Book 2
Imperial Ovid Latin- What have I to do with you, unhappy concern, my little books, I who, wretched, have perished by my own talent? Why do I return to the now-condemned Muses, my own offense? Is it too little to have once deserved punishment? Poems made man and woman wish to know me, by no fortunate omen of mine; poems made Caesar mark me and my conduct, bidding my Art be already taken from me. Take from me my pursuit, and you take the offenses of my life too; I lay it to the verses that I am guilty. This is the reward I won for my care and my wakeful toils: punishment was found for my talent. Had I been wise, I should rightly have hated the learned sisters, powers ruinous to their own worshipper. But now—so great a madness is the companion of my disease— I bring my luckless foot back again to those rocks: just as the conquered gladiator seeks the arena again, and the shipwrecked vessel returns to the swelling waters. Perhaps, as once for him who held the realm of Teuthras, so the same thing shall bring me both wound and cure, and the Muse, who roused the anger, shall also soothe it when roused; poems often entreat the great gods. Caesar himself bade the Ausonian mothers and brides sing poems to turret-crowned Ops. He had bidden them sung to Phoebus too, at the time when he held the games which one age looks upon but once. By these examples I pray that now, most gentle Caesar, your anger may be made milder by my talent. That anger is just, and I will not deny I deserved it— shame has not so far fled from my face— but unless I had sinned, what could you pardon? My lot gave you the matter for mercy. If, as often as men sin, Jupiter should hurl his thunderbolts, in a short time he would be unarmed; now, when he has thundered and terrified the world with his crash, he gives back the air pure, the rains scattered. Rightly therefore is he called father and ruler of the gods, rightly the spacious world has nothing greater than Jove. You too, since you are called ruler and father of your country, use the way of the god who bears the same name. And this you do; nor could any man ever hold the reins of his empire more temperately. You have often granted pardon to the conquered side, which he, the victor, would not have granted to you. I have seen many enriched with wealth and honors who had borne arms against your head; and the day that ended the war ended your anger for the war, and both sides at once brought gifts to the temples; and as your soldier rejoices that he has conquered the foe, so the foe has cause to rejoice that he was conquered. My cause is the better, who am not said to have followed opposing arms nor a hostile cause. By the sea, by the lands, by the third powers I swear, by you, a god present and beheld, that this heart favored you, greatest of men, and that I, so far as I alone could, was yours in mind. I prayed that you might reach the heavenly stars but late, and I was a small part of the throng that prayed the same, and I offered pious incense for you, and with all the rest, alone, I too aided the public prayers with my own. Why should I tell that my books—those too, my offense— are full of your name in a thousand places? Look at the greater work, which is still held unfinished, of bodies changed into forms past belief: you will find there the praises of your name, you will find there many pledges of my heart. Your glory is not made greater by poems, nor has it room to grow that it might be made greater; Jove's fame more than suffices: yet it pleases him that his deeds be told, and that he himself be the matter of song, and when the battles of the war with the Giants are recounted, it is credible that he is glad at his own praises. Others celebrate you, as is fitting, with what voice they can, and sing your praises with richer genius: yet, just as a god is won by the shed blood of a hundred bulls, so he is won by the least offering of incense. Ah, fierce and to me crueler than all my foes, whoever read out to you my delights, that the poems honoring you in my books might not be read with a fairer judgment. But who could be my friend while you were angry? Scarcely then was I not an enemy to myself. When the shaken house has begun to sink, the whole weight settles upon the leaning parts, and all things gape when fortune makes a crack, and, dragged by their own weight, fall to ruin. So I won the hatred of men by my poem, and the crowd followed your face, as it had to. Yet, I remember, you approved my life and conduct, by the horse you had given me, as I passed in review. And if this profits nothing, and no glory of honor is returned, yet I had won no charge of crime. Nor was the fortune of defendants ill committed to me, to be examined by the Hundred Men. Private affairs too I judged without blame, and even the losing side confessed my good faith. Wretched me! I could, had not the last things harmed me, have been safe by your judgment more than once. The last things ruin me, and beneath the lowest sea one storm sinks the ship so often unharmed. Nor did a small part of the flood harm me, but all the waves and the ocean pressed upon this head. Why did I see anything? Why did I make my eyes guilty? Why was the fault known to me, unwitting? Unknowing, Actaeon saw Diana unclothed: none the less he was the prey of his own hounds. Surely among the gods even chance must be atoned for, nor does mischance find pardon when a power is wronged. On that day on which an evil error carried me off, my house, small indeed, but without stain, was ruined: so too, though small, let it be called illustrious in our fathers' age, and inferior to none in nobility, and to be marked neither for wealth nor for poverty, so that from neither was a knight to be conspicuous. Though my house be small in fortune or in birth, yet by my talent it is surely not unknown, which, though I may seem to have used too youthfully, yet I bear a great name from all the world, and the throng of the learned knows Naso, and dares to number him among men not despised. This house, then, dear to the Muses, has fallen, brought low by a single, but no slight, offense: and it has so fallen that it may rise, if only the anger of the wronged Caesar shall ripen to its end, in the issue of whose punishment there is such mercy that it has come milder than my fear. Life was granted me, and your anger stopped short of death, O prince, sparing in the use of your might! Besides, my father's wealth is added, you not taking it away, as though life were too small a gift. You did not condemn my deeds by a decree of the senate, nor was my flight ordered by a chosen judge. Inveighing with grim words—as befits a prince— you yourself avenged your wrongs, as is fitting. Add that the edict, though harsh and threatening, was yet mild in the name of the penalty; for in it I am called relegated, not an exile, and the words there are proper to my fortune. No penalty, indeed, is heavier to a sane man and one of sound mind, than to have displeased so great a man; but a divine power is wont sometimes to be appeasable: when the cloud is driven off, the bright day is wont to come. I have seen an elm laden with leafy vines which had been struck by the bolt of savage Jove. Though you yourself forbid me to hope, I will hope on; this one thing can be done though you forbid it. A great hope steals upon me when I look on you, most gentle prince, hope fails me when I look back on my own deeds. And as, when the winds stir the air, there is no unbroken fury and continual rage, but at times they subside and, intermitting, grow still, and you would think they had laid aside their force: so my fears go and come and vary, and grant and deny me the hope of appeasing you. Therefore by the gods above, who grant and will grant you long ages, if only they love the Roman name, by your country, which is safe and secure under you, its parent, of which, among the people, I was lately a part, so may the love it owes you, the city's love, be returned to you, who ever deserve it by your deeds and heart; so may Livia complete her wedded years with you, who, but for you, was worthy of no husband, who, were she not, the single life would become you, and there was none to whom you could be a husband; safe with you may your son be safe too, and one day rule this empire, an old man with you, an older one; and as your grandsons do, the youthful stars, may they walk by your deeds and by their father's; so may Victory, accustomed always to your camp, now too present herself and seek your familiar standards, and circle about the Ausonian leader on her wonted wings, and lay the laurel garland on his shining hair, through whom you wage your wars, in whose body you now fight, to whom you give great auspices and your own gods, and with half of yourself you are present and behold the city, with half you are far off and wage savage wars; so may he return to you a victor over the conquered foe, and shine aloft on the garlanded horses— spare, I beg, and put away your thunderbolt, your fierce weapons, weapons, alas, too well known to wretched me! Spare, father of your country, nor, forgetful of this name, take from me the hope of one day appeasing you. I do not pray to return, though it is credible that the great gods have often granted things greater than was asked; if you give a milder exile, and nearer, to me who beg it, a great part of my punishment will be lightened. I endure the utmost, cast out among hostile foes, nor is any exile farther from his country than I, sent alone to the mouths of the sevenfold Hister, pressed beneath the icy pole of the Parrhasian maiden— the Cizyges and Colchi and the throng of Teretei and the Getae are scarcely kept off by the waters between the Danube— and, though others have been banished for a graver cause, to none was a farther land given than to me. Beyond this there is nothing but cold and foes, and the wave that freezes with binding frost. Thus far is the Roman part of the leftward Euxine: the Basternae and Sauromatae hold the next. This is the last land under Ausonian law, and scarcely clings to the margin of your empire. Whence I pray, a suppliant, that you relegate me to safety, that peace too may not be taken from me with my country, that I may not fear the tribes which the Hister ill keeps off, nor that I, your citizen, may be captured by the foe. Divine law forbids that any born of Latin blood should suffer barbarian chains while the Caesars are safe. Though two charges have ruined me, a poem and an error, the guilt of the one deed must be kept silent. For I am not of such worth as to renew your wounds, Caesar, who have grieved once more than too much. The other part remains, in which, made by a shameful poem, I am accused of being the teacher of foul adultery. It is possible, then, for heavenly minds to be deceived in some things, and there are many beneath your notice; and as for Jove, gazing at once upon the gods and the lofty sky, there is no leisure to attend to trifling matters, so, while you survey the world that hangs upon you, lesser things escape your cares. Should the prince of empire, leaving his post, read poems made in unequal measures? The weight of the Roman name does not so press upon you, and so light a burden is borne on your shoulders, that you can turn your divine power to silly trifles, and run over my leisure with your eyes. Now Pannonia, now the Illyrian shore must be tamed, now Raetian and Thracian arms cause fear, now the Armenian seeks peace, now the Parthian horseman holds out his bow and the captured standards with timid hand, now Germany feels you young again through your offspring, and a Caesar wages wars for the great Caesar; in short, as in so great a body—greater than ever was— there is no part of the empire that wavers. The city too wearies you, and the guardianship of your laws and of morals, which you wish to be like your own. Nor do you enjoy the leisure you grant to the nations, and you wage unresting wars with many. Should I wonder, then, that in this weight of so great affairs you have never unrolled my jests? But if, as I would prefer, you had chanced to have leisure, you would have read no crime in my Art. That writing, I confess, is not of a stern brow, nor worthy to be read by so great a prince: yet it is not for that contrary to the commands of the laws, nor does it instruct Roman brides. And that you may not doubt for whom I wrote the little books, one of the three has these four verses: "Be far off, slender fillets, the emblem of modesty, and you, long flounce, that cover the middle of the feet! I shall sing nothing but the lawful and permitted loves, and in my poem there shall be no crime." Have I not strictly barred from this Art all whom the matron's robe and the fillet forbid to be touched? But the matron can use the arts of others, and has, though she be not taught, what she may draw from them. Then let the matron read nothing, for by any poem she can be made more learned for offending. Whatever she touches, if she is bent on evil, from it she will fashion her ways to vice. Let her take up the Annals—nothing is rougher than they— and surely she will read how Ilia became a mother; let her take up "Mother of the line of Aeneas" at the first, and she will ask whence kindly Venus was mother of the line of Aeneas. I will pursue it below, if only I am allowed to go in order, that every kind of writing can harm the mind. Yet not for that will every book bear a charge: nothing is profitable that cannot likewise harm. What is more useful than fire? Yet if one prepares to burn houses, he arms his bold hands with fire. Medicine sometimes takes away, sometimes gives, health, and shows which herb helps and which is harmful. Both the robber and the wary traveler are girded with a sword; the one carries snares, the other aid for himself. Eloquence is learned that it may plead innocent causes; it protects the guilty, and oppresses the undeserving. So my poem, if read with an upright mind, will be found able to harm no one. "But it corrupts some." Whoever holds this is wrong, and claims too much for my writings. Yet, that I may grant this—the games too supply the seeds of wickedness: bid all the theaters be taken away! The Martial sand, when it strews the hard ground with blood, how often it has given many a cause for sin! Let the Circus be removed! The Circus's license is not safe. Here a girl sits next to a man unknown. Since some women walk here, that a lover may meet in the same place, why does any portico lie open? What place is more august than the temples? Let her shun these too, if any woman is ingenious for her own undoing. When she stands in the shrine of Jove, in the shrine of Jove it will occur to her how many mothers that god has made. As she enters the neighboring temple of Juno to adore, how this goddess grieved over his many rivals. With Pallas in view, she will ask why the maid took up Erichthonius, born of a crime. Let her come into the temple of great Mars, your gift, and Venus stands joined to the Avenger, her husband before the doors. Sitting in the shrine of Isis, she will ask why the Saturnian drove her across the Ionian and Bosphorian sea. Anchises will be a precedent for Venus, the Latmian hero for the Moon, Iasion for Ceres, that may be cited. All things can corrupt perverted minds; yet all things stand safe in their own places, and far from immodest women the first page sets up my Art, written for harlots alone, and bars the hands of the chaste. Whatever woman bursts where the priest does not allow her to go, straightway she herself is guilty of the charge she took on. Yet it is no crime to unroll tender verses; the chaste may read much that is not to be done. Often a matron of stern brow looks upon naked women and Venus standing ready for every kind. Vestal eyes behold harlots' bodies, nor was that a cause of punishment to their owner. But why is there too much wantonness in my Muse, and why does my book persuade anyone to love? Nothing but my sin and manifest fault must be confessed: I repent of my talent and my judgment. Why did I not rather sing of Troy, fallen beneath the Argive arms, and harassed again by my poem? Why was I silent of Thebes and the mutual wounds of brothers, and the seven gates, each under its own leader? Nor did warlike Rome deny me matter, and it is a pious toil to record one's country's deeds. In short, since you, Caesar, have filled all things with your merits, one of the many parts should have been sung by me, and as the radiant lights of the sun draw the eyes, so your deeds should have drawn my mind. I am blamed unjustly; a thin field is plowed by me; that was a work of great fertility. A little boat should not trust itself to the deep because it dares to sport on a small lake. Perhaps—and even this I doubt—I am fit enough for the lighter measures, and suffice for the small modes: but if you should bid me tell of the Giants tamed by Jove's fire, the burden will cripple me as I attempt it. It is for a rich genius to set down the boundless deeds of Caesar, lest the work be overwhelmed by its matter. And yet I had dared; but I seemed to disparage, and—what is impious—to do harm to your might. I came back again to the light work, the poems of my youth, and stirred my heart with a feigned love. I would not, indeed, but my fates dragged me on, and I was ingenious for my own punishment. Alas for me, that I learned! Why did my parents teach me, and why did any letters detain my eyes? This wantonness made me hateful to you, for the Art by which you thought I tempted forbidden beds. But brides did not learn deceptions with me for master, and no one can teach what he scarcely knows. So I made my delights and tender poems that no tale ever grazed my name. Nor is there any husband, even of the common folk, who through my fault is in doubt of his fatherhood. Believe me, my conduct differs from my poem— my life is modest, my Muse is playful— and the greater part of my works is lying and feigned: it has allowed itself more than its author. Nor is a book the index of the mind, but an honest pleasure bringing much that is fit to charm the ear. Else Accius would be savage, Terence a reveler, and those who sing wild wars would be quarrelsome. In short, I am not alone in having composed tender loves: for love composed, I alone have paid the penalty. What did the Teian Muse of the lyric old man teach but to confound Venus with much wine? What did Lesbian Sappho teach the girls but to love? Yet Sappho was safe, and he too was safe. Nor did it harm you, son of Battus, that often, as you read, you confessed in verse your own delights. No play of pleasant Menander is without love, and he is wont to be read to boys and girls. The Iliad itself, what is it but an adulteress, over whom there was a battle between her lover and her husband? What comes first in it but the passion for Briseis, and how the ravished girl made the leaders wroth? Or what is the Odyssey but a woman, sought by many suitors for love while her husband is away? Who but Homer tells of Venus and Mars bound, their bodies caught upon a shameful bed? Whence but by great Homer's testimony should we know that two goddesses burned for their guest? Tragedy surpasses every kind of writing in gravity: this too ever has the matter of love. For what is there in Hippolytus but the passion of the blind stepmother? Canace is renowned for the love of her own brother. What? Did not the Tantalid, with Cupid driving his chariot, carry off the Pisan maid behind his ivory Phrygian steeds? That a mother dipped her sword in her children's blood, grief, roused by wounded love, did it; love made the king and his rival suddenly into birds, and the mother who still now mourns her Itys. Had not the wicked brother loved Aerope, we should not read of the Sun's averted steeds. Nor would impious Scylla have touched the tragic buskin, had not love cut her father's lock. You who read of Electra and Orestes out of his mind, read of Aegisthus' crime and the Tyndarid's. For why should I tell of the grim tamer of the Chimaera, whom a treacherous hostess nearly gave to death? Why should I speak of Hermione, of you, maid of Schoeneus, and of you, prophetess loved by the Mycenaean chief? Why of Danae and Danae's daughter-in-law and the mother of Lyaeus, and Haemon, and her for whom two nights were joined? Why of the son-in-law of Pelias, of Theseus, and of him who first of the Pelasgians touched the Trojan ground from his ship? Add to these Iole and the parent of Pyrrhus, add Hercules' wife, add Hylas and the Trojan boy. Time will fail me if I pursue the tragic fires, and my book will scarce hold the bare names. Tragedy too is mixed with foul laughter, and has many words of forgotten modesty; nor did it harm the author who made Achilles soft, to have broken his brave deeds by his measures. Aristides joined the Milesian crimes to himself, yet Aristides was not driven from his city. Nor did Eubius, author of an impure history, who described how the seeds of mothers are corrupted, flee; nor did he who lately composed the Sybaritica, nor those who did not keep silent of their own embraces. And these things are mingled with the monuments of learned men, and by the gifts of leaders the public deeds lie open. And lest I should defend myself only by foreign arms, the Roman book too has much that is playful, and as grave Ennius sang Mars with his own lips— Ennius greatest in genius, rude in art— as Lucretius unfolds the causes of swift fire, and prophesies the threefold work's fall, so the woman, to whom Lesbia was a false name, was often sung by wanton Catullus; nor content with that, he published many loves, in which he confessed his own adultery. Equal and like was the license of slender Calvus, who disclosed his own intrigues in various measures. Why should I tell of the poems of Ticidas, of Memmius, in whom there is a name for the things and shame for the names? Cinna too is their comrade, and Anser bolder than Cinna, and the light work of Cornificius, and Cato's like. And in whose books Perilla, lately dissembled by name, is now read called by yours, Metellus. He too, who led the Argo into the Phasian waters, could not keep silent of his own stolen loves of Venus. No less wanton are the poems of Hortensius, no less those of Servius—who would doubt to follow names so plain? Sisenna turned Aristides, nor did it harm him to have inserted shameful jests into history. It was no reproach to Gallus to have celebrated Lycoris, but not to have held his tongue when too full of wine. Tibullus thinks it hard to believe one who swears, since likewise she denies to her husband concerning herself. He confesses he himself taught how to deceive the guards, and now says, wretched, that he is pressed by his own art. Often, as if he were proving his mistress's gem or seal, he remembers, on that pretext, to have touched her hand; and, as he relates, he often spoke with fingers and a nod, and traced a silent mark on the round of the table, and teaches by what juices the bruise leaves the body, which is wont to be made by the pressing of the mouth: in short, he asks of the too-careless husband that he watch his wife too, that she may sin the less, he knows at whom the dog barks when he walks alone, why he so often plies the closed doors before her, and gives many such precepts of intrigue, and teaches by what art brides can deceive their husbands; this was no fraud to him, and Tibullus is read and pleases, and was already known when you were prince. You will find the same alluring precepts in Propertius: yet he is grazed by not the least mark. These I succeeded, since candor bids me hide the illustrious names of the living, I did not fear, I confess, that, where so many keels have gone, mine alone should be wrecked while all the rest are saved. Arts are written by others by which the dice are played:— this was no slight crime to our forefathers— what the knuckle-bones avail, by what throw you may fix the most, and escape the ruinous "dogs"; what numbers the die has, when, the throw called, it is fitting to cast, and how to handle the cast; how the parti-colored piece may advance on the straight line, when the man between two foes is lost, how the one following knows to wage war and recall the one before, nor flee unaccompanied in safety, how the small board is set with three pebbles a side, on which to have won is to have kept one's own in a row, and the other games—for I will not now pursue them all— that are wont to waste our time, a precious thing. Lo, another sings, glad, of the shapes of balls, this one teaches the art of swimming, that one of the hoop. By others the care of dyeing the complexion is composed, this one has given laws for banquets and hospitality; another shows the clay from which cups are shaped, and teaches what jar is fit for clear wine. Such things are played in smoky December, which it was harm to none to have composed. Deceived by these, I made poems not sad, but a sad punishment has followed my jests. In short, of so many writers I do not see one whom his own Muse has ruined; I am the one found. What if I had written mimes jesting at obscene things, which ever have the crime of forbidden love, in which the well-dressed adulterer steadily comes forth, and the cunning wife cheats her foolish husband? The marriageable maid, the matron, the man, the boy look on, and a great part of the senate is present, nor is it enough that the ears are profaned by lewd words; the eyes grow used to suffering many shameful things; and when the lover has cheated the husband by some novelty, he is applauded, and the palm given with great favor; and what profits less, the stage is lucrative for the poet, and the praetor buys such crimes at no small price. Look at the cost of your own games, Augustus: you will read that you have bought many such things at great cost. These you have watched, and often given to be watched— so kindly everywhere is your majesty— and with your eyes, which the whole world uses, you have looked, unmoved, upon adulteries on the stage. If it is right to write mimes imitating shameful things, the punishment due to my matter is less. Or does this kind of writing make its boards safe, and has the stage given to mimes the license that is allowed? My poems too have often been danced before the people, often they have even detained your eyes. Surely, as in our homes the painted bodies of men of old shine, the work of an artist's hand, so somewhere there is a small panel that portrays various embraces and the figures of love. And as the son of Telamon sits, his anger confessed in his face, and the barbarian mother has the crime in her eyes, so dripping Venus dries her wet hair with her fingers, and is seen now veiled by her mother's waters, others sing of wars armed with learned weapons, and part sings of your race, part of your deeds, grudging Nature has confined me to a narrow space, and given my talent slender strength, and yet that fortunate author of your Aeneid brought "arms and the man" to Tyrian beds, nor is any part of the whole body read more than the love joined by no lawful bond. The same poet, in his youth, had earlier sported in bucolic measures with the fires of Phyllis and tender Amaryllis, I too long ago sinned in that kind of writing: a fault not new suffers a new punishment; and I had published poems while you, marking offenses, I passed by so often, a knight unrebuked. Therefore the writings which, as a youth, I thought would not harm me, imprudent, have now harmed me as an old man. Late has the vengeance for the old book overflowed, and the punishment is far from the time of its deserving. Yet, lest you think all my work is loose, I have often given great sails to my ship. I wrote six books of the Fasti, and as many, and each roll has its end with its own month, and this was lately written under your name, Caesar, and my lot broke off the work dedicated to you; and I have given a royal work written in tragic buskins, and it has the words that the grave buskin should have, and I have told, though the last hand was wanting to the work begun, of bodies changed into new shapes. And would that you might recall your mind a little from anger, and at leisure bid a few things be read to you from here! A few, in which, rising from the first origin of the world, I have brought the work down to your times, Caesar! You will see how much heart you yourself have given me, and with what favor of mind I sing you and yours. I have stripped no one with a biting poem, nor does my verse hold the crimes of any, candid, I have shrunk from witticisms steeped in gall: no letter of mine is mixed with venomed jest. Among so many thousands of our people, so many writings, I shall be the one whom my Calliope has wounded. I do not, then, foretell that any citizen rejoices at my woes, but that many have grieved at them; nor is it credible to me that any has insulted me as I lay, if any thanks have been returned to my candor. By these things, I pray, and by others may your divine power be bent, O father, O care and safety of your country! Not that I may return to Ausonia, unless perhaps one day, when you are overcome by the long time of my punishment; a safer exile and a little quieter I beg, that my punishment may be equal to my fault.