Book 6

6. This month too has uncertain causes for its name; of all that I set out, you yourself shall choose which please. I shall sing of facts; but there will be those who say I invented them and think that no divine powers were ever seen by a mortal. There is a god within us; we grow warm when he stirs us: this impulse holds the seeds of a sacred mind. It is especially lawful for me to have seen the faces of the gods, whether because I am a poet, or because I sing of sacred things. There is a grove thick with trees, a place secret from every sound, were it not for the noise of waters. Here I was seeking what was the origin of the month I had begun, and I was busy with the care of its name. Behold, I saw goddesses, not such as the teacher of ploughing had seen, when he followed his Ascraean sheep, nor such as the son of Priam compared in the valleys of watery Ida: yet one of them was from those. One of them was there, the sister of her own husband; this was she (I knew her) who stands on the citadel of Jove. I had shuddered and confessed my heart by my silent pallor; then the goddess herself took away the fears she had made, for she said, "O poet, founder of the Roman year, who have dared to tell great things in slender measures, you have made for yourself the right to see a heavenly power, when it pleased you to set festivals down in your verse. But that you may not be ignorant and led by the error of the crowd, June takes its name from my name. It is something to have married Jove, to be the sister of Jove: whether by my brother or by my husband I should rather boast, I doubt. If lineage is regarded, I first made Saturn a parent, I was the first offspring of Saturn. Rome was once called Saturnia from my father: this land was nearest to him from heaven. If the marriage-bed is prized, I am called the matron of the Thunderer, and my temple is joined to Tarpeian Jove. Could a mistress give her name to the month of May, and shall this honour in me be a thing of envy? Why then am I called queen and chief of the goddesses? Why have they given a golden sceptre to my right hand? Shall days make the month, and shall I be called Lucina from them, and yet draw my name from no month? Then I should repent of having faithfully laid aside my wrath against the race of Electra and the Dardanian house, the cause of my anger was double: I grieved at the rape of Ganymede, and my beauty too was defeated by the Idaean judge. I should repent that I do not cherish the citadels of Carthage, though my chariot and my arms are in that place; I should repent of having set beneath Latium Sparta and Argos and my own Mycenae and old Samos; add old Tatius and the Juno-worshipping Faliscans, whom I suffered to fall beneath the Romans. But let me not repent, nor is any nation dearer to me: here may I be worshipped, here may I hold the temple with my Jove. Mavors himself said to me, 'I commend these walls to you. You shall be powerful in your grandson's city.' His word is followed by deed: I am honoured at a hundred altars, nor is the honour of the month a lighter thing to me. Nor does Rome alone grant me this honour: the towns nearby give me the same gift. Look at the calendars that wooded Aricia holds, and the people of Laurentum and my Lanuvium; there is a month of Juno there. Look at Tibur and the sacred walls of the Praenestine goddess; you will read the season of Juno there, and Romulus did not found those towns: but Rome was my grandson's." Juno had ended. We looked back: the wife of Hercules stood there, and on her face were signs of vigour. "I would not, if my mother bade me yield the whole heaven, linger against my mother's will," she said. "Now too I do not contend over the name of this season: I coax, and almost play the part of one who asks, and I would rather have held what is my right by entreaty, and perhaps you yourself may favour my cause. My mother holds the golden Capitol in a shared temple and, as is fitting, holds the heights with Jove. But all my glory comes from the origin of the month: the only honour I am anxious for is this. What harm is it, Roman, if you gave the title of a month to the wife of Hercules, and posterity remembers it? This land too owes me something, by the name of my great husband; here he drove the captured cattle, here, ill defended by his flames and his father's dowry, Cacus stained the Aventine ground with his blood. But I am called to nearer matters. Romulus divided the people by their years, and distributed them into two parts: the one is readier to give counsel, the other to fight; this age advises war, but that wages it. So he ordained, and marked the months by the same distinction: June belongs to the young (iuvenes); the one before, to the old." She spoke, and they would have gone to strife in their zeal for contest, and piety would have been hidden by anger: Concordia came, her long hair bound with Apollo's laurel, the divinity and the work of a peaceful leader. When she had told how Tatius and brave Quirinus and their two realms had united with their peoples, and how the fathers-in-law and sons-in-law had been received under a common home, "June," she said, "from these joined takes its name." The cause is told threefold. But pardon me, you goddesses: the matter is not to be decided by my judgement. Go from me equal. By a judge of beauty Pergamum perished: two harm more than one can help.

The first day is given to you, Carna; she is the goddess of the hinge: by her power she opens the closed and closes the open. From where she has the powers granted to her, the tale is obscured by age, but from my song you shall be certain. Near the Tiber lies the ancient grove of Helernus: the pontiffs even now bring their rites there. A nymph was born there (the earlier ones called her Crane), often sought in vain by many suitors. She used to follow the fields and hunt wild beasts with javelins and to spread the knotted nets in the hollow valley. She had no quiver, yet they believed her to be the sister of Phoebus; nor were you ashamed of her, Phoebus. If any young man spoke loving words to her, she at once gave back such sounds as these: "These places have too much light, and with the light too much shame: if you lead the way into more secret caves, I follow." While the credulous man went ahead, she, finding the thickets, stops and hides and is in no way to be found. Janus had seen her, and caught by desire of what he saw, had used soft words to the hard girl. The nymph, as her custom was, bids him seek a more secluded cave, and follows as his companion, and leaves her leader. Foolish one! Janus sees what is done behind his back: you achieve nothing, and he looks back at your hiding-place. "You achieve nothing, look!" I say: for as you lie hidden under the rock he seizes you in his embrace, and having had his hope, he says: "For our coupling, let the power of the hinge be yours: have this as the price of your lost virginity." So speaking he gave a thorn, with which she could drive off the gloomy harms from the doors (this was white). There are greedy birds, not those that cheated the throat of Phineus at his tables, but they draw their race from these: a great head, staring eyes, beaks fit for plunder, grey in their feathers, a hook on their talons. They fly by night and seek out children deprived of a nurse and defile the bodies they snatch from the cradle. They are said to tear the milk-fed entrails with their beaks and have a throat full of the blood they drink. Striges is their name; but the cause of this name is that they are wont to screech horribly by night. Whether therefore they are born birds, or are made so by a charm, and a Marsian crone shapes them into birds by her song, they came into the chambers of Proca. Proca, born in those days, was fresh prey for the birds, five days old, and they suck the infant breast with their greedy tongues; but the unhappy child wails and seeks help. Frightened by the voice of her charge, the nurse runs up and finds the cheeks cut by the rigid claw. What was she to do? The colour of his face was such as leaves are wont to have late in the year, harmed by the new winter. She comes to Crane and tells the matter; she says, "Lay aside your fear: your charge will be safe." She had come to the cradle: mother and father were weeping: "Stop your tears, I myself will cure him," she said. At once she touches the doorposts three times in order with arbutus foliage, three times marks the threshold with arbutus leaf; she sprinkles the entrance with waters (and the waters held a remedy) and holds the raw entrails of a two-month-old sow; and thus she says, "Birds of the night, spare the boy's entrails: for a little one a little victim falls. Take, I pray, a heart for a heart, fibres for fibres. This life we give you in place of a better one." When she had thus made offering, she lays the cut pieces under the open sky, and forbids those present at the rite to look back; and a wand of Janus, made of the white thorn, is set where a little window gave light to the chamber. After that, they say, the birds did no violence to the cradle, and the colour that was before returned to the boy.

You ask why rich lard is tasted on those Kalends, and why beans are mixed with hot spelt? She is an ancient goddess and is fed on the foods she used before, nor, in her luxury, does she seek imported feasts. The fish still swam for that people without treachery, and the oysters were safe in their shells. Latium did not know the bird that rich Ionia offers, nor the one that delights in Pygmy blood; and nothing but its feathers pleased in the peacock, nor had the earth before sent its captured beasts. The pig was prized; with a slain pig they kept their feasts: the earth gave only beans and hard spelt. Whoever shall eat these two mixed together on the sixth Kalends, they say his bowels cannot be harmed.

On the highest citadel too, they tell, a temple to Juno Moneta was made from your vow, Camillus: before it had been the house of Manlius, who once drove the Gallic arms from Capitoline Jove. How well, great gods, had he fallen in that battle, defender of your throne, lofty Jupiter! He lived, only to die condemned on a charge of seeking kingship: this title long old age gave him.

The same day is a festival of Mars, whom the Capene gate, set beside the Covered Way, looks upon outside. You too, Tempest, we confess deserved a shrine, when the fleet was almost overwhelmed by the Corsican waters. These memorials of men lie open; if you seek the stars, then rises the curved-beaked bird of great Jove.

The next light calls forth the Hyades, the horns of the Bull's brow, and the earth grows wet with much water.

When the morning has come twice and Phoebus has twice repeated his rising, and the crops have been twice wet with the falling dew, on this day Bellona is said to have been consecrated in the Tuscan war, and she is always favourable to Latium. Appius is the author, who, when peace was denied to Pyrrhus, saw much in his mind, though he was robbed of sight. A small open space looks out from the temple upon the top of the Circus, there is a small column there of no small mark: from here it is the custom for a spear, the herald of war, to be cast by hand, when it is resolved to take up arms against a king and peoples.

The other part of the Circus is kept safe under Hercules the Guardian: a charge the god holds by the Euboean song. The time of the charge is the day of the Morning-star before the Nones: if you seek the giver of the title, Sulla approved the work.

I was asking whether to refer the Nones to Sancus or to Fidius, or to you, father Semo; then Sancus said to me: "To whichever of these you give it, I shall have the gift: I bear three names: so the men of Cures willed it." Him, therefore, the old Sabines endowed with a shrine and set up on the Quirinal ridge.

I have a daughter (and may she, I pray, outlast my years), in whose safety I shall always be happy. When I wished to give her to a son-in-law, I sought the times fit for the wedding torches, and which were to be avoided: then it was shown to me that, after the sacred Ides, June is useful for brides, useful for husbands, but the first part of this month was found unsuited to weddings; for thus the holy wife of the Flamen Dialis told me: "Until the calm Tiber has carried the sweepings from Iliac Vesta down to the sea in its tawny waters, it is not lawful for me to comb my hair with the toothed boxwood, nor to cut my nails with iron, nor to touch my husband, although he is the priest of Jove, although he was given to me by a perpetual law. Do not you hasten either; better will your daughter marry when fiery Vesta shines on a clean floor."

On the third day after the Nones, Phoebe is said to remove Lycaon, and the Bear has no fear from behind. Then I remember that I saw the games on the grass of the Campus and that they were called yours, gliding Tiber. It is a festal day for those who draw the dripping nets, and who cover the curved bronze with little baits.

The Mind too has its divinity. We see the shrine of Mind vowed in fear of your war, treacherous Carthaginian. Carthaginian, you had renewed the war, and at the death of the consul all, struck with dread, greatly feared the Moorish bands. Fear had driven out hope, when the senate took up the vows to Mind, and at once she came in a better mood. That day on which the vows were paid to the goddess sees the Ides pressing on at the sixth light from then.

Vesta, be favourable! To you now, with my mouth devoted, I unloose my lips, if it is granted me to come to your rites. I was wholly in prayer: I felt the heavenly powers, and the ground shone glad with a purple light. I did not indeed see you (away with the lies of poets), goddess, nor were you to be looked upon by a man; but the things I had not known, and in error of which I was held, were made known to me with no one teaching. They tell that Rome had kept forty Parilia, when the goddess, the guardian of the flame, was received into her temple, the work of a peaceful king, than whom no land bore a more god-fearing nature than the Sabine. What you now see in bronze, you would then have seen roofed with straw, and the wall was woven of pliant osier. This narrow place, which holds the hall of Vesta, was then the great palace of unshorn Numa. Yet the form of the temple, which remains now, is said to have been so before, and the cause of the form is to be approved. Vesta is the same as the earth: a watchful fire lies beneath both: the earth and the hearth signify their seat. The earth is like a ball, resting on no support, and as far as it is withdrawn from the heights, so far from the depths is the earth; and the round shape makes this come about. The form of the temple is the same: no corner juts out in it; a dome defends it from the rainy shower. You ask why the goddess is served by virgin ministers? I shall find for this part too its proper reasons. They tell that Juno and Ceres were born of Ops by the seed of Saturn; Vesta was the third. Both the others married, both are said to have borne children, of the three one alone remained, refusing a husband. What wonder, if a virgin, glad in a virgin minister, admits only chaste hands to her rites? Understand Vesta as nothing other than the living flame, and you see no bodies born of the flame. Rightly therefore she is a virgin, who sends out no seeds nor takes any, and loves the companions of virginity. Long, foolish, I thought there were images of Vesta; soon I learned that there are none beneath the curved dome: an unextinguished fire is concealed in that temple, Vesta has no effigy, nor has the fire. The earth stands by its own force: Vesta is called from standing by force, and a like cause can belong to the Greek name. But the hearth (focus) is named from the flames and because it warms (fovet) all things; yet it stood before in the first rooms of houses. Hence too, I think, the vestibule is named: from there in praying we name Vesta first, who holds the first place. Before the hearths it was once the custom to sit on long benches and to believe the gods were present at the table; now too, when the rites of old Vacuna are performed, they stand and sit before the hearths of Vacuna. Something of the old custom has come down to these years: a pure dish carries the foods sent to Vesta. Behold, bread hangs from the garlanded asses, and flowery wreaths veil the rough millstones. Once the farmers parched only spelt in the ovens (and the goddess of the Oven has her own rites): the hearth itself baked the bread set under the ash, and a broken tile was laid on the warm floor. Hence the baker honours the hearth and the mistress of the hearths, and the she-ass that turns the pumice millstones.

Shall I pass over or tell your disgrace, ruddy Priapus? It is a little tale of much report. Cybele, her brow wreathed with a turreted crown, summons the eternal gods to her festival. She summons the satyrs too and the nymphs, rustic powers; Silenus, though no one had called him, is present. It is not lawful, and it would be long, to tell the gods' feast: the night was passed wakeful over much wine. These wandered at random in the valleys of shady Ida, some lie and rest their limbs on the soft grass, these play, sleep holds those, some link their arms and beat the green ground three times with a swift foot. Vesta lay down and took peaceful rest, untroubled, just as she was, her head pillowed, propped on the turf. But the ruddy guardian of the gardens snatches after the nymphs and goddesses, and carries his wandering feet here and there. He sees Vesta too: it is doubtful whether he thought her a nymph or knew her to be Vesta; he himself denies that he knew. He conceives an obscene hope and tries to approach by stealth, and bears his suspended steps with a throbbing heart. By chance old Silenus had left the ass on which he had ridden at the banks of the gently sounding water. The god of the long Hellespont was going to begin, when the ass brayed at the untimely sound. Frightened by the heavy voice the goddess rises; the whole throng flocks together, and he escapes through hostile hands. Lampsacus is wont to sacrifice this animal to Priapus, saying, "Rightly we give the ass's entrails to the flames as informer." You, goddess, mindful, adorn it with necklaces of bread; the work ceases, the idle millstones have grown silent.

I shall tell what the altar of Jupiter the Baker (Pistor) means, more renowned in name than in worth on the Thunderer's citadel. The encircled Capitol was hard pressed by the fierce Gauls: the siege, now long, had made famine. Jupiter, having called the gods above to his royal throne, said to Mars, "Begin!" At once he replies: "Surely it is not unknown what the fortune of my people is, and this grief of mind needs the voice of one who complains. Yet if you require that I tell briefly evils joined to shame: Rome lies beneath an Alpine foe. Is this she to whom the dominion of the world had been promised? Jupiter, was this the city you were to set over the lands? And now she had crushed the neighbouring and Etruscan arms, hope was in mid-course: now she is driven from her own home. We have seen old men adorned with triumphal robes fall dead in the bronze-decked, painted halls; we have seen the pledges of Iliac Vesta moved from their seat: clearly they think there are some gods. But if they looked back at the citadel where you dwell, and saw so many of your homes pressed by siege, they would know that no aid is left in the care of the gods, and that the incense given by an anxious hand is wasted. And would that a place for battle lay open! Let them take up arms, and, if they cannot prevail, let them fall. Now, lacking food and fearing a coward's fate, the barbarian throng presses them shut up on their hill." Then Venus, and Quirinus, beautiful with augur's staff and robe, and Vesta said much on behalf of her own Latium. "The public care is for those walls," Jupiter replied, "and conquered Gaul shall pay the penalty. Only do you, Vesta, see to it that the corn which is lacking be thought to abound, and do not leave your seat. Whatever there is of solid corn, let the hollow mill grind it, and let the hearth harden in the fire what the hand has softened." He had commanded, and the virgin daughter of Saturn nodded assent to her brother's commands, and it was the middle of the night. Now toil had given the leaders sleep: Jupiter rebukes them and teaches with his sacred mouth what he wishes: "Rise, and from the highest citadels into the midst of the foe hurl the aid you least wish to surrender!" Sleep departs, and, driven by the strange riddle, they ask what aid they are bidden to surrender that they would not give. It seemed to be corn; they throw the gifts of Ceres, the thrown things ring on the helmets and the long shields. The hope that they could be conquered by famine fell; the foe repulsed, a white altar is set up to Jupiter the Baker.

By chance I was returning on those Vestal festivals by the way where the New Street is now joined to the Roman forum. Here I saw a matron come down with bare foot: I stood amazed in silence and stayed my step. An old woman of the neighbourhood felt it, and bidding me sit, addressed me, shaking her head with trembling voice: "This, where now the forums are, was held by wet marshes; the ditch was sodden with the river's overflowing waters. That Curtian lake, which holds dry altars, is now solid ground, but was a lake before. Where the Velabra are wont to lead the processions into the Circus, there was nothing but willows and empty reed; often the reveller returning over the suburban waters sings and casts drunken words at the boatmen. Not yet had that god, suited to differing shapes, taken his name from the turned-back river. Here too was a grove dense with rushes and reed, and a marsh not to be approached with unshod foot. The pools have receded, and its own bank confines the waters, and the ground is dry now: yet that custom remains." She had given the cause. "Farewell, best of old women!" I said; "May all that remains of your life be gentle."

The rest I learned long since in my boyish years, yet not for that reason is it to be passed over by me. Ilus, son of Dardanus, had lately built new walls (Ilus still held the rich resources of Asia): it is believed that the heavenly image of armed Minerva leapt down upon the heights of the Iliac city. I had a care to see it; I saw the temple and the place: this remains there, Rome holds the Pallas. Smintheus is consulted, and obscure in his shady grove gave back these sounds with no lying mouth: "Keep the heavenly goddess, and you will keep the city: she will transfer with herself the dominion of the place." Ilus keeps her and holds her shut up on the highest citadel, and the care passes to his heir Laomedon. Under Priam she was poorly kept: so she herself willed, ever since her beauty was defeated by his judgement. Whether the race of Adrastus, or Ulysses apt for thefts, or pious Aeneas had carried her off, the doer is uncertain; the thing is Roman: Vesta guards her, because she sees all things with her constant light. Alas, how greatly the fathers feared, at the time when Vesta burned and was almost buried beneath her own roof! The holy fires blazed with wicked flames, and a profane flame was mixed with the pious flame. The ministers wept, struck with dread, their hair let down: fear itself had taken away the strength of their bodies. Metellus flies into the midst, and with a great voice cries, "Bring help! It is no help to weep," he says. "Lift the fatal pledges with your virgin palms: they are to be saved not by prayer, but by the hand. Wretched me! do you hesitate?" he said. He saw them hesitate and fall on their knees in terror. He draws water, and lifting his hands, says, "Forgive me, sacred things! As a man I shall enter where no man may go. If it is a crime, let the penalty of the deed fall on me: let Rome be freed at the forfeit of my life." He spoke and rushed in; the rescued goddess approved the deed and was kept safe by the service of her own pontiff. Now you shine well, sacred flames, under Caesar: the fire will be forever now in the Iliac hearths, nor under this leader shall any priestess be said to have profaned the fillets, nor be buried alive in the living earth. So the unchaste perishes, because she is buried in her whom she has violated, and Earth and Vesta are the same divinity.

Then Brutus made himself a surname from the Callaecian foe and stained the Spanish ground with blood. Of course, sometimes sad things are mingled with glad, and festivals do not gladden the people with the whole heart: Crassus at the Euphrates lost the eagles and his son and his men, and was himself the last given to death. "Parthian, why do you exult?" said the goddess; "you shall send back the standards, and there shall be an avenger to punish the slaughter of Crassus."

But as soon as the violets are taken from the long-eared asses, and the rough stones grind the corn of Ceres, the sailor, sitting on his stern, will say, "We shall see the Dolphin when the damp night has risen after the day is driven off."

Now, Phrygian Tithonus, you complain of being left by your bride, and the wakeful Morning-star comes out of the Eastern waters: go, good mothers (the Matralia is your festival), and offer the tawny cakes to the Theban goddess. By the bridges and joined to the great Circus is a most frequented space, which takes its name from the ox set there: on this day here, they say, the sceptre-bearing hands of Servius gave temples to mother Matuta in her rites. What goddess she is, why she keeps handmaids from the threshold of her temple (for she keeps them off) and asks for toasted cakes, Bacchus, your hair wreathed with cluster-bearing ivy, if that house is yours, direct the poet's work. Semele had burned by the compliance of Jove: Ino receives you, boy, and busily nurses you with the utmost care. Juno swelled with rage that Ino should rear a child snatched from a mistress; but that blood was her sister's. Hence Athamas is driven by furies and a false vision, and you, little Learchus, fall by your father's hand. The sorrowing mother had entombed the shade of Learchus and had paid all the rites to the wretched pyre. She too, just as she was, having torn her mournful hair, springs up and snatches you, Melicertes, from the cradle. There is a land drawn into a narrow space, that repels two seas and is beaten, single, by two waters: here she came, embracing her son in her frenzied arms, and from the high ridge casts herself with him into the deep. Panope and her hundred sisters receive them unharmed, and carry them with a gentle gliding through their realms. Not yet Leucothea, not yet that boy Palaemon, they reach the mouth of the eddying Tiber. There was a grove; it is doubtful whether it is called Semele's or Stimula's: they say Ausonian Maenads dwelt there. Ino asks of them what race it was: she hears that they are Arcadians, and that Evander holds the sceptre of the place. The daughter of Saturn, hiding that she was a goddess, treacherously incites the Latian Bacchae with feigned words: "O too easy, O captured in your whole heart! This stranger comes no friend to our choirs, she seeks by guile and prepares to learn the sacred rite; but she has a pledge by which she may pay the penalty." Scarcely had she well ended, when the Thyiads fill the air with howls, their hair streaming over their necks, and lay hands on her and fight to tear away the boy, and she calls on gods she does not yet know: "Gods and men of the place, help a wretched mother!" Her cry strikes the rocks of the neighbouring Aventine. The Oetaean hero had driven his Spanish cattle to the bank: he hears, and roused at the voice hurries his way. At the coming of Hercules, those who were just preparing to do violence shamefully turned their backs in womanly flight. "What do you seek here, aunt of Bacchus?" (for he had known her), he says; "or does the same power that vexes me vex you too?" She tells part, part the presence of her son restrains, and she is ashamed to have gone, driven by furies, to crime. Rumour, as it is swift, flies through on beating wings, and your name, Ino, is frequent on men's lips. You are said to have entered the faithful home of Carmentis as a guest and to have laid aside your long hunger; the Tegean priestess, they tell, gave cakes hastily made with her own hand, baked on a sudden hearth. Now too the cakes please her at the Matralia festival: rustic devotion was more welcome than art. "Now," she said, "O seer, unseal the coming fates, as far as is allowed; add this, I pray, to my entertainment." There is a little delay; the seer takes on heaven and the divine powers and becomes full of her god in her whole heart; you could scarcely recognize her of a sudden, so much holier and so much greater than just before she was. "I shall sing glad things; rejoice, Ino, your labours done," she said, "and be ever favourable to this people. You shall be a power of the sea, the deep shall hold your son too. Take another name in your waters: Leucothea to the Greeks, Matuta you shall be called by ours; your son shall have all power over harbours, whom we shall call Portunus, his own tongue Palaemon. Go, I pray, both favourable to our places!" She had nodded; the promise was kept, they laid aside their labours, they changed their names: he is a god, she a goddess.

You ask why she forbids handmaids to approach? She hates them, and the beginning of the hatred, if she allow it, I shall sing. One of your handmaids, Cadmean Ino, was wont often to go into the embraces of your husband. Wicked Athamas loved her secretly; from her he learned that parched seed was given to the farmers. She herself denies that she did it, but rumour took it up. This is why a maidservant's hand is hateful to her. Yet let not the loving mother pray to her for her own offspring: she herself seemed to have been an unhappy parent. You will better commend another's child to her: she was more useful to Bacchus than to her own. "Whither do you hasten?" they tell that she said to you, Rutilius; "on my day you shall fall, consul, by the Marsian foe." The outcome accorded with the words, and the stream of Tolenus flowed crimson, its waters mixed with blood. The next year it was: Didius, slain on the same Pallantian day, doubled the resources of the enemy.

The same day, Fortune, is yours, both giver and place; but who is that one who lies hidden under thrown togas? It is Servius, for this is agreed; but the cause of the hiding differs, and holds me too in doubt of mind. While the goddess timidly confesses her stealthy loves, and is ashamed that a heavenly being lay with a man (for she burned, seized with great desire of the king, and in this one man alone she was not blind), she was wont to enter the house by night through a small window; from this the gate holds the name of Fenestella. Now she is ashamed, and hides the beloved features with a veil, and the king's face is covered with many a toga. Or is it more true that, after the death of Tullus, the common folk were thrown into confusion by the death of the peaceful leader, nor was there any measure; the grief grew at his image, until they hid him by laying togas over him? The third cause must be sung by me at greater length, yet I shall drive my horses reined within bounds. Tullia, her marriage gained by the price of crime, was wont to goad her husband with these words: "What good is it to be matched, you by the murder of my sister, and I of your brother, if a pious life pleases us? Both my husband and your wife ought to have lived, if we were going to dare no greater deed. I make over my father's head and kingdom for a dowry: if you are a man, go, exact the wealth I have named as dowry. Kingship is a deed of crime. Take the realm, my father-in-law slain, and dip our hands in my father's blood." Stirred by such words, the private man had sat on the high throne: the astonished crowd rushes to arms. Hence blood and slaughter, and weak old age is overcome: Superbus, the son-in-law, holds the sceptre snatched from his father-in-law. He himself, beneath the Esquiline, where his palace was, slain, fell, bloodied, on the hard ground. His daughter, about to enter her father's house in a carriage, went through the middle of the streets, haughty and fierce. When the driver saw the body, with tears pouring down he stopped; she upbraids him with such words: "Do you go on, or do you wait for the bitter reward of piety? Drive, I say, the unwilling wheels over the very face." Sure is the proof of the deed: from her the street was called Wicked (Sceleratus), and the matter is marked with an eternal brand. Yet after this she dared to touch the temple, the memorial of her father: marvels indeed, but I shall tell what was done. There was a statue seated on a throne in the likeness of Tullius; he is said to have set his hand before his eyes, and a voice was heard: "Hide my face, lest my daughter see my unspeakable features." A garment is given, he is covered; Fortune forbids it to be moved and thus she herself spoke from her temple: "On the day when the face of Servius is first uncovered and laid open, that will be the first of laid-aside shame." Spare, matrons, to touch the forbidden garments: it is enough to move prayers with the solemn voice, and let his head be always covered with the Roman robe, who was the seventh king in our city. This temple had burned, but the fire spared the statue: Mulciber himself brought aid to his son, for the father of Tullius was Vulcan, his mother Ocresia of Corniculum, conspicuous for her beauty. Tanaquil, the rites duly performed, bade her pour wine with her into the adorned hearth: here among the ashes a shape, an obscene male form, either was or seemed to be, but rather it was. The captive, bidden, sits by the hearth: conceived by her, Servius has the seed of his race from heaven. Then the father gave a sign, when he touched the head with flashing fire, and a flaming crest blazed in the hair.

You too, Concordia, Livia dedicates in a splendid temple, which she herself granted to her dear husband. Yet learn, coming age, that where the colonnade of Livia now is, was the roof of a vast house; one house was the bulk of a city, and held a space greater than many towns hold within their walls. This was levelled with the ground, under no charge of seeking kingship, but because its luxury seemed to do harm. Caesar bore to overthrow such great masses of building and, as heir, to destroy so much of his own wealth: so censorship is exercised and so examples are set, when the judge himself does what he advises others to do.

There is no mark on the coming day that you could name. On the Ides temples were given to Jupiter the Unconquered. And now I am bidden to tell of the lesser Quinquatrus. Now be present, O golden Minerva, to my undertaking. "Why does the flute-player wander through the whole city? What mean the masks, what the long robe?" So I; so Tritonia, her spear laid down, said (may I be able to report the words of the learned goddess!): "In the times of our forefathers of old, the use of the flute-player was great, and was always held in great honour. The flute played in the shrines, the flute played at the games, the flute played at mournful funerals: sweet was the labour for its hire, and there followed a time that suddenly broke the practice of the pleasing art . . . Add that the aedile had ordered that only ten artists should go in the procession of a funeral. They change the city for exile and withdraw to Tibur. Tibur was once a place of exile! The hollow flute is missed on the stage, missed at the altars: no dirge attends the last rites. A certain man had been a slave, worthy of any rank, at Tibur, but for a long time he had been free. He prepares a feast on his country estate and calls together the tuneful throng; they come to the festal feast. It was night, and their eyes and their minds swam with wine, when a messenger came with a face composed beforehand, and thus he said, 'Why do you delay to break up the banquet? For look, the author of your manumission is coming.' Without delay the guests move their limbs, staggering with strong wine: their unsteady feet stand and totter. But the master says, 'Depart!' and on a wagon he lifted the lingerers: in the wagon was spread a broad mat of rushes. The time and the motion and the wine lure on sleep, and the drunken throng thinks it is returning to Tibur. And now through the Esquiline it had entered the Roman city, and in the morning the wagon was in the midst of the forum. Plautius, that he might deceive the senate by their appearance and number, orders the faces to be covered with masks, and mingles others, and, that a flute-girl might swell this company, bids them be in long robes; so the returned ones could well be hidden, lest by chance they be noted to have come back against the orders of his colleague. The plan pleased, and on the Ides they may use the new dress and sing jesting words to the old measures." When she had taught me this thoroughly, I said, "It remains for me to learn why that day is called the Quinquatrus." "My festival is kept in March under that name," she said, "and this throng too is among my inventions. First I made the long flute give its sounds, with holes bored at intervals through the boxwood. The sound pleased: but in the waters that gave back my face I saw my maiden cheeks swell. 'The art is not worth so much to me; farewell, my flute,' I said: the bank received it cast away on its turf. A satyr first marvels at it and does not know its use; but he felt that, when blown, it had a sound, and now lets the breath out with his fingers, now takes it in, and now was proud of his art among the nymphs; he challenges even Phoebus. Phoebus prevailing, he hung; his limbs, flayed, fell away from his skin. Yet I am the inventor and author of this music. This is why that art honours my days."

The third light will come, on which you, Dodonian Thyone, will stand to be seen on the brow of the Agenorean Bull. This is that day on which you, Tiber, send the sweepings of Vesta through the Etruscan waters into the sea.

If there is any trust in the winds, give your sails to the Zephyr, sailors. Tomorrow he will come, favourable to your waters.

But when the father of the Heliads has dipped his rays in the waves, and a clear star girdles the twin poles, the offspring of Hyrieus will lift his strong arms from the ground: on the following night the Dolphin will be visible. Of course he had once seen the Volscians and Aequians put to flight in your fields, land of Algidus; whence, Tubertus, famous in your suburban triumph, you were borne, Postumus, a victor on snowy horses.

Now six days and as many remain of the month; yet add one day to this number: the sun departs from the Twins, and the sign of the Crab grows red; Pallas began to be worshipped on the Aventine citadel.

Now, Laomedon, your daughter-in-law rises, and risen drives away the night, and the wet hoarfrost flees from the meadows: the temple, they say, was given back to Summanus, whoever he is, then, when you, Pyrrhus, were a terror to the Romans.

When Galatea too has received this day in her father's waters, and the earth is full of untroubled quiet, a youth rises from the ground, blasted by his grandfather's bolts, and stretches out his hands bound with a double serpent. Known is the love of Phaedra, known the wrong of Theseus: the credulous father cursed his own son. Not unpunished the pious youth was making for Troezen: a bull cleaves the opposing waters with its breast, the frightened horses take terror and, held back in vain, drag their master over the crags and the hard rocks. He had fallen from the chariot, and, his limbs caught in the delaying reins, Hippolytus was dragged off, his body torn, and had given up his life, to the great indignation of Diana. "There is no cause for grief," says the son of Coronis; "for to the pious youth I shall give back life without a wound, and the gloomy fates shall yield to my art." At once he brings forth herbs from an ivory casket (they had helped the shade of Glaucus before, at the time when the augur went down to the herbs he had watched, and a serpent had used the aid given by a serpent), he touched the breast three times, three times said healing words: the youth lifted his head, laid low upon the earth. A grove and the recess of her own wood Dictynna hides him: he is Virbius of the Arician lake. But Clymenus and Clotho grieve: she, that the threads are spun again, he, that the rights of his realm are made less. Jupiter, fearing the precedent, hurled his thunderbolts against the very man who knew the power of too great an art. Phoebus, you complained: he is a god, be reconciled to your father: for your sake he himself does what he forbids to be done.

I would not wish you, Caesar, however you will hasten to conquer, to move your standards, if the auspice forbade it. Let Flaminius and the Trasimene shores be your witnesses that the gods warn much through favourable birds. If you ask the rash time of the old disaster, that day was the fifth from the end of the month. The next light is better: Masinissa overcomes Syphax, and Hasdrubal fell by his own weapons.

The seasons slip away, and we grow old with the silent years, and the days flee with no rein to hold them back. How quickly the honours of Fors Fortuna have come! After seven lights June will be done. Go, Quirites, gladly honour the goddess Fors: on the bank of Tiber she has the gifts of the king. Hasten, part on foot, part also in the swift skiff, and let it not shame you to come home tipsy from there. Carry, you garlanded boats, the banquets of the young, and let much wine be drunk amid the waters. The common folk honour her, because he who founded her is said to have been of the common folk and to have borne the sceptre from a humble place. She suits slaves too, because Tullius, born of a slave, established the neighbouring temples of the doubtful goddess.

Behold, someone returning from the suburban shrine, scarce sober, casts such words at the stars: "Your belt is hidden now, and tomorrow perhaps it will be hidden: after that, Orion, you will be visible to me." But if he were not drunk, he would have said the same, that the solstice time would come on that day.

As the Morning-star draws near, the Lares received their shrine here, where it is made with the many a garland by a skilled hand. The same time holds the temple of Stator, which Romulus once founded before the front of the Palatine ridge.

As many days remain of the month as there are names for the Parcae, when the temple was given to your robe, Quirinus. Tomorrow is the natal time of the Julian Kalends: Pierides, set the finish to my undertaking. Tell, Pierides, who joined you to him, to whom the conquered stepmother gave her hands unwilling. So I; so Clio: "You look upon the memorials of famous Philippus, from whom chaste Marcia draws her line, Marcia, a name brought down from sacrificing Ancus, in whom the beauty is equal to her nobility. Nor should you think it base that we praise her form: we praise great goddesses in this regard too. The aunt of Caesar was once married to him. O glory, O woman worthy of a sacred house!" So Clio sang, the learned sisters assented; Alcides nodded and struck the lyre.