Book 4

If anything in my little books should be flawed—as it will be— forgive it, reader, in view of the time that made it. I was an exile, and it was rest I sought, not fame, that my mind might not be fixed forever on its woes. This is why even the chained ditch-digger sings, easing his heavy toil with an untaught measure. He sings too who, bent over the muddy shoal, hauls his slow barge upstream against the current; and he who draws the supple oars in time to his chest, beating his arms as the beaten water beats them back. When the weary shepherd has leaned on his staff or settled on a rock, he soothes his flock with a song from his reed-pipe. The maid, singing as she spins her allotted task, beguiles and cheats her labour by the same. They say that grieving Achilles, when the Lyrnessian girl was taken, lightened his cares upon the Haemonian lyre. When Orpheus drew the woods and the hard rocks by his singing, he was mourning his bride twice lost. Me too the Muse relieves as I make for the place I was bidden, Pontus. She alone stood firm, companion of my flight; she alone fears no ambush, no Sintian soldier's sword, no sea, no winds, no barbarian land. She knows, too, what error undid me when I fell, that there was fault in my deed, but no crime. Just now indeed she is fair to me, since before she did me harm, when she was charged as defendant in the crime joined with mine. I would not, since they were bound to bring me harm, have laid my hand upon the rites of the Muses; but now what am I to do? The very power of those rites holds me, and, mad, I love the song that wounded me by song. So the lotus, once tasted by the Dulichian palate, was sweet in flavour, even by that which harmed. The lover generally feels his own losses, yet clings to them, and pursues the very stuff of his own undoing. I too take delight in my little books, though they have harmed me, and I love the weapon that dealt my wounds. Perhaps this devotion may seem to be madness, yet this madness has something of use in it: it forbids the mind to be always intent on its sorrows, and makes it forget the present mischance. And as the Bacchant, wounded, feels not her own hurt, while she raves, shrieking to the Idaean strains, so when my breast is stirred and warmed by the green thyrsus, that spirit rises higher than human ill. It feels not exile, nor the shores of the Scythian sea, it feels not that the gods are wrathful. And as if I drank cups of sleep-bearing Lethe, so the sense of my adverse hour is taken from me. With right, then, I revere the goddesses who lighten my woes, companions from Helicon of my anxious flight, who deigned to follow my steps, partly by sea, partly by land, whether by ship or on foot. Be these, I pray, at least kind to me! For of the gods the rest take sides with great Caesar, and heap on me as many troubles as the shore has sands, as the strait has fish, as a fish has eggs. You will sooner number the flowers in spring, the ears of corn in summer, the fruits through autumn, the snows in the cold, than the ills which, tossed across the whole world, I endure, while in misery I seek the leftward shores of the Euxine. Yet, since I came, the fortune of my woes is no lighter: here too my fate has followed in my tracks. Here too I recognize the threads of my birth-star, threads spun for me from a black fleece. And, not to tell of ambushes and perils to my life— true indeed, but heavier than truth will credit— how wretched it is to live among the Bessi and the Getae for one who once rushed always on the people's lips! How wretched to guard one's life by gate and wall, and scarcely to be safe even by the strength of one's own place! In youth I shunned the hard contests of war, nor handled weapons except in play; now, an old man, I gird my side with sword, my left arm with shield, and set the helmet upon my grey head. For when the watchman from his tower gives the signal of attack, at once with trembling hand we put on our arms. The savage foe, with bows and arrows steeped in poison, circles the walls on his panting horse, and as the ravening wolf bears off and drags through fields and woods the sheep that found no fold, so, if the barbarian enemy finds any in the open not yet received within the gates, he takes him: either he is led away captive, his neck receiving the cast chains, or he perishes by a weapon that holds venom. Here I lie hidden, a new dweller in an anxious home. Alas, too long the span of my fate! And yet the Muse, a guest amid such great ills, endures to return to verse and her old rites, but there is no one to whom I may recite my songs, none to take in Latin words with his ears. For myself—what else am I to do?—I both write and read, and my page is safe before its own judge. Yet often I have said: "For whom does this labour toil now? Or will the Sauromatae and Getae read my writings?" Often, too, as I wrote, the tears poured forth, and the letter was made wet by my weeping, and my heart feels its old wounds as though they were new, and the rain of mournful water glides into my breast, when, by the change reversed, I recall what I am and what I was, and there comes upon me where fate has borne me and from where. Often my mad hand, in anger at my studies and itself, has cast my songs into the fire to burn, and so, since of many few survive, read these, whoever you are, with indulgence. And you, Rome, forbidden to me, look kindly— no better than my times—upon my song.

Now savage Germany, like all the world, may— conquered—have sunk with bended knee before the Caesars, and the high Palatine perhaps is veiled with garlands, and incense crackles in the fire and dims the day, and the gleaming victim, its neck struck by the lifted axe, beats the ground with its crimson blood, and both Caesars prepare to render to the temples of the kindly gods the gifts their friends had vowed, and the young men who grow up under the Caesarean name, that that house may rule the earth forever, and Livia, with her good daughters-in-law, for her son's safe return gives gifts to the gods who earned them, and will often give, and with her the mothers, and those who, blameless, guard the chaste hearths in perpetual virginity; the pious commons, and with the pious commons the Senate, rejoice, the Senate of which I lately was a small part, a knight. Far off, expelled, the common joys pass me by, and only a little of the news, from so far, reaches me. So all the people will be able to watch the triumphs, and read on the leaders' placards the captured towns, and see the kings, chains on their captive necks, walking before the garlanded horses, and will mark the faces of some changed by the moment, of others terrible and forgetful of themselves. Some of the crowd will ask the causes, the deeds, the names; some will tell, though they know but little. "This man, who shines aloft in Sidonian purple, was leader of the war; that next one, second to the leader. This one, who now fixes his pitiful gaze on the ground, had not that look when he bore his arms. That fierce one, his eyes still burning with hatred, was the urger of battle and its counsellor. This treacherous one shut in our men by the snare of the terrain, he who hides his squalid face with hanging hair. By that one who follows, they say, captured bodies were often sacrificed, though he refused, to his god. This lake, these mountains, all these forts, all these rivers were full of savage slaughter, full of blood. Drusus once earned in these lands the name that, a noble son, was worthy of his parent. That one with broken horns, ill-covered by green sedge, was the Rhine, discoloured by his own blood. Lo, Germany too is led with streaming hair, and sits in grief beneath the foot of the unconquered chief, and, offering her proud neck to the Roman axe, she bears the chains on the hand with which she bore her arms." Above these, Caesar, in your victor's car you will be borne, robed in purple, duly through your people's gaze, and wherever you go you will be acclaimed by your people's hands, and the way will be strewn everywhere with scattered flowers. Your brow will be wreathed with Phoebus' laurel, and the soldier will chant "Io triumph!" with mighty voice, and amid the sound and applause and roar together you will often see the four-yoked horses halt at the singing. Thence you will seek the citadel and the shrines that favour vows, and the due laurel will be paid to Jupiter for your vows. This, far removed, I shall behold with such mind as I can: that mind has the right to a place taken from me. It ranges free across the boundless lands, it comes by a swift road into heaven, it leads my eyes into the heart of the city, and lets them not be deprived of so great a good; and the spirit finds a place from which to watch the ivory car; so at least I shall be in my homeland for a brief while. Yet the happy people will catch the true spectacle, and the throng present with its prince will be glad. But for me, only by imagining, and with ears far removed, this fruit must be gathered here, and, sent far from Latium into a world apart, scarcely will there be one to tell me, eager, of these things. He too will report a triumph already late and old: yet whenever I hear of it, I shall be glad. That day will come when I shall lay aside my mourning, and the public cause will outweigh the private.

Greater Bear and Lesser, of whom one guides the Greek, the other the Sidonian ships, both never setting, since, placed at the summit of the sky, you see all things, and do not sink beneath the western waters, and your circle, girdling with its embrace the airy citadel, stands clear above the untouched earth, look, I pray, upon those walls which once, they say, Remus, son of Ilia, leapt across—and ill it went for him— and turn your bright faces toward my lady, and tell me whether she is mindful of me or not. Ah, why do I fear? I ask what is plain. Why does my hope lie mixed with wavering dread? Believe what is so and what you wish, and cease to fear the safe, and let your sure faith be sure of certain faith, and what the flames fixed in the pole cannot tell you, tell to yourself in a voice that will not lie: that she is mindful of you, for whom your greatest care is, and keeps, as she can, your name with her. She clings to your face as though you were present, and, though removed far off, she loves you, if only she lives. Tell me—when the sick mind has sunk into its just grief, does gentle sleep depart from the warned heart? Then do cares come on, while the bed and the place and you touch her and let her not forget me, and the fever comes, and the night seems endless, and the weary bones of her tossing body ache? I doubt not indeed that these and other things befall, and that your love gives signs of mournful grief, and that you are tortured no less than when Theban Andromache saw bloodied Hector dragged from the Thessalian car. Yet I doubt what I myself should pray, nor can I say what feeling of mind I would have you keep. Are you sad? I am vexed that I am the cause of your grief; are you not? Then you would deserve to lose your husband. But mourn your own losses, gentlest of wives, and spend a grim time amid my ills, weep for my misfortunes: there is a certain pleasure in weeping; grief is filled out and worked off by tears. And would that you had to mourn not my life but my death, and had been left alone by my death! This breath would have passed, through you, into my native air, pious tears would have wet my breast, and on the last day my eyes, gazing at the familiar sky, would have been closed by your fingers, and my ashes, set in the ancestral tomb, would have rested, and the soil that touched my birth would hold my body; in short, as I had lived, so I would have died without crime. Now my life is shameful by its own punishment. Wretched me, if you, when called the wife of an exile, turn away your face and the blush comes to your cheeks! Wretched me, if you think it shameful to be seen wed to me! Wretched me, if now you are ashamed to be mine! Where is that time when you used to boast of your husband, nor hide the name of your man? Where is the time when—unless you will not have it recalled— it pleased you, I remember, both to be called and to be mine? And as is fitting for a virtuous wife, I pleased you with every gift: favouring love added much to the truth. Nor was there a man you would prefer to me—so great I seemed to you— nor whom you would rather have as your own. Now too be not ashamed that you are wed to me; your grief should not be absent from this, but your shame should. When rash Capaneus fell by a sudden stroke, do you read that Evadne blushed for her husband? Nor, because the king of the world quenched fires with his fires, was Phaëthon himself to be disowned. Nor was Semele made a stranger to her father Cadmus, because she perished, ambitious, by her own prayers. Nor, because I have been struck by Jove's fierce fires, let a crimson blush come upon your soft cheek. But rise rather to the care of guarding me, and be to me the example of a good wife, and fill with grim matter your virtues: glory walks its steep path by a sheer way. Who would know of Hector, had Troy been happy? The public road of virtue is made through misfortunes. Your art, Tiphys, lies idle, if there is no wave on the sea; if men are healthy, Phoebus, your art lies idle. The virtue that lies hidden and stays unknown in good times shows itself and is proved by misfortunes. My fortune gives your renown its place, and gives your devotion the means to lift its head conspicuous. Use the times whose gift it now is made, and a wide field lies open for your praises.

O you who, noble as you are by the names of your ancestors, surpass your line by the nobility of your character, in whose mind is the image of your father's candour, yet so that that candour lacks not its own sinews, in whose talent is your country's eloquence of tongue, than which there was none greater before in the Latin forum— since, much against my will, I have named you by your marks in place of your name: forgive your own praises. I have done no wrong; your own merits, once known, betray you; if you appear what you are, my fault is dissolved. Nor do I think that the homage paid you in my song can harm you under a prince so just. The Father of his Country himself—for what is more civil than he?— endures to be read often in my song, nor can he forbid it, for Caesar is the commonwealth's, and of the common good a part is mine as well. Jupiter lends his godhead to the genius of poets, and suffers himself to be celebrated by any mouth. Your case is safe by the example of two gods, of whom one is seen, the other believed, divine. Though I ought not to have, yet I shall bear this charge: the choice of writing to you was not yours. Nor is it a new offence of mine that I speak with you, with whom, when safe, I often spoke. And that you may fear the less lest a friend be a charge to you, the blame, if there is any, the author of it can bear, for your father—do not, surely, conceal this— was cherished by me always from my earliest years, and he approved my talent (you can remember this) even more than I, in my own judgment, deserved; and he spoke about my verses with that mouth in which was a part of his great nobility. So it is not now to you, because that house received me, but first to your father, that words were given. Yet they were not given—believe me—but in all my acts, if you take away the last, my life must be defended. This fault too, by which I perished, you will deny to be a crime, if so great a part of my ill be known to you. Either fear or error harmed me, but error came first. Ah! let me not remember my fate; nor by handling them let me reopen wounds not yet closed: even rest will scarcely profit them. So, as I justly pay the penalty, so every crime and design was absent from my offence; and the god knows it; for which neither was my light taken, nor does another possess my wealth, stripped from me. Perhaps this very flight, if only I live, he will one day end, when his anger has grown gentler with time. Now I pray that he bid me depart hence to another place, if my prayers are not without modest shame, a milder exile, a little nearer, I ask, and a place farther from the savage foe; and so great is the clemency in Augustus, that if someone should ask this for me of him, perhaps he would grant it. The cold shores of the Euxine Pontus confine me: "the Inhospitable" it was called by the ancients of old. For neither are its waters tossed by moderate winds, nor does the visiting ship reach calm harbours. Around are tribes that seek plunder by bloodshed; and the land is feared no less than the treacherous water. Those whom you hear rejoice in human blood lie almost beneath the axis of the same star, nor is the place far from us where the dread Tauric altar of the quivered goddess is sprinkled with slaughter. This realm, they tell, was once not coveted by the wicked, nor to be desired by the good—the realm of Thoas. Here the Pelopian maid, in place of a substituted deer, tended such rites as she could for her goddess. After Orestes had come here, driven by his own Furies— whether pious or guilty is doubtful— and his companion, the Phocian, example of true love, who, two in body, were one in mind, at once they are led, bound, to the grim altar, which stood bloody before the twin doors. Yet his own death did not affright this one, nor his own that one: each was grieving for the other's death. And now the priestess had taken her stand with drawn blade, and had bound the barbarian fillet on their Greek hair, when, by an exchange of speech, she knew her brother, and to him Iphigenia, instead of death, gave an embrace, and, glad, transferred the image of the goddess who loathed cruel rites from those parts to better ones. This region, then, almost the last of the great world, which men and gods flee, lies near to me; and near my land are funeral rites, if indeed the barbarian land is Naso's own. O would that the winds by which Orestes was carried away might bear my sails too, when the god is appeased!

O first part among the comrades I have loved, my fortunes' one altar found, by whose words this dying soul revived, as the wakeful flame revives when oil is poured upon it; you who did not fear to open faithful harbours and refuge to a vessel struck by the thunderbolt; by whose wealth I should not have felt myself in want, had Caesar snatched away my ancestral riches. While the impulse of this moment carries me, forgetful of the time, your name has nearly—alas!—slipped from me! Yet you recognize it, and, touched by desire of praise, "That is I," you would wish to be able to say openly. Surely I, if you allowed it, would gladly render you the title, and win for it the rare credit of fame. I fear to harm you, though grateful, by my song, and lest the untimely honour of being named should stand in your way; what is permitted—and is safe—rejoice within your breast, that I am mindful of you, and that you were loyal, and, as you do, strive with the oars to bring me aid, until a softer breeze comes from a calmer god; and guard a head that none can save, unless he who plunged it lift it from the Stygian water; and show yourself constant—which is rare—to every duty of unswerving friendship. So may your fortune have unending advancement, so may you yourself need no help and aid your own, so may your wife match her husband in lasting goodness, and no quarrel fall upon your marriage-bed; and may your brother by blood ever love you with that affection by which the loyal brother loves Castor; so may your son be a youth like you, and may anyone recognize by his ways that he is yours; so may your daughter make you a father-in-law by the wedding torch, and give you, while still young, the name of grandfather not late.

In time the bull grows patient of the ploughman's plough, and offers his neck to be pressed by the curved yoke; in time the spirited horse obeys the supple reins, and takes the hard bits in his gentle mouth; in time the rage of Punic lions is curbed, nor does the fierceness that was before remain in their hearts; and the Indian beast, which obeys the orders of its keeper, in time, conquered, submits to servitude. Time makes the grape swell with its lengthening clusters, till the seeds within scarcely hold the wine they have; time brings forth the seed into whitening ears, and takes care that the fruits be not of a bitter taste. This wears down the share of the plough that renews the soil, this wears hard flint, this wears adamant; this, too, little by little softens fierce angers, this lessens grief and lightens the mournful heart. All things, therefore, slipped away with silent foot, can age diminish, except my cares. Since I lost my homeland, twice has the threshing-floor been trodden of its grain, twice has the grape, pressed by the bare foot, burst apart. Yet no patience has been won in so long a span, and my mind keeps the sense of its ill as if fresh; indeed old oxen too often flee the yoke, and the horse, broken to the bridle, often fights it. And my present trouble is grimmer than the former: for though it is equal to itself, it has grown and swelled with delay. Nor were my ills so well known to me as they are; now they weigh the more, the more they are known. It is no small thing, too, to bring fresh strength, and not to be already worn out by time's hardships. The new wrestler is stronger on the tawny sand than he whose arms are weary, slowed by delay. The whole gladiator is better in his gleaming armour than he whose weapons are red, dyed with his own blood. The newly made ship bears the headlong storms well: the old one is loosed apart by however small a rain. We too bore more patiently what we bear, before our ills were multiplied by the long day. Believe me, I am failing, and, as far as I divine from my own body, but little time is added to my woes. For neither is my strength what it was, nor the colour I used to have: scarcely have I a thin skin to cover my bones. But my mind is sicker than my sick body, and stands without end in the contemplation of its own ill. The look of the city is far away, far my comrades, my care, and she than whom none is dearer to me, my wife, is far. The Scythian rabble is here, the trousered throng of the Getae: thus both what I see and what I do not see move me. Yet there is one hope that may console me in these things— that these ills will not be long, by reason of my death.

Twice has the sun come to me after the cold of icy winter, and twice run its course, touching the Fish. In so long a time why has your right hand done no kindly service in verses, however few? Why has your loyalty ceased, when they wrote with whom I had but little intimacy? Why, as often as I loosed the bindings of some sheet, did I hope that it bore your name? May the gods grant that your letter often was written by your right hand, though none of the many reached me. What I pray, it is plain, is so. Sooner would I believe Medusa's face, the Gorgon's, was girt with snaky hair, that there are dogs beneath the maiden's womb, that the Chimaera is, which parts a lioness from a savage serpent by flames, and four-footed creatures joined with a human breast, and the triple man and the triple dog, and the Sphinx and the Harpies and the serpent-footed Giants, and hundred-handed Gyas and the half-bull man. All these I would sooner believe than that you, dearest, have changed and laid aside your care for me. Countless mountains lie between me and you, and roads and rivers and plains and not a few straits. By a thousand causes it may be that a letter, often sent by you, comes rarely into my hands; yet overcome the thousand causes by writing often, that I may not always have to excuse you, friend, to myself.

Now my temples mimic the swan's plumage, and white old age stains my dark hair, now come the frail years and the more sluggish time of life, and now it is hard for me to bear myself, scarcely firm. Now was the time when, my labours laid aside, I ought to live, troubled by no fear, and to enjoy the leisure that always pleased my mind, and gently to be at my studies, and to honour my small house and the old household gods, and the ancestral fields that now lack their master, and, in my lady's arms and among dear comrades, to grow old, secure, in my homeland. So once had this age of mine hoped to be passed: so I deserved to lay down these years. The gods thought not so, who, driving me by land and sea, have cast me forth into Sarmatian lands. The battered ships are led into the hollow docks, lest they break up rashly in mid-water. Lest he fall and dishonour the many palms he has won, the horse, grown weak, crops the grass in the meadows. When the soldier is no longer fit enough in his years of service, he lays down at the old household gods the arms he bore. So then, as slow old age lessens my strength, for me too it was now time to be given my wooden sword. It was time not to draw a foreign air, nor to ease a parched thirst at the Getic spring, but to withdraw into the empty gardens I once had, to enjoy again the sight of men and the city. So once, my mind not divining the future, I longed to be able to live in peace as an old man. The Fates fought against it; they, who gave me my early times soft, weigh down the later ones. And now, ten lustres ended without a stain, I am pressed in the worse part of my life, and not far from the goals which I seemed almost to grasp, a heavy crash has befallen my course. So, mad, have I forced him to rage against me, than whom the boundless world holds nothing gentler? And was clemency itself overcome by my offences, and yet was life not denied to my error? A life to be passed far from my homeland, beneath the Northern axis, where the left-hand land of the Euxine sea lies. If Delphi and Dodona itself had told me this, both places would have seemed empty of truth. Nothing is so strong, though adamant bind it, as to stand firmer than the swift fire of Jove; nothing is so lofty and stretches beyond perils, that it is not below and subject to a god. For though part of my ills was contracted by my fault, yet the godhead's anger gave more of ruin. But be you too warned by my misfortunes, to earn the favour of a man who equals the gods.

If you permit and allow it, I shall keep silent the name and the deed, and your acts shall be given to the waters of Lethe, and my clemency shall be won over by late tears, only make it plain that you have repented of yourself; only make it plain that you condemn yourself and wish to erase the time of your life, if you could, those Tisiphonean years. But if not, and your breast burns with hatred of me, then unhappy grief will put on enforced arms. Though I am sent, as I am, into the farthest world, my anger will stretch out its hands from here. Caesar—if you do not know it—left me all my rights, and my only penalty is to lack my homeland. And my homeland, if only he be safe, I hope for from him: often the oak, scorched by Jove's bolt, grows green again. In short, if there is no means of vengeance for me, the Muses will give their powers and their weapons. Though I dwell far removed on the Scythian shores, and the nearest constellations are dry to my eyes, my proclamation shall go through boundless nations, and what I complain of shall be known as far as the world stretches. Whatever I say shall go from the east to the west, and the East shall be witness to my Western voice. I shall be heard across the land, across the deep waves, and the cry of my groan shall be loud, nor shall your own age alone know you guilty: you shall be a reproach to lasting posterity. Already I am borne into the fray, and have not yet taken up my horns, nor would I wish there to be any cause for taking them up. The Circus is still idle; already the grim bull scatters the sand and now beats the ground with hostile hoof. This too is more than I wished. Sing, Muse, the retreat, while he is allowed to hide his name.

I who was once the playful poet of tender loves, that you may know me, hear, posterity, who I was. Sulmo is my homeland, rich in cool streams, ninety miles distant from the city. Here I was born, and—that you may know the time— when both consuls fell by a like fate. If it is anything, I am an heir to the rank from of old, through my forebears, no knight made only by fortune's gift. Nor was I the firstborn son; I was begotten after a brother who had come into the world three times four months before. The same Morning Star was present at both our births: one day was celebrated with two cakes. This is the first of the five festivals of armed Minerva, the first that is wont to be made bloody by combat. At once, while young, we are educated, and by our father's care we go to men distinguished in the arts of the city. My brother from his green age aimed at eloquence, born for the strong arms of the wordy forum, but to me even as a boy the heavenly rites were pleasing, and the Muse was secretly drawing me to her work. Often my father said, "Why do you attempt a useless study? Homer himself left no riches." I was moved by his words, and, leaving all Helicon, I tried to write prose free of metre. Of its own accord a song came into fitting measures, and what I tried to write was verse. Meanwhile, as the years glided by with silent step, the freer toga was taken by my brother and me, and the purple with the broad stripe was put on our shoulders, and the study that was before remained ours. And now my brother had doubled his ten years of life, when he died, and I began to lack a part of myself. We took also the first honours of tender age, and I was once one of the board of three men. The Senate-house remained: the breadth of my stripe was narrowed; that burden was greater than my strength. Neither was my body able, nor my mind fit for the toil, and I was one shy of anxious ambition, and the Aonian sisters urged me to seek safe leisure, ever loved by my judgment. The poets of that time I cherished and cultivated, and as many bards as were present, I thought gods were present. Often Macer, older in age, read me his birds, and the snake that harms, the herb that helps. Often Propertius was wont to recite his fires, by the right of the fellowship by which he was joined to me. Ponticus, famed in epic, Bassus too, famed in iambics, were sweet members of my circle. And tuneful Horace held our ears, while he struck cultured songs on the Ausonian lyre. Virgil I only saw; nor did grudging fate give Tibullus time for my friendship. He was your successor, Gallus, and Propertius his; fourth from these in the order of time was I myself. And as I cherished the elder poets, so the younger cherished me, and my Thalia became known not slowly. When first I read my youthful songs to the people, my beard had been cut but once or twice. She had stirred my genius, sung through the whole city, whom I called by no true name, Corinna. Much indeed I wrote, but what I judged faulty I myself gave to the fires to mend. Then too, when I went into exile, I burned some that would have pleased, in anger at my study and my songs. Soft was my heart, not impregnable to Cupid's darts, and such that the lightest cause could move it. Yet though I was such, and was kindled by the smallest fire, no scandal was raised under my name. While still almost a boy I was given a wife neither worthy nor useful, who was my bride for a brief time. Her there succeeded a wife who, though without fault, was not destined to be firm in my bed. The last, who stayed with me into my later years, endured to be the wife of an exiled husband. My daughter, twice fruitful in her first youth, but not by one husband, made me a grandfather. And now my father had completed his fated span, and added nine more lustres to his nine. I wept no otherwise than he would have wept for me, had I been taken. Next I bore my mother to the grave. Happy both, and buried in good time, who perished before the day of my punishment! Happy I too, that not while they lived am I wretched, and that they grieved for nothing concerning me! Yet if of the dead anything but the name remains, and the slender shade escapes the built-up pyres, if, parents' shades, the report of me has reached you, and my charges are heard in the Stygian court, know, I pray—for it is not right for me to deceive you— that the cause of my ordered flight was error, not crime. This is enough for the shades: to you I return, eager hearts, who seek the deeds of my life. Already, my better years driven away, grey hairs had come to me, and mingled with my old locks, and ten times since my birth the victorious knight, crowned with the Pisan olive, had borne off the prizes, when the anger of the wounded prince bade me seek the Tomitae, set on the left of the Euxine sea. The cause of my ruin, too well known to all, must not be attested by my own witness. Why tell of comrades' wickedness and harmful slaves? I bore many things no lighter than the exile itself. My mind scorned to yield to its ills, and proved itself unconquered, using its own strength; and, forgetful of myself and of a life spent in leisure, I took up with unaccustomed hand the arms of the time; and I bore as many mishaps by land and sea as there are stars between the hidden and the visible pole. Touched at last, driven by long wanderings, was the shore where the Sarmatian joins the quivered Getae. Here, though I am ringed round by neighbouring arms, I ease my grim fate by such song as I can. And though there is no one to whose ears it may be brought, yet thus I use up and beguile the day. So that I live and hold out against my hardships, nor are the wearinesses of the anxious light upon me— thanks, Muse, to you: for you give solace, you come as rest from care, you come as medicine. You are my leader and companion, you lead me away from the Hister, and give me a place in the midst of Helicon; you have given me, while alive—a rare thing—a lofty name, which fame is wont to give from the funeral rites, nor has Envy, who disparages things present, bitten any work of mine with grudging tooth. For though our age has borne great poets, fame has not been grudging to my genius, and though I set many above myself, I am called no less than they, and through the whole world I am most widely read. If, then, the prophecies of poets have any truth, even if I die at once, I shall not, earth, be yours. Whether by favour or by my song I have won this fame, rightly to you, kind reader, I give thanks.