bitter funeral.
ATTUSIA LUCANA TALISIA AND MINUCIUS REGULUS, MY KIN. Our acquaintance with you was slight, Attusia, and with your husband, Regulus, plainly none. But you are the own sister of our Sabina, and you too, Regulus, have the name of kinsman. Having drawn names so dear to us, let us, mournful, bind them in the homage of our song, although the funeral honour reaches them as they lie afar, their shades in the Santonican land.
SEVERUS CENSOR JULIANUS, FATHER OF MY SON'S WIFE. Cease, you ancients, you Calpurnian names, to hold this title of Frugi (the Thrifty) as the peculiar glory of your race; nor let Cato alone ever please himself as censor with these titles, nor Aristides alone as the just for himself; for whoever was wise and cultivated truth and faith, let him bear himself as your companion, Censor. You, grave and courteous, relaxed with justice, learned to join a balance to austere things; you wished to ally our houses, though I was not adopted by you nor joined by blood. Surely some likenesses of your character in me, an image of my genius, provided the cause; or already the turning of Fortune was so wheeling, that such good vows gave weight to the fates. If you feel anything among the shades, this cherishes your mind — that what you had wished to come to pass, God willed it.
PAULINUS AND DRYADIA, CHILDREN OF PAULINUS AND OF MEGENTIRA, MY SISTER'S DAUGHTER. You who bore the name and face of your father, Paulinus, who were the image of your lost sire; because of whom the grief of your wretched mother had begun to abate, when your form set forth your father, and gave back his ways, and to those ways would have added that eloquence which Paulinus your father lacked: you are snatched in glad and budding years, and you trouble your mother's heart, still raw. For we weep also a sister snatched from the marriage-bed, alas, by no ripe death — Dryadia. We weep, I in the first place, who am her mother's uncle, and you I love as the offspring of children. She died amid her mother's hands and her father's kisses; you, far off in the Spanish region — you, tender, are plucked, a new flower in your earliest age, a youth not yet with purple-cinctured cheeks! Four children had this mother, now dead, brought forth, but she has already given doubled funerals to the tombs. Let this be enough, father Paulinus; the division is made: the rest of the offspring is owed to the mother.
PAULINUS, MY SISTER'S SON-IN-LAW. Whoever loves a glad genius, whoever loves fair character, and whoever cultivates faith with holy piety, let him revere with me the shade of Paulinus, sprinkling friendly tears and bearing the yearly libations. My contemporary, Paulinus, and having gained my sister's daughter in marriage: thus almost my son-in-law. Your mother was of Aquitanian stock; for to your father Cossio Vasates was the home, a municipal race. Having deserved the office of the prefect's archives, then set over the Libyan accounts, you take rich rewards. For Iberian Tarraco offered you the tribunal of a corrector, eager to be your client. You, cherishing your mother-in-law in a mother's stead, could not be reckoned a kinsman, since you enjoyed the place of a son. Among concordant friends you lived, faithful, having completed eighteen Olympiads.
AEMILIA DRYADIA, MY AUNT. You too, my aunt Dryadia, I revere with tearful measures and pious lips — I, the son of your sister, almost your son — you whom envious death snatched from the marriage-chamber and the nuptial torches; and the funeral honour changed your bed in the bier's stead. You were learning in me, my aunt, how to become a mother; whence now I, a son, render you this sad office.
JULIA CATAPHRONIA, MY FATHER'S SISTER. Nay, impart to my aunt Cataphronia too, O Muse, your funereal complaints. Unwed, she cultivated the love of vowed virginity, and, a sparing old woman; and to me, what she could, though out of a poor sum, she gave, as a mother. Therefore, commemorated, hail; and, summoned in a mother's stead, sad farewell.
JULIA VENERIA, MY FATHER'S SISTER. And my aunt Veneria died early: to her I sing again brief, measured melodies, that her gentle little ash may thrive after its labour, and, swift-footed, may approach the silent places of Erebus.
JULIA IDALIA, MY COUSIN. Little Idalia too there was, who, endowed with the name of the Paphian (Venus), deserved also the beauty of Venus; who was born to me almost as a sister, for she was the daughter of my aunt, whom the dirge celebrates in pious honour with a funereal song.
AEMILIA MELANIA, MY SISTER. And you, Aemilia, a sister scarcely known to me, receive the laments which sad elegies owe to your ash. An equal-aged infancy joined our cradles, although you were older by one consulship. But too envious Lachesis, hastening, completed your times, and gave bitter funerals to the shades. Sent on before, then, farewell, and revere the shades of our parents, of him who came in greater age and of her in less.
POMPONIA URBICA, MOTHER OF MY SON'S WIFE, WIFE OF JULIANUS THE CENSOR. As a woman of illustrious race, so of the morals of the ancients, Urbica, ennobled by the marriage-bed of the Censor; strong in inborn virtues, and increased by those which your husband taught, which your father and mother taught — such as Tanaquil had, such as Pythagorean Theano, and such as she who, without precedent, met death at her husband's slaying. And had fate granted you so to exchange your lot, the Censor would still be living in this our time; but neither did you, long tormented under a widowed age, follow your husband at once to the desired end. Now I, Ausonius, with your son-in-law and your children, father of your son's wife, bring you the yearly rites with sad complaints.