Book 4

pr. Statius to his friend Marcellus, greeting. I have found a book, dearest Marcellus, to dedicate to your devotion. For my part I think no little work of mine ought to begin otherwise than by invoking the godhead of our greatest emperor: but this book has three . . . than the fourth, which belongs to your honour. In the first I paid homage to the seventeenth consulship of our Germanicus; in the second I gave thanks, honoured by being his guest at that most sacred banquet; in the third I marvelled at the Domitian Way, by which he removed the heaviest obstacle of the sands. By its gift you too will receive my letter the sooner, the letter I write to you in this book from Naples. Next comes the lyric poem to Septimius Severus, a young man, as you know, among the most distinguished of the second rank, your friend and fellow-pupil, but dear to me most closely even apart from this claim. As for the Hercules Epitrapezios of our Vindex, I can charge it to your account as the second tribute owed to me and to these studies themselves. That I esteem Vibius Maximus for his rank and his eloquence I had testified well enough in the letter I published to him about the publication of my Thebaid; but now too I beg him to return the sooner from Dalmatia. Joined to these is an eclogue to my fellow-townsman Julius Menecrates, a splendid young man and the son-in-law of my friend Pollius, whom I congratulate on having honoured our Naples with the number of his children. To Plotius Grypus, a young man of higher standing, I shall render a worthier little work, but in the meantime I have inserted into this volume the hendecasyllables over which we laughed together at the Saturnalia. Why then more in the fourth book of Silvae than in the earlier ones? So that those who have found fault—as I hear—because I published this kind of writing may not think they have achieved anything. First, it is useless to dissuade from a thing already done; next, I had already given many of these poems to my lord Caesar—and how much more is that than publishing? And is one not permitted to amuse oneself in jest? In private, he says. But we watch sham fights too, and the sport of fencing admits spectators. Lastly: whoever reads anything of mine against his will at once declares himself my enemy. So why should I defer to his judgement? In sum, it is surely I who am being put on trial; let him hold his peace and rejoice. This book, however, you, Marcellus, will defend; and if it seems good, so far; if not, I shall be reproached. Farewell.

1. The Seventeenth Consulship of the Emperor Augustus Germanicus The purple comes, glad, to twice eight achievements,

and Germanicus opens a year made glorious by Caesar,

and rises with the new sun, among the great stars

shining more brightly himself, greater than the first dawn.

Let the Latian laws exult, rejoice, you curule chairs,

and let Rome, the prouder for it, beat the upper air

with her sevenfold ridge. More than all other heights

Evander's hill rejoices: the new fasces have entered the Palatine,

and the rest brought by a twelfth honour, the prayers granted,

the senate-house is glad to have conquered Caesar's modesty.

Janus himself too, the greatest restorer of measureless time,

lifts his face and from each threshold gives thanks,

he whom you bade, bound with Peace beside him,

compose all wars and swear allegiance to the laws

of the new Forum; behold, he raises his upturned hands

on this side and on that, and with his twin mouth speaks:

'Hail, great parent of the world, who prepare with me

to renew the ages: such your Rome desires always

to behold you in my month; thus it is fitting that the seasons

be born, the years begin; grant to the calendar joys

unbroken; let your shoulders be wrapped in folds of much purple

and the bordered robe sped from the hands of your own Minerva.

Do you see how a new splendour fills the temples, a higher fire

burns on the altars, and the very stars of my winter grow warm for you?

In your character too the squadrons and the tribes rejoice,

and the purple-clad fathers, and every honour

draws its light from the consul? What such, I pray, had the year before?

Come, tell me, mighty Rome, and with me, long Antiquity,

count over the calendars; recall no trivial precedents,

but only those that my Caesar would deign to surpass.

Augustus bore the fasces thirteen times in the gliding years,

but he began to earn them late; you in your youth

have outstripped your forebears. And how much you refuse,

how much you forbid! Yet you will yield to the prayers of the senate

and often promise this day. Beyond this a longer

order awaits, and happy Rome will give you as many curule chairs

three and four times over; with me you will found another age,

and the altar of your aged parent will be renewed for you;

a thousand trophies you will win—only grant triumphs:

Bactra remains to be bridled with new tributes, Babylon remains;

not yet is the Indian laurel in the lap of Jove,

not yet do the Arabs and the Seres sue for terms, not yet has every

year its honour, and the ten months long for your name.'

So Janus spoke, and gladly withdrew within his closed gate;

then all the gods stood open and gave from the glad

sky their signs; and a long youth to you, great leader,

Jupiter granted, and promised you his own years.

2. A Thanksgiving to the Emperor Augustus Germanicus Domitian The royal banquets of Sidonian Dido one poet praises,

he who brought great Aeneas to the Laurentian fields;

another sets forth the feast of Alcinous in enduring song,

he who wore out Ulysses returning over the wide sea:

but I, to whom Caesar has given new joys of the sacred feast

now first, and to rise at the lord's table,

with what lyre shall I celebrate my prayers? what thanks shall I

be enough to render? Not if at once both Smyrna and Mantua

should twine fragrant laurels about my exalted brow

could I speak worthily; I seem to recline amid the very stars

with Jove, and from the hand of Trojan Ganymede to take

the wine of immortality! Barren were the years I let pass:

this is the first day of my life for me, this the threshold of being.

Is it you, ruler of the lands and great parent

of the conquered world, you, the hope of men, you, the care of the gods,

whom I behold as I lie here? Is it given to gaze upon that face

near at hand, amid the wines and the feast, and not to rise?

A roof august, immense, distinguished not by a hundred columns,

but by as many as could uphold the gods above

and the heavens, were Atlas released from his burden. The neighbouring

palace of the Thunderer stands amazed, and the powers rejoice

that you are set in a seat their equal; nor hurry to climb the great heaven;

so vast spreads the pile, so free the sweep of the spreading hall,

freer than the open field, embracing much of the covered

upper air, and only less than its lord: he fills

the household, and gladdens it with his mighty presence; there rivalling,

the African mountain and the gleaming Trojan, and much Syene,

and Chios, and the marble that vies with grey-green Doris,

and Luna, sufficient only for the bearing of columns.

The view stretches high above: weary eyes can scarcely

grasp the summits, and you would think it the panelled ceiling of golden heaven.

Here Caesar bade the lords of Romulus and the robed

ranks, a thousand at once, recline at his tables together,

Ceres herself, her robe girt up, and Bacchus labour

to suffice; thus happily flowed the heavenly course

of Triptolemus; thus beneath the vine-bearing shoot Lyaeus

shaded the bare hills and the sober fields.

But for me it was not the feast, nor the timbers of Moorish wood

leaning on Indian columns, nor the throngs of attendants in order,

but to gaze upon him alone, him alone, that my desire

had leisure—his face tranquil, with serene majesty

softening his rays and modestly lowering

the standards of his fortune; yet on his countenance there shone

an honour he sought to hide; such even a barbarian foe

could behold and own, and nations that knew him not.

Not otherwise does Gradivus recline in the cold valley

of Rhodope, his horses unyoked; thus Pollux lays down

his supple limbs, loosened from the Therapnaean wrestling-ground;

thus Euhan lies by the Ganges amid the howling Indians;

thus Alcides, weighed down, returning from his grim labours,

rejoiced to lean his side upon the outstretched lion-skin.

I speak of little things, and do not yet match your face, Germanicus:

such, when he revisits the bound of Ocean and the tables

of the Ethiopians, his face suffused with sacred nectar,

the lord of the gods bids the Muses sing their secret songs

and Phoebus praise the triumphs of Pallene.

May the gods—for the lesser souls, they say, are often heard—

grant you to pass the bounds of your country's age

twice and thrice over! May the powers be fixed for our wretched stars,

may you grant temples and dwell in our homes! Often may you open

the yearly thresholds, often salute Janus with a new lictor,

often renew the lustres of five years with garlanded ceremonies!

Since you have given me a happy feast and the sacred rites

of your table, such a day, after long time, has come

to me as that beneath the hills of Trojan Alba,

when, while you sang now of German lines of battle, now of the loud

combats of Dacia, your hand clothed me in Pallas's gold.

3. The Domitian Way What monstrous din of hard flint and heavy iron

has filled the rocky flank of the Appian Way

that lies near the sea?

Surely no Libyan hordes resound,

nor does a foreign general, restless in perjured war,

shake the Campanian fields;

nor does Nero break the shallows and, with mountains hewn down,

lead in the foul marshes;

but he who crowns the warlike thresholds of Janus

with just laws and with the Forum,

who restores to chaste Ceres the acres long denied

and the sober lands,

who forbids the strong sex to perish

and as censor keeps grown men

from fearing the penalty of a beautiful form,

who gives back to the Capitol its Thunderer

and sets Peace again in her own house,

who decrees for his father's race lights that shall

last for ever, and a Flavian heaven:

he, vexed at the people's sluggish roads

and the fields that hold back every journey,

cuts out the long detours and with a new

bedding makes firm the heavy sands,

glad to have brought the home of the Euboean Sibyl

and the gulfs of Gaurus and the steaming

Baiae near to the seven hills.

Here once the traveller, borne on a single axle,

swayed sluggishly with reeling sway,

and the grudging earth swallowed the wheels,

and the Latin folk in the middle of the plains

shuddered at the evils of a voyage;

nor were there nimble courses, but the silent ruts

slowed the impeded journey,

while the languid team, complaining of its too-heavy load,

crept beneath the high yoke-beam.

But now what wore out a whole solid day

has become a journey of scarce two hours;

not the stretched wings of birds through the stars,

nor you, ships, will go more swiftly.

Here was the first labour, to begin the furrows

and cut the boundaries and deeply

hollow out the earth with high heaping;

then to fill the dug trenches again with other matter

and prepare a bed upon the topmost ridge,

lest the ground sink, lest a treacherous footing

give an uncertain couch to the pressed stones;

then with kerbstones forced in on this side and that,

and frequent bolts, to bind the road together.

O how many hands labour at once together!

these cut the wood and strip the mountains,

these lift the rocks and beams with iron;

those bind the stones and weave the work

with baked dust and dirty tufa;

these drain the thirsty pools by hand

and drive the lesser streams far off.

These right hands could hollow out even Athos,

and could shut off the mournful sea of groaning Helle

with a bridge that does not float.

By these the little Inous Isthmus, did the gods not forbid the passage,

would have mingled the straits.

The shores grow hot, and the moving woods;

a long crash goes through the cities between,

and at once on this side and on that the broken echo

vine-bearing Massicus sends back to Gaurus;

quiet Cyme marvels at the sound,

and the Liternan marsh, and the sluggish Savo.

But Vulturnus, his tawny head and his dripping

hair entangled far with soft sedges,

lifts his face, and reclined upon the great

arch of Caesar's bridge

pours forth such words from his hoarse throat:

'Good founder of my fields,

who bound me, poured back into trackless valleys

and not knowing how to keep my banks,

with the laws of a straight channel,

and now I, that turbid and threatening one,

scarcely suffering doubtful boats before,

now bear a bridge and am crossed on foot;

I who was wont to snatch lands and whirl forests

away—it shames me!—have begun to be a river;

but I give thanks, and such servitude is worth so much,

that under you as leader, at your command, I yielded,

that you, the greatest arbiter and perpetual

victor of my bank, chose me;

and now you grace me with a blessed channel

and do not let me grow foul, and far off

wipe away the shame of the barren soil,

lest, dusty and heavy with mist,

the gulf of the Tyrrhenian deep should wash over me,

such as Cinyphian Bagrada, while the bank is silent,

creeps along between the Punic fields;

but let me be borne such that with shining course

I may challenge the calm sea and the neighbouring

Liris with my clear flood.'

So spoke the river, and at the same time he had raised

with his vast back the marble-paved expanse;

the gate and prosperous threshold of this road

is an arch, gleaming with the warlike trophies of the leader

and with all the metals of the Ligurians,

as great as that which crowns the clouds with rain.

There the roused traveller is turned aside,

there the Appian grieves to be left behind;

then the course is swifter and keener,

then the very onset delights the yoked teams;

as when, the rowers' arms being weary,

the first breezes flutter the sails,

so come, then, all you who beneath the first sky

honour the faith of the Roman parent,

travel down the sloping road, you nations,

come more swiftly, you laurels of the East.

Nothing stands against the eager, nothing delays:

he who leaves the Tiber at the first dawn

may sail the Lucrine at the first evening.

But near the lowest end of the new road,

where Apollo points to ancient Cumae,

I see one white with hair and fillets!

Are my eyes deceived? Or does the Sibyl

bring forth from the sacred caves her Chalcidian laurels?

Let us give way; lyre, now lay aside your songs:

a holier seer begins; we must be silent.

Behold! she turns her neck, and far through the new

spaces revels, and fills the road,

then thus speaks with maiden mouth:

'I was saying, he will come—wait, you fields

and river—he will come, with heaven favouring,

who will lift the foul grove and the rotting sands

with lofty bridges and a road.

Behold! here is the god; him Jupiter bids

rule the blessed lands in his stead;

than whom none worthier takes up these reins

since I as guide led prescient Aeneas,

eagerly seeking the future of Avernus,

into the groves, and he entered them and left them again.

He is good in peace, he is to be feared in arms,

better than Nature and more powerful.

If he held the flaming axles,

with generous clouds you would be drenched, India;

Libya would be flooded, Haemus would grow warm.

Hail, leader of men and parent of the gods,

godhead foreseen and stored up for me.

No longer unrolled from rotting scrolls

with the solemn prayer of the fifteen men

scan my words, but hear me singing

face to face, as you deserve.

I have seen what chain of deserving years

the bright sisters spin forth for you:

a great order of ages awaits you,

longer than your sons and your sons' grandsons.

You will pass your years in perpetual youth,

those peaceful years which Nestor is said to have reached,

which the old age of Tithonus counts,

and as many as I asked of the Delian god.

Already the snowy Bear has sworn to you;

now the East will give you great triumphs.

You will go where wandering Hercules and Euhan went,

beyond the stars and the flaming sun

and the source of the Nile and the snows of Atlas,

and blessed with every heaping of praises

you will mount, as warrior, and refuse the triumphal car;

until the Trojan fire and the reborn

Tarpeian father shall thunder in his renewed hall,

until this road, while you rule the earth,

shall grow older than the aged Appian.'

4. A Letter to Vitorius Marcellus Run, letter, not sluggish, through the Euboean fields,

setting out by this way, where the noble Appian rises

on its flank and the solid causeway presses the soft sands.

And when you have swiftly entered the towers of Romulus,

at once make for the right bank of the tawny Tiber,

where the Lydian shore shuts in the naval pool deep within

and the channel is fringed with suburban gardens;

there you will see Marcellus, distinguished in beauty and in spirit,

and you will know him, conspicuous by his lofty head.

To him first give the common people's customary greeting,

then remember to render these words shaped in verse:

'Now the flight of the watery spring loosens the lands

and the swift sky, and burns the heaven with the Icarian dog-star;

now the steep walls of crowded Rome grow thin;

sacred Praeneste shelters these men, the icy grove of Diana those,

Algidus either bristling or the Tusculan shade,

these seek the groves of Tibur and the cool of the Anio.

You too—what gentler region withdraws you

from the clamorous city? With what air do you cheat the summer suns?

And what of Gallus, before all others your chief care,

and our love too—doubtful whether to be approved for goodness

of character or of talent—does he take the summer on Latian shores,

or does he seek again the walls of metal-bearing Luna

and the Tyrrhenian houses? But if he keeps close to you,

then I am not now far from your conversation;

it is certain: from there the sound circles about my two ears.

But you, while the grim mane of the Cleonaean star

blazes, possessed by Hyperion too near, strip your breast

of cares and steal yourself away from constant toil.

The Parthian too covers his guilty quivers and unstrings his bow,

and the Elean charioteer soothes in the Alpheus

the horses driven by his labours; and our lyre

grows weary and is loosed: timely rest

stirs and feeds our strength; greater is virtue after leisure!

Such, when Briseis had been sung, did Achilles come

keener, and, laying down his quill, broke out against Hector.

You too will kindle the more for a little while of idleness

silently resumed, and renewed will leap into your wonted deeds.

Certainly now the Latian laws do not stir up quarrels,

and the slow year holds peace, and the returning harvests

have dismissed the Forum; nor now does the crowd of defendants

throng your porch, nor do querulous clients ask you to come out;

the spear that governs the court of a hundred judges is at rest,

the spear by which you already stand most renowned

in lofty fame, and your young eloquence outstrips your years.

Happy in your cares, you who care nothing for Heliconian

garlands nor the unwarlike laurels from Parnassus's height,

but your genius thrives, and girt up for great employments

your spirit bears whatever changes come: we comfort the leisure

of our life with song, and seek the windy joys of fame.

Behold, I myself, following sleep and the genial shore

where Parthenope the stranger hid herself in an Ausonian port,

strike the slender strings with idle thumb,

and sitting on the margin of Maro's temple

take up my spirit and sing in answer to the swelling strains of the great master:

but you, if Atropos shall grant the course of a long life

—and may she grant it, I pray, and so may the powers of the Latian leader prosper,

whom you have made it your zeal to worship, setting even the Thunderer second,

and who has woven into your office another duty

and bids you renew the spaces of the winding Latin Way!—

perhaps you will go to bridle the Ausonian cohorts,

or the peoples of the Rhine, or the shores of black Thule,

or it will be given you to guard the Hister and the dreaded

thresholds of the Caspian gate. For not yours alone is the virtue

of powerful eloquence: you have limbs fitted for wars

and arms that would slowly take up the heavy breastplate:

whether you should go on foot in the field, above the lines

a nodding crest will tower; or you will turn the sounding reins,

the rough horse will serve you. We, singing the deeds of others,

decline toward old age: you, beautiful in your own arms,

will yourself do deeds worth singing, and small Geta

you will furnish with great examples, whom even now his warlike

grandfather demands for warlike deeds, and grants him to know triumphs at home.

Rise, come, boy, take after the young man your father,

happy in your mother's lineage, in your father's virtue.

Now in her Tyrian lap fair Gloria gladly

rears you for herself, and rejoices to promise all the curule chairs.'

This I was sounding to you, Marcellus, from the Chalcidian

shores, where Vesuvius lifts its broken rage,

rolling fires that rival the flames of Trinacria.

A wonder hard to believe! Will future generations believe

that, when crops grow again, when this waste land grows green,

cities and peoples lie pressed below, and ancestral

fields have passed away by a like fate? Nor does the deadly

peak yet cease to threaten. Far from your Teate be that doom,

nor let this madness drive the Marrucinian mountains.

Now if perchance you ask what the beginnings of my Muse may be,

now, having measured the Sidonian labours, my Thebaid

has gathered its sails in the longed-for harbour

and on the ridges of Parnassus and the Heliconian wood

has given incense to the festal flames and the entrails of a virgin heifer,

and hung up my fillets on the vow-bearing tree.

Now another fillet binds my empty hair with a new knot:

Troy indeed and great Achilles I attempt,

but the Archer-father calls me elsewhere and shows me arms

greater, those of the Ausonian leader; impulse draws me there

already and long since, and fear draws me back: will my shoulders

stand beneath that mass, or will my neck be conquered by the great weight?

Tell me, Marcellus, shall I bear it? Or shall a ship

used to know smaller waves not yet be trusted to Ionian perils?

And now farewell, and forbid the honour of your vows for the bard

deeply to leave your heart; for the Tirynthian was not

the parent of kindly friendship: to you shall yield the glory of faithful

Theseus, and of him who dragged the mangled son of Priam

round the walls of Troy for solace, his comrade slain.

5. A Lyric Ode to Septimius Severus Blessed in the honours of a little farm,

where ancient Alba tends its Teucrian household gods,

I salute brave and eloquent Severus

with strings not customary.

Already the fierce winter to the Parrhasian Bears

has withdrawn, overwhelmed by lofty suns;

already sea and land shine bright

toward the Zephyrs, the North Wind broken.

Now with the spring's yearly leaves the tree

grows leafy-haired, now the birds' new

complaints and untried song,

which they fixed in the silent winter.

A frugal earth and a watchful hearth and a roof

grimy with much firelight console us,

and the wine drawn from the jar

in which but now Lyaeus had simmered.

A thousand wool-bearing flocks do not bleat,

no cow lows for her sweet mate,

and if ever to one man singing

the mute field cries back its lord alone.

But this land is dear to me, after my homeland, with my first

cares: here my songs the warrior queen,

the maiden of wars,

loved well, with Caesar's gold,

when you, the sweet peril of your comrade,

striving with all your heart, would lift him up,

as Castor trembled at every

uproar of the Bebrycian sand.

Did remote Leptis, in the trackless Syrtes,

create you? Soon she will bear Indian

harvests, and snatch the rare cinnamon

before the fragrant Sabaeans.

Who would not think that on every height of Romulus

sweet Septimius had crawled as a child?

Who would deny that at the fount of Juturna,

the breasts forsaken, he was nourished?

No wonder your virtue: at once you entered the harbours

of the Ausonians, ignorant of shallow Africa,

and adopted by the Tuscan

streams, as a boy you swam.

Hence, small among the children of the senate-house,

content with the light of the narrow purple,

you grew, but pursued immense labours

with patrician character.

No Punic speech, no Punic dress was yours,

no foreign mind: an Italian, an Italian!

There are in the City and the Roman squadrons

foster-sons who would do honour to Libya.

You have a cheerful voice in the roaring Forum,

but your eloquence is not for sale;

your sword rests in its sheath,

unless your friends bid you draw it.

But the country is dearer to you, and quiet, more often,

now in your father's seat and on Veientine

soil, now above the leafy

Hernican hills, now at ancient Cures.

Here you will set down more in voices and in measures

with loosened step, but mindful meanwhile

of me, redouble the lyre that lies hidden

modestly beneath your cave.

6. The Hercules Epitrapezios of Novius Vindex By chance, as I was easing my cares and lightening

my breast of Phoebus, wandering at leisure through the open Saepta

with the day now dying, the supper of kindly

Vindex carried me off; and this, having glided into the deep recesses of my mind,

remains unconsumed; for we did not drink in the mockeries of the belly,

nor feasts sought from the far ends of the sun,

nor wines vying with the perpetual calendar in age—

ah, wretched are they who delight to know how the bird of Phasis

differs from the wintry crane of Rhodope, which goose

bears the richer liver, why the Tuscan boar is nobler than the Umbrian,

on what seaweed the slippery shellfish may more softly recline:

ours was true love, and talk sought from the midst of Helicon,

and merry jests, that persuaded us to spend the wintry night

and to drive soft sleep from our eyes,

until from the Elysian seats the other Castor

looked forth, and Tithonia laughed at our tables of yesterday.

O good night, and would it had been joined to the Tirynthian moon!

night to be marked with the Erythraean stones of Thetis,

long to be remembered, and to have a lasting genius!

A thousand kinds of bronze and ancient ivory there

and waxen figures that seem to speak with their mimic bodies

I learned by heart. For who anywhere could rival with his eyes

Vindex, in recognizing the old strokes of the craftsmen

and giving the maker back to unsigned statues?

He will show you what bronzes much-vigilant skill wrought for learned Myron,

what marbles live by the chisel of toiling

Praxiteles, what ivory was smoothed by the Pisaean thumb,

what was bidden to breathe at Polyclitus's forges,

what line proclaims old Apelles from afar:

for these things, whenever he lays aside the lyre, are his

idleness; here love calls him away to the Aonian caves.

Among these the genius and guardian of the chaste table,

the son of Amphitryon, took my breast with much love

and did not sate my eyes with long looking:

so great the honour of the work, and the majesty enclosed

within narrow bounds! A god he is, a god! and gave himself

to be seen by you, Lysippus, both seeming small

and felt to be vast! and though within a wondrous foot's

measure he stands, yet it will please you to cry out,

if you carry your gaze over the limbs: 'This breast pressed down

the ravager of Nemea, these arms bore the deadly

club and broke the Argive oars.'

Ah! so great a deceit of form in so small a span!

What measure in the right hand, what experience in the cares

of the learned craftsman, at once to shape an ornament for the table

and to turn over vast colossi in his mind!

Such a thing neither could the Telchines have wrought in their Idaean caves,

nor stupid Brontes, nor the Lemnian who polishes the arms

of the gods, sporting with a scanty mass.

Nor is the image grim and unfitted to relaxed feasts,

but such as the house of frugal Molorchus admired,

or as the Tegean priestess saw in the groves of Alea;

such as he was, sent up to the stars from the Oetaean embers,

when, grim Juno now appeased, he gladly drank the nectar still:

so gentle is his face, as if rejoicing from the heart,

he urges the tables on; this hand holds the drooping

cup of his brother, but this hand remembers the club; the rough seat

he sustains, and the stone with its dressed Nemean covering.

Worthy fortune for the sacred work. The Pellaean

ruler kept the venerable godhead on his glad tables

and carried it as companion of his settings and his risings,

and gladly gave it offerings with the very hand

with which he had taken away and bestowed diadems and overturned

great cities; ever from this he sought spirit for tomorrow's wars,

to this the victor ever told his rich battle-lines,

whether he had dragged the chained Indians from Bromius

or shattered baffled Babylon with his great spear,

or had overwhelmed in war the lands of Pelops and the freedom

of the Pelasgians; and out of the great host of his praises

it is said that he excused only the triumphs over Thebes.

He too, when the Fates were breaking off his great deeds,

as he drained the deadly draught, already heavy

with the dark cloud of death, feared in the dear godhead

other looks, and the bronze sweating at his last feast.

Soon the wondrous ornament was possessed by the Nasamonian king;

and to the brave god there ever paid honours,

savage with his right hand and proud of his perjured sword,

Hannibal. But the god hated him, drenched with the blood of the Italian race

and carrying dread fires to the roofs of Romulus,

both when he set out his feasts and when he dedicated the gifts

of Lenaeus; the god went mourning, a comrade to his accursed camp,

chiefly when with sacrilegious torch he mingled the citadels

of innocent Saguntum, its very homes, and polluted its temples,

and loosed honourable furies upon the peoples.

Nor, after the death of the Sidonian leader, when a plebeian house

possessed the noble bronze, did it cease to adorn the banquets

of Sulla, accustomed ever to enter the houses of the illustrious,

and a sign happy in the lineage of its masters.

Now too, if it is the gods' care to know the ways

and hearts of men: no court, Tirynthian, encloses you,

nor royal honour, but the chaste mind of its lord,

ignorant of guilt, in whom is ancient faith and the perpetual

bond of friendship begun; he knows still, in his flower of life,

Vestinus, equal to his great forebears, whom night and day

he breathes, and lives in the embrace of the dear shade.

Here, then, you have glad peace, bravest of the gods,

Alcides, and you see no wars nor fierce battles,

but the lyre and the fillets and the laurels that love song.

Here in a solemn song he will tell you how great

you terrified the Trojan and Getic homes, how great the snowy

Stymphalus, how great Erymanthus on its watery ridges,

what you were to the master of the Iberian flock,

what to the Maeotian arbiter of the savage altar.

Here he will sing of the thresholds of death, pierced and despoiled by you,

and of the weeping girls of Libya and Scythia.

Neither the ruler of the Macedonians nor barbarian

Hannibal ever, nor the harsh voice of savage Sulla,

could celebrate you in these strains; surely you, the giver of the gift,

would not wish to be approved by other eyes, Lysippus.

7. A Lyric Ode to Vibius Maximus Now long sated with the broad field,

brave Erato, defer the heroic labours

and contract the vast work into smaller

circuits;

and you, ruler of the lyric band,

grant me a little of the new quill's rights,

if in Latin song I have hallowed

your Thebes, Pindar:

I attempt to make my song slender for Maximus;

now from the unshorn myrtle the garlands

must be taken, now a greater thirst, and a chaster

stream must be drunk.

When will the Dalmatian mountains send you back

to sweet Latium, where, Dis once seen,

the pale miner returns, the colour

of the gold he has dug out?

Behold, though I was born in a nearer land,

yet no pleasant harbour holds me,

nor idle Baiae, nor the trumpeter known

for the arms of Hector.

There is sluggishness in my Camenae without you,

the lord of Thymbra himself comes more slowly

than is his wont, and behold, my Achilles

sticks at the first turning-posts.

For with you as my faithful adviser our

Thebaid, much tortured by the file,

assays with bold string the joys

of Mantuan fame.

But I grant indulgence to your delay, because with kindly

offspring you have founded an empty household,

O happy day! behold, there comes to us

another Maximus!

Childlessness, to be fled with every effort,

which the hostile heir presses with his prayers,

demanding—shame on it, alas!—of his best

friend a kinsman's funeral.

Childlessness, entombed with no weeping:

the greedy survivor stands in the captured house,

hanging over the spoils of death and reckoning

even the funeral fire.

May the noble infant last long,

and along the road open to not many

grow into his father's ways, and challenge

his grandsire by his deeds!

You will recall to the little one your own swords,

which you bore to the Eastern Orontes,

commanding the standards of a bridled squadron

with Castor at your right;

how, following the swift thunderbolt

of unconquered Caesar, you gave the recoiling

Sarmatian the bitter law, to live

beneath a single sky.

But let the boy first learn your arts,

you who, having measured all the world's age,

give back the beginnings of brief Sallust

and the foster-child of Timavus.

8. A Congratulation to Julius Menecrates Open the doors of the gods and fill the garlanded temples

with Sabaean clouds and the breathing entrails of cattle,

Parthenope; behold, a third offspring now increases

the famous race of bright Menecrates. The noble throng of nobles

grows for you and consoles the losses of mad Vesuvius.

Nor let secret Naples alone surround the festal altars:

let the allied harbour too, and the land entered by levy,

the Dicaearchean shore, and the region dear to the dripping

god of Surrentum, gird its altars with garlands,

where lies the shore of his mother's grandsire, whom the throng of grandsons

surrounds and strives to render in like features,

and let the great-uncle rejoice, distinguished by his Libyan spear,

and Polla, who thinks them her own children and lifts them up

in her kindly lap. Blessing on you, young man, who give such

lights to your deserving country; behold, with sweet tumult trembles

the house acclaimed by so many young masters; far off let black

Envy withdraw and turn its livid heart elsewhere:

to these, old age and the glory of long virtue, and white

Atropos and your father Apollo with his laurel have promised.

Therefore, that the most august father of the Ausonian city

had given you the glad right of threefold offspring,

was an omen. So often Lucina came and entered

your pious home, returning again; so fruitful, I pray,

let the house stand, and never changed in its sacred gifts.

Blessing on you, that your offspring too was more often increased with manly

strength, but a daughter too is to be rejoiced in by a young father

—virtue is fitter for these, but she will give grandchildren sooner—,

such as Helen, now worthy of her mother's wrestling-schools,

crawled, gleaming white, among her Amyclaean brothers;

or such as the face of heaven, when on a serene night

two stars have brought their radiance near the central moon.

But I complain, rarest of young men, with no easy complaints,

and I am even angry, so far as lovers are angry,

that such great joys it was fitting for me to learn from common

rumour? And while your third infant cried,

no letter came at once, a messenger in great haste,

to bid me heap the festal fires upon the altars

and wreathe my lyre and adorn my doorposts

and bring forth a heaven darkened with Alban smoke

and mark the day with song; but slow and idle

do I now at last sing my vows? Yours is the fault and yours

this shame; but to draw out my complaints further

is not permitted; behold, the glad throng of your children stands round

and defends their father—whom would you not conquer with this array?

Native gods, whom over the seas with great auguries

the Abantian fleet brought down to the Ausonian shore;

you, leader of the people in their long migration, Apollo,

whose bird, still seated on her left shoulder,

happy Eumelis, looking back, fondly adores;

and you, Attic Ceres, for whom with breath ever panting

we silent initiates shake the votive torch;

and you, sons of Tyndareus, whom no dread Lycurgan

Taygetus and shady Therapnae honoured more:

these with their people, native gods, preserve, my household gods;

let there be those who may aid with voice and wealth the city

worn out by age and frequent toils, and keep it in a green name.

To these let the father show gentle manners and the grandfather

a generous splendour, each a zeal for fair virtue,

since both their wealth and their birth permit this one with his first torch

to enter the patrician doors, these in their very boyhood,

if only the powers of unconquered Caesar be present,

favourable to the good, to knock at the threshold of the Romulean senate.

9. Playful Hendecasyllables to Plotius Grypus This is indeed a fine jest, that you have sent

me a little book, Grypus, in return for a little book,

yet it might seem witty,

if after this you send me back something more;

for if you persist in playing, Grypus,

you do not play—come, look, let us reckon it up!

My book, purple and new in its paper

and adorned with two bosses,

cost me, besides myself, ten asses:

you, a thing gnawed by moths and rotten with mould,

such as either drip with Libyan olives

or store Nilotic incense and pepper

or keep the mackerel of Byzantium,

not even containing your own speeches,

which as a young man you thundered in the threefold Forum

or before nearly a hundred judges, before

Germanicus made you arbiter of the following

year's corn-supply and set you in charge, far and wide,

of all the stations of the roads,

but the yawnings of old Brutus,

bought from the box of some wretched bookseller

for more or less a Gaian as,

you give. Was there so utter a lack

of caps stitched from cut cloaks,

or towels, or grimy napkins,

papers, Theban or Carian figs?

Nowhere a ball of plums and Syrian damsons

stored in a tumbling whirl?

No dry lamp-wicks, no folded

skins of onions? Not eggs even,

nor smooth spelt-grits, nor coarse meal?

Nowhere a moist house of curved snails

wandered from the Cinyphian fields?

No heavy bacon or weak ham?

No Lucanian sausage, no heavy Faliscan,

no salt or relish or cheese,

or cakes of green natron,

or raisin-wine from its own grapes recooked,

or new-must muddy with sweet dregs?

What it would not cost even to give scented tapers,

a little knife, or thin writing-tablets?

Were you not allowed, I ask, to give jarred grapes,

dishes turned on a Cuman wheel,

or one dinner-set—why do you shudder?—

of white cups and cooking-pots?

But, like a fair judge with steady balance,

you change nothing, but pay me back the same.

What if, when early in the morning, half-awake,

I have wished you the greeting brought to you,

you too should greet me in turn at home?

Or, when you have helped me with a rich feast,

you yourself should expect like dinners?

I am angry with you, Grypus, but you will fare well;

only do not send me back, with that charm

you are wont to use, even now these hendecasyllables.