Book 2

pr. Statius to his Melior, greeting.

Both our intimacy, in which I rejoice, Melior—best of men, and as flawless in your judgement of letters as in every shade of your life—and the very nature of the little works I hand over to you are so disposed that this whole book of mine looks to you even without a letter. For first it contains our Glaucias, whose most charming infancy (such as the unlucky generally draw by lot) I loved in your embrace—now no longer yours. The wound of his recent loss, as you know, I followed with a funeral elegy so hastily that I have had to excuse my speed to your own feelings. Nor do I now boast of it to you, who know it, but I declare it to the rest, lest anyone weigh the poem with too harsh a file: it was written with confidence and given to one in grief, when slow consolations are almost superfluous. The Surrentine villa of my Pollius, which follows, I ought to have rendered more carefully, if only in honour of his eloquence; but my friend has pardoned me. As for your tree, Melior, and the parrot, you know that I wrote these slight little pieces as if in place of epigrams. The same ease of style was required by the tame lion, which, laid low in the amphitheatre, it would have been frigid not to hand at once to our most sacred Emperor. To our Ursus too, a most candid young man and most learned without any loss to his diligence, I have gladly inserted in this book a consolation written on the loss of his favourite boy, over and above what I owe to himself, because his honour will be set to your credit when I bear it to you. A birthday poem for Lucan closes the volume, which Polla Argentaria, rarest of wives, when we chanced to consult about this day, wished to be charged to her account. I could show no greater reverence for so great an author than this—that, intending to speak his praises, I feared my own hexameters. These pieces, such as they are, dearest Melior: if they have not displeased you, let them receive their publication from you; if not, let them return to me.

1. Glaucias, the favourite of Atedius Melior What solace can I bring you, Melior, for your foster-child snatched away, when, shameless, before the pyre and the embers still alive I begin? Even now the wound gapes, weeping, from broken veins, and the slippery path of a great gash lies open, while I cruelly already lay songs and healing words upon it. You would rather have beatings of the breast and the brave lamentings, and you hate the lyre and turn away with a deaf ear. Untimely I sing: sooner would the tigress, her young driven off, and the lions, bereaved, be willing to hear me, nor, if the threefold song of the Sicilian maiden should flow, or the lyre understood by woods and beasts, would it soothe your mad groans; in your breast there stands frantic grief, and your heart barks at the touch laid upon it. No one forbids you: sate yourself on your ills, and tame your sick sorrow by giving it free rein. Is the pleasure of weeping now fulfilled, and are you now, wearied, not unwilling at a friend's prayers? May I now sing? Behold, even my songs swim with tears in the very mouth, and sad blottings fall upon the words. For I myself with you led out the solemnities of the black procession and the crime that the City watched, and the boy's bier, and I saw the savage heaps of condemned incense and the weeping soul above its own funeral, and you, surpassing the groans of fathers and the arms of mothers, embracing the pyre and ready to drink in the fire, I scarcely held, a comrade like to you, and gave offence by holding you. And now, alas, with the fillets and the glory of my brow undone, an ill-omened poet, I beat my breast turned in grief with you upon the lyre. But you, my comrade and partner in sorrow, if I have deserved it and have felt a share of your mourning, now suffer me, gently, I pray. In the very thunderbolt the fathers heard me; I beside the tombs, when mothers poured out their grief and pious sons, sang consolations, and to myself, when I bewailed my own loss at his fire— who, O Nature!—my father; nor do I, stern, forbid you to mourn, but compare our groans, and let us weep alike. Long now have I been torn, seeking worthy approaches and the beginnings of your praises, O boy rightly beloved. On this side the years that stand on the threshold of life, on this side beauty seizes me, on that an early modesty, and shame and an honesty riper than his tender years. O where now is the whiteness suffused with a rosy blood, and the starry orbs and eyes that shed light upon the sky, and the gathered modesty of a chastened brow, the freeborn hair and, in the middle, the lovely border of the locks? Where now the mouth eloquent with coaxing complaints and the kisses, fragrant with spring flowers entwined, and the tears mingled with laughter, and the voice that, speaking deep within, was mingled with Hyblaean honey? To you the serpent would lay down its hiss, and savage stepmothers would wish to serve. I add nothing to true goods—alas, the milky neck! the arms, the neck never without its master's weight! O where now the not-far-off hope of coming youth and the longed-for honour of the cheeks, and the beard much sworn for you? All into ashes the heavy hour bore down and the day of hate: to us is left the remembering. Who will soothe your breast with the loved talk that made you glad? Who will relieve your cares and the secrets of your mind? Who, when you are inflamed with fierce bile and swelling at the slaves, will calm you and turn you back from anger against yourself? Who will take away the feast begun at your lips and the wine tasted and throw all into confusion with sweet pilfering? Who will break off your morning slumbers with his murmuring, laid upon the bedding, and delay your going with close embraces, and call you back to kisses from the very doorpost? Who, meeting you as you enter, will leap again into your face and hands, and throw his short arms about your shoulders? The house is dumb, I confess, the dwelling desolate, and mould is on the chambers, and sad silence at the tables! What wonder, if your devoted foster-father honours you with so great a funeral? You were the rest and harbour of his old age, you lately his delight, lately the sweet cares of his heart. No whirl of a barbarian platform turned you about, nor were you an infant for sale, mingled with Egyptian wares, who spoke prepared witticisms and rehearsed words in wanton fashion—for you cost dear and came slowly. Here was your home, hence your birth, and to your master's house once dear were both your parents, free for your joys, that you might not complain of your stock; but, taken straight from the womb, exulting he raised you up, and as with your first clear voice you greeted the stars, your master in his heart vowed you to himself, and held you embraced in his bosom and thought he had begotten you. Be it lawful for me to have said it, by the sacred parents' leave— and you, I pray, Nature, suffer it, to whom it is given to set the first laws over souls throughout the world: not all things does the nearest blood, or the offspring sent down through the line of birth, bind together; often within, new and adopted pledges creep, more closely linked. To have begotten children is a necessity, to have chosen brings joy. So coaxing Chiron, half-beast, outdid Haemonian Peleus for tender Achilles, nor did aged Peleus accompany his son to the Trojan arms, but Phoenix clung to his famous nursling. Evander prayed for the far-off returns of triumphant Pallas, faithful Acoetes watched the battles. And when from afar the father lingered among the bright stars, wave-wandering Dictys groomed winged Perseus. Why should I tell of mothers conquered by foster-mothers' love? Why of you, after the ashes and the cheated funeral of your mother, Bacchus, creeping more safely on the breast of Ino? Now, secure of her father, Ilia reigned in the Tuscan waters; Romulus wearied Acca as she carried him. I have myself seen grafted branches, on alien stock, go higher than their own. And now your mind and heart had made you father to him, though not yet his ways or his beauty: yet you loved even now his half-joined voices and his murmuring, his raw wailing and an infant's weeping. He, like a too-bold flower that stands tall in soft meadows, about to breathe its last at the first south winds, so, tender and before his time, with proud face and step had outdone his equals and left his years far behind, whether, his limbs bent in the chained wrestlings, he stood: you would think him conceived of an Amyclaean mother, headlong Apollo would exchange Oebalus's son for him, Alcides would weigh him against Hylas; or whether, Greek in dress, he ran through the Attic discourse of eloquent Menander: Thalia, rejoicing, would praise the sound and, wanton, would break her lovely hair with a rosy crown; or whether he told of the Maeonian elder and the toils of Troy, or the wanderings of Ulysses slowly returning: the father himself felt it, the very masters were amazed. Surely Lachesis, with ill-omened hand, touched his cradle, and Envy, holding the boy embraced in her lap, cherished him: she to adorn his cheeks and grown-out hair, this one to show him arts and fix in him words, which now we lament. He had begun, rising, to match the labours of Hercules in years, but childhood was still near him; yet now his step was strong and his stature larger than his garb, and his clothes seemed to shrink upon the boy, when, what clothes for you, what ornaments did your gentle master hasten to provide! Not to bind your breast in short mantles, nor to crowd your shoulders, narrowing them with a cloak; no shapeless folds for him, but, choosing weaving ever suited to his years, now he veiled him in a crimson cloak, now in a fold imitating the grass, now in a sweetly reddening purple, now he rejoiced to set his fingers ablaze with living gems: no train of attendants, no gifts cease: the bordered toga alone was wanting to his modest grace. Such was the fortune of the house, when the hostile Fate lifted her sudden hands. Why, goddess, do you cruelly bare your fierce claws? Does his beauty not move you, nor his pitiable age? Not savage Procne against her husband could have plucked this one, nor would the fierce Colchian have hardened into cruel rages, nor, had he been born of Aeolian Creusa: grim Athamas would have bent his mad bow away from him; him, though hating the ashes of Hector and Troy, Ulysses, about to hurl him from the Phrygian towers, would have wept. The seventh day, and already his cold eyes grow numb, already infernal Juno holds his hair in her hand. He, though the Fates press on his fragile years, sees you with dying face, and with falling tongue murmurs: into you he breathes all the remnants now of his empty breast; he remembers you alone, hears you alone as you call, and moves his lips for you, leaves his words for you, and forbids your groans, and consoles you in your grief. Yet I am grateful, Fates, that no slow death, as he lay, ate away the boy's grace, and that he went down to the shades whole and undefiled in body by any harm, just as he was. Why should I speak of the obsequies and the gifts lavish on the flames, and the funeral blazing with sad luxury? That the sad pyre rose for you in a crimson mound, that the flowers of Cilicia, that the gifts of Indian grass, and the liquids of the Arabs and Egyptians and Palestinians washed the hair that was to burn? Lavish, he longs to bring all and to set ablaze his whole fortune, Melior, hating his wealth now made desolate: but the envious fire cannot take it, and there are too few flames for the narrow gifts. Horror holds my senses, such as I dreaded you, at the last funeral, and beside the pyre, Melior, once most calm of men! Were you that man, who seemed cheerful and courteous? Whence this savagery and barbarous horror of the hands, while now, flung on the ground, you turn from the hateful light, now, grim, you tear alike your clothes and breast and press the beloved face and lick the cold kisses? There were the father and mother of the boy who lay there, sad—but the astonished parents gazed at you. What wonder? The whole crowd wept the impious thing, and the leading columns that the Mulvian causeway carries on the Flaminian track, while the innocent infant is given to the sad flames, and earns by his beauty and his age a groan: such as, taken approved from the sea to the Isthmian harbours, Palaemon, shipwrecked, lay beneath his mother set over him; so too Opheltes, playing in the grass of snake-bearing Lerna, greedy fire drank when his scales were torn open. Lay aside your fears, and cease to dread the threats of Death: the warder Cerberus shall not bark at him with his triple mouth, no Sister with flames, no rising hydras shall terrify him; nay, the grim boatman of the greedy skiff himself shall draw the barren banks and scorched shores nearer, so that the boy may have no hard task in climbing aboard. What does the offspring of Cyllene announce to me, rejoicing, with his wand? Is there anything so glad in a time so cruel? The boy had known the image and the lofty face of noble Blaesus, while often at home he saw you binding new garlands and wiping the like wax with your breast; him, when, ranging the shores of the Lethean flood, among the Ausonian nobles and the line of Quirinus, he recognized, timidly at first he joins his steps, approaching in silence, and tugs at the topmost garment, then follows more closely; for he no more spurns the one who draws him on, and believes him of unknown stock among his descendants. Soon, when he felt that this was the favourite, the pledge of a rare friend, and the boy who was the solace of lost Blaesus, he lifts him from the ground and binds him to his great neck, and long himself, rejoicing, carries him by hand, and offers what gifts soft Elysium has, the barren branches and the dumb birds and the flowers pale with their blunted bloom. Nor does he forbid him to remember you, but coaxing mingles their hearts and shares the boy's love by turns. This is the end of the lost one. Why do you not now soothe your wounds and lift your head sunk in grief? All things you see are done with, or doomed to die: nights and days pass away and the stars, nor does its own frame profit the solid earth. For who shall weep the deaths of a people, the mortal kind, the passing of the perishable crowd? These wars, these the seas demand; these love destroys, these madness and savage desire, to say nothing of diseases; these the stiffening lips of Winter, those the deadly Dog-star with its pitiless fire, these the pale Autumn awaits with its rain-bringing gape. Whatever has its rising fears its end. We shall all go, we shall go: Aeacus shakes the urn for the measureless shades. But he whom we mourn—happy, he has escaped men and gods and doubtful chance and the slippery ways of blind life, exempt from the Fates: he did not pray, did not fear nor earn to die: we, the anxious commons, we, the wretched, for whom it is uncertain whence the last day comes, what end of life, from what stars the thunderbolt threatens, what cloud sounds our doom—are you moved at all by these? But be moved willingly. Come hither, sent out from the dark threshold, you to whom alone it is given to obtain all things, Glaucias—the ferryman keeps not back the innocent souls, nor that companion of the cruel beast—: you soothe his breast, you forbid his cheeks to run, and fill his blessed nights with sweet talk and living looks, and deny that you have perished. Both his desolate sister, if you can, and his wretched parents, go on to win to comfort.

2. The Surrentine Villa of Pollius Felix Among walls known by the name of the Sirens, and the rocks weighed down by the temple of Tyrrhenian Minerva, there stands a lofty villa, watcher of the Dicarchean deep, where the field is loved by Bromius, and over the high hills the vine is sun-scorched and does not envy the Falernian presses. Hither, after the five-yearly games of my native lustrum, when now a sluggish quiet sat upon the course and the white dust, the contest turned to the Ambracian wreaths, across the strait of my homeland the eloquence of calm Pollius and the youthful grace of bright Polla drew me, when I was already eager to bend my steps where, by the known track, the Appian Way, queen of long roads, is worn. But the delays were welcome; in a calm crescent the waters break through the curving cliffs on either side; nature gives place, and between the mountain there comes a single shore, and goes out into the land with overhanging crags. The first grace of the place: with twin domes the baths steam, and from the land a sweet nymph runs to meet the bitter sea. Here the light troop of Phorcus and Cymodoce with her dripping hair, and green Galatea, long to bathe. Before the house the dark-blue ruler of the swelling wave keeps watch, guardian of the harmless home: with his friendly brine the temples foam. Alcides guards the happy fields; the harbour rejoices under a twin power: this one keeps the lands, this one withstands the savage waves. Wondrous the calm of the sea: here the wearied waters lay aside their fury, and the mad south winds breathe more gently, here the headlong storm dares less, and with no tumult the modest pools lie, imitating their master's ways. Thence a portico creeps up over the slanting heights, a city's work, and tames the rough rock along its long ridge, where before were suns mingled with dark dust and the cheerless wildness of the way; now to go is a pleasure: just as, if you should climb the high summit of Bacchic Ephyre, a covered path leads from Ino's Lechaeum. No—not if Helicon should indulge me all its streams and Pimplea should outdo my thirst, and the hoof of the flying horse should grant abundance, and Phemonoe should unlock her chaste and secret fountains, or those which my Pollius, under Phoebus's auspices, troubled with his urn plunged deeper— could I be able to match in Pierian measures the countless forms and adornments of the places. Scarce in the long array did my eyes suffice; scarce, while I am led through each, did my steps suffice. What a throng of things! Should I marvel first at the genius of the place, or of its master? This house looks on the risings and the tender radiance of Phoebus; that one holds the setting sun and refuses to dismiss the spent light, when now the day is weary and the shadow of the dark mountain falls upon the waters, and the mansions float on the glassy sea. These roofs roar with the sea's clamour, these are ignorant of the sounding waves and prefer the silences of the land. On these places nature smiled; here, conquered, she yielded to the dresser and, teachable, grew tame to unknown uses. A mountain was here, where you see level ground; and lairs there were, where now you go beneath the roofs; where now you see lofty groves, here there was not even earth: the owner tamed it, and the soil, following him as he shaped the cliffs and stormed them, rejoices. Now behold the rocks learning the yoke, and the houses entering, and the mountain bidden to retreat. Now let the hand of the Methymnaean bard and his lyre yield to you, and the Theban harp, and the glory of the Getic quill: you too move rocks, and the deep groves follow you. Why should I tell of the old figures of wax and bronze, if Apelles's colours rejoice to have given them life, if Phidian hands, in still empty—yet admirable—Pisa, have carved anything, or what was bidden by Myron's art or by Polyclitus's chisel to live, and the bronzes, more precious than gold, from the Isthmian ashes, the faces of leaders and bards and of the wise men of old, whom you take care to follow, whom with your whole breast you feel, free of cares and, your mind composed in quiet virtue, ever your own? Why should I unroll the thousand summits and the changing scenes of viewing? Each has its own delight, and a sea proper to every chamber, and across the lying Nereus its own land serves the different windows: this one sees Inarime, thence rough Prochyta appears; here lies open the armour-bearer of great Hector, there Nesis, circled by the sea, breathes back its malign air; hence Euploea, a happy omen to wandering ships, and Megalia, jutting out, that strikes the curving waves, and Limon grieves, your Limon, with its master reclining across from it and gazing far off at the Surrentine mansions. Yet one chamber, one above all stands forth, far off, which sets before you Parthenope on a straight line of sea: here are the rocks chosen from deep within Greek quarries; what the vein of Eastern Syene sprinkles, what the Phrygian axes have dug from sad Synnas through the fields of mourning Cybele, where on the painted marble a white field is set off by a purple ring; here too what was cut from the Amyclaean mount of Lycurgus, that greens and imitates soft grasses on the rocks, here the yellow stones of the Numidians gleam, and Thasos and Chios, and Carystos that rejoices to watch the waves: all, turned toward them, salute the Chalcidian towers. A blessing on your spirit, that you approve what is Greek, that you frequent Greek fields: nor let the walls of Dicarchus that bore you envy! We shall the better possess our learned foster-son. Why should I now tell of the riches of the countryside and the new tillage thrown out into the sea, and the rocks wet with Bacchic nectar? Often through autumn, when Lyaeus is already ripening, a Nereid has climbed the crags and, hidden in the shade of night, wiped her eyes, dripping, with the ripe vine-shoot, and snatched the sweet grapes from the hills. Often too the vintage has been splashed by the neighbouring wave, and Satyrs have fallen in the shallows, and the mountain Pans have longed to catch naked Doris through the waters. Be happy, land, to both your masters, for years of the Mygdonian and Pylian elder, nor change your noble servitude, nor let the Tirynthian hall outdo you in culture, and the bay of Dicarchus, nor let the coaxing vineyards of Therapnaean Galaesus please these masters more often. Here, where Pollius plies the Pierian arts, whether he turns over the counsels the Gargettian author gives, or strikes our lyre, or weaves discordant songs, or, threatening, draws the avenging iambus: hence the light Siren flies from the crags to better songs, hence Tritonia listens with her crest astir. Then the swift winds lay themselves down, the very seas are forbidden to make their noise, the dolphins emerge from the deep and are drawn, coaxing, to the learned lyre, and stray among the rocks. Live, richer than the treasures of Midas and the Lydian gold, happy beyond Trojan and Euphratean diadems, whom no ambiguous rods, no fickle crowd, no laws, no camps shall carry away—you who with a great heart tame hope and fear, loftier than every vow, exempt from the Fates and refuting indignant Fortune; whom, in the doubtful whirlwind of affairs, the last day shall not surprise, but ready to depart and full of life. We, a base crowd, ready always to serve perishable goods and to wish for more, are scattered to chances: from the lofty citadel of your mind you look down on the wanderers and laugh at human joys. There was a time when the votes of two lands tore you apart and you were borne aloft through two cities, venerable here to the Dicarchean colonists, there adopted by mine, and lavish alike to these and those, hot with youth and proud of the wandering of the quill; but now, the mist of things dispersed, you behold the truth— while others in their turn are tossed on that deep— and your bark, unshaken, has entered the secure harbours and the calm rest. So go on, and never send your retired ship out into our storms. And you, far the most learned among Latin daughters-in-law, and equal to your husband in mind, whose heart no cares, no threats furrow your brow, but always bright joys and a pleasure in your face that knows nothing of cares; no unlucky chest strangles your hoarded riches, nor does the loss of greedy interest torment your mind: your wealth is set out, and there is a learned moderation in enjoying it. No hearts cohere under a better god, no other minds did Concord teach. Learn, secure, you whose mingled torches from your breast have come together for the long years, and a holy love keeps the laws of chaste friendship. Go through the years and ages, and outstrip the titles of ancient fame.

3. The Tree of Atedius Melior There stands a tree, shading the clear waters of bright Melior, having clasped the pool, which, from its lowest trunk curved over the shallows, returns thence with upright top, lofty, as though it were born again from the midst of the waves and inhabited the glassy stream with silent roots. Why should I ask Phoebus for so small a thing? Do you tell the causes, Naiads, and you kindly Fauns—enough—give me songs. The tender troops of the nymphs were fleeing Pan; he indeed goes, as if he wished them all, and yet one above all, Pholoe. She, fleeing through woods and rivers, now avoids his hairy steps, now his shameless horns, and now through the warlike grove of Janus and the dark fields of Cacus, and through the Quirinal lands, suspended in flight, she enters the Caelian wastes; there at last, conquered by toil, worn out by fear, where now the open home of calm Melior stands without deceit, she gathered her tawny garments more closely and laid herself down on the edge of the snowy bank. The swift god of the flocks follows, and believes his union already his; with burning breast he poises his sighing at her door, now lightly looms over his prey, when, lo, Diana turns her hurrying steps thither, while through the seven hills she wanders and gathers the tracks of the Aventine deer. She repented of having seen the goddess, and, turning to her faithful companions: 'Shall I never bar from its greedy plunders this wanton and foul herd, and shall the band of my chaste chorus ever dwindle for me?' So, having spoken, she draws from her quiver a short shaft, which she hurls neither with bent horns nor with its wonted whirring, but with one contented hand sent it forth, and the arrow is said to have touched, turned away, the left hand of the sleeping Naiad. She, rising, saw at once the day and the wanton foe, and, lest she should spread her snowy limbs to view, fell so, with all her clothing, into the fountain, and beneath the deep pools, believing Pan pursued, wraps her side in the deep weed. What should the robber do, suddenly cheated? Nor does he dare to trust his body to the deep waters, conscious of his hairy hide, and from his tender years unskilled in swimming: complaining of all, of pitiless Bromius, of the envious pools and the envious shaft, he set down beside it a plane-tree, young to the sight, with long shoot and countless arms and a top destined for the air, and heaped living sand beside, and sprinkled it with the wished-for waters, and gives it such charges: 'Live long, memorable pledge of my vow, tree, and these hidden chambers of the hard nymph do you at least, leaning over, love, and press your leaves upon the water. She indeed deserved it, but let her not, I pray, swelter in the heat from above, nor be struck by hard hail; only remember to sprinkle the water and stir it with your leaves. Then I will long honour you and the mistress of the kindly seat, and will keep both safe in unharmed old age, that, like the leaves of Jove and Phoebus, like the two-coloured shade of the poplar, my pines too may marvel at your shoots.' So he spoke. The tree, animated by the god's old fires, hangs over the teeming pools with slanting trunk and broods, and with loving shadows searches the waters, and hopes for embraces; but the breath of the waters keeps it off and suffers no touch. At last, struggling up to the air, it balances from the bottom, and again ingeniously lifts its knotless top, as though it would descend with another stem into the deepest pools. Now neither does the Phoebean Naiad hate it, but invites with her flood the shut-out branches. These small gifts on your birthday we make ready for you—but to live, perhaps, under a mighty age. You, in whose calm breast have set their seat a coaxing honour and a cheerfulness yet weighty with virtue, to whom is neither slothful quiet nor unjust power nor shameless hope, but a middle path through the honourable and the sweet, incorrupt in faith and untried by any tumults and reserved, while openly you order your life by rule, the same easy despiser of gold and the same most fit to adorn riches and let light into your wealth: in this long flowering youth of mind and character persist to equal the men of Ilium and surpass them, the years that the father bore to Elysium, that the mother bore: this the hard Sisters granted to their prayers, this—the lofty glory of great-souled Blaesus, which, set under your witness and about to flee you in your silence, shall grow green again.

4. The Parrot of the same Parrot, prince of birds, the eloquent delight of your master, skilled imitator, parrot, of the human tongue, who has shut off your murmurs with so sudden a fate? Yesterday, poor wretch, doomed to die, you entered the feast with us, and we saw you plucking the gifts of the welcome table and wandering over the couches past the middle hour of night, and you had even given back greetings and rehearsed words. But now you hold the eternal silences of Lethe, you, that singer. Let the Phaethontian tale of the crowd give way: not the swans alone solemnize their own funerals. But what a house was yours, gleaming with russet shell, and the silver row of bars woven with ivory, and the thresholds creaking shrill at your horn, and the doors, now of their own accord complaining! That blessed prison is empty, and the chiding of the august house is nowhere! Hither let the learned birds be thronged, to whom Nature gave the noble right of speech: let the bird of Phoebus beat its breast, and the starling, mindful to send forth deep the voices it has heard, and the magpies turned in their Aonian contest, and the partridge that repeats and joins doubled words, and she who, a bereaved sister, mourns over her Bistonian bed: bring your groans together and lead the kindred funeral to the flames, and all learn this pitiable song: 'There has fallen the most renowned glory of the airy race, the parrot, green ruler of the Eastern region; whom neither the Junonian bird with its jewelled tail could outdo in look, nor the bird of cold Phasis, nor those that the Numidians snatched under the moist south wind. He, greeter of kings, who spoke the name of Caesar and once played the part of a plaintive friend, now a light table-companion, and so quick to give back the words you showed him! When you, beloved Melior, were shut in with him, you were never alone. But not unhonoured is he sent to the shades: his ashes are perfumed with Assyrian balsam and his slender plumes breathe back the grass of the Arabs and Sicanian saffron; not wearied with idle age shall the Phoenix climb the fragrant fires more happily.'

5. The Tame Lion What did it profit you now to grow tame, your rage laid low? What to unlearn in your spirit the wickedness and the human slaughters, and to suffer command and obey a lesser master? What of this—that you were wont to go from home and return again to your cage, and now of your own accord to withdraw from the captured prey and to let go the inserted hands with a slackened bite? You fall, learned ravager of tall wild beasts, not shut in by the Massylian band or the curving net, nor driven on, in your dreaded leap above the hunting-spears, nor cheated by the blind gape of the pit, but conquered by a fleeing beast. The unlucky cage stands with its hinge open, and around the gates shut on every side the gentle lions swelled that such a crime was allowed; then all their manes drooped, and they were ashamed to look back at the report, and drew their whole brows down over their eyes. But you, laid low at the first blow, that new shame did not overwhelm: your spirit remained, and valour returns to you as you fall, even from the midst of death; nor at once did all your threats turn tail, but, like a soldier conscious of a deep wound, who, dying, goes against the foe and lifts his hand and threatens with the sword that slips away: so you, sluggish in your tread and stripped of your wonted honour, fix your gaping eyes and seek both your life and your foe. Yet great solace of your sudden death you bear with you, vanquished one: that the people and the fathers grieved your dying, as though you fell, a known gladiator on the sad sand; that, amid so many Scythian and Libyan beasts, and from the shore of Rhine and of the Egyptian race—beasts it is cheap to lose— the loss of one lion touched great Caesar's face.

6. Consolation to Flavius Ursus on the loss of his favourite boy Too cruel, whoever sets limits to tears and measures to mourning. It is wretched for a parent to kindle—unspeakable!—the pyre of his firstborn pledges and his rising sons; hard, too, to bewail the loss of a bedfellow snatched away, the empty half of the couch, and the sad laments of sisters and the groans of brothers: yet deep and far within it enters more deeply into the senses, and conquers with greater wounds, the lesser blow—a slave (because Fortune with blind hand so confounds the names of things and knows not the heart)— but a slave, Ursus, you mourn, a faithful one, who by love and loyalty earned these tears, who had a freedom greater than any joined lineage, springing from his mind. Do not press down your weeping, do not be ashamed; let that grief break its reins, and the daylight, if such hard things please—you mourn a man—alas! I myself set the torches—a man, Ursus, your own, to whom servitude was sweet when he willed it, to whom nothing was sad, who of his own accord and over himself was commanding. Who would chastise the mourning sent out for such a death? The Parthian groans for his horse killed in war, the Molossians wept their faithful dogs, and birds have had their pyre, and the stag wept for Maro. What if he were not even a slave? I myself saw, and marked your looks, desiring you only as master; but greater was the spirit in his face, and his character plainly shown in his tender blood. Greek and Latin daughters-in-law would much have wished and longed to have borne such a son; not such did the cunning Cretan recall proud Theseus with her anxious thread, nor did Paris, rustic, about to behold the Oebalian love, launch the unwilling pines into the sea. I do not deceive, nor does the licence wonted to song lead me on: I saw, and still see, such as Thetis hid, singing no war, on the virgin shore, her Achilles, nor such as the Haemonian spear of the right hand caught, Troilus, fleeing around the walls of savage Phoebus. What you were! Behold, far fairer than all boys and men, and only less than your master! His was the one foremost grace, as much as the bright moon outshines the lesser torches, and as much as Hesperus presses down the other fires. No womanish charm was on your face, nor above your mouth a soft grace, such as bid forms of doubtful, blemished kind pass from their sex; but a manly grace, with grim sweetness; nor was your gaze wanton, nor your eyes coaxing with a stern fire, such as, lovely already with his helmet, to the sight Parthenopaeus was; and your hair, simple with comely roughness, and your cheeks not yet beset, gleaming with their first flower: such youth does Eurotas rear in the Ledaean stream, so, untouched in his tender years, does the boy come to Elis and prove his first years to Jove. For whence such modesty in a young mind, and the tranquil moderation of your ways, and a spirit riper than your tender age, with what song could I tell again? Often he chastised you when you willed, and helped you with his zeal and deep counsels; with you sad and glad, and never his own; and he took his look from your face: worthy to surpass even Haemonian Pylades in fame and the Cecropian faith; but let there be a limit to praise, such as fortune allows: with no sounder mind, in his sickness, did Eumaeus hope for the late returns of Ulysses. What god or what chance chooses such sad wounds? Whence such a sure hand for the Fates to harm with? O how, stripped of riches and wealth, would you, Ursus, be stronger in your name! If even Vesuvian fires, smoking in ruin, had belched forth their rich Locri, or the rivers had drowned the Pollentine pastures, or Lucanian Acir, or the rush of Tiber had twisted its deep waters to the right, you would have borne the gods with serene brow; or if kindly Crete and Cyrene had denied their faith and harvests, and wherever from her happy bosom lavish Fortune comes back to you. But, knowing griefs, unhappy Envy saw the vitals of your mind and the ways of wounding. He, just at the threshold of his grown life, the fairest of youths, was trying to weave one three-year span with three Olympiads of five, when the grim Rhamnusian goddess marked him with savage face, and first filled out his frame and added a brightness to his eyes and raised his face more loftily than its wont, alas, fawning fatally on the wretch. And, looking at him, she tormented herself with envy, and, embracing his death, threw her noose upon him as he lay, and, pitiless, plucked his honoured face with curved hand. Scarce at his fifth rising did Phosphorus drive his dewy horse, when already you saw the savage shores of the hard old man, Philetus, and hard Acheron. With what cry the master called you! Not more savagely with her beating would your mother, had she lived, have blackened her dark arms for you, nor your father; and surely the brother who saw the funeral blushed to be outdone. But the fire was not servile to the lost one: the flame drank up the fragrant Sabaeans and the harvests of the Cilicians, and the cinnamon taken from the Egyptian bird, and the juices flowing from Assyrian grass, and the master's tears: these alone the embers drank, these the pyre drank to the end; nor that Setia quenched your white ashes, nor that the slippery onyx walled your bones within its bosom, was more welcome to the wretched shade than the groans—but does even that please? Why do we turn our back on grief, Ursus? Why do you cherish your loss and with an unjust heart love the wound? Where is the eloquence famed for snatched defendants? Why do you torment the dear shade with such savage mournings? Though he was excellent in spirit and deserved to be grieved: you have paid the debt; he goes to the pious and plucks the quiet of Elysium, and there perhaps has found his famous parents; or for him through the pleasant silences of Lethe perhaps the Avernal Naiads, all mingled, play on every side, and Proserpina marks him with a sidelong glance. Lay aside, I pray, your laments; the Fates will give you another Philetus, and perhaps he himself will give one, and will gladly show you comely ways and bearing, and teach you a like love.

7. Birthday Poem for Lucan, addressed to Polla Let whoever, on the hills of Isthmian Dione, his breast roused by the learned frenzy, drinks the liquor of the hanging hoof, keep Lucan's own day. You yourselves, with whom the honour of singing rests, the Arcadian inventor of the tuneful lyre, and you, Euhan, whirler of the Bassarids, and Paean, and the Hyantian sisters, joyfully renew your purple fillets, deck your hair, and let fresher ivy drench your white robes. Let the learned streams wander more freely, and let the Aonian woods be greener, and, if any shade lies open or has caught the daylight, let it be filled with soft garlands. Let a hundred fragrant altars stand in the Thespian groves, and a hundred victims which Dirce washes or Cithaeron rears: we sing Lucan; keep holy silence, this is your day; favour us, Muses, while he who bore you through the twin arts, both of the bound and the loosened foot of speech, is honoured, the priest of the Roman choir. Happy—alas, too happy!—and blessed land, you who see the downward course of Hyperion in the highest waves of Ocean and hear the whirr of the falling wheel, who, fertile, challenge Tritonian Athens with your oiled presses, Baetica: you can charge Lucan to the earth's account! This is more than to have given Seneca to the world or to have begotten sweet Gallio. Let Baetis, nobler than Greek Meles, lift his back-flowing fountains to the stars; Mantua, do not dare to challenge Baetis. The new-born child, at once, upon the very ground, sweetly wailing at his first cry, Calliope took into her coaxing bosom, then first, her mourning laid aside and softened, put off the long sorrows of Orpheus, and said: 'O boy dedicated to the Muses, soon to surpass the long-lived bards, you shall move neither rivers nor herds of beasts nor the Getic ash-trees with your quill, but the seven ridges and martial Tiber, and the learned knights and, with eloquent song, the senate purple in their robes; the nocturnal ruins of the Phrygians let others, and the ways of slow-returning Ulysses and the rash ship of Minerva— a track worn by bards—follow: you, dear to Latium and mindful of your race, more boldly bring forth the togaed song. And first, while still in your tender years, you shall play of Hector and the Thessalian chariots and the suppliant gold of mighty Priam, and you shall unlock the seats of the dead, ungrateful Nero shall be brought forth for you in the sweet theatres, and our Orpheus. You shall tell of the impious fires of the guilty lord wandering over the roofs of Remus. Hence in a joyful address you shall give the title and honour of chaste Polla. Soon, more nobly in your full youth, you shall thunder of Philippi white with Italian bones and the wars of Pharsalia, and the divine leader convulsed amid arms, and Cato grave with pious freedom, and Magnus, dear in his popularity. You, pious, shall weep the crime of Pelusian Canopus, and to Pompey on bloody Pharos you shall give a loftier tomb. These things you shall sing, a youth in your first age, before the years of the Maronian Gnat. The rude Muse of fierce Ennius shall yield, and the lofty madness of learned Lucretius, and he who led the Argonauts through the straits, and he who transfigures the first bodies. What greater thing shall I say? The very Aeneid shall revere you as you sing to the Latins. Nor shall I give only the splendour of songs, but with the genial torches I shall dedicate to you one learned and graced by your own genius, such as coaxing Venus and Juno would give in form, in simplicity, in courtesy, in wealth, in blood, in grace, in beauty; and before your doors I myself shall sound the wedding-hymn with festive songs. O Fates, too savage and too grievous! O long lives never granted to the highest! Why, lofty things, do you lie more open to disasters? Why do great things not grow old by a savage law? So the son of the Nasamonian Thunderer, after his risings and his thunderstruck settings, narrow Babylon presses in a cramped tomb. So Thetis shuddered at the Pelid, fixed by the hand of raging Paris, as he fell. So I followed along the banks of murmuring Hebrus the not-silent head of Orpheus. So you too—crime of a mad tyrant!—bidden to go down headlong into Lethe, while you sing of battles and with lofty voice give consolation to the great tombs, —O dire wickedness! O wickedness!—shall be silent.' So she spoke, and lightly with her gleaming quill wiped away the falling tears. But you, whether raised aloft on the lofty chariots of Fame through the swift axis of the sky, where the mightier souls rise, look down on the lands and laugh at the tombs; or whether, happy, you hold the grove of unbarred peace, deservedly, on the shores of Elysium, where the Pharsalian throng gathers, and the Pompeys and the Catos accompany you as you sound your noble song; or whether, sacred and proud in your great shade, you know Tartarus and from afar hear the lashes of the guilty and look back upon pale Nero at the sight of his mother's torch: be present, shining, and at Polla's call win, I pray, one day from the gods of the silent; this threshold is wont to open for husbands returning to their brides. She, not wanton, clothes you in no deceiving shape of a false power with her revels, but cherishes you yourself and frequents yourself, set deeper in her inmost marrow, and your face supplies vain solace, the face which, marked in like gold, shines above her bed and broods upon the sleep of the untroubled woman. Far hence depart, you Deaths: this is the origin of genial life. Let cruel grief give way, and on her cheeks now flow sweet tears, and a festive sorrow; whatever she had wept before, now let her adore.