Book 1

pr. Long and hard I hesitated, Stella—finest of young men, and most distinguished in our studies in the very field you favour—whether I should myself gather these little books and send them out, books that flowed from me in a sudden heat and a certain pleasure of haste, each one having issued forth from my own keeping one at a time. For why should I burden myself with the authority of this edition too, when I still tremble for my Thebaid, although it has now left my hands? Yet we read the Gnat, and we acknowledge even the Battle of the Frogs, and there is no famous poet who has not made some lighter prelude, in a more relaxed style, to his works. And what of this? It was too late to keep these poems back, when you at least—those of you in whose honour they were given—already had them. But among the rest much of their indulgence is bound to be lost, since they will have forfeited the only grace they had—

their speed. For none of them took longer than two days to compose, and some were poured out in single days; and how I fear that the verses themselves may prove this true of their own quality! The first little book has a sacrosanct witness: for it was right to take my beginning from Jove. These hundred verses, which I made on the great horse, I was bidden to hand to our most gracious Emperor on the day after he had dedicated the work. "You could," someone will say, "have seen it even before." You will answer him for me, dearest Stella—you who know that your own wedding-song, which you laid upon me, was written in two days. Boldly done, by heaven; yet it has three hundred hexameters all the same, and perhaps you, for a colleague's sake, will keep silent. Manilius Vopiscus at any rate—a most learned man, and one who does much to rescue from neglect the letters that have all but taken flight—is wont of his own accord to boast in my name that I described his villa at Tibur in a single day. There follows the little book dedicated to Rutilius Gallicus on his recovery, of which I say nothing, lest I seem to lie on the pretext of a dead man's testimony. For the witness of Claudius Etruscus is itself a proof: he received from me his little bath within the space of a dinner. At the end are the Kalends of December, which surely will be believed: for that most happy night, untried by public delights . . .

1. The Great Horse of the Emperor Domitian What mass is this, doubled by the colossus set upon it, that stands embracing the Latin Forum? Did the work flow down from heaven, complete? Or was the figure forged in Sicilian furnaces and left, when it was done, wearied Steropes and Brontes behind? Or did Pallas's hands fashion you for us such, Germanicus, as the Rhine and the towering house of the astonished Dacian lately beheld you, holding the reins in hand? Now let Fame, that of old admired through the ages the famous name of the Dardanian horse, admire this one—the horse for whom Dindymon was thinned at its sacred summit and Ide stripped of branches: him neither Pergamum could have taken in, with its walls breached, nor boys and unwed girls together in mingled crowd, nor Aeneas himself, nor great Hector, lead within! Add that the one was harmful and embraced the savage Achaeans; this one a gentle rider commends. It delights us to gaze on his face, blended with the marks of war yet wearing serene peace, nor would you think it greater than the truth: equal his form and grace, equal his dignity. Not higher does the Thracian war-horse bear Mars when his arms are spent, and proud he is of the mighty weight, and, seized in no slow course near the rivers, he steams and drives Strymon before him with his huge breath. A site to match the work: on this side the Julian halls open their welcoming threshold; on that, the lofty palace of warlike Paulus rises; behind, the Father; and with kindly face Concord looks on. But you yourself, your lofty head ringed with the clear air, outshine the temples, and seem to be gazing out to see whether a new Palatine rises more beautiful, the flames defied, or whether the Trojan fire keeps watch with silent torch, and Vesta now commends her tested handmaids. Your right hand forbids battle; your left the Tritonian maid does not weigh down, holding out before it the neck of severed Medusa: as if with goads she spurs the horse on; nor anywhere is there a sweeter seat chosen for the goddess, not even, Father, if you yourself held it. A breast that could unfold the cares of the world, and one to which Temese gave itself, drained of all its ore; a cloak hangs loose down your back; your side, with sword at rest, is unafraid—great as the blade with which Orion threatens on winter nights and frightens the stars. But the steed, mimicking the bearing and spirit of horses, lifts his airy face and threatens to gallop; his neck stands stiff with bristling mane, and living force runs through his shoulders, and his flanks, broad enough to bear such mighty spurs, lie open; in place of turf upon the empty ground a bronze hoof covers the hair of captive Rhine. At this sight Adrastus's Arion would have shuddered, and Cyllarus, son of Leda, looking on it from his nearby shrine, takes fright. This horse will never change his master's reins, forever bound to the bridle, and will serve one star alone! The ground scarcely suffices, and the earth, pressed beneath such weight, pants below; nor with iron or bronze: they labour under the genius of the place, though an eternal foundation hold it, which could have carried the summit of a mountain heaped above and stood up hardened by the knee of sky-bearing Atlas. Nor did long delays draw the work out: the very presence of the god's own form delights the labour, and the youth, intent upon the task, marvel that hands can do so much; the lofty engine clatters with the blows: a continuous din goes through the seven peaks of Mars and outdoes the wandering murmurs of great Rome. The guardian of the place himself—whose hallowed chasm and famous pool preserve a memorable name— when he heard the countless ringing of the bronze, and the Forum bellow under the harsh hammering, lifts his bristling face from its sacred squalor and his head, venerable with its well-earned oak. And first he took fright at the great form and the flashing light of the greater horse, and three times in alarm he plunged his towering neck into the pool—then, glad at the sight of the patron, said: 'Hail, offspring and begetter of the great gods, power heard of by me from far off! Now happy is my pool, now venerable, since I am granted to know you near and to gaze on your immortal radiance from a neighbouring seat, I who once, sole founder and discoverer, brought safety to Romulus's city. You tame Jove's wars, you the battles of the Rhine, you civil wickedness, you the mountain slow to its treaty, in a long war. But had our age given birth to you, you would have tried, where I dared not, to go down into the deep pool; yet Rome would have held your reins.' Let the horse give way that stands against the temple of Latian Dione in the seat of Caesar's forum—the one you, Lysippus, are said to have dared to make for the Pellaean leader, and which then bore the face of Caesar on its wondering neck—scarcely with weary eye could you survey how long the look down upon this one from that. Who is so untaught as not to say, once he has seen them both, that the horses differ as much as those who ride them? This work fears neither rain-bearing winters nor Jove's threefold fire, nor the marshalled storms of Aeolus's prison, nor the delays of the years: it shall stand while earth and pole endure, while there is a Roman day. Here too, under the silent night, when heavenly things are pleased by earthly, your kin, leaving heaven behind, shall glide down and mingle kisses close beside, and into your embrace shall come son and brother and father and sister: one neck shall give a place to all those stars. Enjoy forever this gift of the people and the great senate. Apelles's wax would long to portray you, and the aged Athenian of Elean Jove would have wished to set you, his likeness, in a new temple, and gentle Tarentum would have wished your face, and harsh Rhodes, scorning Phoebus, would prefer your eyes that imitate the starry flames; may you surely love the earth, and the temples we dedicate to you inhabit yourself; nor let heaven's court delight you, and may you, glad, see your descendants offer incense to this gift.

2. Epithalamium for Stella and Violentilla Whence have the hills of Latium rung with sacred song? For whom, Paean, do you stir new quills, and from your flowing shoulder hang the eloquent ivory? See, far off the goddesses come down from tuneful Helicon and shake the ninefold torch, the solemn flame for a wedding's union, and the singing water from Pierian springs— among whom, her face full of wantonness, Elegy draws near, taller than her custom, and urges and courts the goddesses, ready to prop her alternate foot, and longs to be seen a tenth among them, and slips in mingled, undetected, among the sisters. The mother of Aeneas's line led the bride by the hand herself, her eyes cast down and blushing with sweet modesty; she herself prepares the couch and the rites, and, in a Latin girdle disguising the goddess, tempers her hair and face and cheeks and, made less, delights to walk as a new bride. I know the day, and the reasons for the rite: it is you that chorus sings—throw wide the doors!—you, Stella; for you Phoebus and Euhan and the winged Tegean from his Maenalian shade bring garlands; nor does coaxing Love nor the Grace cease to scatter your longed-for wife's snowy limbs in embrace with countless flowers and a fragrant shower. You now catch roses upon your brow, now lilies mixed with violets, and screen them from your mistress's snowy face. So the day was at hand, ordained by the Fates in white wool, on which the marriage of Stella and Violentilla, proclaimed, should be cried aloud—let cares and fears give way, let the lying tricks of slanting verse cease, Rumour, be silent: that love, once loosed, has come beneath the law and bitten the curb; the gossip of the crowd is spent, and the citizens have seen the kisses long talked of. Yet you, astonished, though such a night's plenty is granted you, still wish, and dread your vows now allowed by a favouring power; lay down, sweet poet, your sighing, lay it down: she is yours. You may go through the open threshold, freely set ajar, come and go: now nowhere is there doorkeeper or law or shame; sate yourself at last in the embrace you sought— it is yours!—and remember together the hard nights. A worthy reward indeed, even if Juno had given you the labours of Hercules, even if the Fates had granted you to face Stygian monsters, even were you swept through the Cyanean surge. For her sake it would have been worth running, trembling, the Pisaean course and hearing the roar of Oenomaus in pursuit; nor, had you sat, a reckless shepherd on Dardanian Ide; these would have been gifts—nor though gracious Tithonia caught you up instead and bore you away through the air in her chariot. But what cause brought the marriage-bed and unhoped joys to the poet? Here, while the doorposts seethe with the throng and the halls, and many a threshold is struck by many a wand, here, charming Erato, teach me. There is leisure to start fitting talk, and the learned household knows how to listen. By chance, where the Milky Way stands in the calmed sky, nurturing Venus was lying, lately driven from her chamber by night, loosed from her Getic husband's hard embrace. A tender troop of Loves presses about the goddess's bolster and couch; they ask for signals: where to carry their torches, what hearts she bids them pierce; whether she would rather rage on land or in the waves, whether to set the gods at odds, or vex the Thunderer still further. Her own mind not yet fixed, no will settled in her heart, she lies weary on the bedding, where once the Lemnian chains, witnesses of her fault, crept over the bed when it was caught. Then a boy out of the winged crowd—he in whom is most fire, in face and in the light hand whose arrow never failed— from the midst of the band thus sweetly speaks in his tender voice; his quivered brothers held their silence. 'You know, mother,' he says, 'that no hand of mine is sluggish in its service; whomever of men or gods you have appointed, he burns; yet sometimes by tears and a suppliant hand and by prayers and entreaties grant that a man be moved, O mother: for we are not made of hard adamant, but are your own kindred. There is a young man, famous, of Latin stock, whom, sprung from patrician forebears, nobility rejoiced to bear, and at once, foreseeing his beauty, gave him a surname from our heaven. Him I once, with my whole quiver—a sweetness to you— mischievously and with thick shaft pierced as he trembled. Though much sought by Ausonian mothers as a son-in-law, I subdued him, conquered, and bade him bear the yoke of a powerful mistress and to hope through long years; but her I touched only lightly with the topmost torch—for so you bade—sparing, and with an idle bow. From that time how great the fires that anxious young man endures, I am witness, astonished; how through night and day he bears me pressing on him: never on any one have I leaned more fiercely, mother, nor dug the wounds again and again so deep. I have seen Hippomenes too eager to run the cruel field, and not so pale was he even at the goal itself; I have seen the arms of the youth of Abydos vying with the oars and praised his hands, and often, as he swam, I lit his way before him: less was the heat that warmed those savage waters. You, young man, having passed beyond your former loves— I myself marvelled that you held out through such fevers and strengthened your spirit and dried with coaxing feathers your eyes wet with weeping. How often Apollo complained to me that his poet grieved so! Now, mother, grant the marriage he loves; he is our comrade and devoted standard-bearer: he could have told of arms-bearing labours and the famous deeds of heroes and fields streaming with blood, but you gave him the quill, and he chose rather to walk a gentle poet, and to weave laurel into our myrtle. He recounts the falls of youths and their wounds, his own and others'— ah, how great, mother, is his reverence for the Paphian power: it was he who wept the fate of our dove.' He had finished; he hung upon his mother's tender neck, coaxing, and warmed her breast with feathers laid against it; she replies, her face not scorning to be asked: 'A great thing indeed and rare for men, those whom I have approved. A Pierian youth desires the boon: this woman, whose surpassing ornament of beauty I admired—where the glory of her fathers and the honour of her line contended—as she fell to earth I caught her up and cherished her in my bosom, nor did my hand cease, my son, to smooth her neck and cheeks and to draw rich balsam through her hair: to me a sweet image sprang forth. From afar behold the honours of her lofty brow and her piled-up hair. Measure how far she stands out beyond Latin matrons: as much as the Latonian maid overtops the nymphs, and as much as I myself stand above the Nereids. She was worthy to rise with me from the dark-blue waves and to take her seat upon my shell; and if she could have climbed to the flaming dwellings and entered these halls, you Loves yourselves would have strayed. Though I lavished blessed wealth on her, she surpasses her riches in spirit; now I complain that the greedy Chinese strip too narrow a grove, and that the seeds of Clymene fail, nor do the green sisters weep enough, and that too few fleeces now redden with Sidonian dye, and that the crystal of long-lived snows is too rarely chilled. For her I have bidden Hermus and Tagus run down with golden silt, and—not enough for her adornment—bidden Glaucus and Proteus and every Nereid seek Indian necklaces. Had you seen her, Phoebus, through the Thessalian fields, Daphne would wander unafraid; had she been seen on Naxos's shore beside the bed of Theseus, Euhan in flight would have left the Cnossian girl deserted. But had not Juno appeased me with long complaints, the ruler of heaven would have taken false wings and horns for her, and into this woman truly would Jupiter have fallen in the gold. Yet she shall be given to the young man for whom you, my chief power, my son, long—though, grieving, she often denies she will bear the yoke of a second marriage. I have felt that she herself now gives way and has in turn grown warm toward the man.' So speaking she lifted her starry limbs, and passing out from her chamber's proud threshold she called the Amyclaean swans to the reins. Love yokes them, and bearing his glad mother through the clouds sits on the doubled pole; now the towers of Ilian Tiber: the lofty house throws open its bright dwellings, and the joyful swans clapped the gleaming thresholds. A seat worthy of a goddess, that does not look mean beside the shining stars. Here is Libyan and Phrygian marble, here the hard rock of Laconia greens; here is veined onyx, and a vein matching the deep sea, and shining cliffs; here purple often envies the Oebalian and the master of the Tyrian cauldron. The roofs hang propped on countless columns, the beams gleam, soaked with Dalmatian ore. A cool shade let down from ancient woods shuts out the rays, and clear fountains live in the marble. Nor does nature keep its turns: here Sirius is cold, winter is warm, and the house tempers the changed year to itself. Nurturing Venus exults at the sight, and at the dwelling of her powerful foster-child, no less than if she were entering Paphos from the deep sea, the Idalian halls, and the temples of Eryx. Then she addressed the woman herself, reclining on her solitary couch: 'How long this drowsiness, this propriety of an empty bed, O you, dear to me among the Laurentine girls? What measure is there of virtue and good faith? Will you never bow your neck to a husband's yoke? A sadder age will come. Use your beauty, enjoy gifts that are fleeting: not for this did I give you such grace and a proud face and myself, that you should pass through your years widowed as though you were not dear to me. Enough and more than enough to have scorned your former suitors; for here is one given to you with his whole heart, who, among all, admires and loves you alone, needing neither beauty nor lineage; for what young men through the city, what girls, have not learned his cultured songs? Him too—so may the indulgence of the Ausonian ruler continue—you shall see lift up the twelvefold rods before his time; surely even now he has moved the Cybelian threshold and read the Euboean Sibyl's verse, and now the Latin father, whose mind it is my right to know beforehand, will grant the young man purple robes and the curule ivory, and—this the greater glory— the Dacian spoils and fresh laurels to celebrate. So come, join in marriage and take leisure from his youth. What nations, what hearts have I not yoked with my torch? The flocks of birds and beasts and of the hard wild creatures have not refused me; the very air I loose into wedlock with the earth when the clouds grow thin with rain; so the chain of things and the world's age renews itself. Whence the new glory of Troy and the snatcher of the burning gods, had I not been joined to a Phrygian husband? Whence would Lydian Tiber have repeated my Iuli? Who would have set the walls of sevenfold Rome, the Latian head of empire, had not a Dardanian priestess seized Mars by stealth—and not against my will?' With these words she soothes her and breathes into her silence the honour of marriage; back to her mind come now the gifts and prayers and tears, and the man's complaints, watchful near the threshold, and Asteris, sung by the poet through the whole city, Asteris before the feast, Asteris by night, Asteris at dawn, more than Hylas ever was cried aloud; and now she begins, gladly, to bend her stubborn heart and now to seem harsh to herself. A blessing on your couch, gentlest of Latian poets, that, having measured out the hard road and the toils begun, you have reached your haven; just as the runaway stream of bright Pisa, inflamed from afar with love of a foreign water, draws its untainted flood through a sunken channel, until, brought forth at last, it drinks with panting mouth the Sicilian springs; the Naiad marvels at the sweet kisses and cannot believe her husband has come through the sea. What a day was then yours, Stella, in the gods' bright gift, with what longing did your heart leap up, when, propitious, your mistress's face nodded assent to the sweet marriage! You seemed to walk the sky and stray among the gleaming poles. Less did the shepherd exult on Amyclaean sands when Helen came to the Idaean ships; Thessalian Tempe saw no such Peleus, when Chiron from his high-reared horse looked out and saw Thetis approaching the Haemonian shores. How long the stars delay! How slow is the Dawn to the husband's vows! But far off, as soon as they sensed that Stella's wedding was being made ready, the Letoan father of poets and Semele's Euhan, the one stirs his bands at Ortygia, the other at swift Nysa. For the one the Lycian mountains and the cool shade of Thymbra and Parnassus resound; for the other Pangaea echoes back and Ismarus and the once festive shores of Naxos. Then they entered the dear doors, and for the tuneful comrade one brings the lyre, one the tawny fawnskin with its dappled back, one the thyrsus, one the quills; one binds his brows with the inspired laurel, another presses his hair with a Minoan crown. Scarce had the day come forth, and already the wedding omens were at hand, and now each house seethes with festive pomp. The doorposts green with leaves, the crossroads blaze with flames, and the most crowded quarter of measureless Rome rejoices. Every dignity, all the rods, come to the thresholds, every bordered robe is jostled in plebeian tumult: here the knights, here the stole jostles, mixed in the throng of youths. They call them both happy; but in the crowd the more envied the man. Already, leaning against the doorpost, Hymen seeks for the bridal chamber a song still untouched, with which to soothe the poet; Juno grants the venerable bonds, and Concord marks the rite with twin torch. This was that day: let the bridegroom himself sing the night! So far as one may know, just so, vanquished by deceiving sleep, did warlike Ilia lay her side upon the river-bank; not such did Lavinia dye her snowy face, when she blushes with Turnus looking on; not such did Claudia look back upon the people, a maiden, when the ship had moved. Now to work, companions of the Aonian maids and ministers of the tripod, to contend in your several measures: let the inspired band advance, crowned with fillets and ivy, as each is mighty with his triumphing lyre. But chiefly you who at the line's last step would cheat the noble work: give songs worthy of the festal couch. This day, with Cos applauding, Philetas himself and old Callimachus, and Propertius from his Umbrian grot, would have wished to praise; nor Ovid, sad in his own Tomis, nor Tibullus rich by his shining hearth. For me at least no single love, no simple cause of singing, draws me on: with you the Muses are alike and joined, Stella, for me, and as equals we revel together at the altars and drink the kindred water from learned streams; and you, at your birth, my own Parthenope first received in her lap, and on our soil, sweet glory, you crept as a child. Let the Euboean land rise up to the bright sky and Sebethus swell with pride in her lovely foster-child; nor let the Naiads of Lucrine in their sulphurous caves, nor the leisure of Pompeian Sarnus, please themselves more. Come now, hasten famous descendants for Latium, to rule the laws, to govern the camps, to play at songs. Let kindly Cynthia speed the tenth month to its birth, but spare her, Lucina, I pray: and you yourself, boy, spare your mother, do not hurt her tender womb, do not the breasts that stand there; and when nature, in her silent retreat, has formed your face, may you carry much of your father's beauty, more of your mother's. And you, fairest in form of Italian women, possessed at last by a deserving husband, cherish the bond long sought: so shall you suffer no loss of beauty; so, green with the flower of long youth, let your face endure, and let this beauty be slow to grow old.

3. The Tiburtine Villa of Manilius Vopiscus If anyone has been able to behold the chilly Tibur of eloquent Vopiscus, and his twin dwellings with the Anio set between, or to know the commerce of the kindred bank and the villas vying with each other to claim their lord, on him Sirius never barked with its hot star, nor did the cub of leafy Nemea look fiercely: such is the winter under that roof; so do the kindly frosts break the sun, and the house does not swelter through the Pisaean year. With her own tender hand Pleasure herself wrote there beside you, then Venus anointed the gables with Idalian juices and stroked them with her hair, and left a coaxing grace upon the seat, and forbade her winged sons to depart. O day to be remembered long! What joys I bring back in my mind, what wonders that wearied my sight! How gentle the genius of the ground! What beauty in those blessed places, before hands and art! Nowhere did Nature indulge herself more lavishly. The deep groves leaned over the swift shallows: a deceiving image answers back from the leaves, and the same shadow flees down the long waters, the Anio itself—wondrous faith—both below and above here lays aside its swollen fury and foaming murmurs, rocky though it is, as if afraid to disturb calm Vopiscus's Pierian days and his slumbers that hold songs. Each shore is at home, nor does the gentlest stream divide you; the rival mansions keep their banks, and do not complain that anything foreign, or the river, stands between. Now let Fame boast of the Sestian strait and the sea swum across and of the dolphins conquered by the daring youth! Here is eternal quiet, here no rule of storms, never a fever in the waters; here one may pass across glances and voices and almost hands, just as the receding waters thrust back Chalcis. So, sundered by the deep, the Bruttian shore looks across to Sicilian Pelorus. What shall I sing first, what in the middle, where shall I rest? Shall I marvel at the gilded beams, or the Moorish doorposts everywhere, or the marbles bright with their painted vein, or the nymphs let into every chamber? Hither by eye, hither by mind I am drawn. Shall I tell of the venerable age of the groves? Of you, hall, who look down upon the river's shallows, or you who look back to the silent woods, where all is rest for you, untouched by any whirlwind, the night falls silent and murmurs invite gentle sleep? Or of the baths that steam, set on a grassy ledge, and the fire laid upon the cold banks? And of the stream joined to the steaming furnaces, that laughs at the panting nymphs in the neighbouring river? I have seen the arts and hands of the ancients, and metals alive in their various modes; it is a labour to recall the figures of gold, or the ivory, or the gems worthy to touch one's fingers, and all that silver first, or in lesser bronze, has played at, and the hand that has tried its skill on giant colossi. As I wander with my gaze and draw my eyes over everything, I was treading unawares on riches. For a splendour, flowing down from above, and tiles that gave back the bright bronze revealed the floor, where, painted with varied arts, the ground rejoices and outdoes the unswept floor with new figures: my steps took fright. Why should I now marvel at the linked or the parted houses, kept apart by their three chambers? Or at you, the tree saved in the midst of the dwelling, who through roof and posts come forth into the liquid air— under no master destined to suffer the cruel axe? And now perhaps, unknowing, a slippery Naiad or a Hamadryad owes you years not cut short. Why should I tell of the alternating tables above the twin mound, and the whitening pools and the deep fountains in the flood, and you, Marcia, who glide far within across the slanting stream and run over the river by a daring leaden conduit? Or shall a sweet path lead Elis's river alone beneath the Ionian waves down to the Aetnaean harbours? There the Anio himself, leaving his caves and spring, under the secret night, having stripped off his grey-green mantle, stretches his breast here and there upon the fragile moss, or falls headlong into the pools and claps the glassy waters with his swimming, while Tiburnus reclines in that shade, and there Albula longs to plunge her sulphurous locks: this house could draw woodland Phoebe away from Egeria and widow chilly Taygetus of its Dryad choirs and summon Pan from the Lycaean woods. And had the Tirynthian temple not given other lots, the Praenestine sisters too might have moved here. Why should I praise the wild orchards of Alcinous, and you, branches, who never go up empty into the air? Let the acres of Telegonus give way, let the Laurentine fields of Turnus, and the Lucrine dwellings, and the shore of bloody Antiphates; let the treacherous heights of glassy Circe give way, wailed over by Dulichian wolves, and the citadel of proud Anxur, and the seat that gentle to her Phrygian foster-son the old woman owes; let those shores give way that the rainy storm will call you back to from the Antian coast in deep midwinter. Surely it is here that those famous habits weigh their meditations, here that fertile quiet is pressed, and virtue grave with serene brow, and a sane brightness, and delights without luxury, which the aged Gargettian himself, leaving his own Athens, would prefer to his deserted garden: worth seeking through Aegean winters and the snowy star of the Hyades and under the Olenian signs, if a ship must be trusted to Malea and the way must lie through Sicilian seas: why does a near pleasure seem mean to your eyes? Here your lyre delights the Tiburtine Fauns and Alcides himself and Catillus sung with a greater lyre, whether your spirit would contend with Pindaric quills, or raise the lyre to heroic strength, or trouble with black rust the livid satire, or whether your letter shines with no other care. Worthy of the wealth of Midas and Croesus and of Persian treasure, a blessing on the goods of your mind—you for whom Hermus too should have run across his standing fields with his golden banks and Tagus with his glittering silt! So, plying often your learned leisure, so, your breast cleared of every cloud, I pray you may pass the bound of Nestor's old age.

4. On the Recovery of Rutilius Gallicus You are there, O gods above, nor does Clotho roll her work inexorable: kindly Astraea sees the pious, and reconciled to Jove returns and looks upon the stars she had doubted, Gallicus, you belong to heaven. You, Germanicus the god, hold him dear—who would deny it?—Fortune blushed to strip your empire of so great a minister. There stands a neck close to you, that has cast off a weight immense and the ruinous threads of old age, and grows green again, better, into other years. So let the cohorts that keep the city's standards be eager, and the courts that flee so often, in their tumult, to your bosom with their complaints, the laws and the cities everywhere that wear the toga, that beg your justice with far-off entreaties, let them vie in gladness; and let our hill in its turn roar together, and the murmurs of worse rumour be silent! For he remains, and through returning ages long shall remain, the man in whose hands is the gentle guardianship of fearless Rome; nor shall the new ages clothe themselves in this crime of fate, nor shall the altar of refounded Tarentum have sinned. But I will not summon Phoebus, though without him my quills are dumb, nor the Aonian goddesses with Pallas as their tenth, nor will I urge the gentle Tegean nursling of Dirce: come yourself, and supply new strength and spirit, you of whom I sing; for not without a learned power, so great, have you given the broad honours of the Ausonian toga and a hundred men their judgement and their mind, though the inspired Pimplea shut out the poet's thirst and Pirene, the witness, be not given: rather give me a flood for ample draughts, caught from your own spring, whether you build your discourse smooth in loosened measures, or whether eloquence is bent sweetly to your art and tends our laws. Therefore come; if we render to Ceres her own gifts and to Lyaeus unmixed wine, and Diana, rich in spoil, receives the spoils of the chase upon her whole dome, and the war-god the captive weapons: nor will you—since you, Gallicus, have a greater eloquence and abound, sublime, in the wealth of speech— disdain to be honoured on a slenderer lyre. The wandering moon is girdled with stars, and lesser streams have fallen into the ocean. What rewards for your character did the City's love anxiously pay you! What lights then of fathers and knights did I mark, and of the unknowing commons mourning the powerful? Not when Numa was failing did the happy Curia so fear, nor the lofty knight for Pompey, nor the women for Brutus. This was that: to hear unwilling the sad chains, to spare the lash, and not to go where high power bids you go, but to take from yourself much of your armed force and to hold humble hands worthy and the words of suppliants, to render justice to the forum, not to overturn the curule chairs and to soften iron with the toga. So one comes into deep hearts, so reverence steals in mingled with love. The grave harshness of sudden fate too struck all men with fear, and the headlong youthful peril of a swift danger, the evil delaying nothing. That was no fault of old age— for it had scarcely begun to pass beyond its twelfth lustrum— but toil that strained, and the rule of a vigorous mind over the limbs, and the watchful cares for his Caesar, a sweet task. Hence into his weary frame crept deep an insidious quiet and a sluggish forgetting of life. Then the god who, beside the summits of the Alpine ridge, marks the Apolline groves with a holy name, looks—alas—on the nursling he had long left secure, and cutting short delay: 'Now with me, child of Epidaurus, go from here,' he says, 'go gladly: a chance is given—it must be tried— to restore a mighty man. Let us set to and lay hold of the distaff that already draws out the threads: fear not the black thunderbolt: Jupiter himself will praise these arts of his own accord. For it is no plebeian soul, nor one sprung without a favouring power, that I save—and indeed I will tell it briefly, while we go beneath his roof. His own family permitted him, and a nobility reaching back: nor is his origin hidden, but it is outdone by the light that follows, and rejoices to have yielded to so great a grandson. The toga's first virtue was his too: famous and great in eloquence; then his sworn troops, tried in countless camps, earned the houses of the West and the East and under every sun, nor was it allowed in the leisure of peace to relax their spirits and ungird the iron. Him vigorous Galatia dared to assail in war— me too—and for nine harvests Pamphylia feared him, and fierce Pannonia, and Armenia dreadful with its fleeing bow, and Araxes, now enduring the Latin bridge. Why should I unroll his twin rods and the twice-given governance of Asia? She indeed would wish to have him three and four times for her own. But the calendar recalls him, and a greater curule chair, and a promise not once made. Why should I praise the wondrous obedience of the Libyan tribute and the triumph sent from the midst of peace, and the riches so great that not even he who commissioned it dared to expect them? Trasimene rejoices, and the Alps, and the souls of Cannae; and Regulus first, with his torn shade, openly demanded the notable tribute. There is no time to tell of the Arctic lines and the rebel Rhine and the captive prayers of Veleda, and— his greatest glory of late—to throw open the City laid down to the perishing Dacians, when, chosen to take the reins of so great a ruler, Gallicus, you took them up, Fortune not wondering. This man, then—if I speak worthily—we shall snatch, my son, from unjust Jove. The famous father of the Latian city asks it, and he has deserved it; for not in vain did you, boys, lately sound honouring songs for me in your patrician purple, if there is in the healing cave of the twin Chiron any herb, whatever Trojan Pergamus stores for you in her dome or fortunate Epidaurus rears in her healing sands, the help that Idaean Crete brings forth in her shade, the strength of flowering dittany; and where the serpent abounds in his foam: I myself will join my hands, and every kindly poison that, schooled, I have plucked in the fragrant fields of Araby or from the Amphrysian grass as a shepherd.' He had spoken. They find the limbs already laid out in languor and the spirit struggling: each girds himself in the rite of Paeon, and at once they show the way and gladly obey, until with varied medicine they broke the death-bearing plagues and the suspect clouds of an evil sleep. The god himself aids the gods, and, stronger than all disease, seizes the cure; not more swiftly was Telephus restored by Haemonian art, nor those savage wounds healed with Machaon's juice that closed over the fearful son of Atreus. What place for me, among so many gatherings of people and of fathers, is there for care and prayer? Yet I call to witness the lofty stars, and you, Thymbraean father of poets—what fear was mine by every day, what by night, while, clinging to the doorposts, unceasing, now watchful with my ear, now with my eye, I catch at all— as a smaller boat, fastened to a vast ship, when the storm rages, takes in for its part of the raging sea a little water and is rolled by the same south wind. Weave now, joyful sisters, the white threads, weave! Let no one reckon the measure of the life now passed: this shall be his birthday of life. You, worthy to outstrip the Trojan ages and the years of the Euboean dust and Nestor's mouldering seat! With what poor censer now, worthy of you, can I make my plea? Not though Mevania should empty her valleys, or the fields of Clitumnus furnish snow-white bulls, should I suffice. But often, among these honours, the gods have been pleased with turf and meal from a little salt-cellar.

5. The Bath of Claudius Etruscus My inspired lyre does not beat Helicon with a heavy quill, nor do I call the Muses, the powers so often wearied for me; and you, Phoebus, and you, Euhan, I dismiss from the choir. You too, winged Tegean, lay your back, dumb, upon the sounding beast: my songs ask for other companies. The Naiads, mistresses of the waters, and the king of the gleaming fire, still weary and glowing from the Sicilian anvil, it is enough to have drawn forth. Lay aside a little your harmful arms, Thebes: I wish to be playful for a beloved comrade. Pour the cups, boy—but do not labour to count them— and tighten the lingering lyre: depart, Toil and Care, while I sing the baths that gleam with bright gems and, my Clio wanton with fillets and ivy, her modest leaves loosed, plays for Etruscus. Go, green goddesses, and turn hither your liquid faces and crown your glassy hair with tender clusters, clothed in no garment, as you rise from the deep fountains and torment the loving Satyrs with the sight— not you who by your fault have shamed the glory of the waters do I wish to summon: far from here let Salmacis go, and the streams of the widowed daughter of Cebren, dry with grief, and the ravisher of the Herculean nursling. You, nymphs, who dwell in Latium and the seven peaks and lift up the Tiber with new waters, whom headlong Anio, and the Virgin who receives the swimmer, delight, and Marcia who draws the Marsian snows and frosts, whose wandering wave grows upon lofty masses and, hanging, is carried across on countless arches— your work I undertake; yours is the house I unfold in soft song, nor have you ever dwelt more richly in other caves. Cytherea herself held her husband's hand and showed his arts: lest cheap blasts should scorch the furnaces, she herself kindled the torches of the winged Loves. No Thasos was admitted here, nor wave-washed Carystos; onyx mourns far off, and the serpentine, shut out, complains: the purple alone gleams, cut from the tawny mines of the Numidians, and that alone which Phrygian Synnas, in its hollow cave, Attis himself stained with bright spots, and the snowy rocks that Tyre and Sidon cut, where there is scarcely room for the Eurotas, when the green vein varies Synnas with its long pattern; the thresholds do not fail, the vaults blaze, and the gables with varied glass shine into shapes and spirits. The fire itself is amazed, embracing the blessed wealth, and rules more sparingly. Much daylight everywhere, where the sun pierces the roofs with all its rays and burns with another's heat. Nothing plebeian there: nowhere will you mark Temesan bronze. But the water flows happily, driven by silver, and falls by silver and presses upon the shining basins, marvelling at its own delights and refusing to leave. But outside, the dark-blue stream that lives within its snowy margin, all open from the depth to the surface from below, whom would it not urge to go into the pool and loose his sluggish garments? Cytherea would have wished to be born in this deep. Here you would have seen yourself more clearly, Narcissus; here swift Hecate would wish, and, caught, to bathe. Why should I now tell of the floors laid upon the ground, that will hear the rattling balls, where the languid fire wanders through the chambers and the hypocausts roll their thin steam? Nor, should a new guest come from the Baian shores, would he scorn such things—let it be allowed to set small beside great—nor would he who has just bathed in the Neronian wave refuse to sweat here again. A blessing, I pray, on your shining genius and care, boy! May these grow old with you, and may your fortune now learn better to be reborn!

6. The Kalends of December Both Phoebus our father and stern Pallas and the Muses, go far off and take your holiday: on the Kalends of Janus we will recall you. Saturn, his fetter undone, and December heavy with much wine, and laughing Jest and the saucy Witticisms, be present with me, while I tell of the blessed day of the glad Caesar and the merry foretaste of the year. Scarce was the Dawn stirring her new risings, when already sweets were raining in a line —this dew the rising east wind poured forth: whatever noble fruit the Pontic nut-groves bear, or falls from the fruitful ridges of Idyme; what pious Damascus brings forth on its boughs, and what drunken Caunus ripens to the full, came down for nothing in lavish plunder: soft cakes and little dumplings, and Amerine fruits not scorched in their lumps, and must-cake, and date-palm clusters, swollen and pregnant, were falling. Not with such showers does the unclear Hyas overwhelm the lands, nor the loosed Pleiades, as the storm pounded the people through the Latin rows with hail from a cloudless sky. Let Jupiter lead his clouds across the world and threaten the broad fields with rain, so long as these showers of our Jove are borne. But lo, through all the seats there enters a folk remarkable in look, comely in dress, another people, no less than the seated one. These carry baskets and white napkins and richer fare; those lavish mellow wines: you would think them so many Idaean cupbearers. The world, in its better and sterner part, and the nations clad in togas you feed at once; and since you nourish so many peoples, blessed one, proud Annona knows nothing of this day. Go now, Antiquity, compare the ages, the time of ancient Jove and the age of gold: not so freely did the wine then flow, nor did the harvest take the laggard year; at one table every rank feasts, children, women, commons, knights, the senate: freedom has relaxed its reverence. And you yourself too—who of the gods could promise this, or have leisure for it?— have entered into the shared feast with us. Now each man, whoever he is, poor or rich, glories that he is the guest of our leader. Amid these uproars and new delights the light pleasure of watching slips away: there stands a sex untrained and ignorant of the sword; how the shameless thing takes up manly battles! You would think the Thermodontian squadrons were heating to war by Tanais and fierce Phasis. Here advances a bold rank of dwarfs, whom nature, briefly finished at once, bound forever into a knotted ball; they deal wounds and join their hands and threaten themselves with death—by what a hand! Father Mars laughs, and bloody Valour, and the cranes, about to fall to wandering plunder, marvel that the boxers are fiercer than they. Now, under the nearer shadows of night, what tumults does the rich largess set astir! Here enter girls easily to be bought, here is recognized all that wins approval in the theatres for beauty or for art. Here the plump Lydian women clap their troops, there cymbals and tinkling Gades, there the bands of Syrians roar together, here the stage-folk and those who barter common sulphur for broken glass. Amid all this, in sudden flight, there fall through the stars immense clouds of birds, which sacred Nile and dreadful Phasis, which the Numidians gather under the moist south wind: there are not enough to seize them, and full bosoms rejoice as new spoils are won. They raise to the stars their countless voices, sounding the Saturnalia of the prince, and with sweet favour acclaim their lord: this alone Caesar forbade to be allowed. Scarce was the dark-blue night entering the world, when down into the midst of the bright arena descended a flaming globe amid the thick shadows, outshining the torch of the Cnossian crown; the sky blazes with fires, and lets nothing be permitted to the dark night, sluggish Quiet flees, and idle Sleep seeing this departs to other cities. Who shall sing the shows, who the licensed jests, who the banquets, who the unbought feasts, who the streams of lavish Lyaeus? Now, now I faint, and by your Bacchus am drawn, drunk, into late slumber. Through how many years far off shall this day go, and by no age shall its sacred memory fade! While the Latian hills and father Tiber endure, while your Rome shall stand, and while the Capitol that you restore to the lands shall remain.