Book 5
Imperial Ovid Latin- This little book too, devoted reader, from the Getic shore add to the four I sent before. This too will be such as the poet's fortune is: you will find nothing sweet in the whole song. As my state is mournful, so is the song mournful, the writing suiting its matter. Whole and happy, I played at happy, youthful things; yet now it grieves me to have composed them. Since I fell, I proclaim my sudden mischance, and am myself the author of my own theme. And as the Caystrian bird, lying on the bank, is said to wail its own death with failing voice, so I, cast far out upon the Sarmatian shores, see to it that my funeral does not pass in silence. If anyone seeks delights and wanton songs, I warn him: there is no reason for him to read these. Fitter for him will be Gallus and Propertius of the winning mouth, fitter Tibullus, of charming genius. Would that I were not numbered among them! Ah me, why did my Muse ever jest? But I have paid the penalty, and on the borders of the Scythian Hister that player of the quivered Love is absent. What is left, I have turned my mind to public songs, and have bidden men be mindful of my name. Yet if any one of you should ask of me so much— whence I sing what is to be mourned—I have borne much to mourn. These I compose not by genius, not by art: the matter is ingenious by its own ills. And how small a part of my fortune is in the song? Happy he who suffers what he can number! As many as the shrubs of the wood, as the yellow sands of the Tiber, as the soft grasses the field of Mars has, so many ills have I endured, whose cure and rest is in nothing but study and the Muses' tarrying. "What measure, Naso, of your tearful song?" you ask. The same that the measure of this fortune will be. What I complain of, it supplies me from a full spring, nor are these words mine, but those of my fate. But if you should give me back my homeland with my dear wife, my face would be cheerful, and I would be what I was before. If the anger of unconquered Caesar were milder to me, I would now give you songs full of gladness. Yet my writing shall not play again, as it once played; let it have run riot once in my jest. What he himself may approve, I shall sing, if only the penalty be eased in part, and I escape the barbarism and the harsh Getae. Meanwhile, what should my little books do but mourn? That flute suits my funerals.
"But you could," you say, "bear your ills better by silence, and, saying nothing, hide your misfortunes." You demand that no groans follow torments, and forbid me to weep when struck by a grievous wound? Phalaris himself allowed the man in the Perillean bronze to utter bellowings and to complain with a bull's mouth. Since Achilles was not offended by Priam's tears, do you, harder than the foe, check my weeping? When Latona's offspring made Niobe childless, yet she did not bid her keep her cheeks dry too. It is something to lighten a fated ill by words. This made one a Procne, another a Halcyon. This was why, in his cold cave, the son of Poeas wearied the Lemnian rocks with his voice. Grief shut in chokes and seethes within, and is forced to multiply its strength. Grant pardon rather, or take away my books entirely, if what profits me harms you, reader. But it cannot harm, nor have my writings ever been fatal to any but their author. "But they are bad." I confess it. Who forces you to take up the bad? Or who forbids you, deceived, to lay down what you took up? I myself do not amend them, but that they be read as written; they are no more barbarous than their place. Nor should Rome compare me with her poets: among the Sauromatae I was a genius. In short, no glory is sought by me, nor the fame that is wont to set spurs to talent. I do not wish my mind to waste away with constant cares, which yet break in and go even where they are forbidden. Why I write, I have told; why I send to you, you ask— because I long to be with you in any way at all.
When a new letter comes from Pontus, do you grow pale, and is it opened by your anxious hand? Lay aside your fear, I am well; and the body which before was impatient of toils and weak in me, holds out, and, harassed, has hardened by the very use. Or is it that I have no leisure to be ill? Yet my mind lies sick, and has taken no strength with time, and the passion of soul that was before remains. And the wounds I thought would close with delay and their own span ache no otherwise than if just made. True, time's long age helps small ills; to great ills harms accrue with time. For nearly ten whole years the son of Poeas nursed the pestilent wound dealt by the swollen serpent. Telephus would have perished, consumed by endless wasting, had not the hand that harmed brought help. And I—if I have committed no crime—pray that he who made my wounds may be willing to ease what he has made, and, content at last with a part of my grief, take a little water from a full sea; that though he draw off much, much of bitterness will remain, and a part of my penalty will be as great as the whole. As many shells as the shores have, as many flowers as the pleasant rose-beds, as many seeds as the sleep-bringing poppy holds, as many beasts as the wood feeds, as many fish as swim the wave, as many as the birds that beat the soft air with wings, by so many adversities am I pressed: which if I should try to grasp, I should try to tell the number of the Icarian waters. And, to say nothing of the road's mishaps, the bitter perils of the sea, to say nothing of the hands drawn against my life, a barbarous land and the last of the great world holds me, and a place ringed by a savage foe. From here I would be moved—for my fault is not bloody— were there in you, as there ought to be, care for me. That god, on whom the Roman power is well based, has often been mild, as victor, toward his foe. Why do you hesitate and fear what is safe? Approach and ask: nothing in the vast world is gentler than Caesar. Wretched me! What shall I do, if my nearest abandon me? Do you too withdraw your neck from the broken yoke? Where shall I be borne? Whence seek solace for my weary affairs? No anchor now holds my vessel. See to it! I myself, though hated, will flee to the holy altar: the altar drives away no hands. Lo, absent, I address absent powers in supplication, if it is right for a man to be able to speak with Jove: arbiter of empire, by whose safety it is certain that all the gods have care for the Ausonian race, O glory, O image of the homeland that flourishes through you, O man no smaller than the very world you rule— so may you dwell on earth, and the heavens long for you, so may you go late to the stars promised to you— spare me, I pray, and take away the least part of your thunderbolt! Penalty enough will remain. Your anger indeed has been moderate, and you gave me life, and I lack neither a citizen's right nor my name, nor was my fortune granted to others, nor am I named an exile in the words of your edict. And all these things I feared, because I saw I deserved them; but your anger is gentler than my offence. You bade me, banished, look upon the fields of Pontus, and cleave the Scythian strait with a fugitive ship; ordered, I came to the ugly shores of the Euxine sea—this land lies beneath the cold axis— nor does the sky, never without frost, torment me so, and the clod always scorched by hoary cold, and that the barbarian tongue knows no Latin speech, and Greek is conquered by the Getic sound, as that, ringed about, I am pressed on all sides by neighbouring war, and a thin wall scarcely makes me safe from the foe. Peace there sometimes is, but trust in peace never: so this place now suffers, now dreads, arms. From here let me be moved, and let Zanclean Charybdis devour me and send me to the Styx with her waters, or let me be burned, patient, in the flames of swift Aetna, or be cast into the deep straits of the Leucadian god. What I seek is a punishment: for I do not refuse to be wretched, but I pray that I may be wretched more safely.
This is the day on which the poets are wont to celebrate you, Bacchus, if only the seasons deceive me not, and bind their festal brows with fragrant garlands, and chant your praises over your wine. Among them, I remember, while my fate allowed me, I was often a part not unwelcome to you, whom now the Sarmatian shore, set beneath the stars of the Cynosurian Bear, joined to the raw Getae, holds, and who once led a soft life, free of toils, in study and in the Muses' choir, now far from my homeland am ringed by Getic arms, having suffered much before by sea and much by land. Whether chance gave me this or the anger of the gods, or a cloudy Fate was mine at birth, yet you ought to have upheld with your godhead one of the worshippers of your sacred ivy. Or does whatever the sisters, mistresses of fate, have chanted cease to be at the disposal of a god? You yourself were borne to the airy heights by your merits, to which the way was made by no slight toil. Nor did you dwell in your homeland, but came as far as snowy Strymon and the Mars-worshipping Getan, and Persia, and the Ganges roaming with broad stream, and whatever waters the dark Indian drinks. Surely the Parcae, spinning the threads of fate, chanted this law to you, twice born, twice. Me too, if it is right to go by the examples of the gods, an iron lot of life and a hard one presses. I fell no more lightly than he whom, speaking great things, Jupiter drove from Thebes with his own fire. Yet, when you heard that the bard was struck by the thunderbolt, you could grieve at your mother's warning, and, looking around upon the poets at your rites, you could say, "Some worshipper of mine is missing." Bring aid, good Liber: so may the vine weigh down another elm, and the grape be full with enclosed wine, so may the young company of Satyrs be with you amid the Bacchae, and may you not be silent amid the frenzied din, so may the bones of axe-bearing Lycurgus lie ill at ease, nor may the impious shade of Pentheus be free of punishment, so may the bright crown of your wife flash forever in the sky and outshine the neighbouring stars. Come here and ease our misfortunes, most beautiful one, mindful that I am one of your number. There is commerce among the gods: try to bend Caesar's godhead, Bacchus, by your godhead. You too, partners of my study, pious throng, poets, ask each this same thing, your wine taken up. And let one of you, when Naso's name is spoken, set down his cup mingled with his tears, and, reminded of me, when he has looked round upon all, let him say, "Where is Naso, lately a part of our choir?" And so, if I have earned your favour by my candour, and no writing of mine has been hurt by my judgment, if, while I worthily revere the writings of the men of old, I deem the later ones not less than they— so, then, may you make song by Apollo's favour: keep, what is permitted, my name among you.
From the Euxine shore I, Naso's letter, have come, made weary by the sea and weary by the road, who, weeping, said to me, "You, to whom it is allowed, look upon Rome. Alas, how much better is your lot than my lot!" Weeping too he wrote me, nor was the gem with which I was sealed brought first to his mouth, but to his wet cheeks. If anyone seeks to know the cause of his sadness, he asks that the sun be shown him, he sees neither leaf in the woods, nor the soft grasses in the open meadow, nor water in the full river; he will wonder why Priam grieves, when Hector was carried off, or why Philoctetes groans, struck by the serpent. Would that the gods had granted such a state in him, that the cause of his sadness need not be mourned! Yet he bears, as he must, his bitter misfortunes patiently, nor, like an untamed horse, refuses the bridle. Nor does he hope the godhead's anger will be perpetual against him, conscious that in his fault there is no crime. Often he tells how great is the god's clemency, among whose examples he is wont to number himself as well: for that he keeps his ancestral wealth, that the name of citizen, in short, that he lives, he holds to be the god's gift. Yet you (O, if you believe me at all, dearer to him than all) he has always in his whole heart; and he calls you his Menoetiades, you who accompanied Orestes, he calls you his Aegides and his Euryalus. Nor does he long more for his homeland and for what, most of all, his homeland feels to be absent from him, than for your face and your eyes, O sweeter to him than the honey that the Attic bee lays in its combs. Often, too, grieving, he recalls that time, which he mourns was not forestalled by death; and when others fled the contagion of his sudden ruin, nor would approach the threshold of the stricken house, he remembers that you, with a few, stayed faithful to him, if anyone calls three or two a few. Though stunned, he yet felt all, nor that you grieved at his adversities less than he himself. He is wont to recall your words and your face and your groans, and that your breast was wet as you wept; how you stood by him, with what aid you consoled your friend, when you yourself at the same time needed consoling. For these things he affirms he will be mindful and pious, whether he see the day or be covered by the earth, swearing as he is wont by his own head and yours, which I know is no cheaper to him than his own. Full thanks will be returned for deeds so many and so great, nor will he let your oxen plough the shore. Only do this: guard the exile constantly. What he, who knows you well, does not ask, I myself ask.
The yearly birthday of my lady demands its accustomed honour: go, my hands, to the pious rites. So once the Laertian hero kept his wife's festal day, perhaps, at the world's edge. Let my tongue be present, favouring, forgetful of our ills, which, I think, has now unlearned how to speak good words; and the garment which is taken up by me once in the whole year, let it be taken up, white, unlike my fate; and let a green altar be made of grassy turf, and let a woven garland veil the warm hearth. Give me incense, boy, that makes the flames rich, and the wine that crackles, poured on the pious fire. Best of birthdays! Though we are far apart, I pray you come here bright and unlike mine, that if any pitiful wound threatened my lady, it may have been done with, her time of ills past; and that the ship, lately more than shaken by a heavy storm, may go, for what remains, over a safe sea. Let her enjoy her home, her daughter, her homeland— let it be enough that I alone was snatched from these— and since she is not happy in her dear husband, let the rest of her life be free of the grim cloud, let her live, and love her husband, since so she is forced, though absent, and pass her years—but long ones—to their end. I would add mine too, but I fear lest the contagion of my fate corrupt the years which she herself leads. Nothing is certain for man. Who would think it could come to pass that I should perform these rites amid the Getae? Yet see how the breeze bears the smoke risen from the incense toward the Italian quarters and the favourable regions. There is sense, then, in the clouds that the fire drives out: by design, Pontus, they flee your air. By design, when a common offering is made at the altar to the brothers who perished by each other's hand, the black ash, at odds with itself, as if so bidden by them, is split into two parts. This, I remember, I once said could not happen, and in my judgment the Battiadean was wrong: now I believe all things, since you, no fool, have turned your back, vapour, on the North, and seek Ausonia. This, then, is the light which, had it not arisen, no festal day would there have been for wretched me to see. It brought forth one of character equal to those heroines whose father was Eëtion or Icarius. On it were born chastity, virtue, probity, and faith, but joys were not born on this day, but toil and cares, and a fortune unequal to her character, and a just complaint of an almost widowed bed. Surely probity, exercised by adversities, has matter of praise in a grim time. Had hard Ulysses seen nothing hostile, Penelope would be happy, but without praise; had her husband, victor, entered the Echionian citadels, perhaps her own soil would scarcely know Evadne. Though Pelias' daughters are so many, why is one renowned? Surely because one was wed to a wretched husband. Bring it about that another touch the Trojan sands first, and there will be no reason why Laodamia be told of. And your devotion, which you would rather, would remain unknown, if my sails had had their own winds. Yet, gods, and Caesar destined to be a god, but late— when your days shall have equalled the Pylian's span— spare not me, who confess I deserved the penalty, but her, who, deserving no grief, grieves.
You too, once the trust of my affairs, who were my refuge, who were my harbour, you too dismiss the care of the friend you took up, and so soon lay down the pious burden of your duty? I am a load, I confess, which, if you were not going to lay it down in our trouble, should not have been taken up. Do you abandon the ship in mid-billows, Palinurus? Do not flee, nor let your faith be less than your skill. Did the fickleness of faithful Automedon ever, amid the fierce battles of Achilles, desert his horses? Whomever he once received, Podalirius never failed, sick, to bring the promised aid of his healing art. It is more shameful to cast out a guest than not to admit him: let the altar that lay open be firm for my right hand. At first you protected me, and nothing but me alone; but now save me likewise, and your own judgment, if only there is no new fault in me, and my charges have not suddenly changed your faith. May this breath, which I draw ill in the Scythian air, go out, as I wish, from my limbs sooner than your breast be bound by my offence, and I seem deservedly cheaper to you. Not so utterly am I pressed by unjust fates that my mind too is unhinged by long ills. But suppose it unhinged: how often do you think the son of Agamemnon spoke wicked words against Pylades? And it is not far from the truth that he even struck his friend: yet he remained no less in his duties. This alone the wretched have in common with the blessed, that the obedience due to both is given: way is yielded to the blind, and to those whom the bordered robe and the rod with words of command make to be revered. If you do not spare me, you ought to spare my fortune: the anger of anyone has no place against me. Choose the least of my labours, the very least, and it will be greater than you think. As many as are hidden in the dripping reed of the ditch, as many bees as flowery Hybla guards, as many ants as are wont to bear by a slender path the grains they find to their earthen barns, so great a throng of crowding ills stands about me. Believe me, my complaint is less than the truth. He who is not content with these, let him pour sands on the shore, ears of corn on the cornfield, water on the sea. Restrain, then, your untimely swellings of pride, and do not desert my sails in mid-sea.
The letter you read comes to you from that land where the wide Hister is added to the waters of the sea. If life with sweet health is yours, one bright part of my fortune remains. Surely, as ever, you ask, dearest, how I fare; though this you can know even while I am silent. I am wretched: this is the brief sum of my ills, and whoever lives with Caesar offended will be so. Are you eager to learn what the throng of the Tomitan region is, and among what manners I dwell? Though this shore is mixed of Greeks and Getae, it draws more from the ill-pacified Getae. A greater multitude of the Sarmatian and Getic race goes and comes on horseback through the midst of the roads. Among them there is no one who does not bear a quiver and bow and darts livid with viper's gall. A savage voice, a grim face, the very image of Mars, no hair, no beard cut by any hand, a right hand not slow to deal wounds with the planted knife, which every barbarian has joined to his side. Among these, alas, your bard now lives, forgetful of his playful loves, these he sees, these he hears, my friend: and would that he might live—not also die—among them, and that his shade might be absent from these hateful places. That my songs are danced in a full theatre, and that my verses win applause, you write, my friend— I have done nothing, indeed—you know this yourself—for the theatres, nor is my Muse ambitious for applause. Yet it is not unwelcome, whatever keeps me from oblivion and brings the name of the exile back to men's lips, though sometimes I curse the songs which I recall harmed me, and curse my Muses, yet when I have well cursed them, I cannot be without them, and I follow the bloody weapons that wounded me, and the Greek ship, lately torn by the Euboean waves, dares to run the Caphereian water. Yet I do not lie awake to be praised, nor pursue care of future fame, which it would have been more useful to hide. I hold my mind to studies and cheat my griefs, and try to give my cares the slip. What better should I do, alone on the deserted shores, or what other aid should I try to seek in my ills? If I look at the place, the place is unlovely, and than which nothing in the whole world can be grimmer; if at the men, they are scarcely men worthy of the name, and have more savage fierceness than wolves. They fear no laws, but right yields to force, and conquered justice lies beneath the warring sword. With hides and loose trousers they keep off the harsh cold, and their faces are roughly covered with long hair. In a few there remain traces of the Greek tongue, and these too are now made barbarous by the Getic sound. There is not one man in this people who could perhaps render in Latin any common words. I, that Roman bard—forgive me, Muses!— am forced to speak most things in the Sarmatian manner. And, lo, I am ashamed and confess it: now, by long disuse, the Latin words scarcely come to me myself. Nor do I doubt that there are in this little book too not a few barbarisms: not the man's fault, but that of the place. Yet, lest I lose the commerce of the Ausonian tongue, and my voice grow mute in my native sound, I talk with myself and handle again the unaccustomed words, and take up again the ill-omened signs of my study. So I drag out my mind and my time, so I draw myself back and withdraw from the contemplation of my ill. By songs I seek forgetting of wretched things: if I win this reward by my study, it is enough.
I have not so fallen, though cast down, that I am below you too, than whom nothing can be lower. What gives you spirit against me, base one? Or why do you insult misfortunes which you yourself can suffer? Nor do my ills, at which even wild beasts might weep, make you gentle and mild toward me as I lie low; nor do you fear the godhead of Fortune, standing on her doubtful wheel, and the proud words of the goddess who hates pride. Avenging Rhamnusia exacts penalties from the deserving: why do you trample my fate with foot set upon it? I have seen one who laughed at a shipwreck sink in the sea, and I never said the wave was juster. He who once denied cheap food to the wretched now feeds himself on begged-for fare. With doubtful steps wandering Fortune roams, and stays sure and fixed in no place, but now comes glad, now puts on a bitter face, and is constant only in her fickleness. We too flourished, but that flower was fleeting, and our flame was of stubble and brief. Yet, lest you take cruel joys with your whole mind, my hope of appeasing the god is not nothing, either because I sinned short of crime, and as my fault lacks not shame, so it lacks ill-will, or because nothing vast, from the sun's setting to its rising, is gentler than he whom that world obeys. Surely, as he is not to be overcome by force by any, so he has a heart soft to timid prayers, and, by the example of the gods, to whom he himself is to be joined, with the pardon of penalty he will give more, when more is asked. If you should count the suns and clouds in a whole year, you will find the day is oftener bright. So, lest you rejoice too much in my ruin, think that I too can someday be restored; think it can come to pass, the prince appeased, that you see my sad face in the heart of the city, and that I see you driven into exile for a graver cause: these are, next to my first, my nearest prayers.
O if you allowed your name to be set in my songs, how often would you be set down by me! You alone would I sing, mindful of your merit, and in my books no page would have grown without you. What I owed you would be known in the whole city, if yet, an exile, I am read in the city I have lost. The present age would know you mild, and a later age, if only my writings bear away their age, nor would the learned reader cease to speak you well: this honour would remain for you, the bard being saved. Caesar's is the first gift, that we draw breath; after the great gods, thanks are to be given to you. He gave me life; you guard what he gave, and make it possible to enjoy the gift received. And when the greatest part shuddered at my misfortunes, and a part even wished to be thought to have dreaded them, and watched my shipwreck from a high mound, and gave no hand to me swimming through the savage straits, you alone called me, half-dead, back from the Stygian wave. This too, that I can be mindful, is your doing. May the gods grant you them, with Caesar, ever friendly: my prayer could not be fuller. This my labour would set, if you allowed it, in my eloquent books, to be seen in much light; even now my Muse scarcely holds herself, though bidden to be still, from naming you against your will, and as the hound, having found the tracks of the timid hind, held by the hard leash, barks in vain, and as the eager horse, the doors of the bar not yet unbarred, provokes them now with foot, now with very brow, so my Thalia, bound and shut in by the law given, longs to go by the title of the forbidden name. Yet, lest you be harmed by the duty of a mindful friend, I shall obey—cease to fear—your bidding. But I would not obey, did you not think me to remember. For this, which your voice does not forbid, I shall be grateful. And while—O may it be brief!—I see the light of life, this breath shall serve your duty.
As long as I have been in Pontus, three times has the Hister stood fast with cold, three times has the wave of the Euxine sea grown hard. Yet I seem to myself to have been far from my homeland as many years as Dardanian Troy was beneath the Greek foe. You would think time stood still, so slowly it goes on, and the year runs its course with sluggish steps. The solstice takes nothing from the nights for me, nor does winter make the days short for me. Surely in me the nature of things has been made anew, and makes all things long, along with my cares. Or do the common seasons run their wonted courses, and are the seasons of my life rather hard? He whom the shore of the Euxine, false in its name, holds, and the truly left-hand land of the Scythian strait, countless tribes around threaten savage wars, who think it shameful to live except by plunder. Nothing outside is safe: the mound itself is defended by slender walls and the nature of the place. When you least expect it, like birds, the thickest swarm of foes flies upon us, and, scarcely well seen, drives off its prey. Often within the walls, the gates being shut, we gather through the midst of the streets the harmful darts that come. There is therefore a rare man who dares to till the country, and he, unhappy, ploughs with this hand, holds arms with that. Beneath the helmet the shepherd sings on pipes joined with pitch, and the timid sheep fear war instead of the wolf. Scarcely are we defended by the fort's aid; and yet within, the barbarian throng mixed with the Greeks makes fear, since the barbarian dwells among us with no distinction, and holds also more than his share of the dwelling. Though you might not fear them, you could hate them at sight, with their breasts covered by hides and long hair. These too, who are believed born from a Greek city, wear Persian trousers instead of their fathers' dress. They carry on the commerce of a shared tongue; by gesture must the matter be made plain to me. Here I am the barbarian, understood by none, and the stupid Getae laugh at Latin words; and openly, safely, they often speak ill of me to my face, perhaps reproaching me with my exile. And, as happens, when they say something false about me, they think it, as often as I shake or nod my head. Add that unjust justice is dealt by the rigid sword, and wounds are often given in the midst of the forum. O harsh Lachesis, who, to one holding so grave a star, gave the threads of life no shorter! That I lack the sight of my homeland and of you, friends, and complain that I am here among Scythian tribes: both penalties are heavy; yet I deserved to lack the city, perhaps I did not deserve to be in such a place. What do I say, ah, mad one? I deserved to lose life itself too, with Caesar's godhead offended.
That someone in a quarrel called you the wife of an exile, your letter has complained. I grieved, not so much that my fortune is ill spoken of— I who have now grown used to be wretched bravely— as that I am the cause of shame to one whom I least would wish, and I think you blushed at my ills. Yet that one is wrong, by whose judgment I am named an exile: a milder penalty has followed my fault. My greatest penalty is to have offended him, and I would rather the hour of my death had come first. Yet my ship is shaken, not sunk, not overwhelmed, and though it lacks a harbour, still it stands above the waters. He took from me neither life nor wealth nor a citizen's right, I who deserved by my fault to lose all. But because no crime was joined to my offence, he ordered nothing but that I be away from my native hearth, and, as to others whose number it is not possible to grasp, so Caesar's godhead was mild to me. He himself uses of me the name not of exile, but of the relegated: my cause is safe before its own judge. Rightly, then, do my songs, Caesar, for my manly part, sing your praises, such as they are: rightly do I pray the gods that they still close heaven's doors to you, and wish that you be a god without themselves. The people pray the same; but, as rivers run to the vast sea, so a stream of scanty water is wont to run. But you, by whose mouth I am called an exile, forbear, with a lying name, to weigh down my fortune!
You write that I should beguile this tearful time with study, lest my heart perish in shameful sloth. What you advise, friend, is hard, for songs are a glad work, and want peace of mind. My fortune is driven through adverse storms, nor can any lot be grimmer than mine. You demand that Priam sport at his sons' funerals, and that Niobe, childless, lead festal dances. Do I seem bound to be held by grief or by study, ordered, alone, to depart to the farthest Getae? Though you grant me a breast propped on strong oak, such as fame reports was that of the defendant of Anytus, wisdom will fall, shattered, by so great a mass of ruin: the anger of a god prevails over human strength. That old man, called wise by Apollo, would have borne to write no work in this plight. Let forgetting of my homeland come, let forgetting of you come, let all sense of what is lost be able to be absent, yet fear itself, quiet, forbids me to do the duty: a place ringed by countless foes holds me. Add that my talent, harmed by long rust, is sluggish, and is much less than it was before. A fertile field, if it is not renewed by constant ploughing, will have nothing but grass with thorns. The horse that has stood long will run ill, and among those sent from the bars will go last. A skiff turns to soft rot and gapes with cracks, if it has long been away from its accustomed waters. Despair of me too, that, small as I was and before, I can return equal to him whom I had been. Long endurance of ills has crushed my talent, and no part of my old vigour is present. Yet if, as even now, a tablet has been taken up by me, and I have wished to force words into their feet, no songs have been written by me, or such as you see, worthy of their master's time, worthy of the place. In short, glory gives no small strength to the mind, and the love of praise makes the breast fruitful. Once I was drawn by the brightness of name and fame, while a favouring breeze bore my sail-yards. It is now not so well with me that glory is my care: if I might, I would wish to be known to none. Or, because my songs went well at first, do you urge me to write, that I myself may follow my own successes? By your leave, nine sisters, let it be said: you are the greatest cause of my flight, and as the maker of the brazen bull paid a just penalty, so I myself pay the penalty for my arts. I should have had nothing more to do with verses, since, shipwrecked, I rightly fled every sea; but if, mad, I should attempt again the fatal study, will this place furnish me the weapons of song? There is no book here, no one to lend me an ear, and understand what my words mean. All places are of barbarism and of bestial speech, and all are full of the dread of a hostile sound. I myself seem to myself to have now unlearned Latin: for I have learned to speak Getic and Sarmatian. Yet, to confess the truth to you, my Muse cannot be held back from composing song. I write, and burn the books I have written: the end of my study is a little ash. I cannot, and yet I long, to bring forth some verses: therefore my labour is set in the fire, nor does any part of my talent reach you, save what by chance or by trick is snatched from the flames. So would that my Art, which destroyed its master who feared nothing of the kind, had been turned to ashes!
This greeting your Naso sends you from the Getic land, if anyone can send what he himself lacks. For, sick in body, I have caught the contagion of my mind's ill, that no part of me be free from torment, and for many days I am burned by the pains of my side; so the winter has hurt me by no slight cold. Yet if you yourself are well, in some part I am well: for my ruin is propped on your shoulders. What, when you have given me mighty pledges, and when you protect this head through all its measures, in that your letter rarely consoles me, you do wrong, and render a pious deed, but deny me words? Mend this, I pray! And if you correct this one thing, there will be no blemish on your excellent body. I would accuse you of more, were it not possible that to me a letter come not, though it was sent. May the gods grant that my complaint be rash, and that I think wrongly that you do not remember me. What I pray is plainly so: for it is not right for me to believe that the strength of your heart is changeable. Sooner shall the hoary wormwood be lacking to cold Pontus, and Trinacrian Hybla lack its sweet thyme, than anyone convince me you are forgetful of your friend. Not so black are the threads of my fate. Yet, that you may be able to repel even the charges of a false fault, take care not to seem what you are not. And as we used to spend long times in talking, the day failing for our conversation, so let the letter now bear and bear back our silent voices, and let paper and hand perform the office of the tongue. And, lest I seem to distrust this too much, and that it be enough to have warned of it in a few verses, receive the word with which a letter is always ended— and may your fate differ from mine!—farewell.
How great a monument I have given you in my little books, O wife dearer to me than myself, you yourself see. Though fortune may take much from their author, yet you will be borne famous by my genius; and as long as I am read, your fame will be read along with me, nor can you wholly pass into the mournful pyres; and though, by your husband's mischance, you may seem to be pitied, you will find some who would wish to be what you are, who, though you are in a part of my ills, will call you happy and will envy you. I should not have given you more by giving you riches: the rich man's shade bears nothing to the dead. I have given you the fruit of an everlasting name, and that gift than which I could give nothing greater, you have. Add that, as you are the sole protection of my affairs, no small burden of honour comes to you, that my voice is never mute about you, and by the testimony of your husband you ought to be proud. And, lest anyone be able to call this rash, stand firm, and guard alike both me and your pious faith. For while I stood, your faith stayed without base reproach, and your virtue was only blameless. Now a field is made for you from my ruin: here let your virtue set a conspicuous work. It is easy to be good when what forbids being so is removed, and a wife has nothing that hinders her duty; but, when the god has thundered, not to withdraw from the storm— that, at last, is piety, that is wedded love. Rare indeed is the virtue that fortune does not govern, that stays on a steady foot when fortune flees. Yet if any virtue seeks its own reward, and is steep and present in unhappy affairs— count time as you will—through no ages is it kept silent, and the lands wonder at it as far as the world's path lies open. Do you see how through long ages praiseworthy Penelope's faith holds an unquenched name? Do you mark how the wife of Admetus, and of Hector, is sung, and the daughter of Iphis who dared to go into the kindled pyre? How the Phylacean wife lives in fame, whose husband pressed the Trojan soil with swift foot? There is no need of death for me, but of love and faith: fame is not to be sought by you from a hard road. And do not believe that you are warned of this because you do not do it: we give sail, though the ship goes by the oar. He who advises you to do what you already do, in advising praises, and approves your deeds by his exhortation.