Book 4

All this you see, stranger, where mightiest Rome stands, was hill and grass before Phrygian Aeneas; and where the Palatine stands sacred to Naval Phoebus, the cattle of fugitive Evander lay down. These golden temples grew up for gods of clay, nor was a hut, made without art, a reproach; and the Tarpeian father thundered from the bare rock, and the Tiber was a stranger to our oxen. Where this house of Remus rose on its steps, one hearth was once the greatest kingdom of the brothers. The senate-house, which now gleams lofty with the bordered Senate, had Fathers clothed in skins, rustic hearts. The horn summoned the ancient citizens to debate: the senate for them was often a hundred in a meadow. Nor did winding awnings hang in the hollow theatre, the stages did not smell of the solemn saffron. No one cared to seek foreign gods, when the trembling crowd hung upon the ancestral rite, and the yearly Parilia were kept with burning hay, such as now the lustration is renewed with the docked horse. Vesta, poor, rejoiced in garlanded little asses, lean oxen led the cheap rites. Little crossroads were purified by a fattened pig, and the shepherd offered the sheep's entrails to the reeds. The skin-clad ploughman plied the bristly lashes, whence the licensed Fabian Lupercus has his rites. Nor did the rough soldier flash in hostile arms: they waged naked battles with a fire-hardened stake. First the cap-wearing Lycmon set up his headquarters, and a great part of Tatius' affairs was among the sheep. Hence the Tities and the Ramnes and the Luceres of Solonium, hence Romulus drove four white horses. For suburban Bovillae was less small than the city, and Gabii, which is now nothing, the greatest throng. And Alba stood powerful, born by the omen of the white sow, and for you it was a long road to have gone to Fidenae. The Roman foster-child has nothing of his father but the name: he is not ashamed that a wolf was the nurse of his blood. Hither, Troy, you better sent your fugitive household gods; ah, under what omen the Dardan ship was borne! Already then the omens promised well, that the open belly of the firwood horse had done it no harm, when the father hung trembling on his son's neck, and the flame feared to burn the pious shoulders. Then came the spirits of the Decii and the axes of Brutus, and Venus herself brought the arms of her Caesar, bearing the victorious arms of Troy rising again: lucky land that received your gods, Iulus, if only the cauldron of the trembling Avernal Sibyl said that the fields of Aventine Remus were to be hallowed, or if the songs of the Pergamene prophetess, fulfilled late, were true to the long-lived head of Priam: 'Turn the horse, Greeks! You conquer to your ill! The Trojan land will live, and to this ash Jupiter will give arms.' Martian wolf, best of nurses for our affairs, what walls have grown up by your milk! The walls indeed I would try to set out in pious verse: alas, how small a sound is in my mouth! But yet whatever stream shall flow from this slender breast, all of it will serve my fatherland. Let Ennius gird his words with a shaggy crown: to me hold out, Bacchus, leaves of your ivy, that Umbria may swell proud with my books, Umbria, fatherland of the Roman Callimachus! Whoever sees the citadels climbing from the valleys, let him reckon those walls by my genius! Rome, be favourable, the work rises for you; give, citizens, fair omens, and let the bird sing prosperous to my beginnings! I will sing rites and days and the ancient names of places: to these goals must my horse sweat. Where do you rush, heedless, wanderer, to tell the fates, Propertius? The threads are not spun from a lucky distaff. You summon tears by singing, Apollo is turned away: you demand from an unwilling lyre words you will regret. I will tell sure things from sure authorities, or else I am a prophet who knows not how to move the figures on the brazen ball. Babylonian Orops, the offspring of Archytas, begets me, Horos, and the house traced from my forefather Conon. The gods are my witnesses that I have not degenerated from my kindred, and that nothing in my books comes before faith. Now they have made the gods a price, and (Jupiter is deceived by gold) the repeated signs of the slanting wheel and the lucky stars of Jove and the rapacious of Mars and the heavy star of Saturn on every head; what the Fishes move and the spirited signs of the Lion, and what Capricorn, washed by Hesperian water. I said, when Arria brought forth her twin sons (she gave her sons arms, the god forbidding): that they could not bring their spears back to their father's home: and surely now two graves confirm my faith. For Lupercus, while he shields his horse's wounded face, alas, took no good care of himself, his horse having slipped; but Gallus, while in camp he guards the standards entrusted to him, fell before the bloody beak of his own eagle: fated boys, two funerals of a greedy mother! True, but to my sorrow, that faith came to pass. I too, when Lucina drew out the pains of Cinara, and the slow weight of the womb made delay, bade her make a vow obtainable to Juno: she gives birth: the palm is given to my books! This the sandy cave of Libyan Jove does not unfold, nor the entrails that speak the gods entrusted to them, nor if anyone has marked the moved wings of the crow, or the shade that dead comes forth from magic waters: the way of heaven is to be watched and the true path through the stars, and faith is to be sought from the five zones. A grave example will be Calchas: for from Aulis he loosed the ships that clung well to the pious rocks; the same dyed the iron in the neck of Agamemnon's daughter, and the son of Atreus gave the bloody sails; yet the Greeks did not return: ruined Troy, hold back your weeping and look at the Euboean bays! Nauplius holds out avenging fires under cover of night, and Greece swims, pressed by her own spoils. Victor son of Oileus, snatch now and love the prophetess, whom Minerva forbids to be torn from her own robe! So much for history: now I will be borne to your stars; begin, you, to be present, calm to fresh tears. Ancient Umbria bore you with famous household gods— do I lie? or is the boundary of your fatherland touched?— where misty Mevania drips in the hollow plain, and the Umbrian lake grows warm with summer waters, and the wall of climbing Asisium rises on the height, that wall more famous from your genius. And you gathered, at an age not for such gathering, the bones of your father, and were yourself forced into a slender home: for though many bullocks turned your fields, the grim measuring-rod took away your cultivated wealth. Soon when the golden bulla was taken from your young neck, and the toga of freedom assumed before your mother's gods, then Apollo dictates to you a few things from his song and forbids you to thunder words in the mad Forum. But you, fashion elegies, deceptive work: this is your camp!— that the rest of the throng may write by your example. You will suffer the warfare of Venus beneath charming arms, and you will be a foe useful to the Boys of Venus. For whatever victorious palms you have won by labour, one girl makes a mockery of them: and when you have well shaken off the hook fixed in your chin, this will be nothing: the barb will press you with its own point. By her will you will see night and day: even a tear-drop will not fall from your eyes unless bidden. Neither a thousand sentinels nor sealed thresholds will help you: when she is set on cheating, a chink is enough. Now though your ship struggle in mid-waves, or though you go unarmed, a foe among the armed, or though the trembling earth split open its hollow gap: fear the sinister back of the eight-footed Crab.

Why marvel that I have so many forms in one body, learn the ancestral tokens of the god Vertumnus. I am Tuscan and from Tuscans I spring, nor do I repent to have deserted, amid battles, the hearths of Volsinii. This throng delights me, nor do I rejoice in an ivory temple: it is enough to be able to see the Roman Forum. Here once the Tiber made its way, and they say the sounds of oars were heard over the beaten shallows: but after it gave so much ground to its own foster-children, I am called the god Vertumnus from the turned river. . . . Or, because I receive the fruit of the turning year, it believed this to be again the rite of Vertumnus. The first grape colours for me with its darkening clusters, and the bristling stalk swells with milky grain; here you see sweet cherries, here autumn plums and mulberries reddening on a summer day; here the grafter comes to pay his vows with a fruit-laden crown, when the pear-tree has borne apples on an unwilling stock. Lying rumour, you do me harm: another is the marker of my name: only believe a god as he tells of himself. My nature is fit for all forms: turn me into whatever you will, I shall be becoming. Clothe me in Coan silk, I shall become no unyielding girl: and who would deny I am a man with the toga assumed? Give me a scythe and bind my brow with twisted hay: you will swear the grass was cut by our hand. I once bore arms, and, I remember, was praised in them: but with a basket and its weight laid on, I was a reaper. Sober at lawsuits: but when a garland is set on, you will cry that the wine has gone to my head. Gird my head with a turban, I will steal the look of Iacchus; I will steal Phoebus', if only you give me the quill. With nets set on I hunt: but with the reed taken up I am the god, the patron of the feathered fowling. Vertumnus is also the figure of a charioteer, and of him who throws the light weight from one horse to another in turn. If the chance offers, I will plunder fish with the rod, and go, a neat huckster, in lowered tunics. I can bend myself as a shepherd to the staff, or the same carry roses in baskets through the midst of the dust. For why should I add what I am most famed for, the approved gifts of gardens in my hands? The sea-green cucumber and the gourd with swollen belly mark me, and the cabbage bound with light rush; nor does any flower open in the meadows but that it, becomingly set on my brow, droops there. But to me, because alone I was turned into all forms, the native tongue gave a name from the event; and you, Rome, gave rewards to my Tuscans, (whence today the Tuscan Quarter has its name), at the time when Lycomedius came with allied arms and crushed the Sabine arms of fierce Tatius. I saw the lines slipping and the falling weapons, and the foe turn their backs in shameful flight. But grant, Sower of the gods, that the Roman togaed throng may pass through the ages before my feet. Six verses remain: you, who run to your bail-bonds, I do not detain: this is the last chalk-line of my course. I was a stump of maple, hewn by a hurrying scythe, a poor god in a grateful city before Numa. But for you, Mamurrius, engraver of the bronze form, may the Oscan earth not wear away your craftsman's hands, you who could cast me into such teachable uses. There is one work, but one honour is not given to the work.

These charges Arethusa sends to her Lycotas, if, since you are so often away, you can be mine. But if any part be missing, blurred for you to read, this blot will have been made by my tears: or if any letter cheats you with uncertain stroke, it will be the sign of my right hand now dying. Lately Bactra saw you on its repeated risings, lately the Seric foe on his armoured horse, and the wintry Getae, and Britain on its painted chariot, and the burnt, dark Indian by the Eastern water. Is this wedded faith and these the nights you bargained, when, raw, I gave my vanquished arms to your urging? The torch that gave omen to me as a bride, that drew its black light from an overturned pyre; and I was sprinkled with Stygian water, and the fillet was not set straight on my hair: I married with no god attending. Ah, on all gates my baleful vows hang: this is the fourth cloak woven for your camp. May he perish who cut a palisade from the undeserving tree and fashioned the querulous trumpets through hoarse bones, more worthy than crook-backed Ocnus to twist the rope, and to feed your hunger, donkey, forever! Tell me, does the breastplate chafe your tender arms? does the heavy spear gall your unwarlike hands? Let these rather harm you than that any girl with her teeth give me marks to be wept over upon your neck! You are said to have thinned your face with wasting: but I pray that colour be from longing for me. But when evening brings on the bitter nights for me, if any of your arms lie left behind, I kiss them; then I complain that the covers do not settle over the whole bed, and that the birds, authors of the light, do not give their song. On winter nights I work at the camp's tasks and the Tyrian wool cut into bands for your sword-straps; and I learn in what part the Araxes flows, to be conquered, how many miles the Parthian horse runs without water; and I am forced to learn by heart the worlds painted on a map, and what is the arrangement of this learned god, what land is sluggish with frost, what rotten from heat, what wind would bear the sails well to Italy. One sister sits by me, and the nurse, pale with cares, swears falsely that the delays are of the winter season. Happy Hippolyte! She bore arms with bare breast and covered her soft head, barbarian, with a helmet. Would that the camp had lain open to Roman girls! I would be a faithful baggage of your warfare, nor would the ridges of Scythia delay me, when Father Africus binds the deep waters into ice with cold. Every love is great, but greater in an open marriage: Venus herself fans this torch, that it may live. For what use is it to me that the purple gleams thrice with Punic dye and the watery crystal adorns my hands? All is dumb and silent, and one girl, accustomed to the rare Kalends, scarcely opens the closed Lares, and the voice of my little dog Craugis, complaining, is dear to me: she alone claims a share of your bed. I cover the little shrines with flower, I veil the crossroads with vervain, and the Sabine herb crackles at the old hearths. Whether the owl, standing on a neighbouring beam, has hooted, or the sparing lamp has wished to be touched with wine, that day proclaims slaughter for this year's lambs, and the girt-up priests grow hot for the fresh gains. Do not, I pray, let glory be worth so much for Bactra scaled, or the fine linen snatched from a perfumed chief, when the leaden weights of the whirled sling are scattered, and the treacherous bow twangs from horses turned in flight! But (so may the pure spear follow your triumphant horses, the sons of the Parthian land being tamed) keep uncorrupted the pacts of my bed! On this one condition would I have you returned: and when I have brought your votive arms to the Capene gate, I will write beneath: 'A grateful girl, for her man saved.'

The Tarpeian grove and the shameful tomb of Tarpeia I will tell, and the captured thresholds of ancient Jove. There was a lucky grove hidden in an ivy-clad hollow, and many a tree murmured by the native waters, the branching home of Silvanus, whither from the heat the sweet pipe bade the sheep go to drink. Tatius girds this spring with a maple palisade, and crowns his trusty camp with heaped earth. What then was Rome, when the trumpeter of the neighbouring Cures shook the rocks of Jove with his slow droning? And where now laws are given to the conquered lands, the Sabine spears stood in the Roman Forum. The mountains were the wall: where now the senate-house is fenced, the war-horse drank from that spring. Hence Tarpeia drew water for the goddess: but on her a clay urn pressed the middle of her head. And could one death be enough for the wicked girl, who wished to cheat your flames, Vesta? She saw Tatius drilling on the sandy fields and raising his painted arms above the yellow plumes: she was struck dumb at the king's face and his royal arms, and the urn fell from her forgetful hands. Often she pleaded the omens of the innocent moon, and said she must dip her hair in the river: often she brought silver lilies to the gentle Nymphs, that the Roman spear might not harm the face of Tatius. And while she climbed the Capitol clouded with the first smoke, she brought back her arms cut by the bristling brambles, and, sitting on her Tarpeian citadel, thus she wept her wounds, not to be endured by neighbouring Jove: 'Fires of the camp and tents of Tatius' squadron and Sabine arms, fair to my eyes, O that I might sit a captive among your household gods, so long as I, a captive, might gaze on the face of my Tatius! Roman mountains, and Rome set upon the mountains, and farewell to Vesta, to be shamed by my disgrace: that horse, that horse will set my love back in the camp, whose mane Tatius himself arranges to the right! What wonder that Scylla raged against her father's hair, and her white loins were turned into savage dogs? What wonder that the horns of the brother-monster were betrayed, when the twisted way lay open by the gathered thread? What a crime I am about to make for the Ausonian girls, the wicked maid chosen to tend the virgin hearth! If anyone shall wonder at the quenched fires of Pallas, let him forgive: the altar is sprinkled with my tears. Tomorrow, as rumour says, there will be drinking through the whole city: you, take the dewy back of the thorny ridge. The whole way is slippery and treacherous: for it ever hides the silent waters by a deceptive path. O that I knew the chants of the magic Muse! This tongue too would have brought help to the handsome man. The painted toga befits you, not him whom, without a mother's honour, the hard teat of the inhuman wolf nourishes. Here, stranger, shall I be feared, a queen in my native hall? No lowly dowry, Rome betrayed, comes to you. If not, then let the rape of the Sabines not go unpunished: snatch me away and pay back the turns by alternate law! I can part the joined battle-lines: brides, enter the middle pact by my robe. Add, Hymen, your measures, trumpeter, hush your fierce noises: believe me, my bed will soften your arms. And now the fourth horn sings the coming light, and the very stars, slipping into the Ocean, fall. I will try sleep, and seek dreams of you: make yourself come, a kindly shade, to my eyes.' She spoke, and gave her arms to uncertain sleep, not knowing she lay down to new furies. For Vesta, lucky guardian of the Trojan ember, feeds the guilt and lays more torches in her bones. She rushes on, as by the swift Thermodon the Strymonian Amazon is borne, her dress torn open. It was a festival for the city (the Fathers called it Parilia), this was the first day to be for the walls, the yearly banquets of the shepherds, sport in the city, when the rustic dishes drip with riches, and when over the scattered heaps of flaming hay the drunken crowd flings their dirty feet. Romulus decreed the sentries to be at ease, and the camp to be silent, the trumpet stilled. This time Tarpeia, thinking it her own, meets the foe: she binds the bargains, herself to be a partner in the bargains. The hill was doubtful in ascent, and slackened by the festival; without delay, she takes the barking dogs by the sword. All things offered sleep: but Jupiter alone decreed to keep watch for her punishments. She had betrayed the trust of the gate and her fatherland lying low, and asks for herself the day she wishes for the wedding. But Tatius (for the foe gave no honour to the crime) says, 'Marry, and climb the bed of my kingdom!' He spoke, and overwhelmed her with the heaped arms of his comrades. This, maid, was a dowry fit for your services. From its leader Tarpeia the hill has won its name: O watcher, unjustly you have the rewards of your lot.

May the earth, bawd, cover your tomb with thorns, and may your shade feel, what you do not wish, thirst; may your ghost have no rest in its ashes, and may avenging Cerberus terrify your foul bones with hungry sound! Skilled to soften even Hippolytus who refused Venus, and always the worst bird for a harmonious bed, she would force even Penelope, the rumour of her husband scorned, to marry wanton Antinous. If she wished, the magnet could fail to draw the iron, and the bird be a stepmother to her own nests. Indeed, if she moved the Colline herbs to the ditch, things standing still would be washed away by running water: bold to lay laws on the enchanted moon and to disguise her own body as a nocturnal wolf, so that by cunning she might blind the watchful husbands, she tore out the undeserving cheeks of crows with her nail; and she consulted screech-owls about my blood, and for me gathered the seeds, the hippomanes, of a pregnant mare. She pressed on her work with words, as a wheedling drop wears away even a stony way by busy fault: 'If the golden Eastern bank of the Dorozantes delights you and the shell that grows proud beneath the Tyrian water, and the Coan weaving of Eurypylus' Minerva pleases you, and the crumbling figures cut from Attalic couches, or the goods that palm-bearing Thebes sends for sale, and the myrrhine cups baked on Parthian hearths; scorn faith, cast down the gods, let lies conquer, and break the laws of ruinous chastity! And to feign a husband makes a price: use your pretexts! Greater love will run back when the night is put off. If by chance he has tousled your hair, anger is useful: then, peace bought, he must be squeezed. Finally, when you have promised Venus for an embrace bought, pretend that these are the pure days of Isis. Let Iole press April upon you, let Amycle din that your birthday falls on the Ides of May. The suppliant sits—you, with your chair set, write whatever you like! If he fears these arts, you have him! Always have fresh bites about your neck, which he may think were given in alternating quarrels. Nor let the reproaches of pursuing Medea delight you (for she bore disdain, having dared to ask first), but rather the costly Thais of polished Menander, when the comic harlot strikes the cunning Getas. Turn yourself to the man's ways: if he flaunts songs, go as his companion and, drunk, join your voice. Let the doorkeeper watch for those who give: if he knocks empty-handed, deaf, let him dream on at the drawn-down bolt. Nor let the soldier displease you, not made for love, nor the sailor if he brings bronze in his worn hand, or those whose placard hung about barbarian necks, when, chalked, they danced in the midst of the forum. Look at the gold, not the hand that brings the gold! When you have heard verses, what but words will you carry off? He who shall give you verses and not the gifts of a Coan gown, let his lyre be dumb to you, without art. While the blood is in its spring, while the year is whole, without wrinkles, use it, lest tomorrow take something from your face! I have seen the rose-beds of fragrant Paestum, meant to live, lie scorched beneath the morning South wind.' But (take, O queen Venus, for her deserving the slit throats of a collared dove before your hearths) while Acanthis turns the mind of my mistress with these things, my bones could be counted by me through the thin skin. I saw the cough thicken in her wrinkled throat, and bloody spittle go through the hollow teeth, and her rotten soul breathe out upon her father's mats: the bent hovel shivered with its chilly hearth. Her funeral was the stolen bonds of scant hair and a turban pale with filthy neglect, and the dog, too wakeful to my griefs, when the bars had to be cheated by my thumb. Let the bawd's tomb be an old wine-jar with a broken neck: press on it above, wild fig-tree, with your force. Whoever you are who love, batter this grave with rough stones, and with the stones add evil words.

The prophet performs the rite: let lips be favourable to the rites, and let the heifer fall, struck, before my hearths. Let the Roman garland vie with the clusters of Philitas, and let the urn furnish Cyrenaean waters. Give me soft spikenard and the honours of charming incense, and let the woollen circle go thrice around the hearth. Sprinkle me with water, and let the ivory flute pour the song for the fresh altars from Mygdonian jars. Go far, frauds, let harms be in another air: pure laurel softens the new road for the prophet. Muse, we will tell of the temple of Palatine Apollo: the theme, Calliope, is worthy of your favour. The songs are led in Caesar's name: while Caesar is sung, I beg, Jupiter himself, be at leisure! There is a haven of Phoebus, retreating to the Athamanian shore, where the bay hides the murmurs of Ionian water, the Actian sea, the monuments of the Julian keel, a road not toilsome for the vows of sailors. Hither came together the world's forces: a mass of pine stood on the sea, nor did the bird favour the oars equally. The one fleet was condemned by Trojan Quirinus, and its spears shamefully driven by a woman's hand: here the Augustan ship, with sails full of Jove's omen, and standards now taught to conquer for their fatherland. At last Nereus had bent the line into twin arcs, and the water trembled, painted with the gleam of arms, when Phoebus, leaving Delos that stood with him as champion (for the moving island once bore the angry South winds), stood over Augustus' stern, and a new flame shone, thrice curved into a slanting beam. He had not brought locks loosened to his neck or the unwarlike song of the tortoise lyre, but with such a face as he looked on Pelopean Agamemnon, and emptied the Dorian camp into the greedy pyres, or as he goes serpent-like through the winding coils to slay Python, whom the unwarlike lyres feared. Soon he says: 'O saviour of the world from Long Alba, Augustus, known greater than your Hectorean forefathers, conquer at sea: now the land is yours: for you the bow fights and all this burden on my shoulders favours you. Free the fatherland from fear, which now, trusting in you as champion, has laid the public vows on your prow. Which, unless you defend it, Romulus, the augur of the walls, saw the Palatine birds go to ill purpose. And they dare too near with their oars: it is shameful for the Latins, with you as leader, to suffer the royal sails upon the waves. Nor let it frighten you that the fleet rows with a hundred wings: it glides on an unwilling sea: and though the prows carry the Centaur-rocks that threaten, you will find them hollow timbers and painted terrors. The cause breaks and lifts the strength in the soldier; unless a just one is beneath, shame strikes the arms from his hands. The time is here, join the ships! I, the author of the time, will lead the Julian beaks with laurel-bearing hand.' He had spoken, and spends the weight of his quiver in his bow: next after the bow was Caesar's spear. Rome conquers by the faith of Phoebus: the woman pays the penalty: her broken sceptres are borne over the Ionian waters. But father Caesar marvels from the Idalian star: 'I am a god; this faith is of our blood.' Triton attends with his song, and all the sea goddesses applauded around the free standards. She seeks the Nile in her skiff, ill propped on its fleeing, in this one thing not to die on the appointed day. The gods did better! How great a triumph one woman would have been, by the same roads where Jugurtha was led before! From this Actian Phoebus drew his monuments, that one arrow of his conquered ten ships sent against him. I have sung wars enough: now Apollo the victor demands the lyre and strips off his arms for peaceful dances. Now let bright banquets enter the soft grove; and let the rose flow charming round my neck, and let wines be poured, pressed out by Falernian presses, and let the Cilician saffron thrice bathe my hair. Let the Muse rouse the genius of poets laid out at the feast: Bacchus, you are wont to be fruitful to your Phoebus. Let one tell that the marshy Sygambri serve, let this one sing Cepheian Meroe and the dusky realms, let this one report the Parthian confessing by a late treaty: 'Let him give back the standards of Remus, soon he will give his own: or if Augustus spares anything to the Eastern quivers, let him put off those trophies for his sons. Rejoice, Crassus, if you have any sense among the black sands: it is allowed to go across the Euphrates to your tomb.' So I will pass the night with the cup, so with song, until the day cast its rays upon my wine.

There is something in the Shades: death does not end all, and the pale ghost escapes the conquered pyres. For Cynthia seemed to lean over my couch, lately buried by the murmur of the road's edge, when sleep hung over me from the funeral of my love, and I lamented the cold kingdoms of my bed. She had the same hair with her with which she was borne out, the same eyes; her garment was scorched at the side, and the fire had eaten the wonted beryl on her finger, and the Lethean water had worn away the edges of her lips. She sent forth living breath and a voice: but her brittle hands creaked at the thumbs: 'Faithless one, of whom no girl can hope better, can sleep now have power over you? Have the thefts of the wakeful Subura now slipped from you, and my window worn by nocturnal tricks? Through which, the rope let down, how often I hung for you, coming hand over hand into your arms! Often Venus was joined at the crossroad, breast against breast our cloaks made the ways warm. Alas for the silent pact, whose deceptive words the South winds, never to hear them, tore apart. But no one called my name aloud as my eyes went out: I would have won one day back, had you called me: nor did the watchman creak with split reed for my sake, and a broken tile hurt my exposed head. Finally, who saw you bent at my funeral, who saw your black toga grow warm with tears? If it irked you to go beyond the gates, yet thither you might have bidden my bier go more slowly. Why did you not yourself, ingrate, ask for winds at the pyre? Why did my flames not smell of nard? Was this too a burden, to throw on hyacinths at no cost and hallow my grave with a broken jar? Let Lygdamus be branded—let the plate glow white-hot for the slave— I knew it, when I drank the pale wine of his treachery— but let Nomas, cunning, hide her secret spittles; the fiery sherd will declare her condemned hands. She who lately was seen as a public woman through cheap nights, now marks the ground with her gilded train; and she pays back heavier tasks with unjust wool-baskets, if any girl, chattering, has spoken of my beauty; and because Petale brought garlands to my monument, the old woman feels the chains of a filthy log; and Lalage is beaten, hung up by her twisted hair, since she dared to ask in my name. With you allowing it, she melted the gold of my image, to have a dowry from my burning pyre. Yet I do not hound you, Propertius, though you deserve it: long was my reign in your books. I swear by the song of the Fates, revocable for none, and so may the three-headed dog sound gently to me, that I kept faith. If I lie, may a viper hiss on my tomb and lie upon my bones. For there is a twin seat allotted along the foul river, and all the crowd rows on the divided water. The one wave bears the adultery of Clytemnestra, the other carries the wooden monster of the Cretan woman, the feigned cow. Behold, the other part is snatched away in a garlanded skiff, where the blessed breeze caresses the Elysian roses, where the tuneful lyre, and where the round bronzes of Cybebe and the Lydian quills sound for the turbaned dances. Andromeda and Hypermestra, brides without deceit, tell the famous times of their story: the one laments that her arms are bruised by maternal chains, and her hands, undeserving, by the cold rocks; Hypermestra tells that her sisters dared a great thing, but that her own soul had no power for this crime. So with the tears of death we seal the loves of life: I hide the many charges of your perfidy. But now I give you commands, if by chance you are moved, if Chloris' herb does not hold you wholly: let my nurse Parthenie want nothing in her trembling years: she could have, and was not greedy with you. And my delight Latris, whose name is from her service, let her not hold the mirror for a new mistress. And whatever verses you made in my name, burn for me: cease to have my praises. Drive the ivy from my tomb, which with swelling cluster binds my soft bones with twisted tendrils. Where fruitful Anio lies upon the branching fields, and the ivory never grows pale by Hercules' power, here write a song worthy of me on the middle column, but brief, that the hurrying traveller may read it from the city: 'Here in the Tiburtine earth lies golden Cynthia: praise has come, Anio, to your bank.' Nor do you scorn the dreams that come through the pious gates: when pious dreams have come, they have weight. By night we wander abroad, night frees the imprisoned shades, and Cerberus himself strays, the bolt cast down. By day the laws bid us return to the Lethean pools: we are borne over, the boatman counts the cargo borne. Now let others possess you: soon I alone will hold you: you will be with me, and bone shall I wear with mingled bone.' When she had finished this with me in querulous strife, her shade slipped away from amid my embraces.

Learn what this night put the watery Esquiline to flight, when the neighbouring crowd ran for the new fields. Lanuvium is the ancient guardian of an aged serpent, here, where an hour of so rare a delay is not lost, where the sacred descent is snatched away in a blind gap, where there enters (maid, beware all such a journey!) the honour of the hungry serpent, when it demands its yearly food and twists its hisses from the depths of the earth. Girls let down for such rites grow pale, when the hand is rashly entrusted to the snake's mouth. It snatches the food brought near it by the maiden: the very baskets tremble in the maiden's palms. If they have been chaste, they return to their parents' arms, and the farmers cry, 'The year will be fruitful.' Hither my Cynthia was carried off by her shorn ponies: the cause was Juno, but more the cause was Venus. Appia, tell, I pray, with you as witness, what a triumph she held with her wheels racing over your stones! A spectacle, she herself sat hanging on the very pole's end, daring to drive the reins through the foul places. For I say nothing of the silk carriages of the plucked profligate and his Molossian dogs with collars on their necks, who will sell his life for the venal, foul fattening, when the shameful beard covers his shaven cheeks. When such wrong was so often done to my bed, I resolved to move camp with a changed couch. There is a certain Phyllis, neighbour to Aventine Diana, sober, pleasing too little: when she drinks, all becomes her. The other, Teia, is among the Tarpeian groves, fair, but, drunk, one man will not be enough for her. I resolved to ease the night with these summoned, and to renew my secret loves with strange Venus. There was one couch for three on the secluded grass. Do you ask of the seating? I was between the two. Lygdamus was at the cups, and the summer service of glass and the Greek savour of Methymnaean wine. Nile, your flute-player was there, Phyllis the castanet-girl, and a neat myrtle to be scattered, an artless rose, and the dwarf himself, drawn briefly into his own limbs, tossed his stunted hands to the hollow boxwood. But neither did the flame stay steady though the lamps were filled, and the table fell back, overturned, on its feet. And as I sought Venus with the lucky dice, the ruinous dogs always leapt up. They sang to a deaf man, they bared their breasts to a blind one: I, alas, was at the gates of Lanuvium; when suddenly the doorposts sounded on their harsh hinge, and light murmurs were made at the outer Lar. Without delay, Cynthia throws open the whole double doors, her hair not adorned, but in her fury comely. The cups fell from my loosened fingers, and my lips, slack with the very wine, turned pale. She flashes lightning from her eyes and rages as far as a woman can, and it was a spectacle no less than a captured city. She casts her angry nails into Phyllis' face: terrified, Teia cries to the neighbouring waters. The lifted lights disturb the sleeping citizens, and the whole lane sounds with the mad night. These two, with hair torn and tunics rent, the first tavern of the dark street receives. Cynthia rejoices in the spoils and runs back victorious and wounds my face with her turned-back hand, and sets a mark on my neck and bloodies me with a bite, and above all strikes the eyes, which deserved it. And when she had wearied her arms with blows upon me, Lygdamus, hiding by the left bedpost, is dug out, and, dragged forth, adores my guardian spirit. Lygdamus, I could do nothing: with you I was a captive. Then at last with suppliant palms I came to terms, when she scarcely offered her feet to be touched, and said, 'If you wish me to forgive the fault committed, hear what the formula of our law will be. You shall not walk adorned in the Pompeian shade, nor when the sand strews the wanton Forum. Beware to bend your neck sidelong to the top of the theatre, or to let an open litter dawdle to your delay. Lygdamus above all, the whole cause of my complaint, let him be sold and drag a double chain on his feet.' She proclaimed the laws: I answered, 'I will use the laws.' She had laughed, made proud by the rule given. Then, whatever place the strange girls had touched, she fumigates, and wipes the threshold with pure water, and bids me change all the lamps over again, and thrice touched my head with the fire of sulphur. And so, with every cover of the couch changed, I answered, and we resolved our arms over the whole bed.

At the time when the son of Amphitryon had driven the cattle from your stalls, O Erythea, he came to the unconquered hills, the cattle-rich Palatine, and, weary himself, set down the weary oxen, where the Velabrum stagnated with its own stream and where the sailor sailed over the city waters. But they did not stay safe with the faithless host Cacus: he polluted Jove with his theft. Cacus was a dweller there, a robber from a fearsome cave, who gave sounds divided through three mouths. He, that there be no sure signs of the manifest theft, dragged the cattle backwards by the tail into his cave, not without the god as witness: the bullocks lowed of the thief, and wrath broke down the thief's harsh doors. Cacus lay struck on his three temples by the Maenalian club, and Alcides spoke thus: 'Go, oxen, go, oxen of Hercules, the last labour of my club, oxen sought by me twice, twice my prey, and hallow the Bovarian fields with long lowing: your pasture will be the noble Forum of Rome.' He had spoken, and thirst wrings his mouth with dry palate, and the teeming earth furnishes no waters. But far off he hears the shut-up girls laughing, where a grove had made a wood in a shady circle, the closed places of the woman's goddess and the springs to be hallowed with impunity, and rites unveiled to no men. Purple fillets veiled the secluded threshold, the crumbling hut shone with perfumed fire, the poplar adorned the shrine with its long foliage, and much shade covered the singing birds. Hither he rushes, his beard heaped with dust gone dry, and casts before the doors words too small for a god: 'You, I pray, who sport in the sacred cave of the grove, open the hospitable shrines to weary men. Needing a spring, I wander among the waters that sound; and a hollow palm full of the gathered stream is enough. Have you heard of one who lifted the world on his back? I am he: the earth I bore calls me Alcides. Who does not hear of the brave deeds of Hercules' club, and of weapons never vain against vast beasts, and that for one man alone the Stygian darkness shone? If you should make a rite to bitter Juno, my stepmother herself would not have shut off her waters. But if my face and the lion's bristles frighten anyone, and my hair scorched by the Libyan sun, the same I performed servile offices in a Sidonian gown and the daily tasks at a Lydian distaff, and a soft band covered my hairy breast, and I was a fit girl for hard hands.' So Alcides; but the kindly priestess thus, her white hair bound with a purple thread: 'Spare your eyes, stranger, and depart from the dread grove; come now and leave the threshold in safe flight. The altar, forbidden to men, is atoned for by a fearful law, which claims itself in a removed hut. At a great price the prophet Tiresias beheld Pallas, while she bathed her brave limbs, the Gorgon laid aside. May the gods give you other springs: this water flows for girls, a wave remote on a secret path.' So the old woman: he shook the dark posts with his shoulders, and the shut door could not bear his angry thirst. But after, the river drained, he had conquered the heat, he lays down, with scarcely dry lips, grim laws: 'This corner of the world, now drawing me by my fate, receives me: this land scarcely lies open to me, weary. The altar that is devoted to the herds recovered, the Greatest Altar, the altar,' he says, 'made greatest by these hands, let it never lie open, to be revered, to any girls, lest the thirst of eminent Hercules go unavenged.' Hail, holy father, to whom now harsh Juno is kind: Holy one, be willing, favourable, to be in my book. To him, since with cleansing hands he had hallowed the world, thus Tatian Cures named him the Holy One.

Now I will begin to open the causes of Jupiter Feretrius and the triple arms taken from three leaders. I climb a great road, but glory gives me strength: no crown gathered from an easy ridge delights me. You, Romulus, steep the example of this first palm, and return full of spoils from the foe, at the time when, the Caeninian Acro seeking your gates, you, victor, lay him low with your spear upon his overthrown horse. Acro, Herculean leader from the Caeninian citadel, was once, Rome, a terror to your borders. He, daring to hope for spoils from the shoulders of Quirinus, himself gave them, but not dry with his own blood. Romulus sees him poising his darts before the hollow towers, and forestalls him before with sure vows: 'Jupiter, this victim Acro will fall for you today.' He had vowed, and that man fell, a spoil to Jove. The parent of the city and of valour was wont to conquer thus, he who bore the cold camps from a frugal home. The same was fit for the horse and the bridle, the same for the plough, and his helmet adorned with the shaggy mane of a wolf. His painted shield gleamed with no inlaid bronze-gold: the slain oxen furnished the pliant sword-belts. Not yet was the sound of war beyond the Tiber, the farthest prey Nomentum and the three captured acres of Cora. But Cossus follows, by the slaughter of Veientine Tolumnius, when to be able to conquer Veii was a labour; alas, ancient Veii! you too were then kingdoms, and a golden throne was set in your forum: now within your walls the horn of the slow shepherd sings, and they reap the fields among your bones. By chance the Veientine leader stood over the gate of his citadel and gave parley, trusting in his city: and while the ram beat the wall with bronze horn, where the long mantlet covered the drawn-out work, Cossus says, 'It is better for the brave to meet on the field.' No delay is made, both halt their step on the plain. The gods aided the Latian hands, the severed neck of Tolumnius washed the Roman horses with blood. Claudius warded off the foes brought across the Rhine, when the Belgic shield of the vast leader Virdomarus was brought back. He boasted his race from the Rhine itself, nimble to hurl spears from his upright chariot. As he goes throwing javelins from the line in his striped breeches, the twisted torque fell from his cut throat. Now the three spoils are stored in the temple: the cause of Feretrius, that by sure omen leader strikes leader with the sword; or because they bore these conquered arms on their shoulders, hence is the proud altar of Jove Feretrius named.

Cease, Paullus, to press my tomb with tears: the black door opens to no prayers; when once the dead have entered the infernal laws, the ways stand fast in adamant unmoved. Though the god of the dark hall hear you pleading: surely the deaf shores will drink your tears. Vows move the gods above: but when the ferryman has taken the fare, the pale gate bars the grassy pyres. So the mournful trumpets sang, when the hostile torch set beneath drew my head from the bier. What did marriage to Paullus, what the chariots of ancestors profit me, or such pledges of my fame? No less harsh Fates did Cornelia have: and I am a burden that may be gathered by five fingers. Accursed nights and you, sluggish shallows, marshes, and whatever wave entwines my feet, though early, yet I came here not guilty: may the Father give gentle judgments here to my shade. Or if any judge Aeacus sits with the urn set out, let him judge over my bones, the lot drawn: let his brothers sit by, and beside Minos' seat the stern crowd of the Eumenides in the attentive court: Sisyphus, be free of your rock; let the wheels of Ixion be silent, let the deceitful water of Tantalus be caught; let harsh Cerberus today seek no shades; and let the loosed chain lie at the silent bolt. I myself plead for myself: if I lie, may the unhappy urn, the punishment of the sisters, press my shoulders. If glory was ever an adornment to any through ancestral trophies, the African realms speak of my Numantine grandsires: the other throng equals on the mother's side the Libones, and each house is propped on its own titles. Soon, when the bordered gown gave way to the marriage torches, and another fillet bound my gathered hair, I am joined, Paullus, to your bed, so to part from it: on this stone let me be read to have been wed to one alone. I call to witness the ashes of ancestors, to be revered by you, Rome, beneath whose titles, Africa, you lie crushed, and him who stirred his breast with great-grandsire Achilles, Perses, and him who broke your house, his forefather Achilles: that I neither softened the law of the censorship nor by any stain of mine made your hearths blush. Cornelia was no loss to such great spoils: nay, she was a part of the great house to be imitated. Nor was my time changed, it is wholly without crime: we lived distinguished between either torch. Nature gave me laws drawn from my blood, nor could you be better through fear of a judge. Let any urn cast its stern tablets against me: no woman will be the baser for sitting by me, either you who moved slow Cybebe with a rope, Claudia, rare attendant of the turreted goddess, or she for whom, when Vesta demanded back her quenched fires, the white linen showed the hearth alive. Nor did I wrong you, sweet head, my mother Scribonia: what would you wish changed in me except my fate? I am praised by a mother's tears and the city's laments, and my bones are defended by Caesar's groan. He cries that I lived a sister worthy of his own daughter, and we saw tears go from a god. And yet I earned the honours of the matron's noble dress, nor was I snatched away from a barren house. You, Lepidus, and you, Paullus, my comfort after death: my eyes were closed in your bosom. We saw my brother too double the curule chair, in whose consulship, at a festal time, his sister was snatched away. Daughter, you, born the model of your father's censorship, see that you keep to one man, imitating me. And prop up the line with offspring: willingly I go, the boat is boarded, by my many who will increase my deeds. This is the last reward of a woman's triumph, when free fame praises the deserving pyre. Now I commend to you our common pledges, our sons: this care lives, branded even on my ash. Do a mother's turns, father: all that crowd of mine will have to be borne on your neck. When you give your kisses to them weeping, add their mother's: the whole house has now begun to be your burden. And if you will grieve at all, do it without them as witnesses! When they come, cheat their kisses with dry cheeks! Let the nights be enough for you, Paullus, which you wear out about me, and the dreams often believed to be in my likeness: and when in secret you speak to my image, throw each word as if I would answer. But if the door changes the bed opposite, and a cautious stepmother sits in my place, praise and bear, boys, your father's marriage: she, won by your ways, will give you her hands; nor praise your mother too much: compared with the former, she will turn free words into wrongs against herself. Or if, mindful, he stays content with my shade and reckons my ashes to be worth so much, learn even now to feel old age coming, and let no way lie open to a widower's cares. What is taken from me, let it be added to your years: so may Paullus, in my offspring, be glad to be an old man. And it is well: never as a mother did I take up mourning; the whole troop came to my obsequies. The case is pleaded out. Rise, weeping, my witnesses, while the grateful earth repays the price of my life. Heaven too has lain open to virtue: may I be worthy by deserving, that my bones be borne to honoured ancestors.