Book 1

Naso, by now no stranger as a dweller in the Tomitan land, sends you this work from the Getic shore. If you have leisure, Brutus, take in these foreign little books as guests, and hide them away in any place at all. They dare not come within the public monuments, lest their own author should have barred that road to them. Ah, how often I have said: 'You teach nothing shameful, surely: go, that place lies open to chaste verses!' Yet they do not approach, but, as you see yourself, they think it safer to lie hidden beneath a private household god, You ask where you can set these down without offending anyone? Where the Art of Love once stood, that space lies vacant for you. You may ask, perhaps, under the very newness of the thing, why they come. Take it, whatever it is, so long as it is not love. You will find, although the title is not a piteous one, this no less sorrowful than that which I gave before. The matter is the same, the title differs; and the letter shows to whom it is sent, the name not being concealed. You do not wish this, but neither can you forbid it, and the dutiful Muse comes to those who do not want her. Whatever it is, add it to my works. Nothing prevents those born in exile, with the laws kept, from enjoying the city. There is nothing for you to fear. Antony's writings are read, and learned Brutus keeps his book-cases ready to hand. Nor in my madness do I match myself with names so great: I did not bear cruel arms against the gods. In short, Caesar's name, though he himself does not demand it, is missing from no book of mine without its honour. If you doubt me, admit the praises of the gods, and take my poem with the name removed. The branch of peace-bringing olive helps in war: will it profit nothing to have the author of peace at hand? When Aeneas's neck was bent beneath his father, the very flame is said to have given the man a way through: the book carries the son of Aeneas, and shall not every road lie open? But this man is the father of his country; that other was his own father's. Is anyone so bold that he would force from his threshold one who shakes the jingling rattles with a Pharian hand? When the piper before the Mother of the gods plays on his curved horn, who refuses the coin of a small alms? We know that nothing of the sort is done by command of Diana: yet the prophet has the means by which to live. The very deities of the gods above move our hearts, and it is no shame to be taken by such trust. Behold, in place of the rattle and the bored Phrygian boxwood I bear the holy names of the Julian race. I prophesy and admonish: make room for one who brings the sacred things! This honour is sought not for me, but for the great god. And although I deserved and felt the prince's anger, do not think that he himself wishes not to be worshipped by me. I have seen one confess he had profaned the deity of linen-clad Isis, and sit before Isiac altars, another, deprived of sight for a fault like his, cried out in the midst of the road that he had earned it. The powers of heaven rejoice that such proclamations are made, to prove by a witness how much their deities avail. Often they lighten punishments and restore stolen eyes, when they see that one has truly repented of his sin. I repent, oh! if anything of the wretched is believed by anyone, I repent, and am tortured myself by my own deed. And though it is exile, my fault is more grievous to me; and to suffer the penalty is less than to have earned it. Though the gods favour me, to whom he himself is more manifest, the penalty can be taken away, the fault will be everlasting. Death will surely bring it about that, when it comes, I be no exile: that I never sinned, death too will not bring about. It is no wonder, then, if my mind, made wasted, melts away like water flowing from the snow, as a ship is eaten when spoiled by the hidden ship-worm, as the wave hollows the rocks with the salt of the sea, as iron, laid by, is gnawed by rough rust, as a book stored away is consumed by the mouth of the moth, so my breast has the perpetual bites of cares, by which, with no end, it is worn away. Nor will these goads leave my mind sooner than life, and the one who grieves will fall sooner than the grief itself. If the gods above, to whom all that we are belongs, believe this of me, perhaps I shall be held worthy of some small aid, and I shall be moved into a place free from the Scythian bow. If I should pray for more than this, hard men, I shall be too bold of speech.

Maximus, you who fill the full measure of so great a name, and ennoble your line by your soul's nobility, you through whom it was possible to be born, although three hundred fell, since one day did not carry off all the Fabii, perhaps you ask by whom this letter is sent, and would wish to be more certain who it is that speaks with you, Ah me, what shall I do? I fear that, the name once read, you may read the rest harshly and with averted mind. See: I will dare to confess that I have written to you . . . I, who, though I confess I was worthy of a heavier penalty, can scarcely suffer heavier things. I am set in the midst of enemies and amid dangers, as if peace, along with my country, had been taken from me: men who, that they may double the causes of death by a savage wound, smear all their darts with viper's gall. Equipped with these, the horseman surveys the terrified walls like a wolf circling the penned-in sheep: and once the light bow is strung tight on the horse-hair cord, it stays always with its string unloosed. The roofs bristle, veiled as it were with fixed arrows, and the gate scarcely keeps off weapons with its firm bar. Add the look of the place, sheltered by neither leaf nor tree, and that idle winter is joined to winter. Here, fighting against the cold and against the arrows, and the fourth winter wearies me with my fate, my tears have no end, except when stupor blocks them: and a numbness like death holds my breast. Happy Niobe, although she saw so many deaths, who, turned to stone by her sufferings, laid aside all feeling! You too are happy, whose mouths, crying out for your brother, the poplar veiled in new bark! I am the man who cannot be admitted into any wood: I am the man who would wish, in vain, to be a stone. Though Medusa herself should come before my eyes, Medusa herself would lose her powers. We live so that we may never be without the bitter feeling, and my punishment grows heavier through the long delay. So the liver of Tityos, unconsumed and ever reborn, does not perish, that it may often be able to perish. But, I suppose, when rest and the common medicine of care, sleep, is near, night comes empty of its usual ills, Dreams terrify me, imitating real misfortunes, and my senses keep watch to my own harm. Either I seem to be dodging Sarmatian arrows, or to be giving my captive hands to harsh chains, or, when I am deceived by the image of a better sleep, I look upon the abandoned roofs of my own country. And now I talk much with you, friends whom I revered, and now with my dear wife. Thus when a brief and untrue pleasure has been grasped, that state of mine is made worse by the reminder of the good. Whether, then, the day looks upon this wretched head, or the frosty horses of Night are driven on, so my breast melts away with perpetual cares, as new wax does when fire is brought near it, Often I pray for death, and again I pray death away, that the Sarmatian soil may not cover my bones, when it comes to mind how great is Augustus's clemency, I believe that gentle shores can be granted after shipwreck. When I see how tenacious my fate is, I am broken, and slight hope, conquered by great fear, falls, yet I neither hope nor pray for anything further than to be able to escape this ill-changed place. This, or nothing, your favour might modestly attempt for me, with your honour kept safe. Take up the case, Maximus, eloquence of the Roman tongue, enter upon the defence of a difficult cause. It is a bad one, I confess, but it will become good with you pleading it, only speak gentle words on behalf of my wretched flight. For Caesar does not know, though a god knows all things, under what conditions this farthest place lies, Great labours of affairs occupy that deity: this is a care too small for a heavenly breast. He has no leisure to ask in what region the Tomitans are placed, a land scarcely known to the neighbouring Getae, or what the Sarmatae do, what the fierce Iazyges, and the Tauric land of Orestes's goddess, and what other nations, when the Hister has stiffened with cold, cross its hard back on a swift horse. The greatest part of these men care nothing for you, fairest Rome, nor fear the arms of the Ausonian soldier, their bows and full quivers give them courage, and the horse, fit for long courses, as each may please, and that they have learned long to endure thirst and hunger, and that the pursuing enemy will have no waters. The man's anger would not have sent me into that land, if this soil had been well enough known to him. He rejoices that neither I nor any Roman is taken by the enemy, and I least of all, to whom he himself was granting life. He was unwilling, as he could have been, to destroy me with the slightest nod. There is no need of any Getae against my fate, but neither did he find anything done by me deserving death, and he can be less hostile than he was. Even then he did nothing except what I myself forced him to do: his anger is almost more sparing even than my desert. May the gods therefore grant, of whom he himself is most just, that the kindly earth bring forth nothing greater than Caesar, and as the earth was under him, so may it be under Caesar, and pass on, handed down through the hands of his line. But do you, before so calm a judge, such as I too have felt him to be, open your lips for my tears. Do not ask that it go well with me, but that ill go more safely, and that my exile be far from the savage enemy, and that the life which the present deities have granted me the squalid Getan may not take away with drawn sword: in short, that if I die, I may enter a more peaceful field, and that my bones be not pressed by the Scythian soil, nor that—as is fitting, no doubt, for an exile—my ill-laid ashes be struck by the hoof of a Bistonian horse, and that, if any feeling survives after death, no Sarmatian shade may even terrify my Manes. These things, heard, could have moved Caesar's mind, Maximus, if they had moved yours first. Let your voice, I pray, soften Augustus's ears for me, that voice which is wont to aid trembling defendants, and with the accustomed sweetness of your learned tongue bend the heart of the man who equals the gods above. Theromedon will not be entreated for you, nor cruel Atreus, nor he who made his men fodder for his horses, but a prince slow to punish, swift to reward, who grieves whenever he is forced to be fierce, who has always conquered that he might spare the conquered, and who shut civil wars with an everlasting bar, who restrains many by fear of punishment, few by punishment, and rarely casts his thunderbolts, with reluctant hand. Therefore, as an orator sent to ears so calm, ask that our exile be nearer the homeland. I am the man who honoured you, whom the festive table was wont to see among your guests: I am he who led the wedding-song to your marriage fires, and sang verses worthy of a fortunate wedding, whose little books you were wont, I remember, to praise, except those which harmed their own master, to whom you sometimes read your writings as I marvelled: I am he to whom a bride was given from your house. Marcia approves her and, beloved always from her earliest years, has counted her among her own companions, and before her the maternal aunt of Caesar held her so: those of whose judgment any woman is approved, is virtuous. Even Claudia, better than her own reputation, with these for her praisers, would have had no need of divine aid. We too have passed the years gone by without a stain: the latter part of my life must be passed over in silence. But to say nothing of myself, my wife is your burden: you cannot, with faith kept whole, disown her, she flees to you, she embraces your altars —each rightly comes to the gods who are honoured by him— and weeping she begs that, Caesar softened by your prayers, her husband's grave be made nearer.

Your Naso sends you this greeting, Rufinus, a wretched man, if a wretched man can belong to anyone. The consolations lately given to my troubled mind brought aid and hope to my ills, and as the hero, son of Poeas, felt by the arts of Machaon the healing help when his wound was soothed, so I, lying low in mind and wounded by a bitter blow, began to be stronger at your reminder, and, already failing, so revived at your words as a vein is wont to return when wine is poured in. Yet your eloquence did not show such great powers that my breast should be made whole by your words. Though you draw much from the whirlpool of my care, no less than what is drained will be left over. In long time, perhaps, a scar will be drawn over: raw wounds shudder at hands brought near. It is not always in the physician's power for the sick man to be relieved: sometimes the malady is stronger than skilled art. You see how blood released from the soft lung leads by a certain path to the Stygian waters, though the man of Epidaurus himself bring sacred herbs, he will heal the wounds of the heart by no aid. Medicine knows not how to take away the knotty gout, nor does it help against the dreaded waters of dropsy. Care too is sometimes curable by no art— or, if it be so, it must be thinned out by long delay. When your precepts had well steadied my fallen spirit, and the armour of your breast had been taken up by me, again the love of country, stronger than all reason, undid the work which your writings had done. Whether you wish this to be called dutiful affection or womanish, I confess that in my wretchedness my heart is soft. The wisdom of the Ithacan is not doubtful, and yet he longs to be able to see the smoke from his fathers' hearths. By some sweetness or other one's native soil draws all men, and does not let them be forgetful of it. What is better than Rome? What worse than the Scythian cold? Yet hither the barbarian flees from that city, though the daughter of Pandion is well kept in her cage, she strives to return into her own woods. Bulls seek their accustomed glades, lions their accustomed lairs— nor does their wildness hinder them from seeking their dens. You, nevertheless, hope that the bites of exile can yield from my breast to your soothing remedies. Bring it about that you yourselves be not so dear to me, that it may be a lighter ill to have lost such friends, But, I suppose, though I lack the land in which I was born, it has at least fallen to me to be in a human place. I lie deserted on the sands of the world's edge, where the buried earth bears perpetual snows. No field here brings forth fruit, no sweet grapes, no willows are green on the bank, no oaks on the hill. Nor should you praise the sea more than the land: the waters always, empty of suns, swell with the rage of the winds. Wherever you look, the plains lie lacking a tiller, and vast fields, which no one claims, lie waste. The enemy is at hand, to be feared on the right and on the left, and with the dread of his nearness terrifies both flanks, one side is to feel Bistonian pikes, the other, darts hurled by a Sarmatian hand. Go now and recite to me the examples of men of old who bore their lot with a brave mind, and admire the grave strength of great-souled Rutilius, who did not use the offered terms of return. Smyrna held the man, not Pontus and a hostile land, Smyrna, scarcely less to be sought than any place. The Cynic of Sinope did not grieve to be far from his country, for he chose your seats, land of Attica. The son of Neocles, who crushed Persian arms with arms, felt his first exile in an Argive city, Aristides, driven from his country, fled to Lacedaemon, between which two it was doubtful which should rank first. Patroclus as a boy left Opus after a murder done, and came as a guest to the Thessalian soil of Achilles. The exile from Haemonia withdrew to the Pirenian wave, under whose guidance the sacred timbers ran on the Colchian water. Cadmus, son of Agenor, left the Sidonian walls, that he might set his walls in a better place. Tydeus, banished from Calydon, came to Adrastus, and the land dear to Venus received Teucer. Why should I tell of the ancients of the Roman race, among whom Tibur was the farthest land for exiles? Though I follow them all out, to no one in all the ages has so distant from his country or more dreadful a place been given. So much the more let your wisdom pardon me in my grief: it does, not so very much, what your words require. Yet I do not deny that, if my wounds could close, they could close by your precepts. But I fear that you labour to save me in vain, and that, hopeless and sick, I am not helped by the aid brought near. Nor do I say this because there is greater wisdom in me, but because I am better known to myself than to a physician. Yet, however that may be, your great kindness, your goodwill, reaches me, and is taken in good part.

Already a worse age is sprinkled on me with grey hairs, and already the wrinkle of the old man ploughs my face. Already vigour and strength languish in my shaken body, nor do the games that pleased the young man please me. Nor, if you saw me suddenly, could you recognize me, so great has been the ruin of my age. I confess the years do this, but there is another cause too, the anguish of mind and continuous toil. For if anyone should reckon out my ills through long years, believe me, I shall be older than Pylian Nestor. You see how, in the hard fields—and what is firmer than an ox?— toil breaks the strong bodies of bulls. The soil, which has never been used to rest in fallow ground, grows old, wearied by constant fruits. A horse will die, if anyone goes always to the contests of the Circus with unintermitted courses, firm though she be, a ship will be loosened on the sea, which is never dry, never without the flowing waters. Me too the immense series of ills weakens, and forces me to be old before my time, Leisure nourishes the body, the mind too is fed by it: immoderate toil, on the contrary, wears away both. See, because the son of Aeson came into these parts, what praise he wins from late posterity. Yet his toil was both lighter and less than mine, if only great names do not bear down the truth, He set out for the Pontus with Pelias sending him, who was scarcely to be feared beyond the bounds of Thessaly. Caesar's anger has harmed me, before whom from the sun's rising to the sun's setting either land trembles. Haemonia is nearer than Rome to the Left Pontus, and he completed a shorter journey than I. He had as companions the foremost men of the Achaean land: but all forsook my flight. We furrowed the vast sea in a fragile ship: the keel that bore the son of Aeson was thick. Nor had I Tiphys as steersman, nor the son of Agenor to teach me which ways to flee and which to follow. Royal Juno guarded him along with Pallas: no deities defended my head, the stealthy arts of Cupid aided him; arts which I would wish Love had not learned from me. He returned home: we shall die in these fields, if the heavy anger of the offended god persists. Harder, then, is my toil, most faithful wife, than that which the son of Aeson underwent. You too, whom I left a young woman when I departed the city, it is likely have grown old amid my ills, Oh, may the gods grant that I be able to see you so, and to give dear kisses to your changed hair, and to embrace with my arms your body, not plump, and to say 'care for me has made this slender too,' and to tell you, weeping myself, my labours to one weeping, and to enjoy the conversation never hoped for, and to bring incense to the Caesars, and to the wife worthy of a Caesar, to true gods, with a mindful hand! Would that the mother of Memnon, the prince softened, might as soon as possible summon that day forth with rosy face!

He who once was not the least among your friends, asks you, Maximus, Naso asks, that you read his words, in which cease to look for my old talent, lest you seem unaware of my exile. You see how leisure corrupts an idle body, how the waters take a taint unless they are moved, and whatever skill I had in leading on a poem fails, and is made less by inactive sloth. These very things which you read, if you believe me at all, Maximus, I write with a reluctant and scarcely compelled hand. It does not please me to strain my mind to such tasks, nor does the summoned Muse come to the harsh Getae. Yet, as you yourself see, I struggle to draw out the verse: but it is made no softer than my fate. When I read it again, I am ashamed to have written, since I see very much worthy to be blotted out, even by me, who made it, as judge. Yet I do not correct it, this labour being greater than to write, and my sick mind endures to suffer nothing hard, Am I, forsooth, to begin to use the file more bitingly, and to call each single word to judgment? Does fortune torment me too little, unless the Lixus into the Hebrus should flow together, and Athos add its leaves to the Alps? The spirit must be spared that has a piteous wound. Oxen draw their scorched necks out from under the yoke. But, I suppose, fruit is at hand, the most just cause of labours, and the field returns the sown crops with much interest? Up to this time no work, though you recall all of it, has profited me— and would that it had not harmed me! You wonder, then, why I write? I wonder too myself, and often I ask with you what I seek from it, Does the crowd truly deny that poets are sane, and am I the greatest proof of this saying, who, so often deceived by a barren field, persist in burying seed in the ruinous soil? No doubt each man is greedy of his own pursuits, and it pleases him to spend his time in his accustomed art, The wounded gladiator forswears the fight, and the same man, forgetful of his old wound, takes up arms, the shipwrecked man says he will have nothing to do with the sea's waves, and pulls his oars in the very water where he just sailed. So I steadfastly keep up an unprofitable pursuit, and return to the goddesses I wish I had not cultivated. What should I do rather? I am not one to spend my time in slothful leisure: idle time is held by me to be death. Nor does it please me to grow soft till daylight with too much wine, nor does the alluring dice hold my unsteady hands, When I have given to sleep the hours the body demands, how, waking, shall I lay out the long stretches of time? Or shall I, forgetful of my country's custom, learn to bend Sarmatian bows, and be drawn on by the art of the place? This pursuit too my strength forbids me to take up, and my mind is stronger than my slender body, When you have well inquired what I do, nothing is more useful than these arts, which have no usefulness at all. From them I gain forgetfulness of my own misfortune; it is enough if my soil returns me this harvest. Let glory spur you on, you who, that your poems may be approved when recited, keep watch over the Pierian choirs, It is enough for me to compose what comes easily, and the cause of too-intent labour is absent, Why should I polish my poems with anxious care? Or am I to fear that the Getan will not approve them? Perhaps I shall do it boldly, but I boast that the Hister has no greater talent than mine. This is enough, if I attain it in the soil where I must live, to be a poet among the inhuman Getae. Why should I strive for fame into a different part of the world? Let the place fortune has given me be my Rome. With this theatre my unhappy Muse is content: so I deserved, so the great gods willed. Nor do I think there is a way from here to there for my little books, to which Boreas comes with failing wing; we are sundered by sky, and the Bear, far from the city of Quirinus, looks close upon the shaggy Getae. Through so much land, so many waters, I can scarcely believe that the token of my study has leapt across. Suppose it is read, and—what is wonderful—suppose it pleases: that affair surely profits the author nothing, What good would it do you to be praised in hot Syene, or where the Indian water tinges Taprobane? Do you wish to go higher? If the constellations of the Pleiades, distant far, should praise you, what would you carry off from it? But I do not reach there with my mediocre writings, and fame, along with its master, has fled from the city. And you, to whom I perished when my fame was buried, now too, I think, are silent about my death.

Did your heart grow sad when you heard—for a far-off land was holding you—of my misfortunes? Though you may dissemble, Graecinus, and fear to confess it, if I know you well, it is clear that it was sad. An unlovable harshness does not fall within those manners of yours, nor does it any less differ from your studies. By the liberal arts, of which you have the greatest care, hearts are softened and harshness flees. Nor does anyone embrace those arts with better faith, as far as duty and the toil of soldiering allow. Certainly I, as soon as I could feel what I was —for in my stupor I had no mind for a long while— felt this too of my fortune, that a friend was absent, who was to be a great protection to me. Then there were absent, along with you, the consolations of a sick mind, and a great part of my spirit and counsel. But now, with what is left, bring me, I pray, this one help from afar, and aid my heart with your address, which, if you believe anything an unlying friend, should be called foolish rather than wicked. It is neither brief nor safe to write what may be the origin of my fault; my wounds dread to be handled. In whatever way they were done to me, cease to ask: do not stir them, if you wish anything to close. Whatever it is, though it is no crime, yet it must be called a fault. Or is every fault against the great gods a crime? There is, then, Graecinus, hope of lightening the penalty, not left wholly absent from my mind. This goddess, when the deities were fleeing the wicked lands, alone remained on the earth, hateful to the gods. She makes the digger, too, live, though bound with the fetter, and think that his legs will be free of the iron, she makes the shipwrecked man, when he sees no land anywhere, toss his arms in the midst of the waters. Often the skilful care of physicians has abandoned someone, and yet hope does not fall for him, though his pulse fails. Those shut in prison are said to hope for safety, and someone hanging on the cross makes vows. This goddess has not allowed how many men, who bind their own necks with a noose, to perish by the death they planned! Me too, attempting to end my grief with the sword, she reproached and, casting her hand on me, held me back, 'What are you doing?' she said. 'There is need of tears, not of blood, often by these the prince's anger is wont to be bent.' Though, therefore, it is owed nothing to my deserts, yet there is great hope in the goodness of the god. Pray, Graecinus, that he may not be hard to me, and add your words too to my vow. And may I lie buried in Tomitan sand, if it is not clear that you vow these things for me. For doves will sooner begin to shun the tower, wild beasts the caves, flocks the grass, the gull the waters, than Graecinus show himself ill to an old friend, not all things are so overturned by my fates.

The letter which you read brought you, Messalinus, in place of words a greeting all the way from the savage Getae, does the place point out its author? Or, unless the name is read, does it lie hidden that it is Naso who writes these words? Is there anyone of your people set lying in the world's farthest part, except me, who pray to be yours? May the gods, far from all who revere and love you, wish to have knowledge of this nation. It is enough for us to live amid ice and Scythian arrows, if a kind of death is to be reckoned as life, let the land press us with war, or the sky with cold, the fierce Getan with arms, winter battle with hail. Let the region hold us, fruitful in neither apple nor grape, and no side of which rests from the enemy. For the rest, may the throng of your worshippers be safe, among whom, as one of a people, I was a small part. Wretched me, if you are offended by these words and deny that I was ever in any way yours! And even if that were true, you ought to pardon one who lied: my boast takes nothing away from your glory. Who, known to the Caesars, does not feign himself their friend? Grant pardon to the weary: you were my Caesar. Yet I do not break in where it is not lawful to go, and it is enough if you do not deny that your halls were not open to me. And though you had nothing more to do with me, surely by your one mouth I shall be greeted, though less than before, Nor did your father deny us his friendship, the encourager of my study, its cause and its torch: to whom I gave both tears, the last gift at the funeral, and writings to be sung in the middle of the Forum. Add that there is a brother, joined to you by as great a love as was among the sons of Atreus and of Tyndareus: he did not disdain me as companion or as friend: if, however, you think these things will not harm him. If not, in this part too I shall confess myself a liar: let rather that whole house be closed to me, but it neither must be closed, nor has any power the strength to ensure that a friend commits no fault. And yet, though I would wish that even the fault could be denied, so no one is unaware that crime is far from me. But unless part of the offence were excusable, the punishment to come would have been small banishment. But he himself saw this, who sees through all things, Caesar, that my offences could be called folly: and in so far as I allowed, and the matter permitted, he spared, and used the fire of his thunderbolt with moderation. He took away neither life nor wealth nor the power to return, if his anger be conquered by your prayers, but I fell heavily; for what is wonderful, if anyone struck by Jove has no slight wound? Even Achilles himself would hold back his powers, the Pelian spear, when thrown, gave heavy blows, since, then, my avenger's own judgment supports me, there is no reason why your door should refuse to know me. It was cultivated, I confess, less than it ought to have been; but this too was in my fates, I believe. Yet the other house did not feel my duty thus: there I was always beneath your household god. And such is your piety that, though it should not honour you yourself, a brother's friend has some claim upon you. What of it, that as gratitude must always be returned to the deserving, so it is to have deserved well of your fortune? But if you permit us to advise what you should wish, pray the gods to grant more than you may repay. And this you do, and, as far as it is allowed to remember, you were wont to be a cause of service to many because of the gifts given. In what number you please, Messalinus, place me again, only let me be a part not alien to your house: and that Naso suffers ills, since he seems to have deserved them, if you do not grieve that he bears them, yet grieve that he deserved them.

Receive a greeting sent by Naso, dear to you, great part of my soul, Severus. And do not ask how I fare. If I should follow out everything, you would weep; it is enough if the sum of my ill is known to you. We live, without share of peace, amid constant arms, the quivered Getan stirring up harsh wars. And of so many banished, I alone am a soldier in exile: the rest of the throng lie safe, and I do not begrudge it, and that you may the more think my little books deserving of pardon, you will read these poems made in the battle-line. There stands an old city, near the bank of two-named Hister, hardly to be approached for its walls and the site of the place. Caspian Aegisos, if we believe themselves about it, founded it, and called the work by his own name. This the fierce Getan, the Odrysians slain in an unforeseen onset, took, and raised arms against the king. He, mindful of his great lineage, which he increases by valour, is at once present, girt with countless soldiery. Nor did he withdraw before, by the deserved slaughter of the guilty, he had crushed the bold spirits of the people. But to you, bravest in our age, may it be granted always to hold the honoured sceptre in your hand. And may—what is even better, for what fuller thing could I wish you— warlike Rome approve you, along with great Caesar. But mindful whence I started, I lament, O pleasant comrade, that savage arms are added to my ills, that I lack you all. Thrust down to the Stygian shores, the risen Pleiad makes the fourth autumn. Nor would you believe that Naso seeks the comforts of city life; yet he seeks them all the same. For now I remember you, sweet friends, in my mind, now my daughter comes to me along with my dear wife: and from my home I turn again to the places of the fair city, and my mind surveys all things, using its own eyes. Now the forums, now the temples, now the theatres roofed with marble, now there comes to mind every portico with its levelled ground. Now the grass of the Campus that looks upon the fair gardens, the pools and the canals and the Virgin's water. But, I suppose, since the pleasure of the city is taken from the wretch, let me at least be allowed to enjoy any countryside! My mind does not long for the lost fields, and the country, fair to see, on Paelignian soil, nor the gardens set on the pine-bearing hills, which the Clodian way, joined to the Flaminian, looks upon. The gardens which I tended for I know not whom, to which I myself was wont to add—nor am I ashamed—spring water to the planted things: where there are, if they live, certain trees planted by me too, but the fruit not to be gathered by my hand. In place of these lost things, would that it might fall to me at least here, an exile, to have a clod of earth to till! I myself, were it but allowed, would graze the goats hanging on the cliff, I myself would feed the sheep, leaning on my staff; I myself, that my heart may not dwell on its usual cares, would lead the country-dwelling oxen under the curved yoke, and would learn the words the Getic bullocks know, and would add to them the threats they are used to, I myself, guiding the plough-handle pressed by my hand, would try to scatter seed on the stirred soil. Nor would I hesitate to clear the weeds with long hoes, and to give the garden, now thirsting, the waters it might drink, but whence is this for me, between whom and the enemy a wall and a closed gate make the least of distinctions? But for you at your birth—at which I rejoice with my whole heart— the fatal goddesses spun the strong threads. Now the Campus holds you, now the portico with its dense shade, now the Forum, in which you spend rare hours. Now Umbria recalls you, and as you make for the Alban hills the Appian way leads you on a hot wheel into the fields. Perhaps here you wish that Caesar may suppress his just anger, and that your villa be my lodging. Ah! it is too much that you ask, friend: wish more moderately, and, I pray, draw in the sails of your prayer. I would have a land nearer be granted, and one liable to no war: a good part of my ills will be taken away.

Your letter, which came to me about Celsus carried off, was at once made wet with my tears; and—what is unspeakable to say, and I thought could not happen— your letter was read with unwilling eyes. Nor has anything more bitter reached my ears since I have been in the Pontus, and I pray it never may, Before my eyes, as the image of one present, his likeness clings, and love feigns that the dead man lives. Often my mind recalls his jests, free of seriousness, and his serious affairs often done with clear faith. Yet no times come to me more thickly than those which I would wish had been the last of my life, when my house, suddenly fallen in a great ruin, collapsed and fell upon its master's head. He stood by me when a great part forsook me, Maximus, and he was not himself a companion of fortune, I saw him weeping for my death no otherwise than if a brother were to be laid on the fire. He clung to me in embrace and consoled me as I lay, and ever mingled his tears with mine. Oh, how often, a hated guardian of my bitter life, did he hold back my ready hands from my own destruction! Oh, how often he said: 'The anger of the gods is appeasable: live, and do not deny that you can be pardoned!' Yet this saying was most frequent of his: 'Consider how great a help Maximus is bound to be to you. Maximus will exert himself, and, with the piety that is his, will beg that Caesar's anger not be obstinate to the end; and he will employ his brother's strength along with his own, and every aid he will try, that you may grieve the more lightly.' These words lessened the weariness of my evil life. Take care, Maximus, that they have not been in vain. He used to swear to me that he would come here too, if only you gave him the right of the long road. For he honoured your inner shrine with no other rite than that with which you yourself honour the gods, lords of the earth. Believe me, though you have many friends, being worthy of them, he was not, of the many, less than any one of them, if only it is not wealth nor the famous name of ancestors but probity and talent that makes men great. Rightly, then, we pour out tears for Celsus snatched away, which, when I was fleeing, he gave me while alive: rightly we give verses attesting his rare character, that those to come may read your name, Celsus. This is what I can send you from the Getic fields, this alone is what here may be mine. I could not attend your funeral nor anoint your body, and I am divided from your pyre by a whole world, he who could—he whom you, while you lived, held as a god— Maximus performed every office for you. He held for you the obsequies and the funeral of great honour, and poured spices into your cold bosom, and, mourning, dissolved the unguents with tears poured forth, and covered your bones, buried in the neighbouring earth. And since to the dead he renders what is owed to friends, he can count me too among the dead.

Naso the exile sends to you, Flaccus, his greeting, if anyone can send a thing of which he himself is lacking, For long love, with cares, makes the spoiled body sick; my languor does not let it keep its strength. Nor is there any pain, nor am I burned with panting fevers, and my pulse keeps the path of its accustomed measure. My appetite is dull, and the dishes set out stir loathing, and I complain when the hour of hateful food comes. Whatever the sea, whatever the land, whatever the air rears, set it before me, there will be nothing there for which I shall hunger. Let well-attending Youth give me with her lovely hand nectar and ambrosia, the liquids and feasts of the gods, yet that flavour would not whet my dulled palate, and the weight would stand long in my idle stomach. These things, though they are most true, I would not dare to write to just anyone, lest he call my ills mere daintiness, For such, forsooth, is my state, such the look of my affairs, that there could even be a place for daintiness! I pray those daintinesses fall to that man, whoever he is, who fears that Caesar's anger upon me may be lighter. Sleep too, which is food in a slender body, does not nourish my empty frame with its office. But I lie awake, and my griefs lie awake without end, the material for which the place itself gives me. You could scarcely, then, recognize my face once seen, and would ask where the colour went that was there before, A little juice comes through to my thin limbs, and my members are paler than new wax. I have not contracted these losses by immoderate wine: you know that almost only water is drunk by me, I am not weighed down with feasts: if I were touched by love of them, yet there is no abundance of them in the Getic places, Nor does the ruinous pleasure of Venus take away my strength: she is not wont to come to mournful beds. The water and the place harm me, and a cause stronger than these, the anguish of mind which is always present with me. Unless you, along with your like-minded brother, relieved this equally, my mind would scarcely have borne the burden of sadness. You are the land, not hard, to a broken skiff, and you bring me the help that many deny. Bring it, I pray, always, since I shall always lack it, as long as Caesar's offended deity is upon me. That he may lessen, not end, the anger we have earned, let each of you beseech your gods as suppliants.