Ibis

Until now — and twice five lustres of my life are gone — my Muse's every song was a thing without weapons; nor in so many thousands of my written lines is there one letter of Naso's that can be read as drawn in blood: my little books have harmed no one but myself, when the craftsman perished by his own Art. One man — and this itself is a great injury — will not allow the title of my fairness to stand unbroken forever. Whoever he is — for as yet I will somehow keep his name unspoken — he forces hands unused to it to take up weapons. He will not let me, banished to the cold quarters of the north wind, lie hidden away in my exile; unpitying, he torments wounds that long for rest, and bandies my name about the whole forum; he will not let the wife joined to me by the lasting bond of marriage mourn her husband's death while he still lives. And while I cling to the shattered timbers of my own keel, he fights to seize the planks of my own wreck; and he who should have put out the sudden flames, this robber instead seeks plunder from the heart of the fire. He strives to leave my exiled old age without food. Ah! how much more he deserves the woes that are mine! The gods do better — and far the greatest of them to me is he who would not have my road to be a beggar's. To him, then, wherever I am allowed, I will always give deserved thanks for so gentle a heart. Let Pontus hear this; perhaps it too will do the same, that I may have a nearer land to call to witness. But for you, who trampled me, violent man, while I lay fallen, I will be — alas for him! — the wretched enemy you are owed. Sooner shall water cease to be the enemy of fire, and the sun's light be joined with the moon's; the same quarter of the sky send out both west winds and east, and warm south winds blow from the icy pole; sooner shall fresh harmony come to the brothers' smoke, which an old anger parts on the kindled pyre; spring be mingled with autumn, winter's cold with summer's heat, and the same region be both evening and dawn — than there be peace between you and me, the weapons we took up laid down, the bond broken, you scoundrel, by your own crimes. This peace shall hold between us, as long as life remains to me, which the wolf is wont to keep with the helpless flock. The first battles I shall join in the verse I have begun, though wars are not commonly waged in this measure; and as the spear of the soldier, not yet warmed to the fight, seeks at first the ground full of yellow sand, so I will not yet hurl at you the sharpened iron, nor will my spear go straight for your hated head; and in this little book I will name neither your name nor your deeds, and I will let you, for a short while, disguise who you are. Later, if you persist, my book of iambics shall give you weapons dipped in Lycambes' blood. Now, in the way that the son of Battus curses his enemy Ibis, in just this way I curse you and yours. And like him I will wrap my songs in dark histories — though it is not my own custom to follow this manner. I shall be said to have copied his riddles in my Ibis, forgetting my usual judgment and my way. And since I do not yet tell those who ask who you are, take, in the meantime, the name of Ibis for yourself; and as my verses will hold a measure of night in them, so let the whole course of your life be black. See that someone reads these things to you on your birthday, and on the Kalends of Janus, with no lying mouth. You gods of sea and land, and you who hold better realms than these between the opposite poles, beside Jove, hither, I pray, hither turn all your minds, and let there be weight in the things I wish: and you yourself, Earth, you Ocean with your waves, you Air on high, receive my prayers; and you Stars, and you Image ringed with the sun's rays, and you Moon, who never shine in the orb you shone in before, and Night, to be revered in the likeness of your own darkness; and you who spin the appointed work with your three thumbs; and you river that glide through the valleys below with a dreadful murmur, water by which none swears falsely; and you whom they tell of, with twisted snakes in your wreathed hair, sitting before the dark doors of the prison; you too, common folk of the powers above, fauns and satyrs and lares, and rivers and nymphs and the race of demigods: in short, all you gods, old and new, from ancient times down to our own age — be present at my chaos, while dread songs are sung against a faithless head and anger and grief play out their parts. Grant all my wishes, every one in order, and let no part of my vow fall to the ground. And let what I pray for come to pass, so that he may think these were not my words, but the words of Pasiphae's son-in-law. And the punishments I pass over, let him suffer those as well; let that wretch be more fully cursed by my wit! Nor let these vows do less harm for execrating a feigned name, nor stir the great gods less: I curse the man whom my mind means as Ibis, who knows that by his deeds he has earned these prayers. There is no delay in me: as priest I will perform the ratified vows. Whoever is present at my rites, keep a reverent silence; whoever is present at my rites, speak the words of mourning, and approach Ibis with cheeks wet with weeping; meet him with evil omens and with the left foot foremost, and let black garments cover your bodies! You too — why do you hesitate to take up the funeral fillets? Already, as you yourself see, the altar of your funeral stands. The procession is ready for you. Let there be no delay in the grim rites: give your throat to my knives, you accursed victim. Let the earth deny you its fruits, the river deny you its waters, let wind and breeze deny you their breath. Let the sun not be warm for you, nor Phoebe shine for you, let the bright stars desert your eyes. Let neither fire nor air offer itself to you, let neither land nor sea grant you a road. May you wander an exile and destitute, and haunt the doors of strangers, and beg with trembling mouth for a scrap of food. May neither your body be free of complaining pain nor your sick mind, may night be heavier than day to you, and day than night. May you always be wretched, yet pitied by no one: may man and woman rejoice at your misfortunes. May hatred be added to your tears, and may you be judged deserving, when you have borne very many ills, to bear still more. And may that — which is rare — be drained of its accustomed favour: the face of your fortune, an object of envy. May the cause of death not be lacking, but the means of death be lacking: may life, held under duress, flee from the death you long for; and after long wrestling, may your breath leave your tortured limbs and torment them first with a long delay. It shall come to pass. Phoebus himself just gave me signs of the future, and a mournful bird flew up on my left. Surely I will believe that what I vow can move the powers above, [that this grief could never fade away with time,] or that time and the hour could soften my hatred. While Thracians fight with the bow and Iazyges with the spear, while the Ganges is warm and the Hister cold; while the mountains bear oaks and the plains soft fodder, while the Tuscan Tiber holds its clear waters, I will wage war with you. Not even death will end my anger, but will give cruel weapons to my harmless shade. Then too, when I have dissolved into the empty air, my lifeless ghost will hate your ways; then too I will come, a shade still mindful of your deeds, and my bony shape will pursue your face. Whether — what I would not wish — I am consumed by length of years, or set free by a death done with my own hand; whether I am tossed shipwrecked over the boundless waves, and a fish in some far place devours my flesh; whether foreign birds tear at my limbs; whether wolves stain their jaws with my blood; whether someone deigns to lay me beneath the earth and give my empty body to a pauper's pyre — whatever I am, I will strive to burst forth from the Stygian shores, and stretch out my cold hands, an avenger, against your face. You will see me waking, and in the silent shadows of the night I will shake off your sleep, seeming to be present. In short, whatever you do, I will fly before your face and eyes and lament, and you will have no quiet anywhere. Whips, twisted and braided with snakes, will give their sound, and torches will smoke forever before your guilty face. By these Furies you will be driven, alive and dead alike, and your life will be shorter than your punishment. No funeral and no tears of your own people will be granted you: you will be cast out, a head unmourned; you will be dragged by the executioner's hand, while the people applaud, and the hook will be fixed in your bones. The very flames, which devour all things, will flee from you; the just earth will spit out your hated corpse. With claws and beak the savage vulture will tear at your guts, and greedy dogs will rend your treacherous heart. And of your body — though you may be proud of this praise — there will be a brawl among the insatiable wolves. You will be summoned to the regions far from the Elysian fields, and you will dwell in the seats the guilty throng inhabits. There is Sisyphus, forever rolling and chasing his stone, and he who is driven, bound to the rim of a whirling wheel, and the Belides who bear on their shoulders water doomed to spill, the bloody throng, the brides of exiled Egyptus. The father of Pelops seeks the fruit before him, and likewise forever wants, and forever has clear water in abundance; and he who stretches over nine acres, head far from foot, and offers his vitals as a debt to the ceaseless bird. Here one of the Furies will rend your side with the lash, that you may confess the full count of your crime; another will give your limbs to the serpents of Tartarus to be cut; a third will scorch your smoking cheeks with fire. In a thousand ways your guilty shade will be torn, and Aeacus will be ingenious in devising your punishments. He will transfer to you the torments of the ancient guilty: to all the old offenders you will be a cause of rest. Sisyphus, you will have one to whom to hand the rolling weight; the swift wheel will now whirl new limbs; here too will be one who grasps in vain at boughs and waters; here one will feed the birds with vitals never used up. Nor will a second death end the pains of this death of yours, and there will be no final hour to such great sufferings. From here I will sing but a few — as if one were to gather leaves from Ida, or take a drop from the Libyan sea. For I will not tell how many flowers spring up in Sicilian Hybla, or how many crocuses the Cilician land bears, nor how white Athos grows with hail, when grim winter has bristled with the wings of the north wind; nor could all your evils be told by my voice, though you should grant me many mouths multiplied. So many disasters — woe to you, wretch! — and of such a kind will come, that I think even I could be driven to tears. Those tears will make me blessed without end: that weeping will then be sweeter to me than laughter. You were born unlucky — so the gods willed it — and no kindly or gentle star shone at your birth. Venus did not shine that hour, nor Jupiter, the Moon and Sun were not in their fitting place, nor did he whom bright Maia bore to great Jove lend you his fires set out to any good purpose. The fierce stars of Mars, promising nothing peaceful, pressed upon you, and those of the scythe-bearing old man. The very day of your birth, that you might see nothing but sorrow, was foul and black with drawn-up clouds. This is the day to which grim Allia gives its name in the calendar, the day that bore Ibis, a public loss. As soon as he slipped from his impure mother's womb and pressed the Cinyphian ground with his loathsome body, a nocturnal owl sat on the roof opposite, and uttered heavy sounds from its funereal mouth. At once the Eumenides washed him in the marsh waters, where the hollow stream had flowed from the Stygian shallows, and anointed his breast with the gall of an Erebean snake, and thrice cried out over him with bloodied hands. They had steeped his infant throat with the milk of a dog: this was the first food that came to the boy's mouth; from it the nursling drank in the madness of his nurse, and he barks and snarls dog-words through the whole forum. They bound his limbs in rags dyed rust-red, which they had snatched from a half-deserted pyre; and that he might not lie unpropped on the bare earth, they laid his soft head upon flints. And now, as they were about to depart, they brought to his very face torches made of green wood, close up to his eyes. He wept, as an infant does when touched by bitter smoke, when one of the three sisters spoke thus: 'For boundless time we have stirred these tears in you, which will always fall with sufficient cause.' She had spoken. But Clotho ordered the promises to hold good, and spun the dark threads with a hostile hand; and lest she utter long prophecies with her own mouth, 'A bard,' she said, 'will be the one to sing your fates.' I am that bard. From me you will learn your wounds, if only the gods lend their strength to my words, and weight of fact be added to my songs, which you will find ratified through your sufferings. And lest you be tortured without examples from an earlier age, let your woes be no lighter than the Trojans'. As many wounds as the heir of club-bearing Hercules, son of Poeas, bore in his envenomed leg, so many may you bear. May you grieve no less than he who drank a hind's udders, and, armed, took the wound, unarmed, the cure. And he who fell headlong from his horse into the Aleian fields, to whom his own face was almost his destruction. May you see what the son of Amyntor saw, and, trembling, with a servant's staff feel out your way, robbed of your sight. May you see no more than he whom his own daughter guided, whose crime each of his parents had committed: such as he was, the old man famous in Apollo's art, after he was taken as judge in a playful quarrel; and such as that man was, at whose word a dove was given as guide and leader before the Palladian ship; and he who lost the eyes by which he had wickedly seen the gold, which his bereaved mother gave to her son as offerings; like the Aetnaean shepherd, to whom Telemus son of Eurymus had foretold the misfortunes to come; like the two sons of Phineus, whom the same man robbed of light who had given it; like the head of Thamyras and of Demodocus. So may someone cut your limbs, as Saturn once cut away those parts from which he himself was created. And may Neptune be no kinder to you in the swelling waves than to him whose brother and wife became sudden birds; and to the clever man whom, as he clung to the broken timbers of his shattered raft, Semele's sister pitied. Or — that one man not be the only one to know this kind of punishment — let your vitals be torn, rent apart by different horses; or suffer yourself what he suffered from the Punic chief, he whom it was thought shameful for Rome to ransom. And let no present deity come to your aid, as it failed him whom Jove's altar on the Rhoetean shore did nothing to help. And as the Thessalian leapt from the top of Ossa, may you too be hurled from a rocky ridge. — Or, like Eurylochus, who seized the sceptre from that man, let your limbs be food for greedy serpents. Or let scalding water poured over your head hasten your fate, as it hastened the fate of Minos. And like Prometheus, gentle in his works but not unpunished, hang fastened with a chain to the airy birds. — Or, like Etracides, fifth in descent from great Hercules, may you be slain and flung into the boundless sea. Or, like the son of Amyntas, may a boy you loved with a base love hate you, and wound you with a cruel sword. And may no faithful cup be mixed for you any more than for him who was born of horned Jove. Or die in the manner of captive Achaeus, hanged, who wretchedly hung above the gold-bearing water as witness. Or, like the son of Achilles, famous by his kinsman's name, may a tile thrown by an enemy hand crush you. And may your bones rest no more happily than Pyrrhus', which lay scattered along the Ambracian roads. And may you die, like the daughter of Aeacus, struck by hurled javelins; this rite of Ceres may not be passed over in silence. And as I named just now in my song the grandson of a king, may you drink the juices of cantharis beetles your parent gives. Or may a faithful adulteress be named over your slaying, as she by whose avenging hand Leucon fell was called faithful. And may you cast the dearest bodies onto the pyre with yourself, the kind of life's end that Sardanapallus had. And, like those who once prepared to profane the temple of Libyan Jove, may the sand, driven by the south wind, bury your face. And like those slain by the treachery of Darius the second, so may the settling ash devour your mouth. Or, like one who once set out from olive-bearing Sicyon, may cold and hunger be the cause of your death. Or, like the man of Atarneus, sewn into a bullock's hide, may you be carried shamefully as plunder to your master. And in your own bridal chamber may you be slaughtered in the manner of the Pheraean, who was given to death by his own wife's sword. And those you think faithful, as Aleuas the Larisaean did, may you find unfaithful by your own wound. — And like Milo, the tyrant under whom Pisa was tortured, may you be hurled alive into hidden waters. And may the weapons that came from Jove against Aphidas, holding the Phylacian realm, seek you out too. — Or, like Lenaeus once from the Amastrian shores, may you be left naked on the Achillean ground. And as Eurydamas was dragged thrice around the tomb of Thrasyllus by his Larisaean enemy's wheels, or as he who, having often guarded the walls, swept them with his body — though not for long — and as the adulterer, suffering a new kind of punishment by Hippomenes' line, is said to have been dragged on the Attic soil, so, when hateful life has left your limbs, may avenging horses drag away your shameful corpse. So may some crag pierce your vitals, as once Greek vitals were pierced beneath the Euboean gulf; and as the fierce ravisher perished by both lightning and the sea, so may fire help the waters that will drown you. May your mind too be driven, frenzied with the Furies, like his who has one wound over his whole body; and like the son of Dryas holding the Rhodopeian realm, whose dress was unequal on his two feet, as it was once for the Oetaean, and for the son-in-law of the serpents, and for the father of Tisamenus and the husband of Callirhoe. And may you not get a wife more chaste than her at whom Tydeus' line could blush at his daughter-in-law; and her who joined herself in love with her husband's brother, in Locris, the murder hidden under a maidservant's death. So too, the gods grant it, may you take joy in a faithful wife, as the son-in-law of Talaus and of Tyndareus did; and like the Belides, who dared prepare death for their cousins and are now weighed down by water at their necks forever. May you burn with the fire of Byblis and Canace, if you do it to anyone, and may a sister be faithful to you only through crime. If you have a daughter, may she be what Pelopea was to Thyestes, Myrrha to her father, and Nyctimene to hers. And may she be no more loyal and dear to her parent's life than his was to Pterelas, or yours was to you, Nisus; and may she make the place infamous by the name of her crime, and crush her father's limbs beneath the wheels she drove on. May you perish like the young men whose cast-out corpses and faces the gates of Pisa held up; like him who often drenched the ground steeped in the blood of the wretched suitors, better drenched it with his own; like the betrayer, the charioteer of the savage tyrant, who perished and gave a new name to the Myrtoan water; like those who sought in vain the swift maiden, while she was made slower by three apples; like him who [paid for the building that hid the new monster's shape]; like those whose bodies the violent son of Aeacus sent into the deep, twelve in all, a second six with the elder six, to the pyre. Like those who, beaten by the riddles of an obscure mouth, we read the Sphinx gave to an unspeakable death; like those who fell at the temple of Bistonian Minerva, because of which even now the goddess's face is veiled; like those who once made the stalls of the Thracian king bloody with their bodies as a feast; — like those who felt the lions of Therodamas, and those who felt the Tauric rites of the Thoantian goddess; like those whom ravening Scylla and Charybdis facing Scylla snatched in terror from the Dulichian ship; like those whom Polyphemus sent down into his vast belly; like those who came beneath the Laestrygonian hands; like those whom the Punic leader sank in the well-waters and made the white waters with thrown dust. Like the twice-six maidservants and the suitors of Icarius' daughter who perished, and he who handed weapons against his master's head to the suitors; as the wrestler lies, thrown by his Aonian guest, who, marvellous, was a victor when he had fallen; like those whom the strong arms of Antaeus crushed; like him who at last, the deviser of an unjust rite, a victim slain, drew out the rain-waters; as the brother of Antaeus stained the altars with the blood he ought to, and fell by his own example; like him who, impious, fed the terrible horses with human flesh in place of grass; like the two slain under the same avenger by different wounds, Nessus and the son-in-law of Dexamenus; like your great-grandson, Saturn, whom the son of Coronis saw restore life from his own city; like Sinis and Sciron and the son of Polypemon; and he who was part man, part bullock; and he who used to send pressed beams down to the ground and up into the air, gazing on the waters of this sea and of that; and those bodies Ceres saw perishing with a glad face, slain by the hand of Cercyon at Theseus' deed. May these things befall you, whom my anger curses with deserved prayers, or things no lighter than these woes: such as Achaemenides was, deserted on Sicilian Etna, when he saw the Trojan sails coming; such as the fortune of two-named Irus also was; and may the son of Ceres be loved by you forever in vain, and may he, ever sought, ever desert your wealth; and as the soft sand is drawn away by the retreating wave in alternating ebbs from under the pressing foot, so may your fortune always melt away by some means, and, slipping through your hands, ever flow out from the midst of them. And like the father skilled in changing his shapes to various forms, may you be deserted, full yet of unquenchable hunger. And let there be no loathing in you for human food: and in whatever part you can, you will be the Tydeus of this age. And may you do something to make the sun's horses, driven mad, turn back again from the west to the east. You will repeat the foul banquets of Lycaon's table, and try to deceive Jove by the fraud of your food. And I pray that someone may test the power of your divinity, that you may be a son of Tantalus, and the son of Celeus. And so may your limbs be scattered over the broad fields, like those that detained your father's roads. In the bronze of Perillus may you imitate real bullocks, with a sound fitting the shape of a bull. And like fierce Phalaris, your tongue first cut out with the sword, may you groan after the manner of an ox, shut in the Paphian bronze. And while you wish to return to the years of a better age, may you be deceived like the aged father-in-law of Admetus. Or may you, a horseman, be sunk in the gulf of the deep mire, provided there be no name to your fate. And would that you might perish like the Greeks sprung from the teeth sown by the Sidonian hand across the fields. And may the sinister vows that the daughter of Pelias made, and those Moline made, fall alike upon your head; and like those by whom a bird is cursed in a little book, which cleanses its body by casting it into the water. And may you bear as many wounds as that man is said to have borne, from whose funeral rites the knife is never absent. And, thunderstruck, may you cut yourself, like those whom the Cybelean mother drives on to mutilate their worthless limbs to Phrygian measures. And from a man may you become neither woman nor man, like Attis, and shake the harsh drums with a soft hand. And may you be turned suddenly into a beast of the Great Mother, as victor and vanquished were turned by their swift feet. And let not Limone alone have felt that punishment, and may a horse tear your vitals with savage teeth. Or, like the Cassandrean, no gentler than that master, may you, wounded, be buried under heaped earth. Or like the son of Abas, or like the Cygnean hero, may you be shut up and hurled into the waters of the sea. Or may you be slaughtered at the sacred altars, a victim to Phoebus, the death that Theudotus suffered from his savage enemy. Or may Abdera curse you on appointed days, and may stones seek you out, cursed, thicker than hail. Or may you be struck by the three-forked weapon of hostile Jove, like the son of Hipponous, and the father of Dexione, like the sister of Autonoe, like him whose aunt was Maia, like him who rashly drove ill the horses he had longed for; like the fierce son of Aeolus, like one of the same blood and sex from whom the Bear was born that lacks the clear waters — like Macelo, struck with her husband by the swift flames, so, I pray, may you fall by the fire of the heavenly avenger. And may you be a prey to those for whom Latona's Delos must not be approached after Thasos was snatched before its day; and to those who tore apart the man spying on modest Diana's lips, and those who tore apart Linus, son of Crotopus. And may you be struck no more lightly by an envenomed snake than the daughter-in-law of old Oeagrus and Calliope; than the son of Hypsipyle, than he who first fixed the timbers of the suspect horse with a sharp spear-point. And may you not climb the high steps like Elpenor, nor bear the force of wine in the way that he did. And may you fall, overcome, like every man who helped the inhuman Theiodamas as he called the Dryopes to arms; like him who bore the gifts steeped in Nessus' poison, and fences the Euboean waters with his own name. And may you not come down to Tartarus from a sheer rock, like him who chose the work of Socrates' death; like him who saw the deceiving sails of Theseus' ship, like the boy sent from the Trojan citadel, like the nurse, who was also the aunt, of tender Bacchus, like him for whom the discovery of the saw was the cause of death; — like the Lydian maiden who threw herself from the high cliffs, who had spoken evil words against an unwilling god. May a pregnant lioness, a fellow-countrywoman, meet you in your native field, and be the cause of your death, as it was Phalaecus'. And may the boar that killed the son of Lycurgus, and the one born of a tree, and bold Idmon, rend you too. And may it, though lifeless, give you a wound, as it gave him on whom, fixed above, his own people fell. Or the same — like one whom a pine tree destroyed by a like death; if your ship should touch the Minoan sands, may the Cretan crowd take you for a man of Corcyra. May you enter a house about to fall, like the blood of Aleuas, when the seat of Leoprepes' son collapsed without him. And like Evenus, sunk in the rushing river, may you give your name to the swift water — or, like Tiberinus. — And, like the body of the son of Astacus, fixed on a severed trunk, a fit feast for beasts, may a man's head be your food. — And, what they say Broteas did out of a longing for death, may you give your limbs to be burned on a kindled pyre. And, shut in a cage, may you suffer death, like that man, the writer of a history that would do no good. And as it harmed the inventor of the warlike iambic, so may your insolent tongue be your destruction. And like the man who harmed Athens with his unsteady verse, may you perish, hated, for lack of food. And as the bard of the stern lyre is said to have perished, may a wounded right hand be the cause of your end. And as the snake gave a wound to Agamemnon's son Orestes, so may you fall too from a poison-bearing bite. May the first night of your marriage be the last of your life: thus Eupolis and his new-wedded bride perished. And as they tell that buskined Lycophron fell, may a fixed arrow cling in your inner parts. Or, torn, may you be scattered in the wood by the hands of your own people, as the man sprung from a serpent for grandsire was scattered at Thebes. And may you be dragged through wild mountains by a rushing bull, as the imperious wife of Lycus was dragged. And what the unwilling rival suffered from her own sister's lust, may your tongue, cut out, fall before your feet. And in your own eyes may the craftsman bee lodge harmful stings, as it did to the Achaean seer. Like the boy son of Harpagus, may you reproduce the example of Thyestes, and slain, pass into your father's vitals. May you bear maimed limbs, your parts mutilated by a cruel sword, such as they say the limbs of Mamertas were. And as the throat of the Syracusan poet was tightly bound, so may the path of your soul be closed with a noose. And, your skin stripped off, may your bare vitals lie open, like his whose name a Phrygian river bears. Unhappy, may you see the face of stone-making Medusa, which alone gave many of the Cephenes to death. May you suffer the bites of the Potnian mares, like Glaucus, and drink, in your anxiety, what once the wisest defendant of Anytus drank with untroubled mouth. And if you love anything, may it turn out for you no more happily than for Haemon; and as Macareus possessed his own, so may you possess yours. Or may you see what — when the flames already held all things — the son of Hector saw from his native citadel. May you atone for your disgraces with blood, like the son begotten by his own grandfather, to whom through crime his sister became a mother by his own deeds. And in your bones may that kind of weapon lodge by which the son-in-law of Icarius is said to have fallen. And as the chattering throat was crushed by the maplewood horse, so may the path of your voice be shut by a thumb. Or, like Anaxarchus, may you be pounded in a deep mortar, and your bones, struck, sound in place of the usual grain. And, like the father of Psamathe, may Phoebus plunge you into deepest Tartarus, for what that man had done to his own daughter. And may that plague come upon you which the right hand of Coroebus overcame, and brought help to the wretched men of Argos. And like the grandson of Aethra, doomed to die for Venus' anger, may you, an exile, be shaken off by thunderstruck horses. As the host destroyed his ward for great riches, may your host destroy you for small ones. And as they say the six brothers were slain with Damasichthon, so may your whole line perish with you. As the lyre-player added his own death to that of his wretched sons, so may a just weariness of your life be yours. Or, like the sister of Pelops, may you be hardened by a rising stone, and like Battus, harmed by your own tongue. If you hurl the smooth bronze of a thrown discus through the clear air, may you fall struck by the disc, as the boy son of Oebalus did. If any wave is beaten by your alternating arms, may every water be worse for you than the Abydene one. As the comic poet perished in the midst of the waves while he swam, so may the Stygian water choke your mouth. Or, when you have survived the windy sea as a castaway, may you perish, like Palinurus, on the land you touched. And like the buskined bard whom Diana's protection destroyed, may a watchful pack of dogs tear you to pieces too. Or, like the Sicilian, may you leap upon the face of the giant, where Sicanian Etna spews most of its flames. And may the Strymonian mothers tear your limbs with mad nails, thinking you to be Orpheus. As the son of Althaea burned with flames in their absence, so may your funeral pyre blaze with the fire of a brand. As the new bride was caught by the Phasian crown, and the bride's father, and the house with its lord; as the gore spread through the limbs of Hercules, so may the pestilent poison consume your body. — By which the offspring of Penthalus avenged Lycurgus, may that stroke of a strange weapon await you too. And as Milo, try to draw apart the splittable oak, and be unable to bring your caught hands back out. And may you be harmed by your own gifts, like Icarus, against whom the drunken crowd brought their armed hands. And what, in grief at her father's death, the loyal daughter did, make the noose pass through your throat. And, the threshold of your house barred, may you suffer hunger, like her on whom her own parent imposed the law of that penalty. And after his example may you profane the images of Minerva, who from the harbour of Aulis turned his light course. Or, in the manner of the son of Nauplius, may you pay the penalty of death for a false charge, and may it not please you to have not deserved it. — As the Isindian host robbed Aethalus of life, whom even now Ion, remembering, drives from the rites; and as his own mother betrayed Melanthus, hiding in the darkness after the slaughter, by the service of her light: so may your breast be pierced by hurled weapons, so, I pray, may you be hindered by your own helpers. Such a night as fell on the timid Phrygian, when brave Achilles' horses were driven off by a bargain, may such a night fall on you. And may you rest in no better sleep than Rhesus, than the companions of Rhesus, slain then on the road before death; than those whom, with the Rutulian Ramnes, the tireless son of Hyrtacus and the son of Hyrtacus' companion gave to death. And in the manner of the son of Clinias, ringed with black fires, may you carry your half-burned limbs to a Stygian death. And as for Remus, who dared to leap the new-built walls, may the rustic weapons be deadly to your head. Finally, among the Sarmatian and Getic arrows I pray that you may live and die in these places. Let these things be sent to you for now in a sudden little book, lest you complain that I am forgetful of you. Few indeed, I confess: but may the gods give more than I have asked, and multiply my vows by their favour. Later you will read more, and verses that hold your true name, and in the measure in which bitter wars ought to be waged.