Book 4

Receive, Pompeius, a song drawn out from him who is debtor, Sextus, to you for his life. Who, whether you do not forbid your name to be set down by me, this sum too will be added to your deserts: or whether you frown, I shall confess indeed that I have sinned, yet the cause of my offence must be approved. My mind could not be held back from being grateful. May your anger, I pray, not be heavy upon a dutiful service. Oh, how often I have seemed to myself, in those books, impious, that you were read in no place! Oh, how often, when I wished to write another name, my hand, unknowing, brought yours to the wax! The very error in such mistakes pleased me, and the erasure was scarcely made by an unwilling hand, 'Let him see to it! In sum,' I said, 'let him complain himself! I am ashamed not to have earned this offence before.' Give me, if there is any, the Lethe that dulls the breast. Yet I shall not be able to be forgetful of you. And this I beg you to allow, and do not repel my words, disdained, nor think a crime is in my service, and let this slight gratitude be returned for deserts so great: if less, even against your will I shall be grateful. Never was your favour slow to my affairs, nor did your coffer deny me its bountiful wealth. Now too, in no way terrified by my sudden fate, your clemency brings and will bring aid to my life. You ask perhaps whence so great a confidence in the future is mine? Each man guards the work that he has made. As Venus is the labour and glory of the Coan artist, who presses her hair, wet with the sea's spray: as the warlike goddess, guardian of the Actaean citadel, whether of ivory or of bronze, stands, made by Phidias's hand: as Calamis claims the praise of the horses which he made: as the heifer, like the true one, is the work of Myron: so I, not the least part of your affairs, Sextus, am called the gift and work of your guardianship.

What you read, O greatest bard of great kings, comes from the unshorn Getae, Severus: whose name that my little books have so far kept silent, if only you allow me to speak the truth, I am ashamed. Yet a letter, bereft of verse, never ceased to go, dutiful, by alternate turns, only songs attesting my mindful care for you have not been given. For what should I give that you yourself make? Who would give honey to Aristaeus, who Falernian wine to Bacchus, corn to Triptolemus, fruit to Alcinous? You have a fertile breast, and among those who dwell on Helicon to no one does that crop come forth more richly. To send a song to this man was to add leaves to the woods, this was the cause, Severus, of my delaying. Nor yet does my talent answer me as before, but I plough a dry shore strewn with the ploughshare. No doubt, as mud blinds the channels in the waters, and the harmed water stops, its spring suppressed, so my breast is spoiled by the mud of ills, and my song flows from a poorer vein. If anyone had set Homer himself in this land, he too, believe me, would have become a Getan. Grant pardon to the confession, I have loosed the reins of my studies too, and a letter is rarely drawn by my fingers. That sacred impulse which nourishes the breasts of bards, which used to be in me before, is absent, the Muse scarcely comes to her parts, scarcely, the tablets taken up, does she lay her sluggish hands on them, almost forced, and small, not to say no, pleasure in writing is mine, nor does it delight me to bind words in numbers, whether because I have gained no fruits from this at all, so that that thing should be the beginning of my ill: or because to make rhythmic gestures in the dark, and to write a song you might read to no one, is the same. A hearer rouses zeal, and praised valour grows, and glory has an immense spur. Here to whom should I recite my writings, but the yellow-haired Coralli, and what other nations the barbarous Hister holds? But what should I do alone, and with what material should I waste my unhappy leisure, and steal away the day? For since neither wine nor the deceiving dice holds me, through which the silent time is wont to slip away unseen, nor does the land, renewed by its tillage—which I should desire, if it were allowed amid the fierce wars—delight me, what, except the Muses, cold comforts, remains, goddesses who have not deserved well of me? But you, for whom the Aonian spring is more happily drunk, love the study which usefully yields to you, and worthily honour the sacred rites of the Muses, and that I may read it, send here some work of your recent care.

Shall I complain, or be silent? Shall I set down the crime without a name, or should I wish that who you are be known to all? I shall not use a name, lest you be commended by my complaint, and fame be sought for you by my song. While my ship was founded on a sound keel, you who wished to run with me were the first. Now, because Fortune has knit her brow, you withdraw, since you know there is need of your help. You even dissemble, and do not wish to seem to know me, and ask who Naso is, when you hear the name, I am that man, though you do not wish to hear it, joined to you, almost a boy to a boy, by an old friendship: I am he who first used to know your serious affairs and first to be present at your pleasant jests: I am the messmate, the familiar of close intimacy, I am the one Muse in your judgments. I am he, of whom now whether I live, faithless one, you know not, for whom you had no care to ask. Whether I was never dear, you confess you feigned: or, if you were not pretending, you will be found fickle. Or come, name some anger which has changed you: for unless yours is just, my complaint is just. What crime now forbids you to be like the man you were before? Or do you call it a crime, that I have begun to be wretched? If you brought me no help in affairs and deeds, a sheet marked with three words would have come. I scarcely believe it indeed, but report says that you even insult me as I lie low, and do not spare your words. What are you doing, ah, madman? Why, if Fortune should withdraw, do you yourself snatch away the tears for your own shipwreck? This goddess confesses by her unsteady wheel how fickle she is, who always has her summit beneath a doubtful foot, she is more uncertain than any leaf, than any breeze: equal to her in fickleness, base one, is your own alone. All things of men hang on a slender thread, and what once was strong falls by a sudden chance, who has not heard of the wealth of rich Croesus? Yet, taken by the foe, he kept his life, he lately feared in the Syracusan city scarcely repelled hard hunger by a humble art, what had been greater than Magnus? Yet he begged, fleeing, with a client's submissive voice, for aid. And the man to whom the whole world of lands obeyed, . . . he, famous for the Jugurthine and the Cimbrian triumph, in which, with him as consul, victorious Rome was so often, Marius lay in the mud and marsh reed, and that so great a man endured many shameful things. Divine power plays in human affairs, and the present hour scarcely has sure faith. If anyone had said to me 'You will go to the Euxine shore, and will fear to be struck by a Getan's bow,' 'Go, drink,' I should have said, 'the juices that purge the breast, and whatever is born in all Anticyra.' Yet I have suffered these things: nor, though I could guard against mortal things, could I beware the weapons of the highest god. You too, see that you fear, and what seems glad to you while you speak, think that it can become sad.

No day is so wet with southern rains that the rain pours with unbroken waters, nor is any place so barren that in it there is not a useful herb mixed, mostly, with hard brambles. Heavy fortune has made nothing so pitiable that joys do not lessen the ill in some part. Behold, lacking home and homeland and the sight of my own, shipwrecked, driven onto the waters of the Getic shore, yet I have found a cause whereby I can spread out my face, and not remember my fortune. For, as I walked alone on the tawny sand, a wing seemed to have given a sound behind my back. I look back, nor was there a body that I could perceive, yet these words were received by my ear: 'Behold, I come to you as messenger of glad things, Fame, glided through the immense ways of the air. With Pompeius consul, than whom no other is dearer to you, the next year will be bright and happy.' She spoke, and when she had filled the Pontus with glad rumour, the goddess turned her course from here to other nations. But for me, my cares dispersed amid the new joys, the unjust harshness of this place fell away. Therefore when, two-headed Janus, you have unlocked the long year, and December has been driven from the sacred month, the purple of the highest honour will clothe Pompeius, that he may owe nothing to his own titles. Already I seem to see the halls almost burst by the throng, and the people hurt by the failing room, and the temples of the Tarpeian seat first approached by you, and the gods made easy to your vows, the snow-white oxen offer their necks to the sure axe, which the Faliscan grass nourished in its fields: and though you would wish all the gods, then these more earnestly, to be favourable to you, Caesar will be there with Jove. The senate-house will receive you, and the fathers, called by custom, will turn their ears to your words. When your voice has gladdened these with eloquent mouth, and, as is wont, the day has brought prosperous words, and you have given due thanks to the gods above along with Caesar (who will give a reason why you do so often), then you will seek home again, with the whole senate attending, the house scarcely holding the people's homage. Wretched me, that I shall not be seen in that throng, nor will my eyes be able to enjoy those things! What is allowed, absent, with such mind as I can, I shall see you: that mind will behold the face of its own consul, may the gods grant that at some time our name come into your mind, and that you say, 'alas! what is that wretched man doing?' If anyone brings me these words of yours, I shall confess straightway that my exile is gentler.

Go, light elegies, to the learned ears of the consul, and bear my words to be read by the honoured man. The way is long, nor do you advance on equal feet, and the earth lies hidden, covered with winter snow. When you have crossed icy Thrace and Haemus shrouded in clouds and the waters of the Ionian sea, in less than ten days you will come to the mistress city, though you do not make the journey in haste. Straightway from there let the Pompeian house be sought by you: none is closer to the Augustan forum. If anyone, as in a crowd, asks who you are and whence, carry any names you please to his deceived ear. For though it be safe, as I think it is, to confess, words of fear surely have less of fiction. Nor will you have a chance of seeing the consul, no one forbidding, when you have reached the threshold. Either he will govern his Quirites, declaring the law, when, seated high, he presses the ivory conspicuous with figures: or he will arrange the public revenues at the set spear, and will not let the resources of the great city be lessened. Or, when the fathers have been called into the Julian temple, he will treat of matters worthy of so great a consul. Or he will bring the accustomed greeting to Augustus and his son, and consult about a duty too little known. All the time free from these Caesar Germanicus will take away. After the great gods he honours him. Yet when he has rested from the throng of these affairs, he will hold out his gentle hands to you, and ask perhaps what I, your parent, am doing. I wish you to give him such words as these: 'He still lives, and confesses that he owes you the life which he holds as a gift from the mild Caesar before, you, when he fled, he is wont with mindful mouth to recall to have shown safe ways through the barbarism: that he did not warm a Bistonian sword with his blood, was brought about by the care of your heart: besides, many gifts also for the guarding of his life were added, that he might not lessen his own resources. For which deserts, that gratitude be returned, he swears that he will be your bondsman for all time. For sooner shall the mountains lack their shady tree, and the straits be without sail-flying ships, and rivers return to their springs in a backward course, than the gratitude for your service can pass away.' When you have said this, ask him to keep his gifts, so will the cause of your journey be accomplished.

The letter you read comes to you, Brutus, from those places in which you would not wish Naso to be, but what you would not wish, pitiable fate has willed; ah me! that prevails more than your vows. In Scythia a five-year Olympiad has been passed by me: now the time crosses into a second lustre. For tenacious fortune persists, and, insidious, sets its malignant foot against my vows. You were sure to speak for me, glory of the Fabian race, Maximus, to the Augustan deity with suppliant voice. You die before my prayers, and I think, Maximus, that I am the cause of your death (let me not be worth so much). Now I fear to entrust my safety to anyone: the very aid fell with your death. Augustus had begun to forgive my deceived fault. He left both my hope and the earth at once, yet such as I could, Brutus, about the new heavenly one I gave a song, set far from your shores. Would that this piety profit me, and that there be now a limit to my ills and a milder anger of the sacred house, that you too pray the same I can clearly swear, O Brutus known to me by no doubtful mark. For though you have always shown me true love, yet this love grew in the adverse time. And whoever should see your tears and mine alike, would believe that two were going to suffer punishment. Nature bore you mild to the wretched, nor to anyone did it give a gentler nature than to you, Brutus: so that one who knew not what you avail in the forensic war, would scarcely think that defendants could be despatched by your mouth. No doubt it belongs to the same man, though they seem to fight, to be easy to suppliants, fierce to the guilty, when the vengeance of the severe law has been undertaken by you, your words have venom in each one, as if by dipping. May it fall to enemies to feel how violent you are in arms, and to undergo the weapons of your tongue. Which are filed by you with so fine a care, that all deny the talent to be of that body, but if you see anyone harmed by unjust Fortune, no woman is softer than your spirit. This I especially felt, when a great part of my friends disowned their knowledge of me. Forgetful of them, never forgetful of you, who, anxious, lighten my ills, I shall be. And sooner shall this Hister, too near a neighbour to me, turn its course into its head from the Euxine sea, and, as if the times of the Thyestean feast returned, the chariot of the Sun be driven toward the eastern waters, than any of you, who grieved that I was taken away, charge me ungrateful, as not remembering you.

Since you have been sent, Vestalis, to the Euxine waters, to render justice in the places set beneath the pole, behold, you see present in what a field I lie, nor will you be a witness that I am wont to complain falsely. There will be added to my voice, through you, not idle, young man sprung from Alpine kings, faith, you yourself surely see the Pontus grow thick with ice, you yourself see the wines standing in rigid frost; you yourself see how the fierce Iazyx, an ox-driver, leads laden wagons through the midst of the Hister's waters, and you see poisons sent beneath the curved iron, and the weapon having two causes of death. And would that this part had only been beheld by you, not also known to you by your own war! The march is toward the first spear-rank through thick perils, the honour which lately fell to you by desert, though this title be full of profits for you, the very valour itself, immense, will be greater than the rank. The Hister does not deny this, whose water your right hand once made crimson with Getic blood. Aegisos does not deny it, which, retaken at your approach, felt that there was no help in the nature of the place. For—it is doubtful whether better defended by site or by hand— the city was on a high ridge, level with the clouds. The fierce foe had intercepted it from the Sithonian king and, victor, held the wrested wealth, until Vitellius, borne down on the river's wave, brought the standards against the Getae, the soldier disembarked. But for you, bravest offspring of high Donnus, came the impulse to go against the hostile men. Without delay, conspicuous far off in gleaming arms, you take care that brave deeds cannot lie hidden, and with mighty stride you go against the iron and the place and the rocks, more than the winter's hail. Nor does the throng of javelins, sent over you, delay you, nor the weapons that drip with viper's blood. The darts cling with painted feathers in your helmet, and almost no part of your shield is free of a wound, nor does your body happily escape all the blows: but the pain is less than the keen love of praise. Such, at Troy, before the Danaan ships, Ajax is said to have withstood the Hectorean torches, when they came nearer and hand was brought to hand, and the matter could be carried on close with the fierce sword, it is hard to say what your Mars did there, and how many you gave to death and whom and in what ways. Victor, you trod down the heaps made by your sword, and many a Getan lay beneath your set foot. The lesser man fights, by the example of the first spear-rank, and the soldier bears many wounds, makes many, but your valour passes all the others by as much as Pegasus will go before swift horses, Aegisos is conquered, and your deeds, Vestalis, are attested for all time by my song.

A letter, late indeed, you cultivated in studies, Suillius, has come here from you, but welcome to me nonetheless, in which you say that, if dutiful gratitude can soften the gods above by asking, you will bring me aid. Though now you give nothing, I am made debtor to a friend's heart, and I call the will to help a service. Only let that impulse of yours last into the long age, and let your piety not be wearied by my ills. The bonds of affinity make some claim for us, which I pray may always remain unshaken. For she who is your wife is almost a daughter to me, and she who calls you son-in-law calls me husband, ah me, if, having read these verses, you draw down your face, and are ashamed to be my kinsman! But you will be able to find nothing here worthy of shame except my fortune, which has been blind to me. Whether you sift my lineage, knights from the first origin we shall be found, through countless ancestors: or if you wish to inquire what my character is, take away the error, the wretch's: they lack a stain. You only, if you hope anything can be done by praying, entreat the gods you worship with suppliant voice. Your gods are the young Caesar, appease your deities, than this altar surely none is better known to you. That altar never lets the prayers of its priest be vain: hence seek help for my affairs. However small the breeze that aids us there, my swamped skiff will rise again from the midst of the waters. Then I shall bring solemn incense to the swift flames, and shall be witness how much the deities avail. Nor shall I build you a temple, Germanicus, of Parian marble: that ruin plucked away my wealth. Temples shall the houses and blessed cities make for you; Naso, by his wealth, will be grateful by song. A small gift, I confess, is rendered for great ones, when for granted safety we give words, but he who gives the greatest that he could is grateful in abundance, and that piety has reached its own end. Nor does the incense which the poor man pours to the gods from a small censer avail less than that given on a great dish, and a lamb as milky as the victim pastured on Faliscan grass stains, when struck, the Tarpeian hearths. Yet for the service done to princely men through song there is nothing more fitting. Songs perform the heraldings of your praises, and take care that the fame of your deeds not be fleeting. By song valour becomes long-lived, and, free of the tomb, has the knowledge of late posterity. Wasting age consumes iron and stone, and no thing has greater strength than time. Writings bear the years, by writings you know Agamemnon, and whoever bore arms against him or with him, who would know Thebes and the seven leaders without song, and whatever was after these, and whatever was before? The gods too, if it is right to say it, are made by songs, and so great a majesty needs the singer's mouth. So we know that Chaos, sorted out from that mass of earlier nature, has its own parts: so the Giants, aiming at the heavenly realms, were given to the Styx by the avenger's cloud-bearing fire. So victor Liber drew praise from the conquered Indians, Alcides from captured Oechalia. And lately, Caesar, songs have hallowed in some part your grandfather, whom valour added to the stars. If anything living, then, Germanicus, still remains in my talent, it will all serve you. You, a bard, cannot scorn a bard's service: in your judgment that thing has a price. But had not so great a name called you to greater things, you would have been the highest glory of the Muses. But to give us material is greater than songs: nor yet can you wholly desert them. Now you wage wars in numbers, now in numbers you restrain words, and what is work for others, this will be play for you. And as Apollo is sluggish neither at the lyre nor at the bow, but each string comes to his sacred hands, so you lack neither the learned man's nor the prince's arts, but the Muse is mingled with Jove in your spirit. And since that wave has not driven us from it which the hollow hoof of the Gorgonean horse made, may it profit, and bring help, to guard the common sacred rites, and to have laid a hand on the same studies: that I may at last escape the shores too much exposed to the skin-clad Coralli, and the savage Getae: and if my homeland is closed to the wretch, that I may be set in some place less distant from the Ausonian city, whence I may be able to celebrate your recent praises and recount your great deeds with the least delay. That this prayer may touch the heavenly deities, dear Suillius, pray almost on behalf of your father-in-law.

From where it is allowed, not from where it pleases, Graecinus, Naso sends you this greeting from the Euxine shoals, and, sent, may the gods grant it meet that Dawn which will first give you the twelve fasces: that, since without me you will touch the Capitol as consul and I shall be no part of your throng, my letter on the appointed day may take a master's part and perform a friend's duty. And if I had been born under better fates and my wheel ran true on its axle, my tongue would have done the office of greeting you, which now my hand performs through writing, and, congratulating, I should give kisses with sweet words, nor would that honour be less mine than yours. On that day, I confess, I should be so proud, that scarcely any house could hold my pride: and while the throng of the sacred senate girds your side, I, a knight, should be bidden to go before the consul's feet; and although I should wish to be always nearest you, I should rejoice not to have had a place at your side, nor should I be querulous, though I were crushed by the crowd: but it would then be sweet to me to be pressed by the people, I should gaze, rejoicing, how great would be the order of the column, and how long a road the dense throng would hold, and that you may the more know how common things touch me, I should watch what purple covered you. The figures too I should know, shaped on the curule chair, and the whole carved work of the Numidian tusk. But when you had been led to the Tarpeian heights, while the sacred victim fell at your bidding, me too, secretly giving thanks to him, the great god who sits in the midst of the temple would have heard; and I should give incense with a mind fuller than the dish, glad four times over at the honour of your office. Here I should be numbered among your present friends, if only kindly fates gave the city's right, and the pleasure which now is grasped by mind alone, would then have to be perceived by the eyes too. It has not so seemed good to the heavenly ones, and perhaps justly; for what would it profit me to be denied for the sake of punishment? Yet I shall use my mind, which alone is not exiled from its place, and I shall behold your bordered robe and your fasces. That mind will see you now rendering justice to the people, and will feign itself to be present, secretly, at your affairs. Now it will believe you setting up the long returns of the lustre at the spear, and letting all out on exact faith: now making eloquent words in the midst of the senate, seeking what the public good asks: now decreeing thanks to the Caesars above, or striking the white necks of fat oxen. And would that, when you have prayed for better things, you may ask that the prince's anger be appeased toward me! Let the dutiful fire rise at this voice from the full altar, and let the bright tip give a good omen to your vow. Meanwhile, in the part where it is allowed, lest I complain of all, here too I shall pass a festive time at your consulship. There is a second cause of gladness, not yielding to the first, your brother will be the successor of so great an honour. For the command ended for you, Graecinus, at the last of December he takes up on the very first day. And, such is the piety in you, you will bear alternate joys, you in your brother's fasces, he in yours. So you will have been twice consul, he twice consul, and in your house a double honour will be beheld. Which, though it be vast, and warlike Rome sees no command higher than the highest consul, yet the dignity of the bearer multiplies this honour, and the office given has the majesty of the giver. May it be allowed, then, for Flaccus and for you to enjoy such judgments of Augustus for all time. Yet what time will be free from the nearer care of affairs, add your vows, I pray, to my vows. And if the breeze gives any sail, loosen the ropes, that my ship may go out from the Stygian waters. Flaccus lately governed these places, Graecinus, and under that leader the fierce bank of the Hister was safe. He held the Mysian nations in faithful peace, he terrified with the sword the Getae who trust their bow, he, by swift valour, retook captured Troesmis, and stained the Danube with fierce blood. Ask the look of the place and the discomforts of the Scythian sky, and ask by how near a foe I am terrified: whether the slender arrows are smeared with serpent's gall, or a human head becomes a dire victim. Whether I lie, or the Pontus, hardened by cold, freezes over, and the ice holds many acres of the strait, when he tells these things, ask what my repute is, and ask in what manner I pass the hard times. Nor am I here in hatred, nor surely do I deserve to be, nor with my fortune has my mind too been changed. That calm of mind which you used to praise, that old modesty persists in my accustomed face, so I am far off, so here, where the barbarous foe, where fierce arms avail more than laws, brings it about that, through so many years now, Graecinus, no woman or man or boy can complain of anything about me. This makes the Tomitans favour and stand by the wretch: this land, since it is so, must be witnessed by me. They, because they see I wish it, prefer that I depart: yet, out of regard for themselves, they wish me to be here. Nor would you believe me: there are decrees by which they praise me and the public wax makes me exempt from burdens, and though glory is not fitting for the wretched, the neighbouring towns give me the same gift. Nor is my piety unknown: the host land sees that the worship of Caesar is in my house. There stand alike the dutiful son and the wife as priestess, deities now no lighter than the god already made. And that no part of the house be lacking, both grandsons stand, this nearest his grandmother's side, that his father's. To these I give, as often with incense, words of prayer, as often as the day rises from the eastern world. The whole Pontic land, though you ask it, will say I do not feign this, the witness of my duty. The Pontic land knows that I celebrate, with such games as we can, the birthday of the god. Nor is such piety less known to the guests, if the long Propontis has sent any to these waters, he too, under whom the left Pontus had been a province, your brother, will perhaps have heard these things. My fortune is unequal to my spirit, and gladly, poor, I cull slight resources with such a gift. Nor do I give these things to your eyes, removed far from the city. But content with silent piety we are. And yet these things will touch Caesar's ears at some time. Nothing that is done in all the world is hidden from him. You at least know these things, taken up among the gods, and see, Caesar, as the earth is set beneath your eyes. You hear, seated amid the vaulted stars, the prayers which we give with anxious mouth. Perhaps too those songs reach there, which I sent about you, made a new heavenly one. I augur, then, that your deities are bent by these, nor do you without desert have the mild name of Parent.

This is the sixth summer now drawn out for me, to be passed on the Cimmerian shore among the skin-clad Getae. What flints, what iron, dearest Albinovanus, do you compare to my hardness? The drop hollows the stone, the ring is worn away by use, the curved ploughshare is rubbed by the pressed soil. Devouring time, then, destroys all things but me: even death, conquered by my hardness, holds back. Ulysses is an example of a too-patient spirit, tossed for two lustres on the doubtful sea. Yet he did not endure all the times of an anxious fate, and there were often calm delays, or was it grievous for six years to have cherished fair Calypso and to have lain with a goddess of the sea? The son of Hippotes receives him, who gives winds as a gift, that the useful breeze may curve the driven sails, nor is it a labour to hear well-singing girls: nor was the lotus bitter to him who tasted it. These juices, which make forgetfulness of one's homeland, I would buy with part of my life, if only they were given. Nor would you ever compare the city of the Laestrygonian to the nations whom the Hister skirts with its slanting water. Nor will the Cyclops conquer savage Piacches in fierceness, who is wont to be how small a part of my terror! Than Scylla, who barks from her trunk with wild monsters at her loins, the Heniochan vessels have harmed sailors more, nor can you compare Charybdis to the hostile Achaeans, though three times she drinks down, three times she vomits up the strait, who, although they roam more freely in the region on the right, yet do not let this side be secure, here are leafless fields, here darts dipped in poisons, here winter makes the straits passable even to the footman, so that, where the oar had just made its way with the beaten waves, the dry wayfarer goes, the ship scorned. Those who come from there say you scarcely believe these things, how wretched he is who bears things harsher than belief! Yet believe; nor will we let you not know the causes why a bristling winter hardens the Sarmatian sea. Nearest to us are the stars that give the shape of the Wain and that have the chief cold. Hence rises Boreas, and he is native to this shore and takes his strength from a nearer place. But the South wind, which breathes warm from the opposite pole, is far off and comes rare and more languid. Add that here rivers are mingled in the enclosed Pontus, and the strait loses its strength through the many a stream. Hither flow Lycus, hither Sugaris and Penius and Hypanis and Cales, and Halys, twisted with frequent eddy, and rapacious Parthenius, and Cynapses, rolling rocks, glides on, and Tyras, slower than no river, and you, Thermodon, known to the female squadrons, and Phasis, once sought by Greek men, and Dyrapses, most clear with the Borysthenian stream, and Melanthus, gently performing his soft course, and he who separates two lands, Asia and the sister of Cadmus, and makes his course between the two, and countless others, among whom the greatest of all, the Danube, denies that it yields to you, Nile, the abundance of so many waters adulterates the waves it swells, nor lets the sea keep its own strength. Nay even, like a pool and a sluggish marsh, its dark-blue colour scarcely exists and is diluted. Fresh water floats on the strait, and is lighter than the sea-water, which has its own weight from the mingled salt. If anyone should ask why these things were told to Pedo, or what it profited to speak them in fixed measures, 'I beguiled my cares and cheated the time,' I shall say. This fruit the present hour has brought me. We have been away, while we write this, from our wonted grief, nor did we feel ourselves to be amid the Getae. But you, I do not doubt, when you praise Theseus in song, that you guard the titles of your material, and imitate the man whom you recount; he surely forbids that faith be a companion of tranquil times only. Who, although he is mighty in deeds and is set down by you, a man to be sung with as great a mouth as he deserved, yet there is something imitable in him for us, and in faith anyone can be a Theseus. You have no enemies to be tamed by sword and club, by whom the Isthmus was scarcely passable to anyone: but love must be shown, no toilsome thing to one who is willing. What labour is it not to have violated pure faith? These things to you, who persist unswerving toward a friend, there is no reason to think said with complaining tongue.

Gallio, it will be a crime scarcely excusable in me, that you have had no name in my song. For you too, I remember, soothed with your tears my wounds made by the heavenly spear. And would that, hurt by the loss of a snatched-away friend, you had felt nothing further to complain of! Not so did it please the gods, who, cruel, did not hold it an impiety to despoil you of a chaste wife. For a letter, messenger of grief, came to me lately, and your losses were read with my tears. But neither, less wise, would I dare to console the prudent, and to report to you the noted words of the learned: and your grief, if not by reason, I have long suspected to be ended already by the very lapse of time. While your letter comes, while mine, running back, passes through so many seas and lands, a year goes by. It is the office of a fixed time to speak consolations, while the grief is in its course and the sick man seeks help. But when a long day has stilled the wounds of the mind, he who stirs them unseasonably renews them. Add that (and would that the omen come true for you) you can now be happy in a new marriage.

That you are not set among my little books, friend, is brought about by the condition of your name. But I would deem no other worthy of this honour before you— if only my song is any honour. The law of the foot and the fortune of your name stand in the way, and there is no road by which you may enter my measures, for I am ashamed so to split your name into twin verses, that the former end with this part and the lesser begin. And I should be ashamed if, where a syllable lingers, I called you more tightly and named you Tuticanus. Nor can you come into verse in Tuticanus's manner, so that from a long the first syllable be made short, or that be lengthened which now goes out too clipped, and the second be long by a stretched-out delay. If I should dare to corrupt your name by these faults, I should be laughed at and rightly denied to have sense. This was my cause for delaying this gift, which my love will repay with interest added, and I shall sing you by whatever mark, send you songs, known to me almost a boy when I was almost a boy, and through the long series of years which we both have, loved by me no less than brother by brother. You were a good encourager, you were leader and companion, when I guided the new reins with a tender hand. Often I corrected my little books under you as censor, often an erasure was made at my prompting for you, when the Pierian goddesses had thoroughly taught you to compose a Phaeacid worthy of Maeonian pages. This tenor, this concord, begun in green youth, has come unshaken to whitening hair. Which unless they move you, I should think your heart to be of hard iron or closed in unconquered adamant, but sooner shall both war and frosts be lacking to this land, the two things which hateful Pontus has for me, and the North be warm and the South be very cold, and my fate be able to be milder, than your heart be hard to a weary comrade. Let this heap be absent, and it is absent, from my ills. You only, by the gods, of whom that one is surest, under whom your honour has constantly grown as prince, bring it about, guarding the fugitive with constant piety, that the hoped-for breeze not desert my craft. You ask what I charge you with? May I perish, unless it is hard to say; if only he who has perished can perish. Nor do I find what I should do, nor what I would or would not, nor is my own advantage well enough known to me. Believe me, prudence first abandons the wretched, and sense and counsel flee along with the substance, do you yourself, I pray, seek in what part I am to be helped by you, and by what ford you may make a way to my prayers.

O you to be named among my undoubted comrades, who, calling you what you are, Carus, truly, hail! Whence you are greeted, this colour can at once be your token and the structure of my song. Not because it is wonderful, but because it is surely not common: for such as it is, it is not hidden to be mine. I myself too, though you tear the title from the page's front, seem able to say what work is yours. Though set among many little books, you will be known, and through the marked signs will be found out. The strength will profit the author, which we know to be worthy of Hercules and equal to him whom you yourself sing. And my Muse too, caught by her own colour, may perhaps be conspicuous by her own faults. A form so bad forbade Thersites to lie hidden, as fair Nireus was to be gazed upon. Nor will it be fitting for you to marvel if the songs are faulty, which I, almost a Getan poet, make. Ah! I am ashamed, and I have written a little book in the Getic tongue, and barbarian words have been set to our measures: and I pleased (congratulate me) and began to have a poet's name among the inhuman Getae. You ask the subject? Praises: I spoke of Caesar. My novelty was aided by the deity of the god. For I taught that the body of father Augustus had been mortal, that his deity had gone to the ethereal homes: that he was equal in valour to his father, who, when asked, took the reins of empire that he had often refused: that you, Livia, were the Vesta of chaste mothers, doubtful whether more worthy of your son or your husband: that there were two young men, firm supports of their parent, who had given sure pledges of their spirit. When I read these writings through, in a tongue not my country's, and the last page came to my fingers, all moved their heads and their full quivers, and there was a long murmur in the Getic mouth. And someone said, 'Since you write these things of Caesar, you ought to be restored by Caesar's command.' He indeed said it: but the sixth winter beneath the snowy pole now sees me, Carus, banished. Songs profit nothing, songs once harmed me, and were the first cause of so wretched a flight, but you, by the common covenants of the sacred study, by the name of friendship not cheap to you (so may Germanicus, the foe captured in Latian chains, bring material to your talents: so may the boys be well, the common vow of the gods, who have been given you, a great praise, to be shaped), as much as you can, lend weight to my safety, which will be none, unless my place be changed.

These things are sent to you, of whom I lately complained in song that you had a name not fit for my numbers, in which, except that so far I am somehow well, you will find nothing besides that pleases me. Even safety itself is hateful, and it is my last vow, of course, to go from these places to any other you please. I have no care, to what land I be sent from this one, because every one will be more pleasing than the one I see. Into the midst of the Syrtes, into the midst of Charybdis send my sails, provided I lack the present soil. The Styx too, if it is anything, will be well exchanged for the Hister, and anything the world has lower than the Styx, the tilled field hates the grass, the swallow the cold, less than Naso the places next to the Mars-worshipping Getae. For such words the Tomitans are angry at me, and a public anger is stirred by my songs. Shall I, then, never cease to be harmed through my songs, and shall I always be punished by my incautious talent? Shall I, then, that I write not, delay to cut off my fingers, and madly still follow the weapons which harmed me? Do I turn aside again to the old rocks and those waters in which my wrecked ship struck? But I have done nothing, no fault is mine, Tomitans, whom, though I loathe your places, I love. Let anyone sift the records of my labour: my letter has complained nothing about you, I complain of the cold and the assaults to be feared from every side and that the wall is battered by the foe, I have said most true charges against the places, not the men. You too often blame your own soil. The Muse dared to teach how his own Ascra was forever to be avoided, that of the old farmer: and he who wrote it had been born in that land, yet Ascra did not swell with anger at her bard. Who loved his homeland more than skilful Ulysses? Yet by his evidence the harshness of the place is taught. Not the places, but the manners the Scepsian harassed with bitter writings, the Ausonian, and Rome was made defendant: yet she endured the false reproaches with an even mind, nor did the fierce tongue harm its author. But a bad interpreter stirs the people's anger against me and calls my songs to a new charge. Would that I were as happy as I am candid of heart! No one wounded by my mouth survives even now. Add that, were I now blacker than Illyrian pitch, the faithful throng was not to be bitten by me. My lot mildly received by you, Tomitans, shows that the Greek men are so gentle. My people, the Paelignian, and my native region, Sulmo, could not have been gentler to my ills. The honour which you would scarcely give to anyone unhurt and safe, was given lately to me by you. I alone so far am exempt on your shores, those excepted who have the gifts of the law. My temples are veiled with a sacred crown, which the public favour, against my will, set on them. As welcome, then, as the Delian land of Latona, which alone gave a safe place to her wandering, so dear to me is Tomis, which to me, driven from my fatherland's seat, remains up to this time a faithful host, would that the gods had granted that it could have the hope of calm peace, and were farther from the icy pole.

If anyone anywhere still survives not forgetful of me, and asks what I, the banished Naso, am doing, let him know that I owe my life to the Caesars, my safety to Sextus: after the gods above, this man will be first for me. For though I embrace all the times of my wretched life, no part of mine is free of his deserts, which are as many in number as the seeds reddening beneath the tough rind in the garden of a fertile field, as many as Africa's crops, as the Tmolian land's clusters, as many as Sicyon's berries, as Hybla bears combs of honey, I confess it: you may witness it, mark it, Quirites! There is no need of the law's force, I myself speak, set me among your father's wealth, a small thing: I am part, however tiny, of your fortune. As your Trinacria and the land once ruled by Philip, as the house joined to the Augustan forum, as your Campania, a countryside pleasing to its master's eyes, and what you hold left to you, Sextus, or bought: so, behold, I am yours, by whose sad gift you cannot say you have nothing in the Pontus, and would that you could, and that a friendlier field be given, and you set your property in a better place! Since this is in the gods' power, try to soften by praying the deities you honour with perpetual piety. For it is scarcely possible to distinguish whether you are the greater proof of my error or its remedy. Nor do I pray as one doubting: but often, with the stream favourable, the course of the going water is increased by oars, and I am both ashamed and afraid to pray always the same things, lest a just weariness come over your mind. But what shall I do? Desire is an immoderate thing. Grant pardon to my fault, mild friend. Often, desiring to write something else, I slip to the same! My letter of itself asks for a place. Yet whether my gratitude is to have effect, or whether the hard Fate bids me die beneath the icy pole, always with unforgetting mind I shall recall your gifts, and my land shall hear that I am yours. And whatever land is set beneath any sky shall hear it (if only my Muse pass the fierce Getae), and shall know you the cause and saviour of my safety, and me yours by less than scale and bronze.

Envy, why do you tear the songs of snatched-away Naso? The last day is not wont to harm talents, and fame comes greater after the ashes, and I had a name even then, when I was numbered among the living; when there were Marsus and Rabirius of the great mouth and Iliac Macer and starry Pedo; and Carus, who would have hurt Juno in his Hercules, if that man were not already Juno's son-in-law, and Severus, who gave Latium a royal song, and both Prisci, with subtle Numa, and you, Montanus, who suffice in unequal numbers or in equal, and have a name by twin song, and he who bade Ulysses write back to Penelope as he wandered for two lustres on the savage sea, and Sabinus, who deserted his Troesmis and the unfinished work of the Days by swift death, and Largus, called by the surname of his talent, who led the Phrygian old man into Gallic fields; and Camerinus, who sings of Troy from conquered Hector; and Tuscus, who has a name from his Phyllis; and the bard of the sail-flying sea, of whom you could believe that the dark-blue gods had composed his songs; and he who told of the Libyan battle-lines and the Roman wars; and Marius, deft in writing of every kind; and the Trinacrian author of his Perseid, and the author, Lupus, of the returning son of Tantalus and of Tyndareus's daughter; and he who turned the Maeonian Phaeacid, and you too, Rufus, lyre-player of the Pindaric lyre; and the Muse of Turranius, leaning on tragic buskins; and your Muse, Melissus, with the light comic slipper; when Varius and Graccus gave fierce words to tyrants, Proculus held the soft path of Callimachus, Passer returned, a Tityrus, to the ancient grasses, and Grattius gave fitting arms to the hunter, Fontanus sang the Naiads loved by the Satyrs, Capella shut his words in unequal measures; and when there were others, all of whose names to recount is a long delay, songs which the common crowd holds; and there were young men, whose work, because it is unpublished, I have no right to name (yet you, Cotta, in the throng I would not dare to keep silent, light of the Muses and bulwark of the forum, to whom, Maximus, redoubled nobility gave the Cottae on your mother's side and the Messallae on your father's) if it is right to say it, my Muse was of bright name and was read among such great men. Therefore cease, Envy, to rail at one removed from his homeland, and do not scatter, bloodthirsty one, my ashes. I have lost all: only life is left, to give me the feeling and the material of ill. What does it profit to send the sword into dead limbs? There is no room in me now for a new wound.