Book 3

pr. Statius to his Pollius, greeting.

To you at least, sweetest Pollius—and most worthy of that repose to which you cling so faithfully—I have no need to commend at length the boldness of these little books, since you know that many of them were born suddenly in your own bosom, and have often dreaded this audacity of my pen, as often as, drawn aside into the sanctuary of your own eloquence, I go more deeply into letters and am led by you into every recess of study. Secure, therefore, this third book of our Silvae is sent to you. The second indeed had you as its witness, but this one has you as its author. For Hercules of Surrentum opens its first threshold—the Hercules consecrated on your shore, whom, as soon as I had seen him, I worshipped in these verses. There follows the little book in which I thus escorted the most splendid and to me most delightful young man, Maecius Celer, sent by our most sacred Emperor to the Syrian legion, since I could not follow him. The devotion of my Claudius Etruscus, too, deserved some consolation from our studies, while he mourned his aged father with true tears—which is now a most rare thing. Earinus, moreover, the freedman of our Germanicus—you know how long I delayed my response to his desire—when he had asked that I dedicate in verse his hair, which he was sending in a doubled casket, with a mirror, to the Pergamene Asclepius. The last is the eclogue in which I urge my own Claudia to retire with me to Naples. Here, if I speak truly, is conversation, and indeed unguarded, as with a wife, and one who would rather persuade than please. To this little book in particular you will show favour, since you know that this resolve for my repose is aimed especially at you, and that I am retiring not so much to my homeland as to you. Farewell.

1. Hercules of Surrentum, belonging to Pollius Felix Pollius renews for you, Tirynthian, the interrupted rites, and assigns the reasons for the year's delay: that you are worshipped now in a greater dome, and no longer hold, poor, a bare shore and a roof habitable by wandering sailors, but gleaming doorposts and gables propped up with Greek metals, as though, purified again by the torches of an honest fire, you were climbing the heavens from the Oetaean flame. Scarce is there faith for eyes and mind: are you that inglorious keeper of an open threshold and a small altar? Whence this new hall and unlooked-for splendour for rustic Alcides? There are fates of gods, there are fates of places! O swift devotion! Here, lately, one might see barren sands, a mountain's flank sprinkled by the sea, and rocks shaggy with thorns, and ground that would suffer no footsteps. What fortune suddenly enriched the stiff crags? Did these walls come at a Tyrian quill or a Getic lyre? The year itself is amazed at the labours, and the cramped months, in their twelvefold bound, marvel at the long-lived work. A god brought the citadels and reared up his own, and the resisting rocks he removed, straining, and with his great breast pushed back the mountain: you would believe he had bidden his cruel stepmother. So come, whether, now free of the laws, you dwell in your father's Argos and tread upon Eurystheus sunk in his tomb, or whether you hold the throne of your own Jove and the stars won by your valour, and Hebe, girded, holds out to you a draught of blessed nectar, better than the rejected Phrygian: come hither and bring your genius to the rising temple. Not harmful Lerna, nor the fields of poor Molorchus, nor the dreaded field of Nemea and the Thracian caves demand you, nor the polluted altars of the Egyptian king, but a happy and simple house, ignorant of evil frauds, and a seat most worthy of heavenly guests. Lay aside your savage bows and the cruel troop of your quiver and the club drenched with the blood of many kings, and let go from your great shoulders the foe spread upon them: here for you a lofty couch is woven with Sidonian acanthus, and the bed grows rough with ivory figures. Come appeased and gentle, not turbulent with anger nor fearing servitude, but such as Maenalian Auge detained you, spent with revels and dripping with much wine, and such as Thespius, your father-in-law so many times over, beheld in amazement after the crimes of a wandering night. Here for you a festive wrestling-school, and the innocent rages of youths without the gauntlet, hold their yearly contests in a swift cycle. Here a priest is inscribed in the temple, his grandfather rejoicing, small as yet and like to you, when with your first hand you crushed the stepmother's monsters and grieved them slain. But what were the beginnings of the sudden temple, venerable one, tell me, come, Calliope; Alcides as your ally will sound the great strain, and his measures will be changed for the strung bow. It was the time when the most scorching axis of heaven leans upon the lands, and Sirius, struck by much Hyperion, keen, sets the panting fields ablaze, and now the day was at hand on which, fit for fugitive kings, the Arician grove of Trivia smokes, and with much torchlight the lake that knows of Hippolytus shines; Diana herself crowns her deserving dogs and wipes her darts and lets the beasts go safe, and the whole Italian land, its hearths chaste, keeps the Ides of Hecate holy. But I, although beneath the hills of Dardanian Alba I had my own estate, and the water running by the gift of the great leader sufficed at home to soothe my cares and ease the heats, was guesting at the rocks known by the Sirens' name and the home of eloquent Pollius, no stranger, ever learning the man's ways and his peace and the new flowers of the Muses and his untouched songs. By chance, while we kept Trivia's day on the wet shore and, heavy, shunned the narrow doors and accustomed roofs and warded off the sun with leaves and a spreading tree, the sky hid itself, and the bright light gave way to sudden clouds, and the west wind, thinned, with a heavier south wind grew wet; such a cloud as Saturn's daughter brought to Libya, while rich Elissa was given to her Ilian husband, and the nymphs, as witnesses, howled through the wilds. We scattered, and the slaves snatch away the festive feasts and the garlanded wines: nor was there anywhere for the banquet to move, although countless houses settled above the rejoicing fields and the mountain shone rich with many a roof: but the threatening clouds urged us to seek the nearest place, and the faith of fair weather, hurt, that would return. There stood a slender hut, called by the name of a sacred temple, and a small home pressed great Alcides in a humble dwelling, scarce able to cover the wave-wandering sailors and the searchers of the deep. Hither all our crowd we gathered, hither the feast and the rich couches and the throng of servants are packed, and the most welcome band of bright Polla. The doors did not hold us, and the narrow shrine fell short. The god blushed and laughed, and entered the beloved heart of Pollius, and embraced the man with coaxing arms. 'Are you,' he said, 'that bestower of wealth, who with lavish mind filled at once the houses of Dicarchus and youthful Parthenope? Who fixed for my mountain so many gables, so many green groves, so many rocks imitating faces, and bronzes, so many waxes living with painted light? For what was this house, what this land, before it could rejoice in you? Along a long track you covered the bare crags, and where there was only a footpath, now a high portico stands for you with set-out columns, that the way might not be mean. The shores of the curving coast you shut, with twin domes enclosing the warm nymphs. Scarce could I count your works; to me alone is Pollius poor and needy: yet glad I enter such a home, and the shore that you spread out I love. But the next seat looks down on this, and Juno secretly laughs at my threshold. Give me a temple and altars worthy of your endeavours, which ships would not wish to pass even with favouring sails, whither the ethereal father and the summoned throng of gods at the feast may come, and from a lofty temple his hostess-sister. Nor let it terrify you that the solid boss of the grudging mountain stands stiff against you and is never worn away by measureless age: I myself will be present and aid such great endeavours and break through the rough entrails of the unwilling earth. Begin, and, trusting in Hercules' urgings, dare. Not more swiftly stood the Amphionian citadels or the Pergamean labour.' He spoke and left his mind behind. And no delay: when the weapon is shaped by the written design, countless hands came together: theirs the care to cut the woods and lift the beams, theirs to sink the foundations in the soil. Part of the damp earth is baked, to protect against winters and shut out frosts, and the untamed flint melts in the curving furnace. But the chief labour is to hew away with the hand the opposing cliffs and the rocks that refuse the iron. Here the father of the place himself, the Tirynthian, his arms laid aside, sweats, and with strong axe the deformed ground, when the heavy sky is overspread with the shade of night, he himself digs, and the rich Goat-rocks and green Taurubulae echo back, and a huge echo of the sea returns to the lands. Not so loud does Aetna sound with its moving anvils, when Brontes and Steropes strike, nor is the crash greater from the Lemnian caves, when fiery Mulciber lets fall the aegis and adorns Pallas with chaste gifts. The crags shrink, and, returned under the rosy light, the craftsmen marvel at the work. Scarce does a second year pant out, and the rich Tirynthian from his huge citadel looks down on the waves and challenges the roof of his joined stepmother, and invites Pallas to worthy temples. Now the peaceful trumpets give their signals, now the sand, burning, smokes for the brave rites: these honours neither the Pisaean Jove nor the father of shady Cirrha would disdain. Nothing is sad in these places; let lamentable Isthmos give way, let grim Nemea give way: here a happier child offers sacrifice. The green Nereids themselves spring out of their own accord from their pumice caves: they cling to the wet crags and are not ashamed to watch in secret the naked wrestling-schools. And Gaurus watches, wooded with Icarian vine, and the grove that crowns Nesis fixed in the sea, and calm Limon and Euploea, an omen for ships, and Lucrine Venus, and from the Phrygian summit you, Misenum, shall learn the Greek trumpets, and kindly Parthenope laughs at the native rite and the naked contests of men and the small images of her own crown. Come too and yourself, glad, deign with unconquered hand the deeds of your own contest; whether to cleave the clouds with the discus, or to outstrip the swift west winds with the javelin, or whether it is sweet to you to knot the Libyan wrestling-bouts by hand, indulge the rites, and, if you have apples to spare from the Hesperides, set them in the venerable lap of Polla; for she can hold, and will not so far degrade the honour. But if she could take back her sweet glory and her green years, —give me pardon, Alcides—you might perhaps have spun for her your thread. These things I, glad and revelling at the rising altars, brought as my offerings. Now on the very threshold—I see him loosing his voice and uttering such words: 'A blessing on your spirit and your wealth, you who imitate my labours, who tame the stiff cliffs and the shameful wastes of barren nature, and turn to use the lairs haunted by wild beasts, and bring forth foully hidden powers; what rewards for your deserts shall I now pay you? What thanks shall I render? I will hold the threads of the Fates and draw out the distaffs—I know how to conquer hard Death—, I will turn away your mourning and forbid sad losses, and you, unharmed, I will renew with green old age, and grant you long to behold your young grandsons, until both this one is ripe for a bride and that one for a husband, and again from them a new brood and a forward band now creep over their grandsire's shoulders, now in a coaxing throng race vying to the kisses of calm Polla. For to my temples a bound of years shall never be set, while the engine of the flaming sky carries me, nor shall there be more dear to me Nemea and ancient Argos nor the Tiburtine house and the chambers of the sun, Gades.' So he speaks; and touching the fire rising on the altars and shaking his temples white with poplar foliage, he swore by the Styx and the thunderbolts of the ethereal father.

2. Propempticon for Maecius Celer Gods, whose love it is to keep the bold keels safe and to soothe the savage perils of the windy deep, spread the sea soft and turn to my vows a calm will, and let no gentle wave drown out the one who prays: 'A great and rare deposit, Neptune, we give to your deep, a young man is entrusted to the doubtful main, Maecius, and he prepares to carry across the seas the greater part of our soul. Bring forth your kindly stars and settle on the twin horns of the yard-arm, sons of Oebalus; for you let sea and sky shine: far off drive the stormy stars of your Ilian sister, I pray, and shut them from all the sky. You too, dark-blue band of the sea, Nereids, to whom honour and the fortune of the second realm has fallen —if it be lawful for me to name the great sea's stars—, rise from the glassy caves of foaming Doris, and the bays of Baiae and the shores teeming with warm waves vie in a calm swimming to circle round. Seeking where the high ship is, which the noble nursling of warlike Ausonia, Celer, rejoices to climb. Nor is it long to seek: but lately, beyond the seas, the first to land at the Dicarchean shores the heavy Egyptian year, the first to salute Capreae, and on the right margin sprinkled the Mareotic wines of Tyrrhenian Minerva. Gird each side of this ship in your soft circle, and, your tasks shared out, you stretch the hempen cables of the mast, you bind the topsails to the highest yards, you open the sails to the west winds; let part replace the benches, part lower into the waters the rudders of the curving stern; let there be those for whom the heavy lead-plummet explores the depths, and those who tie astern the boat that will follow and pluck up from deep within the hooked anchor-cables; let one temper the tides and bend the sea toward the dawn: let none of the grey-green sisters be free of her office; hence let Proteus, with much body, and Triton, with twin body, swim ahead, and Glaucus, who lost his loins to sudden monsters, as often as he glides to his fatherland's shores, striking shore-loving Anthedon with his coaxing tail. But you above all, Palaemon, with your divine mother, assent, if it is my love to lay open your Thebes, and I sing of Phoebean Amphion with no degenerate quill. And the father who breaks the winds in his Aeolian prison, to whom the varied blasts and every breath through the seas of the world and the storms and the rain-clouds obey, let him press Boreas and Eurus and Notus more closely, the mountain set against them: let the sky be free for Zephyr alone, let him alone drive the ships and skim above the highest waves, unceasing on the sea; until, with no whirlwind, he assigns your glad sails to the Paraetonian banks.' We are heard. He himself calls the ship and chides the lingering sailors. Lo, my heart already with timid cold slips down, and I cannot, though the horror of the omen warns me, close the tears suspended on the margin of my eyes. And now the sailor has parted the ship from land with the cable loosed and let down the narrow gangway into the sea. The savage master from the stern with a long shout scatters the embraces and tears apart the faithful kisses, nor is it allowed to linger long on the dear neck, yet I will go onto the land last of all the throng, nor depart until the ship is already withdrawing. Who made for wretched living creatures this rough and severed sea a path, and drove the pious nurslings of the solid earth out into the waves and sent them into the gaping deep, bold in his ingenuity? For no rasher was that valour which joined cold Pelion to the summit of Ossa and twice pressed panting Olympus beneath the ridges. Was it so little to cross the slow marshes and pools, and to set narrow rivers beneath bridges? We go into the sheer abyss, and from every side flee our native lands, shut in a scanty plank and a bare sky. Hence the fury of the winds and the indignant storms and the roaring of the sky and the more thunderbolts for the Thunderer. Before ships the seas were torpid in sluggish sleep, nor did Thetis dare to foam, nor the waves to scatter clouds: the waters swelled at the sight of the keels, and the storm rose against man. Then the Pleiades were cloudy, and the Olenian Goat; then Orion was worse than his wont. I complain justly: see, the ship, driven through the wandering waves, flees, little by little smaller, and far off conquers my keeping eyes, holding so many fears clasped in its slender wood. And you who above the rest, pledge of our love, will carry, Celer—with what heart shall I now bear my sleep or how endure my days? What messenger to one fearing everything, whether the smooth wave has let you pass the raging mouth of the Lucanian sea, whether twisted Charybdis heaves, or the ravaging maiden of the Sicilian deep, what manners headlong Hadria bears to you in your course, what peace there is in the Carpathian, with what breeze Doris carries you up, flattered by the thefts of the Agenorean bull? But I have deserved my complaints. For why, when you sought the camp, did I not go, an eager comrade, even to the unknown Indians and Cimmerian chaos? My king's warlike standards would stand near, whether you held weapons in your hand or the reins, or gave laws to the armed; and of your works, though not a partner, surely an admirer I would be present. If once Phoenix, reverend to great Achilles, came to the Ilian shore and Thymbraean Pergamus, unwarlike and sworn to nothing for the swelling son of Atreus, why is my love a coward? But with faithful heart I shall never be absent, and shall follow your sails with long vows. Isis, once stabled beneath the caves of Phoroneus, now queen of Pharos and divinity of the panting East, receive with many-sounding sistrum the Mareotic ship, and the excellent young man, to whom the Latin leader gave the Eastern standards and the Palestinian cohorts to rein, yourself with calm hand lead through the festive thresholds and the sacred harbours and your cities. With you as guide let him learn whence comes the fertile licence of the marshy Nile, why the shoals subside and the bank confines the waters that are pooled with Cecropian mud, why grudging Memphis, or why the mouth of Therapnaean Canopus is wanton, why the Lethean doorkeeper guards the Egyptian altars, why cheap animals are equal to the great gods; what altars the long-lived Phoenix spreads for itself, what fields it deigns, or in what flood of Nile the adored Apis plunges, to the alarm of trembling shepherds. Lead him too to the Emathian shades, where the warlike founder of the city, drenched with Hyblaean nectar, endures, and the serpent-bearing house, where, sunk in coaxing poison, the Actian Cleopatra fled the Ausonian chains. On even to the Assyrian seats and the appointed camps escort him, and to Latin Mars, goddess, hand over the young man, nor will he be a new guest: as a boy he sweated in these fields, known as yet only by the light of the broader stripe, yet brave already to outstrip the squadrons with an easy wheel and to condemn the Eastern arrows with his javelin. Therefore there shall be that day, on which, about to give you greater things, Caesar shall bid you depart from your finished war, and we, again standing on this shore, shall behold the vast waves and shall beg for other breezes. O how great I shall be then, or how great the votive lyre I shall move with my quill! When, my neck bound with a great band, you lift me on your shoulders, and first upon my breast, new from the ship, you lean, and give back the kept conversations, and in turn we tell of the years between: you of swift Euphrates and royal Bactra and the sacred wealth of ancient Babylon and Zeugma, the road of the Latin peace, how sweet the grove of flowering Idyme, where precious Tyre reddens, with what juice the purple of Sidon is twice dyed in the vats, where in their first bud the white twigs sweat out the lucky balsam: but I, what tombs I gave to the conquered Pelasgians, or what page shall close for me my laboured Thebes.

3. Consolation to Claudius Etruscus Highest of the gods, Piety, whose most welcome power, rare in heaven, looks upon the profaned lands, hither, your hair filleted and distinguished by a snowy robe, such as, present still and driven out by no fraud of the guilty, you dwelt among rude peoples and golden realms, come to the gentle obsequies, and behold the pious tears of mourning Etruscus, and wipe his praised eyes. For who, seeing him break his breast with unfilled lament and embrace the pyre and lean upon the embers, would not believe that the funeral of a young wife was bewailed, or that the face of a son just growing to manhood was snatched away by the flames? It is a father who is wept. Be present, gods and men, at the rites; far hence, far go you guilty, if any have an unspoken crime in their heart, and the long old age of a wearied father, if any is conscious of a struck mother and fears stern Aeacus at the infernal urn: the innocent and chaste I call. See, he holds the aged face gently clasped, and sprinkles his parent's holy gray hair with tears, and loves the soul's last cold; the son thinks his father's swift years —wondrous faith!—and the dark Sisters made too much haste. Exult, calm shades, by the Lethean streams, rejoice, Elysian houses; lay garlands on the altars and let festal altars gladden the pale groves. Happy, this shade, too happy and wept by a son, comes; far off the hisses of the Furies, far off the threefold warder; let the long way open wide within for excellent souls, let him go, and approach the dread throne of the silent lord, and bear his last thanks, and anxiously ask for the young man as many years. A blessing on your pious groaning! We will give solace to worthy mournings, and of our own accord we will hallow to your old man Aonian rites of the dead, Etruscus! Lavish, plunge the Eastern seeds, the proud harvests of Cilicia and Araby, into the pyre; let the fire carry the heir's wealth, and from the high mound let the cinders be packed, that will send pious clouds to the bright sky: we will bring gifts that will not burn, and your sorrow, with me to teach it, will endure into the coming years. For it is not unknown to me to weep a parent; I groaned in like fashion, flung down by the fire. That day urges me to soothe your losses with song: and I myself bore the complaints I now bring to you. Not bright indeed, most gentle old man, was the line of your race, nor a pedigree handed down from forebears, but a great fortune supplied the lack of birth and hid the fault of your parents. For you bore no masters from the commons, but those whom alike the West and the East serve, nor is that a shame to you: for what, on earth and in heaven, remains without the law of obeying? By turns all things are ruled and press one another by turns: every land is under its own kings; happy Rome presses the diadems of kings; to leaders it is given to rein her; soon their power grows over the gods above, but even the divinities have a law: the swift choir of the stars serves, and the wandering moon serves, nor does the orbit of light return so many times unbidden; and—if it be lawful now to match low things with high— the Tirynthian too endured the harsh covenants of a savage king, nor did the pipe of Phoebus, in service, blush. But neither were you sent to Latium from barbarian shores: Smyrna was your native soil, and the harbour with its reverend spring, Meles, and the ford of Hermus, where Lydian Bacchus enters and refreshes his horns in the golden mud. Thence a glad sequence, and from various cares in order honour increased; ever to walk near the divine powers, ever to attend the side of Caesar and to cling to the gods' sacred mysteries was granted. The Tiberian hall first, your face scarce yet imitating a new youth, is opened to you—here freedom, your years overcome by much native worth, came offered—nor did the next heir, though pitiless and driven by the Furies, drive you away. With him too, a slender comrade even to the Arctic frosts, you endured a tyrant dreadful in speech and look, monstrous to his own, like those who tame the dreaded hearts of beasts and bid them, when blood is now tasted, give back the hands plunged in their mouths and live by no prey. But by your merit you rose to chief deeds when Claudius, an old man not yet dismissed to the starry axis, passed you on to be held by a far-off heir. Who, fearing the gods above, is granted to have deserved at once so many temples, so many altars? The winged Arcadian is the messenger of highest Jove; Juno wins the rain-bearing daughter of Thaumas; swift Triton stands ready in obedience to Neptune's commands: you so many times bore in due rite the changed yokes of leaders, unimpaired, and your bark was happy in every deep. And now the high day entered the pious house and Fortune, exalted, came in with full stride; now to you alone is entrusted the ordering of sacred wealth and the riches gathered through all peoples and the expenses of the great world, whatever Iberia casts out from her gold-bearing trenches, what gleams on the Dalmatian mountain, what is swept from the African harvests, whatever the floor of the sweltering Nile grinds, and what the diver, sunk in the Eastern sea, gathers, and the tilled flocks of Lacedaemonian Galaesus and the clear snows and the Massylian timbers and the honour of Indian ivory: to you alone, the trusted minister, all things obey that Boreas and fierce Eurus and cloudy Auster bring in: sooner could you count the winter rains and the leaves of the woods. The same, watchful and of keen mind and swift, unrolls how much under every Roman standard by the day, and how much for the tribes, what the temples, what the high courses of the waters, what the sea's defences require, or the long stretched-out line of the roads; what gold gleams on the lord's lofty ceilings, what mass must melt, to be shaped by fire into the faces of gods, what stamp of Ausonian Moneta rings out in the fire. Hence for you a rare rest, and pleasure shut from your mind, and scant feasts and care never hurt by deep unmixed wine; yet genial laws are dear to your heart, and to bind your mind with bridal couches and to join festive weddings and to beget faithful clients for your lord. Who would not know the lofty stock and the beauty of famous Etrusca? Though by my own eyes she was not known to me, yet a portrait gives back to fame her surpassing grace, and the like beauty of her children shows it in their faces, nor was her stock common; a brother bore the rods and the highest curule chair and the Ausonian swords, and faithful carried the appointed standards, when first the savage madness drove the fierce Dacians on, and the race was condemned in a great triumph. So whatever from her father's blood was lacking, the mother restored, and the house, rejoicing in the marriage, saw the obscure side grow bright; nor were the pledges far off; for twice Lucina came to the births, and with light hand herself, fertile, touched the heavy labours. Happy—ah!—if a long day, if the just threads had granted you to behold the faces of your children and their green cheeks! But the joys fell broken in mid youth, and Atropos cut with her hand the flowering years; as the pale lilies droop their stalks and the budding roses die at the first south winds, or where the new purple breathes out its bloom in the spring meadows. Around those funerals you, arrow-bearing Loves, hovered, and anointed the pyres with the mother's balsam; and there was no measure either with your torn wings or your hair to scatter the fire, and the gathered quivers built the pyre. What rites of the dead then, or what laments would you have given to your mother's pyre, Etruscus, you who think your father's funeral not ripe, and these years untimely for the pious! Him too, who now with his nod tempers the high citadels, sharing his bright offspring with the lands and the stars, gladly endowed with the honour of an Idumaean triumph, and, deeming him worthy of a place in the order of the victorious procession, forbade it not, and his humble parents diminished nothing, and the same led him down to the equestrian rows and changed his station and stripped the ignoble iron from his left hand and matched the honour of his sons. Twice eight lustres flowed for his right hand, and a course of life without a cloud, how rich for the uses of his children, and willing to depart from his whole wealth— witness still the splendour of lavish Etruscus, drawn from there, to whom your indulgence gave manners not lowly. For with embraces ever calling you back you held him, coaxing, and never a father by command; to his honour the brother himself too, more inclined, rejoiced to yield. What thanks do the devoted young men render you for their reborn father, highest of leaders, or what pious vows! You—whether old age, slow with mould and drained of affairs, erred, or whether coaxing Fortune long preferred his return—were content only to warn the old man, astonished and shuddering at the stroke of the thunderbolt to come, with thunder and a gentle storm; and when, beyond the horrid seas of cares, the partner went far off, leaving the Italian fields, he was bidden to withdraw to the soft shores of the Campanian coast and the Diomedean citadels, and was a guest, not an exile. Nor, long delaying, do you, Germanicus, unbar again the Romulean threshold and cherish the mourner and raise his fallen household. No wonder, most gentle leader, since this is that clemency which gives the Cattians, conquered, sparing covenants, and gives the Dacians their own mountain, which lately, after the horrid wars, did not deem the Marcomani and the wandering Sauromatae worthy of a Latin triumph. And now the day is at its end, and the inexorable measure fails. Here the devotion of sad Etruscus demands of me such songs as neither the Sicilian rocks command nor the swan now sure of its fate, nor the wife of savage Tereus. Alas, with what beatings I saw him wearying his arms, and poured out, face down, over the kisses! Scarce do servants and companions hold him, scarce the high fire drives him off. Not otherwise did Theseus groan along the Sunian shores, who had deceived Aegeus with false sails. Then, groaning fearfully and his face fouled, he addresses the warm cinders: 'Why do you leave us, most faithful one, with Fortune returning, father? But now we appeased the powers of the great patron and the brief wraths of the gods above, and you enjoy them not, and, robbed of the use of so great a gift, you flee to the shades, ungrateful, nor is it given to bend the Fates as to appease the harsh powers of evil Lethe. Happy he to whom, bearing his father on his great neck, the sacred reverence of the Mycenaean flame opened its way! And tender Scipio, who from the savage Carthaginians snatched his father, and the rash devotion of Lydian Lausus. Could even the wife of the Thessalian husband weigh out his death, and the Thracian, suppliant, conquer pitiless Styx? How much better might this be allowed for a father! Yet you shall not be snatched away whole, nor shall I send your funeral far off; here your shades, here within the house I shall keep them: you the guardian and lord of the home; to you shall all your kin obey; I, duly the lesser and ever second, shall pour the constant feasts and cups to your sacred shade, and worship your image; you the bright marble, you the line of learned wax shall give back to me like yourself, now ivory, now tawny gold shall change your face, thence I shall ask the way of manners and the examples of a long life and pious addresses and dreams that will warn me.' As he speaks such words, the father hears with glad sweetness and slowly descends to the pitiless shades, and bears the words to his beloved Etrusca, to tell them. Hail for the last time, gentlest of fathers, and for the last time farewell, who, your son surviving, shall never suffer the sad chaos and the mournful mould of a neglected tomb. Ever shall your altars breathe with fragrant flowers, ever shall the happy urn drink Assyrian liquors and tears, which is the greater honour. Here he shall offer sacrifice to your shade, and from your own land shall raise your tomb, and by his example deserving has consecrated to you our songs too, rejoicing in this also, to have given even cinders to this sepulchre.

4. The Hair of Flavius Earinus

Go, locks, and cross, I pray, the easy sea; go, reclining softly on the crowned gold; go, gentle Cytherea will give favouring courses and will appease the south winds; perhaps even she will carry you off from the ship you fear, and lead you over the waters in her own shell. Receive the praised hair, Phoebean youth, which Caesar's boy gives to you; receive it gladly and show it to your unshorn father, let him compare the sweet gleaming locks and long think them his brother Lyaeus's. Perhaps he himself too the honour of the hair that never falls will reap and lay it for you, enclosed, in other gold. Pergamum, far happier than pine-bearing Ida! Though she please herself with the cloud of her sacred rape —surely she gave to the gods above the one whom turbulent Juno ever sees and shrinks from his hand and refuses the nectar—, yet you, dear to the gods and marked by your beautiful nursling, sent him to Latium, the minister whom with calm brow Ausonian Jupiter and Roman Juno alike look upon and both approve; nor is so great a pleasure to the powerful lord of the lands without the gods' design. It is said that, while she sought the Idalian groves from Eryx's summit and golden Venus drives her soft swans, she entered the Pergamean halls, where the greatest helper is present to the sick, and the gentle god, staying the hastening fates, broods over the health-bringing serpent. Here she catches sight of a boy, brilliant with the star of surpassing beauty, playing before the very altars of the god. And first, a little deceived by the sudden shape, she thinks him one of the children of the commons; but he had no bow and no shadows from his shining shoulders. She marvels at the boyish grace, and gazing on his face and hair, then says: 'Will you go to the Ausonian citadels, neglected by Venus? Will you bear the squalid roofs and the yoke of common servitude? Far be it: I will give to that beauty the master it has deserved. Come, go with me, go, boy: I will lead you through the stars in my winged chariot, a vast gift for the leader; nor shall plebeian rights await you: you are owed to a Palatine love. Nothing, nothing, I confess, in all the world have I seen or begotten so sweet. The Latmian shall yield to you of his own accord and the Sangarian boy, and he whom the empty image of the spring and a sterile love consumed. You the dark-blue Naiad would have preferred, and, your urn seized, would have drawn you more strongly. You, boy, before all; he alone is more beautiful, to whom you shall be given.' So beginning, she lifts him lightly with her through the air and bids him sit in her swan-drawn chariot. And no delay: now the Latian mountains and the dwellings of old Evander, which the famous father of the world adorns with new mass and makes Germanicus equal to the highest stars. Then a nearer care for the goddess: what form is best for the hair, what dress fit to kindle the rosy face, what gold more worthy on the fingers, what on the neck. She knew the heavenly eyes of the leader, and herself had joined the torches and with full hand given the marriage: so she adorns his locks, so pours the Tyrian mantle, gives the rays and her own fire. The former delights gave way and the troops of servants; he carries the first cups to the great leader, and the heavy myrrh-vessels and crystal, with a whiter hand: a new grace grows for Bacchus. Boy dear to the gods above, chosen to taste beforehand the venerable nectar and so often to touch the mighty hand, which the Getae long to know, which the Persians and Armenians and Indians long to touch! O born under a favouring star, much has the gods' indulgence smiled on you! Once too, lest the first down should pluck your shining cheeks and the grace of your beautiful form should darken, the god himself left the lofty Pergamum of his fatherland across the seas. To no one was the power to soften the boy entrusted, but the Phoebean youth, with silent art, gently bids the body, shaken by no wound, pass from its sex; yet anxious with cares Cytherea is gnawed and fears the boy's pains. Not yet had the leader's fair clemency begun, from his rising, to keep males untouched; now to break the sex and change a man is a sin, and rejoicing nature sees only those whom she begot, nor by a sinister law do the slave-mothers fear to bear the burdens of their sons. You too now, a young man, had you been born later, your cheeks shaded and stronger in your grown limbs, would have sent no single gift, rejoicing, to the Phoebean threshold; but now your hair alone sails to your father's shores. This with much balsam the Paphian was saturating, this the new Grace combed with her threefold hand; to this the wounded hair of purple Nisus yields, and that which swelling Achilles kept for the Spercheus. To the boy himself, when first it was resolved to crop his snowy brow and bare his shining shoulders with the hand, there come the tender winged ones with the Paphian mother and free his locks and lay the Seric mantle from his breast; then with joined arrows they cut the hair and set it in gold and gems; his mother herself snatches the falling locks and Cytherea repeats the secret liquids. Then a boy from the throng, who chanced with upturned hands to have carried a noble mirror of jewelled gold, 'Let us give this too,' he says; 'no gift will be more welcome to your father's temples, and more powerful than the gold itself. Only fix your gaze and leave your face here forever.' So he speaks and unlocked the mirror, its image seized. But the excellent boy, stretching his palms to the stars, 'For these gifts, gentlest keeper of men, if I have deserved it, may you renew my lord with long youth and keep him for the world! This the stars with me, this the waters and lands ask: let him go, I pray, through the years of Ilium and Pylos alike, and rejoice in his own home and let the Tarpeian temples grow old with him.' So he speaks, and Pergamum marvels at the moved altars.

5. Eclogue to his Wife Why so sad, tell me, why through the shared nights, wife, anxious and sleepless, do you draw out sighs of care? I do not fear that your faith is broken or that in that heart is another love; against you no arrows are allowed to go —let the Rhamnusian hear it with hostile face—it is not allowed, and even if I myself, snatched from my native shore, through wars, through seas for four full lustres, should wander, you would put a thousand suitors to flight, untouched, not feigning to unweave the cut threads, but openly, without deceit, you would have refused the bridal chamber, armed. Yet tell me, whence this lofty brow and clouded face? Is it because, weary, I divine that I shall return to my Euboean home and lay my old age to rest in my native land? Why is this sad to you? Surely no wantonness is in your heart, nor do the swift battles of the Circus soothe you, nor does the crowd of the clamorous theatre enter your senses; but honesty and shaded quiet and joys never base. But to what waves do I snatch you as my comrade? And yet, even if I were going to dwell beside the cold Bears, or above the darkening shoals of Hesperian Thule, or to the impenetrable head of the sevenfold Nile, you would urge my ways. For yours—surely with kindly lot Venus keeps you joined to me in my flowering years and into old age—yours, who pierced me with my first wound untouched by the bridal chamber and still wandering in my youth, your reins, gladly and teachably I received, and the bridle once set in I shall never change but ever press; you, when I bore the Alban gifts in my bright hair and was holily clad in Caesar's gold, embracing me to your heart, with garlands gave panting kisses to mine; you, when the Capitol denied my lyre, grieved with me, conquered, over savage and ungrateful Jove; you snatch with wakeful ear my songs running forward at their first sounds, and whole nights in their murmur; you alone, the witness of my long labour, and as my Thebaid grew with your years, such as I lately saw you, when I was snatched near the Stygian shades, when I was hearing the Lethean streams close at hand, and held my eyes already falling in death; surely Lachesis, the times of my exhausted fate now spent, pitying you alone, gave them back, and the powerful gods above feared your envy. After all this, do you, my comrade, delay to go on the near journey now and to the longed-for bays? Alas, where is the known faith, tested through so many uses, by which you match the old heroines of Latium and Greece? To the Ilian halls Penelope would have gone, rejoicing— for why should she let her lovers keep her?—had Ulysses suffered it; Aegiale complained, Meliboea complained, of being left, and she whom—how savage they were!—her beatings made a maenad. No less than these are you. To know one faith and to give your life to your husbands—so surely you still seek the ashes and the former shade, so, embracing the obsequies of your tuneful husband, you repeated the great beatings in your breast, now mine. Nor is your devotion other, nor your care for your daughter; so too as a mother you love, so never from your heart does your daughter depart, and fixed in your soul's inmost shrines you hold her night and day. Not so does the Trachinian Alcyone circle her nests, not so does Philomela her spring dwellings, embracing, and pour her soul into her young. Now she holds you, because in a widowed bed alone she now wears away the barren leisure of her lovely youth. But they will come, the weddings will come with full torches. So surely she deserves by the gifts of beauty and mind; whether, embracing the lyre, she seeks it, or with her father's voice sounds what must be learned by the Muses and shapes my songs, or whether she parts her white arms in soft motion: her honesty conquers her genius, her modesty her art. Will not the light boys, will not you, Cytherea, be ashamed that this beauty lies idle? Nor is Rome alone fertile to reconcile the wedded couches and kindle the festive torches: in our land too sons-in-law shall be given. Not so far did the Vesuvian peak and the fiery storm of the dread mountain drain the trembling cities of their citizens: they stand and flourish with peoples; here, founded under Phoebus's auspices, the houses of Dicarchus, and the harbour and shores hospitable to the world; but here the tracts that imitate great Rome, the walls that Capys filled with the Teucrians he brought, ours too, and not rare with its own slender colonists, Parthenope, to whom Apollo himself showed the gentle soil across the seas with a Dionaean dove. These seats I labour to bring you to—for neither is barbarous Thrace nor Libya my native soil—, seats which soft winter and cool summer temper, which the unwarlike sea washes with sluggish waves, where there is secure peace in the places, and the leisure of an idle life, and quiet never disturbed, and slumbers fully slept. No fury in the forum, nor laws drawn for quarrels: the only law for men is the law of character, and justice without rods. Why now should I tell of the magnificent sights and the adornments of the places, the temples and the spaces set off by countless columns, and the twin mass of the open and roofed theatre, and the five-yearly games next to the Capitoline rites, why should I praise the shore and the freedom of Menander, which Roman dignity and Greek licence mingle? Nor are there wanting various delights round about life: whether the most coaxing shores, Baiae with their steam, or to visit the inspired roofs of the prophetic Sibyl be sweet, and the ridge memorable for the Ilian oar, or whether the dripping vineyards of Bacchic Gaurus and the homes of the Teleboae please you, where for trembling sailors the Pharos lifts its sweet lights, rival of the night-wandering moon, and the dear Surrentine ridges not poor in soft Lyaeus, which my own dweller, Pollius, before all others enriches, and the healing lakes of Aenaria and Stabiae reborn: shall I recount to you a thousand loves of our land? But enough; this, wife, it is enough to have said: it created me for you, it bound me as your comrade for the long years. Is not this land worthy to be seen as the mother and nurse of us both? But I am ungrateful, who add more and doubt your character: you will come, dearest wife, and will even come before me; without me Tiber the lord of waters and the roofs of arms-bearing Quirinus shall seem mean to you.