Book 5

pr. Statius to his friend Abascantus, greeting.

Good examples should be honoured with every feeling, since they benefit the public. The devotion you show to your Priscilla is both a part of your character and can win you the goodwill of everyone, above all of a husband. For to love a living wife is a pleasure, a dead one a religious duty. Yet I have not rushed to this work as one of the crowd, nor merely as one performing a service. For Priscilla loved my wife, and by loving her made her more approved in my eyes; after this I should be ungrateful if I passed over your tears. Besides, I strive in my modest way always to deserve well of every quarter of the divine house. For he who worships the gods in good faith loves their priests too. But although I had long desired a closer enjoyment of your friendship, I would rather not yet have found the occasion.

1. A Funeral Lament for Priscilla If I had a hand skilled to mould wax into likenesses,

or to give life to ivory or gold with stamped figures,

from these, Priscilla, I would frame a welcome solace

for your husband; for by his rare devotion he deserves

that, your face marked with Apelles's colour

or born from the hand of Phidias, you should be restored to his grief.

So he strives to snatch your shade from the pyre, and wages

a vast contest with Death, and wearies the cares

of craftsmen, and seeks in every metal to love you.

But mortal is the honour that the nimble hand labours.

We, rarest wife of a praised young man,

attempt to give you with our enduring lyre

just rites, long-lived and not to suffer an obscure end. Only let kindly Apollo

and Caesar, who comes to me ever with Apollo joined,

give assent: no better tomb to build than this.

Late indeed is the medicine prepared for so great a grief,

when the second winged wheel of Phoebus turns the year;

but while the wound was fresh and the house still black

in the first hurt, what access was there then to the wretched ear

of the bereaved husband? Then to weep and rend the garments

and weary the flocks of slaves and outdo all wailing

and beat at the Fates and the unjust gods above

with raging complaints was the only solace. Though Orpheus himself,

attended by woods and rivers, were present to soothe

the lamentations, and all his aunts to attend the bard,

all the priesthood of Apollo and Bacchus to cover him:

no songs, no strings could avail to soften the gods

of pale Avernus, or the Furies, when their hair had heard the sound:

so great a grief reigned in the thunderstruck breast!

Now even to lamentation the scar, now smooth, flees back

while we sing, and the rain of a husband's tears

presses heavy on his eyes. Have these eyes still pious weeping?

A wonder hard to believe! Sooner is the mother of Sipylus said

to have drained her cheeks, sooner the mournful dews

of Tithonis fail, or the sated mother of Achilles weary

of dashing storms against his tomb.

Blessing on your spirit! That the god marks, who turns the reins

of the world and, nearer than Jove, orders human deeds,

and sees you mourning: behold the secrets of his chosen minister!

From this too he takes proofs, that you love a shade

and tend a funeral. This is the chastest ardour,

this love that deserves to be approved by its lord, the censor.

No wonder, if Concord with a long, unbroken chain

joined you, mingled with breast laid to breast,

though she indeed had endured marriage before and the torches

with another husband, yet she cherished you, embraced with all

her heart and soul, as if joined to you in virginity;

just as the elm loves the vine wedded to its coeval

branch, and mingles the grove, and prays for a rich

autumn, and rejoices crowned with the dear clusters.

They are praised for their forebears, or for the gift of fair form,

who have lacked the goods of character, and, powerful by a false

praise, lack the true: though both your lineage shone

and your fair beauty was much to be desired by husbands,

from you came a greater honour, to have known one bed,

to have stirred one fire beneath your secret bones,

a love that neither the Phrygian ravisher could have corrupted,

nor the suitors of Dulichium, nor he, the fraternal adulterer,

who polluted a chaste marriage with Mycenaean gold.

If you offered the wealth of Babylon, if the weight of Lydia's treasure

and the powerful riches of the Indians and the Seres and the Arabs,

she would rather, in chaste poverty undefiled,

die, and pay her life for fame.

Nor was her brow grimly stern, nor too great the harshness in her manners,

but simple and cheerful faith, and grace mingled

with modesty; and if doubtful danger had called to greater things,

she would gladly, for her husband, have met the armed

bands and the lightning fires and the perils of the midmost sea,

the better that adverse fortune did not prove

what was your care for the marriage-bed. How great her pallor for her husband!

But by a better way your prayers earned the gods

kindly for your husband. While night and day you wearied

the powers, while you fell suppliant at every altar

and adored the gentle genius of your present lord.

You were heard; and Fortune came with kindly step.

For she saw the diligent quiet of the pious young man,

his unbroken faith and his breast girt with cares,

his watchful senses and his sober heart, worthy

to unfold such great affairs. She saw it—he who knows all

his servants' matters, and surrounds every side with chosen ministers.

No wonder: he sees risings and settings, what the south wind,

what the wintry north wind does; and the counsels of the sword and the toga

he approves, and the very mind. Upon those shoulders, subdued,

he laid an immense burden and a weight scarce to be handled

—for no other care in the sacred house is more manifold—:

to send forth far into the wide world

the orders of the Romulean leader, and to handle with his hand

the strength and the measures of empire; what laurels come from the north,

what the wandering Euphrates, what the bank of the double-named Hister,

what the standards of the Rhine may bear; how far the farthest world

has yielded, and Thule, surrounded by its retreating, resounding flood—

for all the javelins lift glad foliage,

and no lance is marked with a fatal feather—

besides, if the lord distributes his trusty swords,

who is fit to bridle the maniples in their hundreds,

who should be sent among them as a knight, who to command a cohort,

whom a higher rank of bright tribune befits,

who is worthier to give the signal to a bridle-bearing squadron;

to foreknow also a thousand changes, whether the Nile

has drowned the fields, whether Libya has sweated with the rain-bringing south wind;

and were I to count all, no more does the winged Tegean herald

announce with his interpreting wand from the lofty stars,

nor the Junonian maiden who falls through the liquid air

and binds the rain in her painted arc,

nor she who, with winged course, carries your laurels, Germanicus,

Fame, outrunning the day and leaving the slow Arcadian

beneath the stars and the daughter of Thaumas in mid-heaven.

How the gods, Priscilla, and men beheld you on that

kindly day, when first your husband was set near such great

affairs! You almost outdid the joys

of the man himself, while with poured-out heart, prostrate before

the sacred feet of a lord so greatly deserving, you rolled

so great things. Not so on the Aonian summit does he rejoice

whom the Delian father set over the chasms of the secret cave,

nor he to whom Bacchus gave the venerable right of the first thyrsus

and the standards of the thunderstruck band.

Nor for this was her quiet or her goodness changed, nor did she swell

with prosperity: the same tenor of mind and modest manners

remain as her fortune grows; anxious, she nurses the cares

of her husband and at once urges and softens his labours.

She herself hands out the modest fare and sober cups,

and counsels to follow the lord's example; like the Apulian wife

of a thrifty farmer, or the Sabine woman scorched by the sun,

who sees, when the stars now look forth, that the time

of her wearied man is at hand, and quickly the tables and the couches

she sets, and waits for the sound of the returning plough.

I speak of little things: she would go with you, a companion through the icy north

and the Sarmatian winters and the Hister and the pale frosts

of the Rhine, with you, her spirit hardened through all the heats;

and, if the camp allowed, she would wish to bear the quiver,

would wish to guard her side with the Amazon's shield,

while she might see you in the dusty cloud of wars

near the thunderbolt of Caesar's horse, brandishing the divine

weapons and sprinkled with the sweat of the great spear.

Thus far the kindly lyre. Now is the time to lay aside your leaves,

Phoebus, and to doom your locks to the mournful cypress.

What god bound Fortune and Envy together

in a kinship never at peace? Who bade the unjust

goddesses war for ever? Will she mark no house

that this one does not at once eye with a grim glance

and overturn its joys with cruel hand?

The household flourished, glad and unshaken:

nothing sorrowful—for what, however faithless and fickle,

could be feared from Fortune, with Caesar so favourable?

The envious Fates found a way, and savage force

entered the pious home; so the vineyards are blasted

with the malignant south wind; so the tall harvest grows old

with too much rain; so the breeze, meeting the swift ship,

grudges it, and clouds over the favourable sails;

Priscilla's surpassing beauty is plucked by Fate;

as the tall pine, the leafy glory of the forests,

whether by Jove's evil fire or now loosed at the root,

fails and, despoiled, murmurs back to no breeze,

what avail goodness or chaste faith, what the honoured

powers of the gods? On every side the dark nets of death

hedged the wretched woman about; the sisters' hard threads

are stretched, and only the last part of the spun thread remains.

No throng of slaves, no laborious art of the healers

availed her ills; yet her companions everywhere with feigned

face counterfeit hope; she marks her weeping husband,

he now in vain begs the streams of infernal Lethe

undrunk, now anxious at every altar

weeps and seals the doors and with his breast wipes

the thresholds; now he calls the entreatable power of great

Caesar—alas, the harsh course of fate! Is there anything

he may not do? How great a delay could have been added

to mortal years, if you, father, held all

control! Mocked Death would groan in her blind pit

longer, and the empty Parcae would have laid by their threads.

And now her face falls, and over her eyes the last

wandering, and her ears grow dull, save when the husband's voice alone

is known; him alone, returned from the midst of death,

her mind beholds, him she clasps bravely with feeble arms,

her unmoving eyes turned toward him; not on the last sun

does she choose to sate her sight, but on her sweet husband.

Then dying she thus consoles her like-souled lover:

'Part of my soul that shall live on, to whom would that I could

leave the years that hard Atropos snatches from me:

spare, I pray, your tears; do not strike your breast

with cruel wailing, nor torment your wife's fleeing shade.

I leave the marriage-chamber indeed, yet with the order of death unbroken,

since I go first: I have lived out times better than long old age;

I saw you long ago shining in every flower,

I saw you draw nearer and nearer to the lofty right hand;

now over you the Fates have no power, nor any longer the gods above:

these things I carry with me. Do you press on gladly

on your begun path; love untiringly the sacred side

and the mighty genius; now, what you yourself desire to be bidden,

give to the Capitoline seat eternal gold,

that the sacred face of Caesar may shine with its hundredfold weight

and mark the love of his own worshipper;

so I shall see neither the Furies nor the worse

Tartarus, and shall be admitted happy to the Elysian shores.'

This she says, sinking, and embraces his joined limbs,

and not sad, transferred her clinging soul to her husband's lips,

and with her dear right hand pressed down her own eyes.

But the young man, his breast set aflame with great grief,

now fills the widowed home with savage cry,

now longs to loose the sword, now stretches to the high

places—his companions scarce hold him back—; now with mouth sealed

he lies on the lost one, and savage drives the sunken grief

deep in his heart; as the Odrysian bard, sluggish

at the sight of his wife, his quill laid down by the Strymon,

was stunned, and wept the sad pyre without a song,

he too would have broken off the spans of his upright life,

that you might not go uncompanioned to Tartarean chaos,

but the faithful mind of his leader forbids it, and the awe

of the sacred command and a greater love. Who with worthy song

could read through the funeral rites and the deadly gifts of the sad procession?

There all heaped in a long swarm

flows the spring of the Arabs and the Cilicians, and the flowers of Saba

and the harvest of the Indians soon to burn, and incense snatched

from Palestinian temples, with the Hebrew liquors

and the Corycian foliage and the Cinyrean buds; and on a high

couch she herself reclines, shaded with Seric

and Tyrian covering, but in all the procession the husband alone

is gazed upon; on him the eyes of great Rome are turned

as on one bearing young sons to their last pyres:

such grief is in his face, so much of night

his hair and cheeks have; her, loosed in a tranquil end

and happy, they call; for the husband they shed their tears.

There is a place before the city, where huge Appia

first arises, and where, by the Italian Almo, Cybele

lays down her grief and no longer remembers the Idaean streams;

here, veiled softly in Sidonian purple,

her peerless husband—for he could not endure the smoking pyres

and the cry of the funeral fire—laid you, Priscilla, on a blessed

couch. Nothing can the longer years

pluck away, nothing can the toils of time spoil,

once your limbs were dried: such wealth the venerable marble

breathes. Soon, changed into various

shapes, you are made new: in this bronze Ceres, in this bright Cnossian,

in that dome Maia, in this stone Venus, and not unchaste.

The powers, not disdaining, receive your comely

features; the slaves stand round and the throng accustomed

to your service; then duly couches and tables are prepared,

unfailing. This is a house, a house! Who would call it a sad

sepulchre? With the husband's devotion thus rightly seen

you would at once cry out: 'Here is, I recognize, the minister

of him who lately founded the shrine of an eternal race

and set his stars in another heaven.'

So, when a great ship from the Pharian shore

looses its new course, and now on either side the countless cables

and the broad arms of the sail-bearing mast it stretches forth

and has entered upon its ways, a narrow skiff goes by the same

sea, and claims for itself a part of the immense south wind.

Why now, choicest of young men, do you nurse immoderate weeping

in your heart, and long forbid your grief to depart?

Surely you do not fear that Priscilla may tremble at the Cerberean

barkings? He is silent to the pious! That a too-slow boatman

may delay and drive her from the shallows? He carries the deserving

at once, and gently sets the shades in his welcoming skiff.

Besides, if ever a shade praised by a pious husband

comes, Proserpina bids the glad torches go

and the old heroines, come forth from the sacred caves,

with purple light loosen the sad darkness,

and strew garlands and Elysian flowers before the soul;

so Priscilla enters the shades; there with suppliant hand

she begs the Fates for you, appeases the kings of grim Avernus

for you, that, the bounds of human life fulfilled,

you may leave the lands and a lord that calls you their healer, and yourself

leave the earth, a young man grown old! The sure sisters swear to her prayer.

2. Praises of Crispinus, Son of Vettius Bolanus My friend Crispinus seeks the Tyrrhenian countryside and the glades of Tages;

nor is the delay long, nor the land remote,

but my heart is plucked by a secret bite,

and my moist eyes drive forth swelling drops,

as if over the Aegean storms I followed the sails

of a departing friend, and watched his ship, weary now from the high

cliffs, and complained that my eyes were beaten by the long expanse of air.

What, if the bright beginnings of a first campaign

and the sweet auspice of the camp now called you,

distinguished boy, with how much weeping would my joys flow,

what embraces would I give! Are even sad things to be desired

by kindred? And twice eight orbits your life

has now circled. But your spirit is sturdier than your narrow years,

and bends beneath the burden, and your age does not contain its own mind;

no wonder: no inglorious line of forebears,

obscure in ancestors and lacking the light of old,

bore you from plebeian stock; not sprung from squadron-blood,

new to the trabea and with a poor stripe,

did you, a stranger, knock at the august seat and the inner shrine

of the Latian senate, but with the line of your own people

going before; as through the acres of the Romulean circus,

when, fair to see and noble in his ancestral titles,

a horse is awaited, from whose long pedigree

the lucky stud-farm has parents that have well deserved,

him all the applause spurs on, him the very dust

as he flies, and the curving turning-posts, rejoice to recognize:

so you, bright boy, the senate-house felt to be born for itself,

and the patrician moon enclosed your first steps.

Soon your shoulders, by custom, knew the Tyrian folds

and the powerful tunic; but indeed a great father was preparing

great examples for your titles, since he, entering his youth

at once, warlike, invaded the quivered Araxes

and Armenia, hard to teach to serve fierce Nero;

Corbulo wielded the chief command of rigid Mars,

but as companion of the war and sharer of its toils

he too, much admiring him in his distinguished arms,

took Bolanus; and to him, accustomed to entrust the harshest

of his cares and to share his fears: what time was friendly

to stratagems, what good times there were when war was unsheathed,

what faith was suspect, or what was the true flight of the fierce

Armenian. Bolanus to foreknow the road to be feared,

Bolanus to seek ridges fit for a safe camp,

Bolanus to measure the fields, to open the grudging

delays of torrents and woods, and to fill the great mind

of the awesome leader, and alone to suffice

for the huge commands. The barbarian land itself already knew the man;

he was the second peak of the wars, the helmet next to the chief,

as the Phrygians, astonished, though they saw the Nemean

arms and the Cleonaean bow driving the battle-lines,

while Alcides fought, yet feared Telamon too.

Learn, boy—for not from a stranger's counsel must you seek

the fair love of virtue: let kindred praise furnish your spirit;

to others let the Decii and the returning Camilli

be shown—do you learn your father, how great, bearing his orders,

he entered Thule, which denies itself to the western

waves and to wearied Hyperion, and how great he ruled,

allotted for a year, the thousand cities of mighty Asia,

his sway softened by the toga. Drink such things with attentive

ears; let your kinsmen vie to commend these to you,

let your companions and your father's old men repeat these precepts.

And now you prepare another journey, nor with idle step

do you mean to go; not yet have the marks of sturdy youth

crept upon your cheeks, and still the course of your life is unbroken,

nor is your father near; for, drained by unjust fates,

he died, leaving a twofold offspring without a guardian.

Nor at least from your tender arms did the boyish purple

slip off, and the white mantle clothe your shoulders,

whom no unbridled youth corrupted, nor the freedom

of the new toga, taken too soon! As a wood that knows not the sickle

lifts its foliage and breathes out its fruit in shade.

But for you Pierian cares beneath your tender breast,

and modesty, and learned manners that prescribe their own law to themselves;

then glad uprightness and a tranquil brow and a brightness

that holds the border of luxury, and devotion dispensed

through every measure; to yield to your coeval brother,

to admire your father and forgive your wretched mother,

the fortune of your house warned you. Could she have prepared

for you those abominable cups and deadly juices with her hand,

you who by your voice can turn aside the bites

of serpents and appease all stepmothers with your face?

It is right to harass the shades and rightly by curse

to take away the peace of the pyre; but you, best of boys, I see

turning your gaze and preparing such words:

'Spare, I pray, the ashes: that was fate and the wrath of the guilty

Parcae and the crime of a god, who sees mortal

hearts too late, nor at the first threshold checks

the attempts of crimes and minds preparing unspeakable things.

Let that day pass from time, nor let later

ages believe it! Let us at least be silent and suffer

the crimes of our own race to be covered, buried in deep

night. He has exacted the penalty, he whose care is for his own people,

by whose authorship Devotion returns and revisits the earth,

whom every wickedness fears; enough is this vengeance, to be wept by us;

would that it were permitted to entreat the savage

Furies and turn aside Cerberus from the timid shade

and give swiftly to her spirit the forgetful stream of the dead.'

Blessing on your spirit, young man! But the mother's crimes grow,

nor was it only devotion, but at once steep virtue

that you affected. Lately, when by chance a companion

grew pale at the false charge of an undeserving repute,

and the Forum was roused, and, girt with many a judge,

it rose, and Julia brandished her chaste thunderbolt:

you, though you had not before endured the Forum and the stern

laws, but lay hidden in the silent shade of study,

took it upon you to defend his fears and to ward off

the hostile darts, unarmed still and a recruit, for a trembling friend.

Never did Romulus or the Dardanian old man behold

such years warring in the gowned slaughter

of the midmost Forum. The fathers were amazed at such great attempts

and your endeavours, nor did the defendant himself fear you.

Equal vigour is in your limbs, and strength prompt for brave deeds

suffices your spirit and follows its vast commands.

I myself lately saw you on the Tiberine shore,

where the Tyrrhenian wave seethes in the Laurentine shallows,

driving your course and vexing the bare flanks

of a fierce horse with your heel, in face and right hand threatening:

—if there is any faith in words, I was amazed and thought you armed—:

so, fair on his Gaetulian horse and shaking his Trojan

weapons, the hunter Ascanius went into his stepmother's

fields, and burned for wretched Elissa for his father's sake;

not otherwise Troilus with lighter circle baffled

the threatening horses, or he whom from the high towers,

as he wheeled the Arcadians round the turning-posts in the Ogygian dust,

the Tyrian mothers watched with no grim eye.

Therefore come now—the leader's indulgence urges you

and your glad brother gives sure footprints to your prayers—

rise in spirit and conceive the brave cares of the camp.

Mars and the Attic maiden will show you battle-lines,

Castor to turn horses, Quirinus to shake arms on your shoulders,

he who allowed you, on a neck so tender,

to clash the cloud-born shields and the arms untouched by slaughter.

What lands, then, into what world of Caesar will you go?

Will you swim the northern rivers and the broken streams

of the Rhine, or will you sweat in the heat-bearing fields of Libya?

Or will you shake the ridges of Pannonia and the Sauromatae

who change their homes? Or will the sevenfold Hister hold you,

and Peuce, flowed round by her shady consort?

Or will you enter the Solyman ashes and the captured palm-groves,

the woods not happy for itself by the portents of Idume?

But if the land bridled for your great father

receives you, how the fierce Araxes will exult!

What glory will lift the Caledonian fields,

when the long-lived dweller of that savage land shall tell you:

'Here your father was wont to give laws, from this turf to address

his squadrons; far off these watch-towers and forts

—do you see?—he set, and girt these walls with a ditch;

these gifts, these weapons he dedicated to the warlike gods

—you still see the titles—; this breastplate he himself put on

at the call of arms, this he snatched from a British king.'

Just as, to Pyrrhus preparing victorious war against the Teucrians,

Phoenix told of Achilles, unknown to him.

Happy you, who, trusting in your green youth, Optatus,

will endure whatever roads and enter whatever rampart,

perhaps yourself at his side—so may the prince's powers attend—

girt, and a tireless companion of your like-souled friend,

as Pylades was after the pious custom, as the son of Menoetius

waged the Dardanian wars. For this concord is yours,

this love; and may it last, I pray! From me a stronger age

now flees; hence with vows and prayers I will aid his spirit,

and my own! But if perchance I rouse my wonted laments

and the fathers of Romulus come to my songs,

you, Crispinus, will be wanting to me, and through every tier

my Achilles will look round for you, absent.

But you will come back better—the bards' omens do not run

in vain—. And he who now opens to you the eagles and the camp,

the same will grant you to pass through all the ranks and be girt

with the proud fasces and to sit on your fathers' curule chairs.

But who from the lofty hills of Trojan Alba,

whence that god, nearest, looks out upon the walls

of his Rome close by, enters swifter than Fame,

a messenger, and fills your home, Crispinus?

Surely I said: the bards' auguries do not run

in vain; behold! Caesar unbars to you the vast threshold of honours

and entrusts to you the duties of Ausonian iron.

Go, boy, and striving suffice for such great gifts,

happy, you who now swear beneath a great commander,

and to whom sacred Germanicus first hands the sword!

This is no less than if the Lord of War himself unfolded to you

the eagles, brave one, and drew over you the grim face

of the helmet. Go, eager, and learn to deserve greater things!

3. A Funeral Lament for His Father Give me yourself those evil powers and a song of lamentation

from the Elysian spring, and the strain of the left-hand

lyre, learned father. For it is not right that the Delian caves

be moved nor wonted Cirrha be stirred

without you. Whatever Phoebus of late in the Corycian shade,

whatever Euhan was showing from the Ismarian hills,

I have unlearned. The Parnassian fleeces have fled my locks,

and I have dreaded—a horror!—the deadly yew creep into the ivy

and the trembling laurel wither.

Surely I, who went to exalt the deeds of great-souled kings,

breathing high and matching Mars in song,

who has cast cold clouds over my barren heart with sluggish

decay, who, Apollo being sunk, over my condemned mind?

The goddesses stand round the thunderstruck bard, sounding nothing

sweet either with fingers or voice; their leader herself, propped with her head

on the silent lyre, as after Orpheus was snatched away

she stood beside you, Hebrus, beholding now the deaf

ranks of beasts and the unmoved groves, the song lifted away.

But you, whether, sent forth from the body, stretching to the heights

you review the gleaming tracts and the elements of things,

what god, whence fires, what path leads the sun,

what diminishes Phoebe, and what cause can restore

her when hidden, and unfold the measures of well-known Aratus,

or whether on the secret grass of the Lethaean field

near the assemblies of heroes and the blessed shades,

the Maeonian and Ascraean old men, no slower a shade

you dwell beside, and sound your verses in turn and mingle songs:

give voice, father, and genius to my great grief,

for me, thrice reading the heaven and thrice unweaving her face,

the Moon sees idle, and consoling sad cares with no

Heliconian art; since your fire glowed for me on those features

and I drank your ashes with weeping eyes,

honour is worthless to my studies; scarcely to these offices

do I first loose my spirit, and to drive decay from my silent

cares now even with sinking hand and with no dry eye

I begin, leaning on the tomb, where you softly rest

holding our acres, where after the death of Aeneas

starry Ascanius heaped upon the Latian mountains his Alba,

while he hated the fields rich with Phrygian blood

and the dotal kingdom of an ill-omened stepmother.

Here I—for the breath of Sicanian saffron does not breathe

more gently, nor if the rare Sabaeans had plucked for you their

cinnamon, nor the Arab his fragrant ears of spice—

you, to be heaped with funeral offerings, I bewail with Pierian

song; take, O take the groans and the wounds of your son

and his tears, such as few parents ever had.

And would that fortune were mine to give altars to your shade,

a work equal to temples, and to raise an airy pile,

beyond the rocks of the Cyclopes and the bold stones

of the Pyramids, and to fringe your tomb with a great grove!

There I would have surpassed the gifts of the Sicilian sepulchre

and the grove of Nemea and the rites of the mangled Pelops.

There the naked strength of Grecian men would not cleave

the air with the Oebalian discus, nor sweat of horses water

the fields, nor the hoof give a sound in the crumbling track;

but a simple chorus of Phoebus, and the leafy

prizes of bards I would duly bind for you, praised father.

Myself with streaming eyes, priest of the shades and the soul,

I would sing first the lament, from which neither Cerberus with all

his mouths nor the laws of Orpheus could turn you away.

And there, singing your manners and deeds,

perhaps fortune would not have ranked me below grand-voiced Homer,

and devotion would strive to match grim Maro.

Why should she more assail the gods above and the bronze threads

of the sisters, the bereaved mother who sits over the warm mound

of her son, or she who looks upon the fire of her young husband

and overcomes the hands that bar her and the throng that holds her,

leaping, ready to die, into the burning man?

Greater perhaps than these I may beat the gods above and Tartarus

with my envy: even to strangers let my funeral go,

pitiable to look upon. But neither now has Nature given herself

to my grieving, nor Devotion to just claim; for me at the first threshold

of fate and in green age, father, snatched as it were from life,

you go down to harsh Tartarus. For not more sparingly did the Marathonian maid

bewail Icarius, slain by the crime of savage rustics,

than the parent her Astyanax, falling from the Phrygian tower,

though that maid shut up her groans in a final

noose: but you, after the funeral of great

Hector, it shames her to have served a Haemonian husband.

Not those laments which, sure of fate, the swan

sends before itself by tuneful death, nor those which from the black rock

the Tyrrhenian birds threaten too sweetly to sailors,

will I bring to my father's pyre: not what with broken murmur

Philomela laments and bewails to her cruel sister:

too well known to a bard. Who has not in his lament named all

the boughs of the Heliades and the tearful buds

and the Phrygian stone, and her who dared songs against

Phoebus, and Pallas not glad of the faithless boxwood?

You let Devotion, forgetful of men, and Justice recalled

from heaven, and Eloquence with twin tongue lament,

and Pallas and the learned Heliconian band of Phoebus,

whose labour is to lead Aonian songs by the six-foot measure,

and those to whom the song on the Arcadian shell, by measures,

was the care of the lyre and its name, and those whom under all the world

steep Wisdom counts by its sevenfold fame,

who over the furies and the houses of kings and the stars

averse from heaven thundered in the terrifying tragic buskin,

and those whose joy it was to make slender their powers with wanton Thalia,

or sweetly to truncate the heroic measures by their step.

For having embraced all in his mind, and master of all

where the broad power of speech lies open, whether it pleased him to bind

his beginnings in Aonian measures, or in loosened speech

to scatter them and match the storm-clouds with unbridled utterance.

Lift up your half-ruined face suddenly from the dust,

Parthenope, and set your hair, buried by the breathing mountain,

over the tombs and the funeral of your great foster-child,

than whom nothing more excellent did the Munychian citadel,

nor learned Cyrene nor spirited Sparta create.

If you lay devoid of lineage and obscure in fame,

holding nothing of your race, by him alone you would prove yourself

Greek and drawn from your ancestors' Euboean blood.

He so often furnished the seasons for your garlands,

when in praised verse he sang the appointed lustres,

surpassing the lips of the Pylian old man and the lips of the king

of Dulichium, his hair bound beneath both wreaths.

Not for you a deformed origin of obscure blood,

nor a race without light (although the fortune of his parents

was straiter than its outlay): for in rich fashion

Infancy chose to lay aside for you your purple robes

given for the honour of your stock, and the noble gold of your breast.

At once, when you were born, the Aonian sisters smiled

propitious, and Apollo, already then kindly to me,

dipped the boy's lyre and his lips in the sacred stream.

Nor is your country's glory single, and your natal origin

hangs on the doubtful contest of two lands.

Greek Hyele, adopted among the Latian colonists, reports you

of her race, where the heavy steersman fell from the ship

and the wretch awoke in the midst of the waves;

but greater from there, by the long order of his life, Parthenope

proves him her own . . . Homer too other cities by other birthplaces

tear apart, and all claim him; he is not true to all,

a monstrous glory of the false nourishes the vanquished.

And there, while you brought forth years and a healthy life,

at once you are swept to the contests of your country's festival,

scarcely to be filled by men, hasty for praise and bold

of talent. The people of Euboea were amazed at your earliest songs,

and parents pointed you out to their sons.

Thence frequent in the contest, and your voice inglorious

at no sacred game: not so often did green Therapnae applaud

Castor as victor in the course, nor his brother with the cestus.

But if it was easy to conquer at home: what to earn the Achaean

prizes, now with Phoebus's branches, now with the grass of Lerna,

now with temples protected by the Athamantean pine,

when, though so often wearied, yet nowhere did far-wandering Victory

bear off your leaves or touch another's locks?

Hence the vows of the fathers were entrusted to you, and the noble youth

ruled by your guidance; to learn the manners and deeds of the men

of old, what was the fall of Troy, how slow Ulysses returned,

how great Homer ran over horses and the battles of men in verse,

and how greatly the Ascraean and the Sicilian old man enriched

the pious countrymen; by what law the curved voice of the Pindaric lyre

runs back, and Ibycus, the suppliant of birds,

and Alcman sung at stern Amyclae,

and fierce Stesichorus, and Sappho rash to have entered

the manly leaps, unafraid of the dread Leucadian rock,

and whatever others the lyre deemed worthy. You, skilled to unfold

the songs of the son of Battus and the hiding-places of Lycophron's art,

and intricate Sophron and the secrets of slender Corinna.

But why do I speak of small things? You, accustomed to bear an equal

yoke with Homer, and to match the six feet with loosened

verses, and never to be left behind by a shorter step,

what wonder, if, leaving their homeland, they sought you,

those whom the Lucanian field, those whom the acres of rigid Daunus,

those whom the house wept by Venus and the land neglected

of Alcides, or those whom from the Surrentine height

the maiden, watcher of the Tyrrhenian deep, sends,

those whom, by a nearer bay, the hill marked by trumpet and oar,

and Cyme, of old the hostess of an Ausonian home,

and those whom the Dicaearchean harbours and the Baian

shores send, where deep amid the waters the fire,

mingled, pants, and the hidden conflagrations guard the homes?

So to the Avernal rocks and the dark caves

of the Sibyl the nations came from everywhere to ask,

and she sang the threats of the gods and the deeds of the Parcae,

a seer not vain, though Phoebus was deceived.

Soon you instruct the Romulean stock and the lords to be,

and persist in leading them in the footsteps of their fathers.

Under you the Dardanian explorer of the hidden fire,

who conceals the inner shrine of the Diomedean theft,

grew, and thence the boy learned the sacred rites; you, as approver of arms,

showed them to the Salii, and the prophetic sky to sure

augurs; to whom it was right to unroll the Chalcidian song,

why the hair of the Phrygian flamen lies hidden, and your

scourges the girt Luperci greatly feared.

And now perhaps from that flock one to the nations

gives laws in the East, another curbs the Spaniards,

another shuts off the Achaemenian Persian by Zeugma,

these bridle the rich peoples of Asia, these the Pontic lands,

these mend the forums with peacemaking fasces, those

hold the camps in pious station: you are the source of their praise.

Not for you would Nestor have vied to mould youthful hearts,

nor Phoenix, the governor of an untamed pupil,

nor Chiron, who broke with another song the son of Aeacus,

willing to hear the keen trumpets and the clarions.

While you celebrate such things, suddenly civil Erinys

moved the torch from the Tarpeian mount and Phlegraean

battles; the Capitol gleams with sacrilegious brands,

and the Latian cohorts took up the furies of the Senones;

scarce was there respite from the flame, nor had that pyre of the gods

yet settled, when you, eager solace for the ruined temples,

and much swifter than the very torches,

in the assemblies with pious lips bewail the captive thunderbolts.

The lords of Latium marvel, and the avenger of the gods,

Caesar, and from the midst of the divine fire the father gives assent.

And now your mind was set to weep with pious song

the Vesuvian fires and to spend a groan on your country's losses,

when the father lifted the mountain, snatched from the lands, to the stars

and far flung it down upon the wretched cities.

Me too, knocking at the tuneful groves and the Boeotian valleys,

when I said I was descended from your stock, the goddesses

admitted; for not only the stars and seas

and lands, which custom owes to a parent, did you give me,

but this glory, whatever it is, of the lyre, and you first gave me

to speak no common thing and to hope for fame from the tomb.

How were you, whenever I soothed the Latian fathers

with my song, and you, a happy spectator, were present

at your gift! Alas, with what weeping was your joy confounded,

amid vows and pious fears and glad shame!

How that day was yours, how no greater was the glory mine!

So when the man who begot him watches the youth

in the Olympian arena, he himself strikes more, more in his deep heart

is he beaten; the tiers attend, but by the Achaeans

he is gazed at more, while again and again he buries his eyes in the dust thrown up

and prays, the crown seized, to expire.

Alas for me, that I bore only my country's leaves on my head

and the Ceres-gifts of the Chalcidian crown alone

with you as witness! How would the Dardanian field of Alba

scarcely have contained you, if through me you had borne the garlands

given by Caesar's hand! What strength would that day

have lent, how much could it have taken from your old age!

For that the oak mingled with olive did not press my brow,

and the hoped-for honour fled: how sweet for my parent

would the trackless heights of the Tarpeian be! With you as master,

my Thebaid was pressing on the beginnings of the bards of old;

you were to spur my songs, you to unfold the deeds

of heroes and the measures of war and the placings of regions

you showed me. My course wavers on an uncertain path

without you, and the sails of my bereaved ship grow dim.

Nor did you cherish me only with bounteous devotion:

such too in the marriage-chamber, one torch known to you,

one wedlock, one love. Surely I cannot now part my mother

from your cold tomb: she feels you and holds you,

she sees you, and salutes the tombs at sunrise and sunset,

as others with feigned devotion tend the Pharian griefs

and the Mygdonian, and bewail funerals not their own.

Why should I tell of your displayed manners, your kept dignity?

What devotion, what cheapness of gain, what care of modesty,

how great a love of right? And again, when it was sweet to relax,

what grace in your words, what no old age in your mind?

For these your deserts, fame and kindly praise

the judging care of the gods granted you, and a life sad with no

wound; you are snatched away, father, not lacking years,

not having too many, bearing thrice ten lustres of years

joined; but devotion and grief do not let me count, O you worthy

to pass the Pylian goals of age and equal the Teucrian

old men, O worthy to see me like yourself! But not for you was the gate

of death sad: for the causes were light, nor did an exit sluggish

with the corruption of old age send your limbs before to the waiting tomb,

but a dull torpor and a death that mimicked rest

unfolded you, and bore you under Tartarus in a false sleep.

What groans I then—the anxious band of companions saw,

your mother saw, and as an example rejoiced and recognized—

what laments I bore! Grant me pardon, shades,

it is right to have said it, father: you would have given me no more.

Happy is he who clasped his father with empty arms:

he would, though placed in the Elysian seat, snatch him away

and bear him again through the Danaan shades;

him, attempting, and forcing his living steps into Tartarus,

the long-lived seer of infernal Diana brought down;

so the cause, a lesser one, sent the Odrysian lyre

across sluggish Avernus; so Admetus on the Thessalian shores:

if one day brought back the Phylacean shade,

why should the lyre, father, entreat nothing, whether yours or mine,

among the shades? May it be right for me so to touch my father's face,

right to have joined hands, and let whatever law follow.

But you, kings of the shades and Ennaean Juno,

if I pray for things worthy of praise, take away the torches and the hair

of the Furies; let the harsh doorkeeper sound with no mouth,

let the averse valleys hide the Centaurs and the herds of Hydra

and the Scyllaean monsters, and let the last ferryman

invite the aged shade to his banks, the throng dispersed,

and gently set him among the central seaweed.

Go, pious shades and swarms of Grecian bards,

and sprinkle the illustrious soul with Lethaean garlands

and show the grove into which no Fury has burst,

in which is false daylight and air most like to heaven.

Thence yet may you come, by the better gate where horn

conquers the malignant ivory, and in the likeness of sleep show the visions

you were wont; as the gentle nymph dictated the sacred rites of Numa

and the worship to be observed, beneath the Arician cave,

as Scipio is believed by the Ausonians to have drawn full sleep

from Latian Jove, as Sulla not without Apollo.

4. Sleep By what crime have I deserved, gentlest youth of the gods,

or by what error, wretched, that I alone should lack

your gifts, Sleep? Every herd is silent, the birds and the beasts,

and the curved tree-tops feign weary slumbers,

nor have the fierce rivers the same sound; the shudder of the sea

dies down, and the seas, leaning on the lands, grow quiet.

Now the seventh returning moon looks back on my sick

eyes still standing open; as many times the Oetaean and Paphian

torches revisit me, and as often Tithonia passes by

my complaints and, pitying, sprinkles me with her cold whip.

Whence shall I find strength? Not if I had the thousand eyes

which sacred Argus kept only in alternating watch,

and never kept awake with his whole body.

But now, alas! if someone through the long night, holding

a girl's arms entwined, drives you off of his own will, Sleep,

from there come; nor do I bid you pour all your wings

over my eyes—let the happier throng pray for that—:

touch me with the very tip of your wand,

it is enough, or pass lightly over with hovering knee.

5. A Funeral Lament for His Boy Wretched me! For with no solemn words shall I

begin now, hateful to the vocal waves of Castalia

and grievous to Phoebus. What rites of yours, sisters,

Pierian, what altars have I defiled?

Tell me; after the punishment, let me confess what I have committed.

Have I set my footsteps in some forbidden grove?

Have I drunk from a forbidden fount? What fault, what error

so great do I expiate? Behold, with dying arms

clasping my entrails, the infant is torn away, and his soul;

not of my stock indeed, nor one to bear my name

and face; I was not his father—but see my tears

and livid cheeks, and believe in the lamentations of the bereaved:

I am bereaved. Hither let fathers and mothers with open breast

assemble; and bring his ashes to your eyes, and your crimes,

if any woman has, beneath full breasts, to a funeral

borne her own children, herself with sinking step, and let her wet

breast fall and quench with milk the burning embers.

Whoever has plunged into the ashes a youth marked

with the flower of tender youth, and has seen the cruel flames

creep with the first down over him as he lies,

let him be present and grow weary with me in alternate cry:

he will be overcome by tears, and you, Nature, will be ashamed.

So great is my fierceness, so great the madness of my grief,

that even this, when I strive, the thirtieth daylight passed,

leaning on the tomb, and turn lamentation into songs,

and labour at discordant measures and sobbing words:

the lyre's force, and a wrath impatient of silence,

begins. But neither the wonted laurel on my head

nor the filleted honour on my brow; behold, the yew

withers in my hair, and the bewept cypress shuts out

the glad ivy with its branches; nor with ivory thumb

do I strike the strings, but with wandering fingers, frantic,

I tear the uncertain lyre. It pleases, alas, it pleases to pour out

an unpraised song and rudely to lay bare my wretched grief.

Have I deserved this? So in song and garb accursed

let the gods above behold me? Let them be ashamed of Thebes and the new

Aeacid? Will nothing peaceful now flow from my lips?

I who—how often!—could fondly soften the wounds of mothers

and fathers, who could soothe widowed griefs,

I, the gentle consoler of mourners, heard

at bitter tombs and by the descending shades,

I fail, and seek for helping hands and remedies

for my wounds, but the worst, my own. Now is the time, friends,

whose streaming eyes and wounded breasts I have wiped:

render aid, pay your cruel thanks.

Doubtless, when I reproached your funerals with sad measures:

'you who grieve for another's losses, lay by,

unhappy man, your tears and keep your sorrowful songs.'

It was true: my strength is spent and no abundance of speech

is mine, and my mind has found nothing worthy of so great a thunderbolt:

every voice is inferior and all words are mean.

Pardon, boy: you overwhelm me with sad gloom.

Ah! hard would he be who, the wound of his dear wife seen,

found something for Thracian Orpheus to sing sweet

to himself, who, if Apollo, embracing the pyre of Linus,

was not silent—am I perhaps called too much and too greedy of grief,

and to have exceeded in tears a just modesty?

But who reproaches my groans and laments?

O too happy, too cruel, and free

of your sway, Fortune, is he who dares to dictate a law

to weeping or to assess the bounds of grieving!

It urges, alas, the wailing: sooner might you stay rivers

fleeing their banks, or stand against swift fires,

than forbid the wretched to mourn. Yet let that stern one,

whoever he is, learn the wounds of my cause.

I did not love a chattering darling bought from a Pharian ship,

a child taught the railleries of his own Nile,

too forward of tongue and in his wit; he was mine, mine.

I saw him falling to earth, and anointed with the natal song

I cherished him, and as he begged with trembling cries

new airs, I inserted him into life. What more do parents give?

Indeed I gave you another birth and freedom under your very

breasts, little one, when you laughed at our gifts,

ungrateful as yet—and he made haste,

but rightly he made haste, my love, lest your freedom,

so small, should lose a single day. Shall I not then, grim

with envy, beat the gods above and unjust Tartarus?

Shall I not bewail you, dear boy? You whose safety I desired

more than sons; whom, begotten, at his very first dawn

I clasped and fixed to myself; to whom I showed words

and sounds, and unbound his hidden complaints and wounds,

and as he crawled on the ground, stooping to our kisses,

I raised him up, and in my caressing lap, again and again

as they sank, lulled his eyelids to rest and summoned sweet sleep.

His first voice held my name, and his play

was my laughter, and from my face came his joys.

Afterward. A Fragment of Statius's On the German War lights: the gentle prudence of Nestorian Crispus,

and Fabius Veiento—the purple marks both as powerful,

thrice they filled the recording calendars with their name—

and, almost neighbour to Caesar's court, Acilius.