Book 2

Let whoever is present keep holy silence: we purify the crops and the fields, as the rite stands handed down from our forefather of old. Bacchus, come, and let the sweet grape hang from your horns, and Ceres, wreathe your temples with corn-ears. On this sacred day let the earth rest, let the ploughman rest, and the heavy work cease, the ploughshare hung up. Loose the straps from the yokes: now at the full mangers the oxen ought to stand, their heads garlanded. Let all things be devoted to the god: let no woman dare to lay her wool-working hand to the day's spinning. You too I bid keep far off, let him withdraw from the altars to whom Venus brought her joys in the night just past. Pure things please the gods above: come in clean garments and with clean hands take up the water of the spring. See how the sacred lamb goes to the gleaming altars, and the white throng behind, their hair bound with olive. Gods of my fathers, we cleanse the fields, we cleanse the husbandmen: drive you the evils from our boundaries, let the crop not cheat the harvest with deceitful blades, let the slower lamb not fear the swift wolves. Then the sleek countryman, trusting in his full fields, will heap great logs upon the blazing hearth, and the crowd of home-born slaves, the good sign of a prosperous farmer, will play and build little huts of twigs before the fire. I pray for what is to come: do you see how, with favourable entrails, the prophetic fibre signals the gods are kindly? Now bring out for me the smoky Falernian of an old consul's year, and loose the bindings of a Chian jar. Let wine grace the day: it is no shame to grow soaked on a festal day and to bear one's wandering feet badly. But let each man, over his cups, drink the health of Messalla, and at every word let the name of the absent one ring out. Messalla, renowned for triumphs over the Aquitanian people, and a victor of great glory to your unshorn forefathers, come hither and breathe favour upon me, while in my song thanks are rendered to the gods of the countryside. I sing of the fields and the gods of the fields. With these for teachers life ceased to drive off hunger with the acorn of the oak: they first taught how to cover with green foliage a little house, its beams set together; they too, men say, were the first to teach the bulls servitude, and to set the wheel beneath the wagon. Then savage ways departed, then the fruit-tree was planted, then the fertile garden drank the watering streams, then the golden grape gave up its juices, pressed by the feet, and sober water was mixed with untroubled wine. The fields bear harvests, when with the heat of the burning star the yearly earth lays down her yellow tresses. In the field the light bee, in springtime, brings flowers to the hive, that, busy, it may fill the combs with sweet honey. The countryman, first sated by the constant plough, sang rustic words to a steady measure and, full-fed, first piped a song upon the dry reed, to recite before the adorned gods, the countryman first, stained with reddening vermilion, Bacchus, led the dances with as-yet-untried art. To him a memorable gift, given from the full sheepfold, a he-goat, leader of the flock, increased his scanty wealth. In the field a boy first made a garland from the spring flowers and set it upon the ancient Lares. In the field too the gleaming ewe bears the soft fleece on her back, to give tender girls their task. Hence women's labour, hence the spinning and the distaff, the spindle that turns the work with the thumb pressed to it: and some weaver, busy at unwearying Minerva's craft, sings, and the loom rings from the beaten warp. Cupid himself, too, is said to have been born among the fields, among the herds, among the untamed mares. There he first practised himself with an untrained bow: ah me, how skilled now are the hands he has! Nor does he aim, as before, at cattle: he longs to pierce girls and to subdue bold men. He has stripped the young man of his wealth, he has bidden the old man speak shameful words at the door of an angry mistress: under his guidance the girl, stealing alone in the dark past the guards who lie there, comes to her young lover, and feels out the path with her feet, suspended in fear, exploring the unseen ways before her with her hand. Ah, wretched are they whom this god harshly oppresses! but happy is he on whom gentle Love softly breathes. Holy one, come to our festive feasts, but lay aside your arrows and put far from here, I pray, your burning torches. Sing you the renowned god, and call him with your voice for the flock: let each man call him aloud for the flock, in secret for himself. Or even aloud, each for himself: for the merry crowd makes its din, and the curved pipe with its Phrygian strain. Make sport: now Night yokes her horses, and the golden stars follow their mother's chariot in a wanton band, and behind comes silent Sleep, wrapped in dusky wings, and the black Dreams with their uncertain step.

Let us speak words of good omen: the Birthday comes to the altars: whoever is present, man and woman, keep favourable silence. Let pious incense burn upon the hearths, let those perfumes burn that the tender Arab sends from his rich land. Let the Genius himself be present, to see his own honours, let soft garlands adorn his holy hair. Let his temples drip with pure spikenard, let him be sated with cake and soaked with wine, and let him grant you, Cornutus, whatever you ask. Come now (why do you delay? he has granted it) ask. I prophesy you will pray for the faithful love of a wife: already, I think, the very gods have learned this by heart. Nor would you choose for yourself whatever fields, the whole world over, the brave countryman ploughs with his sturdy ox, nor whatever of jewels is born among the favoured Indians, where the wave of the Eastern sea grows red. The vows are answered: O may Love fly here on rustling wings and bring the golden bonds of wedlock, bonds to last forever, until slow old age brings on the wrinkles and dyes the hair grey. May this birthday come with happy omen and grant offspring, and may a fresh band of children play before your feet.

The country and the farmhouses hold my girl, Cornutus: iron-hearted, alas, is whoever stays in the city. Venus herself has now migrated into the broad fields, and Love learns the rustic words of the ploughman. O, when I might look upon my mistress, how bravely there would I turn the rich soil with the sturdy hoe and follow the curved plough in the farmer's way, while the barren oxen break up the fields for sowing! Nor would I complain that the sun scorched my slender limbs, or that the broken blister chafed my tender hands. Handsome Apollo too pastured the bulls of Admetus, and neither his lyre nor his unshorn hair availed him, nor could he heal his cares with health-giving herbs: love had overcome all that the healing art could do. The god himself was wont to drive the cows from the stalls . . . and to teach how to curdle the fresh milk with rennet, and how the milky liquid hardened with the mixture. Then the basket was woven of the light osier of the rush, and a wandering way for the whey was made through the meshes. O how often, while he carried a calf through the fields, men say his sister, meeting him, blushed! O how often, while he sang in the deep valley, the bulls dared to break his learned songs with their lowing! Often leaders sought oracles in time of anxious trouble, and the crowd came home from the temples unanswered: often Latona grieved to see in disorder the sacred hair that the stepmother herself had once admired. Whoever saw his unadorned head and his loosened locks would ask for the hair of Phoebus. Where now, Phoebus, is your Delos, where Delphic Pytho? Surely Love bids you dwell in a humble cottage. Happy were they of old, when, men say, the eternal gods were not ashamed to serve Venus openly. A byword he is now: but whoever has a girl for his care would rather be a byword than a god without love. But you, whoever you are, whom with cheerless brow Cupid commands that your camp should be in our house . . . the iron age praises not love but plunder: yet plunder has wrought many evils. Plunder girt the savage battle-lines with discordant arms: hence blood, hence slaughter and death came nearer. Plunder bade men double their perils on the wandering sea, when it gave warlike beaks to the unsteady ships. The plunderer longs to seize on measureless plains, that he may pasture many acres with countless sheep: one to whom foreign marble is a care, and through the city's uproar a thousand columns are carried on sturdy yokes, and a mole encloses the untamed sea, so that within the lazy fish may not heed the threats of winter at hand. But for me let Samian crockery draw out the merry feasts, and the smooth clay shaped on the Cuman wheel. Alas, alas, I see that girls rejoice in rich men: now let the plunder come, if Venus desires wealth: that my Nemesis may flow with luxury and walk through the city, conspicuous in my gifts. Let her wear the fine robes that a Coan woman has woven, and arranged with golden stripes: let her have dark attendants, whom the sun of India scorches and the fire stains as the horses are driven near: let Africa and Tyre vie to furnish her choice colours, the scarlet and the purple. I speak of what is known: he holds a kingdom himself, whom often the barbarous platform forced to bear his chalked feet. But for you, hard crop, who lead my Nemesis away from the city, may Earth render no seeds with any faith. And you, tender Bacchus, planter of the joyous grape, you too, Bacchus, leave the accursed vats. It is not allowed unpunished to hide lovely girls in the cheerless fields: your new wine is not worth so much, father. O perish the harvests, if only there be no girls in the country: let the acorn nourish, and water be drunk in the ancient way. The acorn nourished the men of old, and everywhere they always loved: what harm did it do to have no furrows sown? Then to those on whom Love breathed, gentle Venus openly offered her joys in the shady valley. There was no guard, no door to shut out the grieving lover: if it is right, I pray, that custom of old, return. . . . let them cover their rough bodies with shaggy clothing. Now if my girl is shut away, if rare is my chance to see her, alas the wretchedness, what good is it that the toga hangs loose? Lead me on: at my mistress's command I will furrow the fields: I do not refuse the chains and the lashes.

Here I see slavery and a mistress ready for me: now, that ancestral freedom of mine, farewell. But cheerless slavery is given, and I am held in chains, and Love never loosens the bonds for my misery, and whether I have earned something or sinned in nothing, he burns me. I burn, alas! Take away your torches, cruel girl. O that I might not be able to feel such pains, how much rather would I be a stone on the icy mountains, or stand a crag exposed to the raging winds, which the wave of the vast sea, wrecking ships, might beat upon! Now both the day is bitter and the shadow of night more bitter: for all the hours are steeped in cheerless gall. Neither elegies avail nor Apollo, author of song: she forever demands a price with her hollow hand. Go far off, Muses, if you are no help to a lover: I do not court you that wars may be sung, nor do I tell of the paths of the Sun, or how, when she has filled her orb, the Moon runs back, her horses turned about. I seek easy access to my mistress through songs: go far off, Muses, if those songs have no power. But I must get gifts by murder and crime, that I may not lie weeping before her closed house: or I will snatch the offerings hung up in the holy shrines: but Venus before all the rest must be wronged by me. She prompts the evil deed and gives me a rapacious mistress: let her feel my sacrilegious hands. O perish whoever gathers the green emeralds and stains the snowy sheep with Tyrian purple. This adds reasons for greed, and the Coan robe, and the bright shell from the Red Sea, to girls. These have made them wicked: hence the door has felt the key, and the dog has begun to be a guardian of the threshold. But if you bring a great price, the guard is overcome, the keys do not bar you, and the dog itself is silent. Alas, whatever god gave beauty to a greedy woman, what a blessing he brought, with so many evils! Hence weeping and quarrels resound, this is the very cause that Love now wanders, an infamous god. But you who shut out, for a price, the lovers you have conquered, may wind and fire snatch away the riches you have gathered: nay, may the young men gladly watch your house ablaze, nor let anyone diligently add water to the flame. Or if death should come to you, there will be none to mourn, none to bring a gift to your cheerless funeral. But the good woman, who was not greedy, though she had lived a hundred years, will be wept before the blazing pyre: and some old man, revering his loves of long ago, will give yearly garlands to the raised mound and, departing kindly, will say, "Rest in peace, and may the earth lie light above your untroubled bones." True things indeed I warn of, but what do true things profit me? Her law is the one by which I must observe my love. Nay more, should she bid me sell my ancestral seat, go under her command and under the auction-sign, my Lares. Whatever Circe has, whatever poison Medea, whatever herbs the Thessalian land bears, and what, when Venus breathes love into the untamed herds, the hippomanes drips from the loins of the lustful mare— if only my Nemesis look upon me with a calm face, though she mix a thousand other herbs, I will drink them.

Phoebus, show favour: a new priest enters your temples: come hither with your lyre and your songs. Now, I pray, strike the sounding strings with your thumb, now turn your words to my praises. Yourself, your temples bound with the triumphal laurel, come to your rites, while they heap the altars. But come gleaming and beautiful: now put on the robe laid aside, now comb well your long hair, such as men recall you sang the praises of victorious Jove, when Saturn the king had been put to flight. You see from afar what is to come, to you the augur, devoted, knows well what fate the prophetic bird sings; you rule the lots, through you the soothsayer foresees, when the god has marked the slippery entrails with signs; with you for guide the Sibyl never deceived the Romans, she who sings the hidden fates in six-foot verse. Phoebus, let Messalinus touch the sacred scrolls of the prophetess, and teach him yourself, I pray, what she sings. She gave the oracles to Aeneas, after he, men say, had borne up his father and his rescued Lares and believed Rome would not be, when, mournful, from the deep he looked back upon Ilium and its burning gods. (Romulus had not yet shaped the walls of the eternal city, not to be dwelt in by his fellow Remus; but then the cattle grazed upon the grassy Palatine and humble huts stood on the citadel of Jove. There, dripping with milk, was Pan beneath the shade of the holm-oak, and Pales made of wood with a rustic pruning-knife, and on a tree hung the wandering shepherd's votive offering, the chattering pipe sacred to the woodland god, the pipe whose rows of reed grow ever shorter: for the reed is joined with wax, ever smaller. But where the region of the Velabrum stretches open, a little skiff used to go through the shallows, the water beaten by the oar. Often a girl, on a festal day, to please the wealthy master of the flock, was carried thence to her young lover, with whom returned the gifts of the fruitful country, cheese and the white lamb of a snowy ewe.) "Tireless Aeneas, brother of fluttering Love, who bear the Trojan rites on your fugitive ships, now Jupiter assigns you the Laurentine fields, now the welcoming land calls your wandering Lares. There you will be holy, when the revered water of Numicus has sent you, a deified hero, to the gods in heaven. Lo, Victory flutters above your weary ships; at last the proud goddess comes to the Trojans. Lo, the fires of the Rutulian camp gleam for me: now I foretell your death, barbarous Turnus. Before my eyes is the Laurentine fort and the wall of Lavinium, and Alba Longa, founded by Ascanius the leader. You too I now see, Ilia, priestess to please Mars, who deserted the Vestal hearths, your stolen embraces, your fillets lying low, and the arms of the eager god left upon the banks. Graze now, bulls, the herbage on the seven hills while you may: here will soon be the place of a great city. Rome, your name is fated to rule the lands, wherever Ceres looks down from heaven on her own fields, both where the risings of the Sun lie open and where, with flowing waves, the river bathes the panting horses of the Sun. Troy indeed will then marvel at herself and say to herself that you took good counsel for her over so long a journey. I sing what is true: so may I forever feed, unharmed, upon the sacred laurel, and may my virginity be eternal." These things the prophetess sang, and called you, Phoebus, to herself, and tossed her flowing hair before her face.— Whatever Amalthea, whatever Marpesian Herophile said, what the Greek Phyto warned, and the lots that the Tiburtine sang along the sacred Anio's streams and carried unwetted in her bosom— these foretold that comets would be evil signs of war, that much stone would rain down upon the lands. And they say that trumpets and clashing arms were heard in the sky, and that the groves foretold the flight to come: the cloudy year itself saw the Sun fail of his light and yoke his pale horses: and the images of the gods shed warm tears, and oxen, speaking, gave warning of the fates beforehand. These things had been of old: but you now gentle, Apollo, plunge the portents beneath the untamed seas, and let the laurel, kindled in the sacred flames, crackle well, that the year may be lucky and blessed by that omen. When the laurel has given good signs, rejoice, you farmers; Ceres will fill out your granaries full with corn-ears, and the countryman, smeared with new wine, will strike the grapes with his foot, until the jars and the great vats fail: and the shepherd, soaked with wine, will sing his festal Palilia: then, away from the stalls, keep far off, wolves. He, made drunk by custom, will kindle the heaps of light stubble and leap across the sacred flames. And the matron will bear offspring, and the child will snatch kisses from his parent, gripping his ears, nor will it weary the grandfather to keep watch over his little grandson and, an old man, to speak baby-words with the boy. Then the young people, having served the god, will recline upon the grass, where the light shade of an ancient tree falls, or they will stretch awnings from their garments, bound with garlands, and the goblet itself will stand crowned. And each man will heap high for himself the feast and the festal tables of turf, and a couch of turf. Here a young man, drunk, will heap curses on his girl, which afterwards he would wish unsaid by his vows: for that fierce one, sober, will weep the same and swear that he was out of his mind. By your leave let the bow perish, let the arrows perish, Phoebus, only let Love wander unarmed upon the earth. A good art it is: but after Cupid took up his weapons for himself, alas, alas, to how many has that art brought harm! And to me especially: for a year I lie wounded and (I cherish my sickness, since the very pain delights me) I sing always of Nemesis, without whom no verse of mine can find words or the proper measures. But you—for the guardianship of the gods protects poets— I forewarn you, girl, spare the sacred bard, that I may celebrate Messalinus, when he bears the spoils of war before his chariot, the conquered towns, himself wearing the laurel: bound with rustic laurel, the soldier will sing "Hail, great triumph!" with a loud voice. Then let my Messalla give the loyal crowd their spectacle, and let his father applaud as the chariot passes by. Grant this: so may your hair, Phoebus, be unshorn, so may your sister be chaste for you forever.

Macer follows the camp: what will become of tender Love? Will he be a companion and bravely bear arms on his neck? And whether the long road of the lands or the wandering seas lead the man, will Love wish to go to his side with weapons? Burn, boy, I pray, the fierce one who has left your ease, and again call back the runaway beneath your standards. But if you spare soldiers, this one too will be a soldier, who carries the light water for himself in his helmet. I seek the camp, and farewell to Venus and farewell to girls: strength too is mine, and the trumpet is a joy to me. Great words I speak, but when I have grandly spoken great things, the closed doors shake the brave words out of me. How often have I sworn never to return to her threshold! When I have sworn it well, yet my foot of itself returns. Fierce Love, would that I might see your weapons broken, the arrows, and, if it be allowed, the torches put out! You torment my misery, you compel me to call down curses on myself and to speak unspeakable things with maddened mind. By now I would have ended my ills with death, but credulous Hope nurses my life and ever says tomorrow will be better. Hope feeds the farmers, Hope entrusts to the ploughed furrows the seeds that the field will repay with great interest: this catches birds with the snare, this fish with the rod, when the slender hooks have hidden the bait before: Hope too consoles the one bound with a stout fetter: his legs ring with iron, but he sings amid his work: Hope promises me an easy Nemesis, but she denies it. Ah me, do not conquer the goddess, hard girl. Spare me, I pray, by the untimely bones of your sister: so may the little one rest peacefully beneath the tender earth. Holy she is to me, to her tomb I will bring offerings, and garlands wet with my tears, to her mound I will flee and sit, a suppliant, and bewail my fate with the silent ashes. She will not endure that her client weep on and on for your sake: in her name I forbid you to be cold to me, lest the neglected shade send you evil dreams, and your mournful sister stand before your sleeping couch, such as she came, fallen headlong from the high window, bloodstained, down to the infernal pools. I cease, lest my mistress's bitter griefs be renewed: I am not worth so much that she should weep even once. Nor is she worthy to spoil her telltale eyes with tears: the bawd harms us, the girl herself is good. Phryne the bawd is murdering me, wretch, and stealthily carrying letters comes and goes with a hidden bosom: often, when from the hard threshold I recognize my mistress's sweet voice, this woman says she is not at home: often, when a night has been promised me, she announces the girl is unwell, or that she has taken fright at some threats. Then I die of cares, then my distracted mind imagines who holds my girl, or in how many ways he holds her: then, bawd, I call down curses on you: anxious enough may you live, if even the smallest part of my vows has moved the gods.