Book I

Book I.1:1-38 Love’s madness

Cynthia was the first, to my cost, to trap me with her eyes: I was untouched by love before then. Amor it was who lowered my gaze of endless disdain, and, feet planted, bowed my head, till he taught me, recklessly, to scorn pure girls and live without sense, and this madness has not left me for one whole year now, though I do attract divine hostility.

        Milanion, did not shirk hard labour, Tullus, my friend, in crushing fierce Atalanta, Iasus’s daughter. Then he lingered lovesick in Parthenium’s caves, and faced wild beasts there: thrashed, what is more, by the club of Hylaeus, the Centaur, he moaned, wounded, among Arcadia’s stones. So he was able to overcome the swift-footed girl: such is the value of entreaty and effort in love. Dulled Amor, in me, has lost his wits, and forgets the familiar paths he once travelled.

        But you whose trickeries draw down the moon, whose task it is to seek revenge, through sacrifice on magic fires, go change my mistress’s mind, and make her cheeks grow paler than my own! Then I’ll believe you’ve power to lead rivers and stars wherever you wish, with Colchian charms.

        Or you, my friends who, too late, would draw me back from error, search out the cure for a sick heart. I will suffer the heat and the knife bravely, if only freedom might speak as indignation wishes. Lift me through furthest nations and seas, where never a woman can follow my track. You, to whom gods grant an easy hearing, who live forever secure in mutual love, you stay behind. Venus, our mistress, turns nights of bitterness against me, and Amor never fails to be found wanting. Avoid this evil I beg you: let each cling to his own love, and never alter the site of familiar desire. But if any hears my warning too late, O with what agony he will remember my words!

Book I.2:1-32 Love goes naked

        What need is there, mea vita, to come with your hair adorned, and slither about in a thin silk dress from Cos? Why drench your tresses in myrrh of Orontes, betray yourself with gifts from strangers, ruin nature’s beauty with traded refinements, nor allow your limbs to gleam to true advantage? Believe me nothing could enhance your shape: naked Amor ever hates lying forms. Look at the colours that lovely earth throws out: still better the wild ivy that springs up of itself; loveliest the strawberry tree that grows in deserted hollows; and water knows how to run in untaught ways. The shores convince us dressed with natural pebbles, and birds sing all the sweeter without art.

        Phoebe did not set Castor on fire this way: she Leucippus’s daughter; nor Hilaira, her sister, Pollux, with trinkets. Not like this Marpessa, Evenus’s daughter, whom Idas and passionate Phoebus fought for by her father’s shore. Hippodamia did not attract Pelops, her Phrygian husband, with false brightness, to be whirled off on alien chariot-wheels. They did not slavishly add gems to faces of a lustre seen in Apelles’s paintings. Collecting lovers everywhere was never their inclination: to be chaste was beauty fine enough for them.

        Should I not fear now, that I may be worth less than these? If she pleases one man a girl has enough refinement: and Phoebus grants, to you above all, his gifts of song, and Calliope, gladly, her Aonian lyre, and your happy words never lack unique grace, all that Minerva and Venus approve of. If only those wretched luxuries wearied you, you would always be dearest to my life for these.

Book I.3:1-46 After a night’s drinking

        Just as Ariadne, the girl of Cnossus, lay on the naked shore, fainting, while Theseus’s ship vanished; or as Andromeda, Cepheus’s child, lay recumbent in her first sleep free now of the harsh rock; or like one fallen on the grass by the Apidanus, exhausted by the endless Thracian dance; Cynthia seemed like that to me, breathing the tender silence, her head resting on unquiet hands, when I came, deep in wine, dragging my drunken feet, while the boys were shaking the late night torches.

        My senses not yet totally dazed, I tried to approach her, pressing gently against the bed: and though seized by a twin passion, here Amor there Bacchus, both cruel gods, urging me on, to attempt to slip my arm beneath her as she lay there, and lifting my hand snatch eager kisses, I was still not brave enough to trouble my mistress’s rest, fearing her proven fierceness in a quarrel, but, frozen there, clung to her, gazing intently, like Argus on Io’s new-horned brow.

        Now I freed the garlands from my forehead, and set them on your temples: now I delighted in playing with your loose hair, furtively slipping apples into your open hands, bestowing every gift on your ungrateful sleep, repeated gifts breathed from my bowed body. And whenever you, stirring, gave occasional sighs, I was transfixed, believing false omens, some vision bringing you strange fears, or that another forced you to be his, against your will.

        At last the moon, gliding by far windows, the busy moon with lingering light, opened her closed eyes, with its tender rays. Raised on one elbow on the soft bed, she cried: ‘Has another’s hostility driven you out, sealing her doors, bringing you back to my bed at last? Alas for me, where have you spent the long hours of this night, that was mine, you, worn out now, as the stars are put away? O you, cruel to me in my misery, I wish you the same long-drawn-out nights as those you endlessly offer to me. Till a moment ago, I staved off sleep, weaving the purple threads, and again, wearied, with the sound of Orpheus’s lyre. Until Sleep impelled me to sink down under his delightful wing I was moaning gently to myself, alone, all the while, for you, delayed so long, so often, by a stranger’s love. That was my last care, amongst my tears.’

Book I.4:1-28 Constancy in Love

        Why do you urge me to change, to leave my mistress, Bassus, why praise so many lovely girls to me? Why not leave me to spend the rest of my life in increasingly familiar slavery? You may praise Antiope’s beauty, the daughter of Nycteus, and Hermione of Sparta, all those the ages of beauty saw: Cynthia denies them a name. Still less would she be slighted, or thought less, by severe critics, if she were compared with inferior forms. Her beauty is the least part of what inflames me: there are greater things I joy in dying for, Bassus: Nature’s complexion, and the grace of many an art, and pleasures it’s best to speak of beneath the silent sheets.

        The more you try to weaken our love, the more we both disappoint with acknowledged loyalty. You will not escape with impunity: the angry girl will know of it, and be your enemy with no unquiet voice. Cynthia will no longer look for you after this, nor entrust me to you. She will remember such crimes, and fiercely denounce you to all the other girls: alas, you’ll be loved on never a threshold. She will deny no altar her tears, no stone, wherever it may be, and however sacred.

        No loss hurts Cynthia so deeply as when the god is absent, love snatched from her: above all mine. Let her always feel so, I pray, and let me never discover cause in her for lament.

Book I.5:1-32 Admonishment to Gallus

        Envious man, quiet your irksome cries at last and let us travel the road we are on, as one! What do you wish for, madman: to feel my passion? Unhappy man, you’re hastening to know the deepest hurt, set your footsteps on hidden fire, and drink all the poison of Thessaly. She’s not like the fickle girls you collect: she is not used to being mildly angered. Even if she does not reject your prayers, by chance, how many thousand cares she’ll bring you! She’ll not let you sleep, now, or free your eyes: she’s the one to bind the mind’s uncivilized forces. Ah, how often, scorned, you’ll run to my door, your brave words turning to sobs, a trembling ague of bitter tears descending, fear tracing its hideous lines on your face, and whatever words you wish to say, lost in your moaning, you, you wretch, no longer able to know who or where you are.

        Then you’ll be forced to know my mistress’s harsh service, and what it is to return home excluded. You’ll not marvel at my pallor any more, or at why I am thin all over. Your high birth will do you no good in love. Love does not yield to ancient faces. But if you show the smallest sign of guilt, how quickly your good name will be hearsay! I’ll not be able to bring you relief when you ask, while there’s no cure for my malady: rather, companions together in love and sorrow, we’ll be forced to weep on each other’s offered breast.

        So stop asking what my Cynthia can do, Gallus, she comes not without retribution to those who ask.

Book I.6:1-36 Love’s bonds

        I’m not afraid to discover the Adriatic with you, Tullus, or set my sail, now, on the briny Aegean: I could climb Scythian heights, or go beyond the palace of Ethiopian Memnon. But, clinging there, my girl’s words always hinder me, her altering colour: her painful prayers. All night she goes on about passion, and complains there are no gods, since she’s forsaken. Though mine, she denies herself to me, she threatens, as a hurt lover does a man she’s angry with.

        I’ll not live an hour among such complaints: O let him perish who can make love, with them, at his ease! What use is it for me to discover wise Athens, or see the ancient treasures of Asia, only for Cynthia to cry out against me when the ship’s launched, and score her face with passionate hands, and declare she owes kisses to the opposing winds, that nothing is worse than a faithless lover?

        You can try and surpass your uncle’s well-deserved power, and re-establish our allies’ ancient rights, since your youth has never made room for love, and you’ve always loved fighting for your country. Let that Boy never burden you with my labours, and all the marks of my tears! Let me, whom Fate always wished to level, give up this life to utter worthlessness. Many have been lost, willingly, in wearisome love: earth buries me also among that number. I’m not born fitted for weapons or glory: this is the war to which the Fates would subject me.

        But whether you go where gentle Ionia extends, or where Pactolus’s waters gild the Lydian fields, your feet on the ground, or striking the sea with your oars, you’ll be part of the accepted order: then, if some hour comes when I’m not forgotten, you’ll know I live under cruel stars.

Book I.7:1-26 In praise of Love Poetry

        While you write of Cadmus’s Thebes, and the bitter struggle of that war of brothers, and (bless me!) contest Homer’s primacy (if the Fates are kind to your song) I, Ponticus, as usual, follow my passions, and search for a means to suffer my lady. I’m forced more to serve sadness than wit, and moan at youth’s hard times.

        This, the way of life I suffer, this is my fame. Let my praise be simply that I pleased a learned maid, Ponticus, and often bore with her unjust threats. Let scorned lovers, after me, read my words with care, and benefit from knowing my ills. You, as well, if the Boy strikes home, with his sure shaft (something I wish the gods did not allow) will cry out in pain for that ancient citadel, the lost armies of the seven, thrown down in eternally silent neglect, and long helplessly to compose sweet verses. Love come late will not fill your song.

        Then you’ll often admire me, not as a humble poet: then you’ll prefer me to the wits of Rome: and the young men will not be silent round my tomb, crying: ‘There shall you lie, great singer of our passions.’ Take care, in your pride, not to condemn my work. When Love comes late the cost is often high.

Book I.8:1-26 Cynthia’s journey

        Are you mad, then, that my worries do not stop you? Am I less to you than chilly Illyria? Does he seem so great to you, whoever he is, that you’ll go anywhere the wind takes your sails without me? Can you hear the roar of the furious seas unmoved; take your rest on the hard planks; tread the hoarfrost under your tender feet? Cynthia, can you bear unaccustomed snow? Oh, I wish the days to the winter solstice were doubled, and the Pleiades delayed, the sailors idle, the ropes be never loosed from the Tyrrhenian shore, and the hostile breezes not blow my prayers away! Yet may I never see such winds drop when your boat puts off, and the waves carry it onwards, leaving me rooted to the desolate strand, repeatedly crying out your cruelty with clenched fist.

        Yet whatever you deserve from me, you who renounce me: may Sicilian Galatea not frown on your journey: pass with happy oars Epirus’s Acroceraunian cliffs, and be received by Illyrian Oricos’s calm waters. No other girl will seduce me, mea vita, from bitterly uttering complaints of you at your threshold, nor will I fail to question the impatient sailors: ‘Say in what harbour my girl is confined?’ crying ‘Though she lives on Thessaly’s shore, or beyond the Scythian, yet she’ll be mine.’

Book I.8A:27-46 Cynthia’s journey abandoned

        She’s here! She stays, she promised! Discontent, vanish, I’ve won: she could not endure my endless entreaties. Let eager Envy relinquish illusory joy. My Cynthia’s ceased to travel strange roads. I’m dear to her, and she says Rome’s best because of me, rejecting a kingdom without me. She’d rather be in bed, though narrow, with me, and be mine, whatever its size, than have the ancient region that was Hippodamia’s dowry, and the riches that the horses of Elis won. She did not rush from my breast, through avarice, though he’s given a lot, and he’d give her more.

        I could not dissuade her with gold or Indian pearls, but did so by service of flattering song. I rely, like this, on the Muses in love, nor is Apollo slow to help us lovers. Cynthia, the rare, is mine! Now my feet tread the highest stars: night and day come, she’s mine! No rival steals my certain love from me: this glory will crown my furthest age.

Book I.9:1-34 Ponticus struck down by Love

        I told you love would come to you, Derider, and words of freedom would not be ever yours. Behold, you’re down and come, a suppliant, at a mistress’s behest, and now some girl, bought a moment since, commands you. Dodona’s oracular doves can’t outdo me in prophesying what young men each girl will tame. A service of pain and tears has made me expert: though I wish I could forgo knowing, be called an innocent in love!

        What use is it now, you wretch, to recite your serious poem, or weep for the Theban citadel of Amphion’s lyre? Mimnermus’s lyrics are worth more than Homer in love. Gentle Love seeks out sweet song.

        I beg you, go put away those learned books, and sing what every girl wants to know! What if access to her wasn’t so easy? Yet you, you madman, seek for water mid-river. You are still not pale, even, truly untouched by the fire: this is only the first spark of evil to come. Then you’ll prefer to seek Armenian tigers, or feel the bonds of the infernal wheel, than know the frequent darts of the Boy in your marrow, and be powerless to deny your angry one a single thing.

        Love grants no one an easy passage, driving them back with either hand. And don’t be deceived if she’s ready to satisfy you: if she’s yours, Ponticus, she’ll attack you more fiercely. Love won’t let you remove your gaze at leisure, nor keep watch in another’s name, Love, who doesn’t appear till he’s touched you to the bone.

        Whoever you are, flee those endless charms! Flint and oak would yield to them, more so you, yourself a frail spirit. So, if there’s honour, confess your error quick as you can. In love it often helps to spell out whom it is you die for.

Book I.10:1-30 Educating Gallus

        O sweet dream, when I saw your first love: witness, there, to your tears! O what sweet pleasure for me to recall that night, O the one so often summoned by my longing, when I saw you dying, Gallus, in your girl’s arms, uttering words between long pauses! Though sleep pressed on my weary lids, though the Moon blushed, drawn through mid-heaven, I still could not draw back from your play; there was so much ardour in your exchanges.

        But, since you weren’t afraid to allow it, accept your reward for the joy of trust. I’ve not only learnt to be silent about your pain, there’s something greater in me, my friend, than loyalty. I can join parted lovers again, and open a mistress’s reluctant door. I can heal a lover’s fresh wounds: the power of my words is not slight. Cynthia repeatedly taught me what one should look for or beware of: Love has not been idle.

        Beware of picking a fight with your girl when she’s angry, don’t speak in pride; don’t stay silent for long: and if she asks something, don’t say no while frowning, and don’t let kind words shower on you in vain. She’ll come in a temper when she’s ignored and, wounded, she won’t remember to drop her justified threats. But the more you are humble, and subject to love, the more you’ll enjoy a fine performance. He’ll be able to endure one girl gladly, who is never found wanting, or free of feeling.

Book I.11:1-30 Cynthia at Baiae

        While you idle at Baiae’s heart, Cynthia, where Hercules’s causeway hangs by the shore, now gazing at waves that washed Thesprotus’s kingdom, now at the waters by noted Misenum, does any thought find entrance, oh, that brings you nights mindful of me? Is there a place where the least of love remains? Or has some unknown rival, with false pretence of passion, drawn Cynthia away from my songs?

        I would much rather some little craft, relying on feeble oar, entertained you on Naple’s Lucrine Lake, or the waters easily parting, stroke after stroke, held you enclosed in the shallow waves of Teuthras, than free to hear another’s flattering whispers, settled voluptuously on some private shore! Far from watching eyes a girl slides into faithlessness, not remembering the gods we share. Not that your reputation is not well known to me, but in that place every desire’s to be feared.

        So, forgive me if my writings have annoyed you: my fears are to blame. I do not guard my mother now with greater care, nor without you have I any care for life.

        You’re my only home, my only parents, Cynthia: you, every moment of my happiness. If I am joyful or sad with the friends I meet, however I feel, I say: ‘Cynthia is the reason.’ Only leave corrupt Baiae as soon as you may: that coast will bring discord to many, coast fatal to chaste girls: O let the waters of Baiae vanish: they’re an offence to love!

Book I.12:1-20 Faithfulness in separation

        Why don’t you stop inventing charges of apathy, Rome, the ‘knowing’, saying it grips me? She’s separated from my bed by as many miles as Russia’s rivers from Venice’s River Po. Cynthia doesn’t nourish familiar love in her arms, nor make sweet sounds in my ear. Once I pleased: then there was no one to touch us who could compare for loyalty in love. We were envied. Surely a god overcame me, or some herb picked from Promethean mountains shattered our bond?

        I am not who I was: distant journeys alter girls. How quickly love flies! Now I’m forced to endure long nights alone, for the first time, and be oppressive to myself. He’s happy who’s able to weep where his girl is: Love takes no small joy in a sprinkling of tears. Or he who, rejected, can change his desire: there is joy in a new slavery as well. But it is impossible for me ever to love another, or part from her. Cynthia was love’s beginning: Cynthia will be its end.

Book I.13:1-36 He predicts Gallus’s fate

        You’ll laugh at my downfall, as you often do, Gallus, because I’m alone and free, love flown away. But I’ll never echo your words, faithless man. May no girl ever let you down, Gallus. Even now with your growing reputation for deceit, never seeking to linger long in any passion, you begin to pale with desperation in belated love, and fall back, tripped, at the first step. She’ll be your torment for despising their sorrow: one girl will take revenge for the pain of many. She’ll put a stop to your roving desires, and she’ll not be fond of your eternal search for the new.

        No wicked rumour, or augury, told me this: I saw it: can you deny me, as witness, I pray? I saw you, languishing, arms wound round your neck, and weeping for ages, in her hands, Gallus, yearning to breathe your life out in words of longing: and lastly, my friend, a thing shame counsels me to hide: I couldn’t part your clinging, such was the wild passion between you. That god Neptune disguised as the Haemonian River Enipus didn’t squeeze the obliging Tyro so readily; Hercules’s love was never so hot for celestial Hebe, when he first felt delight on the ridge of Oeta. One day can outrun all lovers: she lit no faint torch in you, she’ll not let disdain reappear in you, or you be seduced. Desire spurs you on.

        I’m not surprised, since she rivals Leda, is worthy of Jupiter, and alone lovelier than Leda’s three children by him. She has more charm than the demi-goddesses of Greece: her words would force Jupiter to love her. Since you’re sure to die of love, once and for all, no other threshold was worthy. May she be kind to you, now new madness strikes, and, whatever you wish, may she be the one for you.

Book I.14:1-24 Love’s Delight

        Though, you drink Lesbos’s wine, from Mentor’s cups, abandoned, in luxury, by Tiber’s waves, now amazed how quickly the boats slip by, now how slowly the barges are towed along: while the wood spreads its ranks over all the summits, thick as Caucasus’s many trees: still these things have no power to rival my love. Love refuses to bow to great riches.

        If she spins out sleep with me as desired, or draws out the whole day in easy loving, then the waters of Pactolus flow beneath my roof, and the Red Sea’s coral buds are gathered below the waves, then my delight says I am greater than kings: and may it endure, till Fate demands I vanish. For who can enjoy wealth if Love’s against him? No riches for me if Venus proves sullen!

        She can exhaust the strong powers of heroes: she can even give pain to the toughest minds: she’s not fearful of crossing Arabian thresholds, nor afraid to climb on the purple couch, Tullus, and toss the wretched young man all over his bed. What comfort is dyed silk fabric? When she’s reconciled, and near me, I’ll not fear to despise whole kingdoms, or King Alcinous’ gifts.

Book I.15:1-42 Cynthia’s infidelities

        Cynthia I often feared great pain from your fickleness, yet still I never expected treachery. See with what trials Fortune drags me down! Yet you still respond slowly to those fears, and can raise calm hands to last night’s tresses, and examine your looks in endless idleness, you go on decking out your breast with Eastern jewels, like a lovely woman preparing for some new lover.

        Calypso did not feel so when Odysseus, the Ithacan, left, when she wept long ago to the empty waves: she sat mourning for many days with unkempt hair, pouring out speech to the cruel brine, and though she might never see him again, she grieved still, thinking of their long happiness. Hypsipyle, troubled, did not stand like that in the empty bedroom while the winds snatched Jason away: Hypsipyle never felt pleasure after, melting, once and for all, for her Haemonian stranger. Alphesiboea was revenged on her brothers for her husband Alcmaeon, and passion severed the bonds of loving blood. Evadne, famous for Argive chastity, died in the pitiful flames, raised high on her husband’s pyre.

        Yet none of them influence your mode of existence, so that you might also be known in story. Cynthia, cease now revoking your words by lying and refrain from provoking forgotten gods. O reckless girl, there’ll be more than enough grief in my misfortune if it chances that anything dark happens to you! Long before love for you alters in my heart, rivers will flow back from the vast ocean, and the year shall reverse its seasons: be whatever you wish, except another’s.

        Don’t let those eyes seem so worthless to you, in which your treachery was so often believed by me! You swore by them, that if you’d ever been false, they’d vanish away when your fingers touched them. Can you then raise them to the vast sun, and not tremble, aware of your guilty sins? Who forced on you the pallor of your shifting complexion: who drew tears from unwilling eyes? Those are the eyes I now die for, to warn lovers such as me: ‘No charms can ever be safely trusted!’

Book I.16:1-48 Cynthia’s threshold speaks

        Now I’m bruised in night quarrels with drunkards, moaning often, struck by shameful hands, I, who used to open to great triumphs, Tarpeia’s entrance, honoured for chastity, whose threshold was crowded with golden teams, wet with the suppliant tears of captives. Disgraceful garlands aren’t lacking, hung on me, and always torches rest there, symbols of the excluded.

 Nor can I save my lady from infamous nights, honour surrendered in obscene singing. Nor does she repent as yet, or cease her notoriety: cease living more sinfully than this dissolute age.  And, complaining, I’m forced to shed worse tears, made sadder by the length of some suppliants’ vigil. He never allows my columns to rest, renewing his sly insinuating song:

‘Entrance, crueller than my mistress’s depths, why are your solid doors closed now, and mute, for me? Why do you never open to admit my desire, unable to feel or tell her my secret prayers? Will there be no end assigned to my sadness, and sleep lie, unsightly, on your cool threshold?  Midnight, the stars sinking to rest, and the icy winds of chill dawn, grieve for me. You alone never pity man’s grief, replying with mutually silent hinges.

O I wish that my soft voice might pass through some hollow cleft, and enter my lady’s startled ears! Then she would never be able to check herself, and a sigh would surface amongst reluctant tears, though she seems more unyielding than flint or Sicilian stone, harder than iron or steel.

Now she rests in another man’s fortunate arms, and my words fail on the nocturnal breeze. But to me, threshold, you’re the one, great cause of my grief, the one who is never conquered by gifts. No petulant tongue of mine ever offended you, in calling out angry drunken jests, that you should make me hoarse with endless complaining, guarding the crossroads in anxious waiting. Yet I have often created new lines of verse for you, and printed deep kisses on your steps. How often before now have I turned from your columns, treacherous one, and with hidden hands produced the required offering.’

So with this and whatever else you helpless lovers invent, he drowns out the dawn chorus. And I’m condemned to eternal infamy, for my mistress’s failings now, for her lovers’ tears forever.

Book I.17:1-28. He goes on a journey.

        Since I managed to flee the girl, now it’s right that I cry to the lonely halcyons: Cassiope’s harbour’s not yet had its accustomed sight of my boat, and all my prayers fall on a heartless shore. Yes, even in your absence, Cynthia, the winds promote your cause: hear with what savage threats the sky resounds. Will good fortune ever come to calm the storms? Will that little beach hold my ashes?

        Change your fierce complaints to something kinder and let night and hostile shoals be my punishment. Could you, dry-eyed, require my death, never to clasp my bones to your breast? O, perish the man, whoever he was, who first made ships and rigging, and ploughed the reluctant deep! Easier to change my mistress’s moods (however harsh, though, she’s still a rare girl) than to gaze at shores ringed with unknown forests, and search in the sky for the long-lost Twins.

        If the Fates had buried my grief at home, and an upright stone stood there to my last love, she would have given dear strands of hair to the fire, and laid my bones gently on soft rose-petals: she would have cried my name, over the final embers, and asked for earth to lie lightly on me.

        But you, the sea-born daughters of lovely Doris, happy choir, loosen our white sails: if ever love glided down and touched your waves, spare a friend, for gentler shores.

Book I.18:1-32 Alone amongst Nature

        Truly this is a silent, lonely place for grieving, and the breath of the West Wind owns the empty wood. Here I could speak my secret sorrows freely, if only these solitary cliffs could be trusted.

        To what cause shall I attribute your disdain, my Cynthia? Cynthia, what reason for my grief did you give me? I, who but now was numbered among the joyous, now am forced to look for signs of your love. Why do I merit this? What spell turns you away from me? Is some new girl the root of your anger? You can give yourself to me again, fickle girl, since no other has ever set lovely foot on my threshold. Though my sorrow’s indebted to you for much grief my anger will never be so fierce with you that rage could ever be justified in you or your weeping eyes be disfigured with falling tears.

        Is it because I show few signs of altered complexion, and my faith does not cry aloud in my face? Beech-tree and pine, beloved of the Arcadian god, you will be witnesses, if trees know such passions. Oh, how often my words echo in gentle shadows and Cynthia is carved in your bark!

        Oh! How often has your injustice caused me pains that only your silent threshold knows? I am used to suffering your tyrannous orders with diffidence, without moaning about it in noisy complaint. For this I win sacred springs, cold rocks, and rough sleep by a wilderness track: and whatever my complaint can tell of must be uttered alone to melodious birds.

        Yet whatever you may be, let the woods echo ‘Cynthia’ to me, and let not the wild cliffs be free of your name.

Book I.19:1-26 Death and transience

        I fear no sad shadows, now, my Cynthia, or care that death destines me for the final fires: but one fear is harder to bear than funeral processions, that perhaps my lonely corpse would lack your love. Cupid has not so lightly clung to my eyelids, that my dust could be void, love forgotten.

        That hero, Protesilaus, could not forget his sweet wife even in the dark region: the Thessalian came as a shade to his former home, longing with ghostly hands to touch his joy. Whatever I am there, I will ever be known as your shadow: a great love crosses the shores of death.

        Let the choir of lovely women of old, come to greet me there, those whom the spoils of Troy yielded to Argive men, none of whose beauty could mean more to me than yours, Cynthia, and (O allow this, Earth, and be just) though old age destined keeps you back, your bones will still be dear to my sad eyes. May you, living, feel this when I am dust: then no place of death can be bitter to me. How I fear lest you ignore my tomb, Cynthia, and some inimical passion draws you away from my ashes, and forces you, unwillingly, to dry the tears that fall!

        Constant threats will persuade a loyal girl. So, while we can, let there be joy between lovers: no length of time’s enough for lasting love.

Book I:20:1-52 The story of Hylas: a warning to Gallus

        For your loyal love, Gallus, take this warning (Don’t let it slip from your vacant mind): ‘Fortune often attacks the imprudent lover’: so might the River Ascanius, harsh to the Argonauts, tell you.

        You have a lover, like Hylas, Theodamas’s son, no less handsome, not unequal in birth. Take care if you walk by sacred rivers in Umbrian forests, or the waters of Anio touch your feet, or if you wander the edge of the Phlegrean plain, or wherever a river gives wandering welcome, always defend your loving prey from the Nymphs (the Ausonian Dryads’ desire is no less) lest rough hills and cold rocks are yours, Gallus, and you enter eternally untried waters. The wretched wanderer Hercules suffered this misery, and wept by the wild River Ascanius, on an unknown shore.

        They say that the Argo sailed long ago from Pagasa’s shipyard, and set out on the long voyage to Phasis, and, once the Hellespont’s waves slid past, tied her hull to Mysia’s cliffs. Here the band of heroes landed on the quiet shore, and covered the ground with a soft layer of leaves. But the young unconquered hero’s companion strayed far, searching for the scarce waters of distant springs.

        The two brothers, Zetes and Calais, the sons of the North Wind, chased him, pursued him, both above him, with hovering grasp, to snatch kisses, and alternately fleeing with a kiss from his upturned face. But he hangs concealed beneath the edge of a wing and wards of their tricks in flight with a branch. At last the sons of Orithyia, Pandion’s daughter, cease: ah! Sadly, off goes Hylas, off to the Hamadryads.

        There lay the well of Pege, by the peak of Mount Arganthus, the watery haunt dear to Thynia’s Nymphs, over which moistened apples hung from the wild fruit-trees, and all around in the water-meadows white lilies grew, mixed with scarlet poppies, which he now picked with delicate fingers, childishly preferring flowers to his chosen task, and now bent innocently down to the lovely waves, prolonging his wandering with flattering reflections.

        At last with outstretched palms he prepared to drink from the spring, propped on his right shoulder, lifting full hands. Inflamed by his whiteness, the Dryad girls left their usual throng to marvel, easily pulling him headlong into the yielding waters. Then, as they seized his body, Hylas cried out: to him Hercules replied, again and again, from the distance, but the wind blew his name back, from the far waters.

        O Gallus warned by this, watch your affairs, entrusting handsome Hylas to the Nymphs.

Book I.21:1-10 Gallus speaks his own epitaph

        ‘You who rush to escape the common fate, stricken soldier from the Etruscan ramparts, why turn your angry eyes where I lie groaning? I’m one of your closest comrades in arms. Save yourself then, so your parents might rejoice, don’t let my sister know of these things by your tears: how Gallus broke through the midst of Caesar’s swordsmen, but failed to escape some unknown hand: and whatever bones she finds strewn on Etruscan hills, let her never know them for mine.’

Book I.22:1-10 Propertius’s place of origin.

        You ask, always in friendship, Tullus, what are my household gods, and of what race am I. If our country’s graves, at Perusia, are known to you, Italy’s graveyard in the darkest times, when Rome’s citizens dealt in war (and, to my special sorrow, Etruscan dust, you allowed my kinsman’s limbs to be scattered, you covered his wretched bones with no scrap of soil), know that Umbria rich in fertile ground bore me, where it touches there on the plain below.

Book II

Book II.1:1-78 To Maecenas: His subject matter

        You ask where the passion comes from I write so much about, and this book, so gentle on the tongue. Neither Apollo nor Calliope sang them to me. The girl herself fires my wit.

        If you would have her move in a gleam of Cos, this whole book will be Coan silk: if ever I saw straying hair cloud her forehead, she joys to walk, pride in her worshipped tresses: or if ivory fingers draw songs from the lyre, I marvel what fingering sweeps the strings: or if she closes eyelids, calling on sleep, I come to a thousand reasons for verse: or if naked she wrestles me, free of our clothes, then in truth we make whole Iliads: whatever she does or says, a great tale’s born from nothing.

        Maecenas, even if fate had given me the strength to lead crowds of heroes to war, I’d not sing Titans; Ossa on Olympus, with Pelion a road to Heaven; or ancient Thebes; or Troy that made Homer’s name; or split seas meeting at Xerxes’s order; Remus’s first kingdom, or the spirit of proud Carthage, or the German threat and Marius’s service. I’d remember the wars of your Caesar, his doings, and you, under mighty Caesar, my next concern.

        As often as I sang Mutina; Philippi, the citizens graveyard; the sea-fights in that Sicilian rout; the ruined Etruscan fires of the former race; Ptolemy’s Pharos, its captive shore; or sang of Egypt and Nile, when crippled, in mourning, he ran through the city, with seven imprisoned streams; or the necks of kings hung round with golden chains; or Actium’s prows on the Sacred Way; my Muse would always weave you into those wars, mind loyal at making or breaking peace.

        Achilles gave witness of a friend’s love to the gods, Theseus to the shades, one that of Patroclus, son of Menoetius, the other of Pirithous, Ixion’s son. But Callimachus’s frail chest could not thunder out Jupiter’s struggle with the giant Enceladus, over the Phlegrean Plain, nor have I the strength of mind to carve Caesar’s line, back to Phrygian forebears, in hard enough verse.

         The sailor talks of breezes: the ploughman, of oxen: the soldier counts wounds, the shepherd counts his sheep: I in my turn count sinuous flailings in narrowest beds: let every man spend the day where he can, in his art. Glorious to die in love: a further glory, if it’s given, to us, to love only once: O may I enjoy my love alone!

 If I’m right, she finds fault with dubious women, and disapproves of the whole Iliad because of Helen.

        Though it be for me to taste Phaedra’s chalice, from which Hippolytus took no harm; or for me to die of Circe’s herbs; or for Medea to heat the Colchian cauldron over Iolcus’s fire; yet since one woman alone has stolen my senses, it’s from her house my funeral cortege shall go.

        Medicine cures all human sorrows: only love likes no doctor for its disease. Machaon healed Philoctetes’ limping feet; Chiron, Phillyra’s son, the eyes of Phoenix; Asclepius, the Epidaurian god, returned Androgeon to his father’s hearth, by means of Cretan herbs, and Telephus, the Mysian warrior, from Achilles’s Haemonian spear by which he had his wound, by that self-same spear, knew relief. 

        If any one can take away my illness, he alone can put apples in Tantalus’s hand: he’ll fill urns from the virgin Danaids’ jars, lest their tender necks grow heavy with unloosed water; he’ll free Prometheus’s arms from Caucasian cliffs, and drive the vulture from his heart.

So, whenever the Fates demand my life, and I end as a brief name in slight marble, Maecenas, the hope and envy of our youth, true glory of my death or life, if by chance your road takes you by my tomb, halt your British chariot with chased yoke, and as you weep, pen these words in the silent dust: ‘A hard mistress was this wretch’s fate.’

Book II.2:1-16 Her beauty

        I was free, and thought to enjoy an empty bed: but though I arranged my peace, Amor betrayed me. Why does such human beauty linger on Earth? Jupiter I forgive you your rapes of old. Yellow her hair, and slender her hands, her figure all sublime, and her walk as noble as Jupiter’s sister, or Pallas Athene, going to Dulichian altars, her breasts covered by the Gorgon’s snaky locks.

        She is lovely as Ischomache, the Lapith’s demi-goddess, sweet plunder for the Centaurs at the marriage feast, or Hecate by the sacred waters of Boebeis, resting, a virgin goddess, it is said, by Mercury’s side. And you Goddesses yield whom shepherd Paris once saw, when you laid your clothes aside for him on Ida’s mountain slopes! I wish that the years might never touch that beauty, yet she outlast the ages of the Sibyl of Cumae.

Book II.3:1-54 Her qualities and graces.

        You who said that nothing could touch you now, you’re caught: that pride of yours is fallen! You can hardly find rest for a single month, poor thing, and now there’ll be another disgraceful book about you.

        I tried whether a fish could live on dry sand it has never known before, or a savage wild boar in the sea, or whether I could keep stern studies’ watch by night: love is deferred but never destroyed.

        It was not her face, bright as it is, that won me (lilies are not more white than my lady; as if Maeotic snows contended with the reds of Spain, or rose-petals swam in purest milk) nor her hair, ordered, flowing down her smooth neck, nor her eyes, twin fires, that are my starlight, nor the girl shining in Arabian silk (I am no lover flattering for nothing): but how beautifully she dances when the wine is set aside, like Ariadne taking the lead among the ecstatic cries of the Maenads, and how when she sets herself to sing in the Sapphic style, she plays with the skill of Aganippe’s lyre, and joins her verse to that of ancient Corinna, and thinks Erinna’s songs inferior to her own.

        When you were born, mea vita, did Love, dressed in white, not sneeze a clear omen for you, in your first hours of daylight? The gods granted you these heavenly gifts: in case you think your mother gave them to you: such gifts beyond the human are not inborn: these graces were not a nine-month creation. You are born to be the unique glory of Roman girls: you’ll be the first Roman girl to sleep with Jove, and never visit mortal beds amongst us. The beauty of Helen returns a second time to Earth.

        Why should I marvel now that our youths are on fire with her? It would have been more glorious for you, Troy, to have perished because of this. I used to marvel a girl could have caused so mighty a war, Asia versus Europe at Pergama. But Paris, and Menelaus, you were wise, Menelaus demanding her return, Paris slow to reply. That face was something: that even Achilles died for: even to Priam a proven cause for war. If any man wants to outdo the fame of ancient paintings, let him take my lady as model for his art: If he shows her to the East, to the West, he’ll inflame the West, and inflame the East.

        At least let me keep within bounds! Or if it should be a further love comes to me, let it be fiercer and let me die. Just as the ox at first rejects the plough, but later accepts the yoke and goes quiet to the fields, so spirited youth frets at first, in love, but takes the rough with the smooth later, tamed. Melampus the prophet, accepted shame in chains, convicted of stealing Iphiclus’s cattle, but Pero’s great beauty drove him not profit, she his bride to be in Amythaons’ house.

Book II.4:1-22 His mistress’s harshness.

        First you must often grieve, at your mistress’s wrongs towards you, often requesting something, often being rejected. And often chew your helpless fingernails between your teeth, and tap the ground nervously with your foot, in anger!

        My hair was drenched with scent: no use: nor my departing feet, delaying, with measured step. Magic roots are worth nothing here, nor Colchian witch of night, nor herbs distilled by Perimede’s hand, since we see no cause or visible blow anywhere: still, it’s a dark path such evils come by.

        The patient needs no doctor, no soft bed: it’s not the wind or weather hurts him. He walks about – yet suddenly his funeral startles his friends. Whatever love is, it’s unforeseen like this. What deceitful fortune-teller have I not been victim of, what old woman has not pondered my dreams ten times?

        If anyone wants to be my enemy, let him desire girls: yet delight in boys if he wants to be my friend. You slide down the tranquil stream in a boat in safety: how can such tiny waves from the bank hurt you? Often his mood alters with a single word: she will scarcely be satisfied with your blood.

Book II.5:1-30 Sinful Cynthia

        Is it true all Rome is talking of you, Cynthia, and you live in unveiled wantonness? Did I expect or deserve this? I’ll deal punishment, faithless girl, and my breeze will blow somewhere else. I’ll find one of all those deceitful women who want to be made famous by my songs, one who won’t taunt me with such harsh ways: she’ll insult you: ah, so long loved, you’ll weep, yet it’s too late.

        Now my anger’s fresh, now’s the time to go: if pain returns, believe me, love will too. The Carpathian waves don’t change in the northerlies as swiftly, nor the black cloud in a shifting southwest gale, as lovers’ anger alters at a word. While you can, take your neck from the unjust yoke. Then you won’t grieve at all, except for the very first night. All love’s evils are slight, if you are patient.

        But, by the gentle laws of our lady Juno, mea vita, stop hurting yourself on purpose. It’s not just the bull that strikes with a curving horn at its aggressor, even a sheep, it’s true, opposes the foe. I won’t rip the clothes off your lying flesh, or break open your closed doors, or tear your plaited hair in anger, or dare to bruise you with my hard fists. Let some ignoramus look for quarrels as shabby as these, a man whose head no ivy ever encircled. I’ll go write: what your lifetime won’t rub away: ‘Cynthia, strong in beauty: Cynthia light in word.’ Trust me, though you defy scandal’s murmur, this verse, Cynthia, will make you pale.

Book II.6:1-42 His jealousy

        There was never so much crowding round Lais’s house in Corinth, at whose doors all of Greece knelt down, never such a swarm for Menander’s Thais with whom the Athenians once amused themselves. Nor for Phryne, so rich from many lovers, she might have rebuilt the ruined walls of Thebes.

        Why, you even invent false relatives, and don’t lack for those who’ve the right to kiss you. The faces of young men in your paintings, and their names, annoy me, even the tender voiceless boy in the cradle. I’m wounded if your mother smothers you in kisses, your sister, or the girlfriend you sleep with. Everything hurts me: I’m afraid: (forgive my fear) and, wretched, suspect a man under every shift.

        Once, so the tale is, wars occurred for jealousies like these: see here the origins of Troy’s destruction. The same madness made the Centaurs smash wine-cups, violently fighting Pirithous. Why seek Greek examples? You were the author of that crime, Romulus, reared on a she-wolf’s savage milk: you taught them to rape Sabine virgins, and go free: through you, Love dares what he pleases now in Rome.

        Admetus’s wife, Alcestis, was blessed, and Ulysses’s bed-mate, Penelope, and every woman who loves her husband’s home!  What use is it girls, building temples in honour of Chastity, if every bride’s allowed to do what she wants?

        The hand that first painted obscene pictures and set up disgraceful things to view in innocent homes corrupted the unknowing eyes of young girls, and denied them ignorance of sin itself. Oh, let him groan who sent abroad, through art, the trouble latent in silent pleasures! Once, they’d not deck their houses with those images: then, the walls weren’t painted with sin. Not without cause cobwebs wreathe the shrines, and rank weeds clothe neglected gods.

        What guards shall I set for you, then, what lintel that no hostile foot shall ever cross? For a sad prison will achieve nothing against your will. She’s only safe, Cynthia, who’s ashamed to sin. No wife or mistress will ever seduce me: you’ll always be my mistress, and my wife.

Book II.7:1-20 Lifting of the law that bachelors must marry

        Cynthia was overjoyed, of course, when that law was repealed: we’d wept for ages in case it might divide us. Though Jupiter himself can’t separate two lovers against their will. ‘But Caesar’s mighty.’ But Caesar’s might’s in armies: conquered people are worth nothing in love.

        I’d sooner suffer my head being parted from my body than quench this fire to humour a bride, or as a husband pass by your sealed threshold, and, having betrayed it, look back with streaming eyes. Ah, what sleep my flute would sing you to then, a flute sadder than a funeral trumpet!

        Is it for me to supply sons for our country’s triumphs? There’ll be no soldiers from my line. But if I follow the true camp of my mistress, Castor’s horse will not be grand enough for me. It was in fact through this my glory gained such a name, glorious as far as the wintry Dneiper. You’re the only one who pleases me: let me please you, Cynthia, alone: that love will be more to me than being called ‘father’.

Book II.8:1-12 She’s leaving him

        She’s being torn away from me, the girl I’ve loved so long, and, friend, do you stop me shedding tears? No enmities are bitter but those of love: cut my throat indeed and I’ll be a milder enemy. Can I watch her leaning on another’s arm, she, no longer called mine, called mine a moment ago?

        All things may be overturned: surely, love’s affairs may be so: you win or lose: this is the wheel of love. Often, great leaders, great tyrants have fallen: and Thebes stood once, and there was noble Troy. Many as the gifts I gave, many as the songs I made: yet she, the cruel one, never said: ‘I love.’

Book II.8A:13-40 Propertius scorned

        So, cruel girl, through all the years now, have I, who supported you and your household, have I ever seemed a free man to you? Perhaps you’ll always hurl scornful words at my head?

        So, will you die, like this, Propertius, you who are still young? Then die: let her rejoice at your death! Let her disturb my ghost, and harass my shade, insult my pyre, and trample on my bones! Why! Didn’t Haemon of Boeotia, his flank wounded by his own sword, fall by Antigone’s tomb, and mingle his bones with those of the luckless girl, not wishing to return to the palace of Thebes without her? But you, also, man, will not escape: you should die with me: both our blood will trickle from this same blade. However much my coming death shames me, shameful though it be indeed, you will die it too. The Theban princes fell in no less dire a war for a kingdom, their mother torn between them, than if we fought, my girl between us, I, not fleeing my own death if I could achieve yours.

        Even Achilles, left alone, his mistress taken, let his sword rest there in his tent. He saw the Achaeans fleeing, then mangled on the beach, the Dorian camp ablaze with Hector’s torch: he saw Patroclus hideous with sand, stone dead, blood in his outspread hair: and he suffered that because of fair Briseis.  Grief rages, so deeply, when love is torn away. Then when his captive girl was given back in retribution, he dragged that same brave Hector behind his Thessalian steeds.

        No wonder that Amor triumphs over me, since I am so much the lesser in birth or arms.

Book II.9:1-52 Cynthia’s new lover

        That which he is, I was, often: but perhaps one day he’ll be thrown away, and another dearer to you.

        Penelope was able to live un-touched for twenty years, a woman worthy of so many suitors. She evaded marriage by her cunning weaving, cleverly unravelling each day’s weft by night: and though she never hoped to see her Ulysses again, she waited, growing old, for his return. Briseis, too, clutching dead Achilles, beat at her own bright face with frenzied hands, and, a weeping slave, she bathed her bloodstained lord, as he lay by the yellow waters of Simois, besmirched her hair, and lifted the mighty bones and flesh of great Achilles with her weak hands. Peleus was not with you then Achilles, nor your sea-goddess mother, nor Scyrian Deidamia, bereaved in her bed.

        So it was that Greece, then, was happy in its true daughters: then honour was respected even in the camps. But you, you, impious girl, can’t stay free a single night, or remain alone a single day! Why, you both drink from the cup, laughing away: and perhaps there are wicked words about me. You even chase after him, who left you once before. The gods grant you may enjoy being slave to that man!

        Were they for this, the vows I undertook for your health, when the waters of Styx had all but gone over your head, and we friends stood, weeping, round your bed? Where was he, by the gods, faithless girl, what on earth was he then to you?

        What if I was a soldier, detained in far-off India, or my ship was stationed on the Ocean? But it’s easy for you to weave lies and deceits: that’s one art that women have always learned. The Syrtes’ shoals don’t change as swiftly in shifting storms: the leaves don’t tremble as fast in the wintry South-west gale, as a woman’s given word fails in her anger, whether the cause is weighty, or whether the cause is slight.

        Now, since this wilfulness pleases you, I concede. I beg you, Boys, bring out your sharper arrows, compete at shooting me, and free me of my life! My blood will prove great honour to you.

        The stars are witnesses, girl, and the frost at dawn, and the doors that opened secretly for unhappy me that nothing in my life was ever as dear to me as you: and you will be, forever, too, though you’re so unkind to me. No woman will leave a trace in my bed: I’ll be alone, since I can’t be yours. And I wish, if perhaps I’ve lead a pious life, for that man, in the midst of love, to turn to stone!

Book II.10:1-26 A change of style needed.       

        Now it’s time to circle Helicon to other metres; time to give the Thessalian horse its run of the field. Now I want to talk about squadrons brave in fight, and mention my leader’s Roman camp. But if I lack the power, then surely my courage will be praised: it’s enough simply to have willed great things.

        Let first youth sing of Love, the end of life of tumult: I sing war now my girl is done. Now, I want to set out with more serious aspect: now my Muse teaches me on a different lute.  Surge, mind: vigour now, away from these low songs, Muses: now this work will be large-voiced, thus:

        ‘Euphrates now rejects Parthian cavalry protection, and mourns that he reduced Crassus’s presence. Even India, Augustus, bows its neck to your triumph, and Arabia’s virgin house trembles at you; and if any country removes itself to the furthest ends of the earth, let it feel your hand later, once it’s captive.’

        I’m a follower of camps like this: I’ll be a great poet singing of your camp: let the fates oversee that day!

        When we can’t reach the head of some tall statue, and the garland is set before its lowly feet, so now, helpless to embark on a song of praise, I offer cheap incense from a poor man’s rites. My verses as yet know not Hesiod’s founts of Ascra: Love has only washed them in Permessus, Apollo’s stream.

Book II.11:1-6 ‘Let other men write about you’

        Let other men write about you, or yourself be all unknown. Let the man who sows his seed in barren soil praise you. All your gifts, believe me, that dark funeral day will be borne away with you, on the one bed: and he’ll despise your dust, the man who passes by: he’ll not say: ‘This ash was once a learned maid.’

Book II.12:1-24 A portrait of Amor

        Whoever he was who first depicted Amor as a boy, don’t you think it was a wonderful touch? He was the first to see that lovers live without sense, and that great good is lost in trivial cares. Also, with meaning, he added the wings of the wind, and made the god hover in the human heart: true, since we’re thrown about on shifting winds, and the breeze never lingers in one place.

        And it’s right that his hand should grip barbed arrows, and the Cretan quiver hang across his shoulders, since he hits us before we safely see the enemy, and no one escapes unwounded from his hurt.

        His darts remain with me, and his form, a boy, but surely he must have lost his wings, since he never stirs anywhere but in my heart, and, oh, wages endless war in my blood.

        What joy is it for you, Amor, to inhabit my thirsty heart? If you know shame, transfer your war elsewhere: better to try those innocent of your poison. It’s not me you hit: it’s only my tenuous shadow.

        If you destroy me, who’ll be left to sing like this? (This slender Muse of mine is your great glory.) Who will sing the face, the hands, or the dark eyes of my girl, or how sweetly her footsteps are accustomed to fall.

Book II.13:1-16 His wish for Cynthia’s appreciation of his verse

        Erythra’s not armed with as many Persian shafts, as the arrows Love has fixed in my chest. He ordered me not to despise the lesser Muses and told me to live like this in Ascra’s grove: not so that the oaks of Mount Pierus would follow my sweet words, or so I could lead wild creatures down to Ismara’s valley, but more that Cynthia might wonder at my verse. Then I’d be better known in my art than the Argive, Linus.

        I’m not merely an admirer of beauty and virtue, or the fact a woman says her ancestors are famous. It’s my joy to have read in the arms of a learned girl, and to have my writing proved by her discerning ear. Sampling that goodbye to the muddled talk of the people: since I’ll be secure with my lady as my judge.

        If, perhaps, she turned her mind to peace with kindness, I might then withstand Jupiter’s enmity.

Book II.13A:17-58 His wishes for his funeral

When death closes my eyes at last, then, hear what shall serve as my funeral. No long spread-out procession of images for me: no empty trumpeting to wail my end. Don’t smooth out a bed there on ivory posts for me then, no corpse on a couch, pressing down mounds of Attalic cloth of gold. Forget the line of perfumed dishes for me: include the mundane offerings of a plebeian rite.

        Enough for me, and more than enough: if three little books form my procession, those I take as my greatest gift to Persephone.

        And surely you’ll follow: scratches on your bare breasts; and never weary of calling my name; and place the last kiss on my frozen lips, when the onyx jar with its Syrian nard is granted. Then when the fire beneath turns me to ashes let the little jar receive my shade, and over my poor tomb add a laurel, to cast shadow on the place where my flame died, and let there be this solitary couplet:

        HE WHO LIES HERE, NOW, BUT COARSE DUST,

          ONCE SERVED ONE LOVE, AND ONE ALONE.

        So the fame of my tomb will be no less than that of the grave of blood, of Achilles the hero. And when you too approach your end, remember: come, grey-haired, this way, to the stones of memory. For the rest, beware of being unkind to my tomb: earth is aware and never wholly ignorant of truth.

        How I wish any one of the Three Sisters had ordered me to give up my breath at the first, and in my cradle. Why is the spirit preserved, yet, for an unknown hour? Nestor’s pyre was seen after three generations: yet, if some Phrygian soldier, from the walls of Troy, had cut short his fated old age, he would have never have seen his son, Antilochus, buried, or cried out: ‘O Death, why come so slowly?’

        Yet you, when a friend is lost some time, will weep: it’s a law of the gods, this care for past men. Witness the fierce wild boar that once felled white Adonis, as he hunted along the ridge of Ida; there in the marsh, they say, his beauty lay, and you, Venus, ran there with out-spread hair. Yet you’ll call back my voiceless shade in vain, Cynthia: what power will my poor bones have to speak?

Book II.14:1-32 Reconciliation

        Agamemnon did not joy like this over his triumph at Troy, when Laomedon’s great wealth went down to ruin: Ulysses was no happier, when, his wanderings done, he touched the shore of his beloved Ithaca: nor Electra, on finding Orestes safe, when she’d cried, as a sister, clasping what she thought his ashes: nor Ariadne, Minos’ daughter, seeing Theseus return unharmed, with her guiding thread, out of Daedalus’s maze: as I with the joys I gathered last night. I’ll be immortal if there’s another like it. Yet when I used to go with a suppliant’s hanging head, she spoke of me as worth less than a dried up pond.

        She doesn’t try to oppose me now, with unjustified disdain, and can’t rest indifferent to my moans. I wish her peace terms had not been made known to me so late! Now the medicine’s wasted on the ashes. The path was under my feet and I was blind: no one of course can see when crazed with love.

        This attitude I have found the best: lovers, show disdain! She comes today, who yesterday said no.

        Others, frustrated, knocked, and called my lady’s name: the girl, at ease, laid her head by mine. This victory’s more than conquering far Parthia to me: she’s my spoil: my chariot: my riches. I’ll add rich gifts to your sanctuary’s columns Cytherea, and this will be the verse below my name:

GODDESS, PROPERTIUS SETS THESE SPOILS BEFORE YOUR TEMPLE: HE WAS RECEIVED AS A LOVER FOR ONE WHOLE NIGHT

        Now, mea lux, shall my ship preserved come to your shores, or sink, fully laden, in the shallows? For if you change towards me, perhaps through some fault of mine, let me lie down dying at your threshold!

Book II.15:1-54 Joy in true love

O happy me! O night that shines for me! And O you bed made blessed by delights! How many words thrashed out when the light was near us, what striving together when light was taken away! Now with naked breasts she struggles against me, now, tunic gathered, demands delay. She, with her lips, opening my eyelids weary with sleep, and saying: ‘Is this how you lie here, laggard?’

 Our arms were varied in how many changing embraces! How long my kisses lingered on your lips!

        No joy in corrupting Venus to a blind motion: know, if you do not, the eyes are the guides of Love. They say Paris himself was ruined by the Spartan, Helen, as she rose naked from the bed of Menelaus. And Endymion, they say, was naked: arousing Diana, he lay beside the naked goddess.

        But if you insist from pride in lying there dressed, you’ll feel my hands ripping your clothes: what’s more if anger provokes me any further, you’ll be showing bruised arms to your mother. Sagging breasts don’t stop you from toying yet: let them think of it that childbirth’s already shamed.

        While the fates allow, we’ll sate our eyes with love: the long night comes, the day does not return. And I wish you’d bind us like this, clinging together, in chains that no day might ever unloose! Let doves coupled together in love prove your image: male and female wholly joined. He’s wrong who looks for an end to love’s madness: true love has no knowledge of limits. Earth will sooner taunt farmers with false spring; Sol the sun-god drive with black horses; streams call their waters backwards to their fountains; fish be stranded, and the deep dry land; sooner than I transfer my pangs to another: hers am I living, hers will I be in death.

        But if she’ll grant me such nights with her as this, one year will seem as long as a lifetime. If she gives me many, I’ll be immortalised by them: even one night might make a man a god. If all men longed to pass their lives like this, and lay here, bodies held by draughts of wine, there’d be no vicious swords, or ships of war, nor would our bones be tossed in Actium’s deep, nor would Rome racked so often by rounds of private quarrels, be weary and grieving with loosened hair. This, at least, those who come after us should rightly praise: our cups of wine offended none of the gods.

        You while the light lasts, then, don’t leave off life’s joys! Though you give all your kisses, they’ll prove all too few. As the leaves fall from dried garlands: as you see them scatter in cups and float there: so we, now, the lovers, who hope for great things, perhaps fate, tomorrow, will end our day.

Book II.16:1-56 Cynthia faithless

        A praetor came, just now, from the land of Illyria: the greatest prize for you, the greatest worry for me. Why couldn’t he lose his life on the Ceraunian rocks? O, Neptune, what gifts I’d have given you!

        Now banquets are given, tables burdened without me: now the door’s open all night, but not for me. Well, if you’re wise, don’t neglect the harvest on offer: strip the stupid animal of his whole fleece; then, when he’s but a pauper, his gifts all spent, tell him to sail to new Illyrias!

        Cynthia doesn’t chase high office, doesn’t care for honour: no, she’s the one always weighing a lover’s purse. But you, Venus, O, help me in my pain: let his incessant lust destroy his member! 

        Can anybody buy her love with gifts, then? The shameful girl, she’s undone by money. She’s always sending me off to sea to look for jewels, and orders gifts from Tyre itself. I wish that no one in Rome was wealthy, that our Leader himself would live in a thatched cottage. Mistresses wouldn’t be saleable for a gift, and a girl would grow grey-haired in the one house. You’d never lie seven nights apart, your gleaming arms round so vile a man, and not because I’ve sinned (you’re the witness) but because everywhere lightness was always beauty’s friend. Excluded by birth, a barbarian stamps his foot, and now, suddenly blessed, he occupies my kingdom!

        See what bitterness Eriphyla found in gifts, and with what misfortunes Creusa burned as a bride. Is there no insult sufficient to quench my tears? Surely this grief cannot be far behind your sins? So many days have gone by since any desire for the theatre or the arena stirred me, and food itself gives me no joy. I should be ashamed, oh, ashamed! But perhaps as they say sinful love is always deaf.

        See Antony, that general, who a moment ago, filled Actium’s waves with the vain cries of lost soldiers: infamous love commanded him to recall his ships, turn his back, and run to the furthest corner of the globe. That is Caesar’s power and his glory: he who conquered sheathed the sword.

        But, that man, whatever clothes he gave you, whatever emerald, or yellow-glowing topaz, I’d like to see swift-moving hurricanes whirl them to the void: I wish they were merely earth or water to you.

        Jupiter won’t always smile at lovers’ faithlessness or turn deaf ears to their prayers. You’ve heard the thunderclap rumble through the sky, and the lightning bolt leap down from its airy home. Neither the Pleiades nor rainy Orion do these things: it’s not for nothing the angry lightning falls. It’s then the god chooses to punish deceitful girls, since he, himself, wept when he was once deceived.

        So don’t let clothes from Sidon count so much that you’re frightened whenever the South wind bears a cloud.

Book II.17:1-18 His faithfulness, though ignored

        To lie about the night, to lead a lover on with promises, that’s to own hands dyed with his blood! I’m the poet of these things, so often whiling away bitter nights alone, tossing from side to side in bed.

        Whether you’re moved by Tantalus’s fate beside the water, parched as the liquid ebbs from his thirsty mouth, or whether you admire Sisyphus’s labour, rolling his awkward burden up all the mountain side: nothing in the world lives more harshly than a lover, nor, if you’re at all wise, is there anything that you’d wish less to be.

        I whom envious admiration once considered happy, I too am hardly allowed entrance, now, one day in ten. Now by comparison, impious girl, I’d enjoy hurling my body from some hard rock, or taking powdered drugs in my fingers. I can’t even sleep at the crossroads under the clear moon, or send my words through the crack in the door.

        But though it’s fact I’ll take care not to change my mistress: then she’ll cry, when she senses loyalty, in me.

Book II.18:1-4 Lover’s Stoicism

        Continual complaints cause dislike in many: a woman is often moved by a silent man. If you’ve seen something, always deny you’ve seen! Or if anything happens to pain you, deny the pain!

Book II.18A:5-22 Youth and Age

        What if my youth were white with age’s white hair and sagging wrinkles furrowed my brow? At least Aurora didn’t reject Tithonus, old, didn’t allow him to lie there lonely in the House of Dawn. She often fondled him, descending into her waters, before she bathed her yoked horses with care. She, when she rested in his arms, by neighbouring India, lamented that day returned too soon.

        Climbing into her chariot she spoke of the gods’ injustice, and offered her services, unwillingly, to the world. Her joy was greater that old Tithonus was alive, than her grief was heavy at the loss of Memnon. A girl like that was not ashamed to sleep with the old, or press so many kisses on its white hair.

        But you even hate my youth, unfaithful girl, though you’ll be a bowed old woman yourself, on a day not so far away. Still, I let care go, since Cupid is oft inclined to be harsh on the man to whom he once was kind.

Book II.18B:23-38 Painted Lady

        Do you even imitate the Britons, now, stained with woad, you crazy girl, and play games, with foreign glitter on your face? Everything’s proper form is as Nature made it: Belgian colour looks foul on Roman cheeks. May there be many an evil for that girl, in the underworld, who, false and foolish, dyes her hair! Be rid of it: I’ll still see you as beautiful, truly: your beauty’s sufficient for me, if only you’ll come often. What! If some girl stains her forehead blue, does that mean dark blue beauty’s fine?

        Since you’ve no brother left you and no son, I’ll be brother and son in one for you. Let your couch itself always guard you: and don’t desire to sit with your face over-painted.

        I believe what rumour tells me: so refuse to do it: bad news leaps land and sea.

Book II.19:1-32 Cynthia is off to the country

         Even though you’re leaving Rome against my wish, I’m glad, Cynthia, since you’re without me, you’re in the country, off the beaten track. There’ll be no young seducer in those chaste fields, one whose flatteries stop you being true; no fights will begin beneath your window; your sleep won’t be troubled by being called aloud.

        You’ll be alone, and you’ll gaze, alone, Cynthia, at mountains, herds, the fields of poor farmers. No games will have power to corrupt you there, no sanctuary temples giving you countless opportunities for sin. There you’ll watch the oxen’s endless ploughing, vines losing leaves to the pruning-hook’s skill: and you’ll carry a little offering of incense to some crude shrine, where a goat will die in front of the rustic altar: and you’ll imitate their choral dance bare-legged: but only if all is safe from strange men.

        I’ll go hunting: I’ll take pleasure now, at once, in accepting the rites of fair Diana, and dropping my former vows to Venus. I’ll start chasing wild creatures, and fasten horns to fir trees, and control the audacious dogs myself. Yet I’ll not try great lions, or hurry to meet wild boar face to face. It’s daring enough to take the gentle hare, or pierce a bird with a trim rod, where Clitumnus clothes the beautiful stream with woodland tangles, and his wave bathes the snow-white heifers.

        You, mea vita, if you venture anything, remember I’ll be coming there for you, in a few days time. So, solitary woods and vagrant streams, in mossy hills, won’t stop me trying your name on my tireless tongue. Everyone wishes to hurt those who are absent.

Book II.20:1-36 His loyalty

        Why cry more than Briseis when she was led away? Why weep more sadly than Andromache, the anxious prisoner? Why do you weary the gods, crazy girl, with tales of my deceit? Why complain my faithfulness has ebbed away?  Attica’s night-owl never cries as loud in funereal mourning in Athenian trees, nor does Niobe, with a dozen monuments to her pride, pour as many tears down sorrowing Sipylus’s slopes.

        Though my arms were fastened with bronze links: though my members were enclosed by Danae’s tower: I would break chains of bronze for you, mea vita, and leap over Danae’s iron tower. My ears are deaf to whatever they say of you: only don’t doubt my seriousness. I swear by my mother’s bones and the bones of my father (if I deceive, oh let the ashes of both weigh heavy on me!) that I’ll be yours, mea vita, to the final shadows: one day, one faith will carry both away.

        And if your name or your beauty could not hold me, the gentleness of your demands would indeed. Now the orbit’s traced of the seventh full moon since never a street corner’s been silent about us, while your threshold has frequently been kind to me, and I’ve frequently had access to your bed. But I’ve not bought a single night with costly presents: whatever I’ve been, it’s through the great grace of your spirit.

        Many men sought to be yours, you have sought me only: can I fail to remember your qualities?  If I do let the tragic Furies torment me, or Aeacus damn me with infernal justice, and I be spread-eagled amongst Tityus’s vultures, and bear rocks with Sisyphus’s labour, myself.

        And don’t entreat me with pleading letters: my loyalty at the last will be such as it was at the start. This is the whole of my law, that alone among lovers, I don’t leave off in a hurry; I don’t begin without thought.

Book II.21:1-20 Cynthia deceived by Panthus

As often as Panthus has written a letter to you about me, so often let Venus fail to be his friend. Yet now I seem to be a truer oracle to you than Dodona’s. That handsome lover of yours has a wife!

        So many nights wasted? Aren’t you ashamed? See, he’s free, he sings: you, far too credulous, lie alone. And now you’re a conversation piece between them: He says arrogantly you were often at his house against his will. Let me be ruined, if he seeks anything else but glory from you: he, the husband gains praise from this.

        So Jason, the stranger, once deceived Medea of Colchis: she was thrown out of the house (and Creusa gained it next). So Calypso was foiled by Ulysses, the Ithacan warrior: she saw her lover spread his sails. O girls, too ready to lend an ear to your lovers: once you’ve been dropped learn not to be thoughtlessly kind!

        You’ve long been looking for someone else who’ll stay: the lesson you had at first, foolish girl, should teach you to be careful. I, whatever the place, am yours in every moment, whether I am in sickness or in health.

Book II.22:1-42 His philandering

        You know that before today many girls have equally pleased me: you know, Demophoon, many troubles come my way. No crossroad’s traversed by my feet in vain. O, and the theatre was made to be my constant downfall. Whether some girl spreads her white arms in tender gesture, or whether she sings in various modes! And then, our eyes search out their own wound, if some beauty sits there, her breast not veiled, or if drifting hair strays over a chaste forehead, hair that an Indian jewel clasps at the crown: such that, if she says no to me, perhaps with a stern look, cold sweat falls from my brow.

        Demophoon, do you ask why I’m so soft for them all? Love has no answer to your question: ‘Why?’

        Why do some men slash their arms with sacred knives, and are cut to pieces to frenzied Phrygian rhythms? Nature at birth gave every man his fault: fate granted that I’d always desire someone. Even though the fate of Thamyris the bard came upon me, I’d never be blind to beauty, my jealous friend.

        And you’re wrong if I seem small to you, thin bodied: worshipping Venus has never been a trouble. It’s all right to ask: often a girl has found my attentions effective all night long. Jupiter, for Alcmene, halted both the Bears, and the heavens went two nights without their king: yet he still didn’t take up his lightning wearily, even so. What about when Achilles left Briseis’s arms? Did the Trojans flee the Greek javelins less? When fierce Hector rose from Andromache’s bed, did the Mycenaean fleet not fear the battle? One and the other destroyed ships or walls: in this I am Achilles, in this I am fierce Hector.

        See how now the sun, and now the moon serve in the sky: well one girl’s not enough for me. Let another girl hold and fondle me in passion’s embrace: yes, another, if she will not grant me space: or if by chance she’s made angry by my attentions to her, let her know there’s another who would be mine!

        For two cables protect a ship at anchor better, and an anxious mother’s safer rearing twins.

Book II.22A:43-50 False promises

        Say either no, if you’re cruel or, if you’re not cruel, come! Why take pleasure dealing in pointless words?  This one pain, above all others, is sharpest for a lover, if she suddenly refuses to come as he’d hoped.

        What vast sighs hurl him round his whole bed, as he throttles some unknown man, who’s been admitted! And wearies the boy asking about what he’s already heard, and orders him to ask about the fate he fears to know.

Book II.23:1-24 The advantage of a bought woman

        I was persuaded to keep away from the streets, yet water fetched from the lake now tastes sweet to me. Should any freeborn man have to give bribes for another man’s slave to bring him the message his mistress promised? Or ask so many times: ‘What colonnade shades her now?’ or: ‘Which direction did she take on the Plain of Mars?’

        Then when you’ve carried through the Labours the story tells of, for her to write ‘Have you any little thing for me?’ so you can face a surly guard, or often, imprisoned, lurk in some vile hole. What it costs us, the night that comes just once in a whole year! Let them perish, those who take pleasure in closed doors!

        In contrast, isn’t she pleasing, that girl who goes with her cloak thrown back, not fenced in by a threatening guard, who often abrades the Sacred Way in dirty slippers, and brooks no delay if any want to approach her: she never puts you off, nor chatters aloud, demanding what your stingy father often complains at having given you, nor will she say: ‘I’m scared, get up, be quick, I beg you, wretched man: my husband comes to day, to me, from the country.’ Let the girls Iraq and Syria have sent delight me. I can’t bear shamefaced robbery in bed. Now that no freedom’s left to any lover, he who’d be free let him wish for no more love.

Book II.24:1-16 Propertius’s book well-known

        ‘You would say that: now you’re common talk because of that notorious book, now your Cynthia’s viewed by the whole Forum?’ Who wouldn’t bead with sweat at those words in the circumstances, whether from honest shame, or wishing to keep quiet his affairs? But if my Cynthia still breathed on me good-naturedly, I wouldn’t be known as the source of evil: I wouldn’t be paraded, infamous, through all the city, and, though not alight with goodness, I’d deceive.

        So may it be no surprise to you, my seeking common girls: they bring me into less disrepute: surely no trivial reason?

        And just now she wanted a proud peacock’s tail for a fan, and to hold a crystal ball in her cold hand, and, angering me, longs to ask for ivory dice, or whatever glitters on the Sacred Way. O, perish the thought that the expense bothers me, but I’m ashamed to be a laughing-stock through my deceitful lady, now.

Book II.24A:17-52 Recriminations

        Is this what, at first, you made me take delight in? Aren’t you ashamed, being lovely, to be so wayward? We’ve hardly spent one night or more of passion, and now you say I’m a burden in your bed. A moment ago you praised me, read my poetry: does your love so rapidly avert its wings?

        Let that man contend with me in ingenuity, contend in art: let him be taught how to love in one place first. If it pleases you, let him fight with Lernean Hydras, and bring you apples from the dragon of the Hesperides: let him gladly drink foul poisons, or shipwrecked, taste the water, and never decline to be miserable because of you (I wish, mea vita, you’d try me with labours like these!).

        Then this insolent man will be one of the cowards for you, who comes now officiously swollen with honour: next year there’ll be discord between you.

        But the Sibyl’s whole lifetime will not change me: nor Hercules’s labours: nor death’s black day. You’ll gather them and say: ‘These are your ashes, Propertius. Alas, you were true to me, you indeed were true, though your ancestors’ weren’t noble, and you weren’t as rich others.’ There’s nothing I won’t suffer, injuries won’t change me: I don’t consider it pain to endure a lovely girl.

        I believe that not a few have been undone by your figure, and I know that many men have not been true. Theseus took delight for a while in Ariadne, Demophoon in Phyllis: both unwelcome guests. Now Medea is seen on Jason’s boat, and in a moment left alone by the man she saved.

        The woman who acts out simulated love for many must be hard: she, whoever she is, who prepares herself for more than a single man. Don’t seek to compare me with the noble, or rich: they’ll scarcely come gathering your ashes on your last day. I’ll do it for you: but I’d rather, this I beg, that, with unbound hair, you’ll beat your naked breasts instead for me.

Book II.25:1-48 Constancy and Inconstancy

        Unique woman, born to beauty, you, the object of my pain, since fate excludes me from your saying: ‘Come, often’: your form will be made most famous by my books: with your permission, Calvus: and Catullus, peace to you, with yours.

        The aged soldier sleeps by his grounded weapons; ancient oxen refuse to pull the plough; the rotting ship rests on empty sands; and the warrior’s ancient shield idly hangs on some temple wall. But no old age would lead me away from loving you, not even if I was Nestor, or Tithonus.

        Wouldn’t it be better to serve a cruel tyrant, and groan in your brazen bull, savage Perillus? Wouldn’t it be better to harden at the Gorgon’s gaze, or even suffer those Caucasian vultures? Yet I shall still endure.

        The iron blade’s eaten away by rust and the flint by drops of water: but love’s not worn away by a mistress’s threshold if it stays to suffer and hear threats undeserved. More: the lover pleads, when despised: and when wronged confesses sins: and then returns himself with reluctant step.

        You as well, credulous man, waxing proud when love’s at the full: no woman stays firm for long. Does anyone perform his vows in mid-storm, when often a ship drifts shattered in the harbour? Or demand his prize before the race is run, and the wheel has touched the post seven times? The favourable breeze plays us false in love: when it’s delayed great is the ruin that comes.

        You, meanwhile, though she still delights in you, close imprisoned joy in your silent heart. For, I don’t know why, but in his love pact, it is always his boastful words that seem to harm the lover.  Though she often calls for you, remember, go but once: that which is envied often fails to last.

        Yet were there to be times like those that pleased the girls of old, I would be again what you are now: I’m vanquished by time. But age shall still not change my habits: let each man be allowed to go his own way.

        And you, that recall service to many loves, if so, what pain afflicts your eyes! You see a tender girl of pure white, you see a dark: either colour commands you. You see a form that expresses the Greek, or you see our beauties, either aspect grips you. Whether she’s in common dress or scarlet, one or the other’s the road to a cruel wound. Since one girl can lead your eyes to sufficient sleeplessness, one woman, whoever’s she is, is plenty of trouble.

Book II.26:1-20 A dream of shipwreck

        I saw you, in my dreams, mea vita, shipwrecked, striking out, with weary hands, at Ionian waters, confessing the many ways you lied to me, unable to lift your head, hair heavy with brine, like Helle, whom once the golden ram carried on his soft back, driven through the dark waves.

        How frightened I was, that perhaps that sea would bear your name, and the sailors would weep for you, as they sailed your waters! What gifts I entertained for Neptune, for Castor and his brother, what gifts for you Leucothoe, now a goddess! At least, like one about to die, you called my name, often, barely lifting your fingertips above the deep.

        Yet if Glaucus had seen your eyes, by chance, you’d have become a mermaid among Ionian seas, and the Nereids would have chided you, from envy, white Nesaee and sea-green Cymothoe. But I saw a dolphin leap to aid you, who once before, I think, bore Arion’s lyre. And already I was about to dive myself from a high rock, when fear woke me from such visions.

Book II.26A:21-58 Faithful love

        Let them admire the fact, now, that so lovely a girl serves me, and that they talk of my power throughout the city! Though Cambyses, and the golden rivers of Croesus, should return, she’ll not say: ‘Poet, depart my bed.’ While she reads to me, she says she hates rich men: no girl cherishes poetry with such reverence. Loyalty is great in love: constancy greatly serves it: he who can give many gifts let him have his many lovers.

        If my girl thinks of travelling the wide sea, I’ll follow her and one breeze will blow the faithful pair onward. One shore will rest us, one tree overspread us, and we will often drink at a single spring. And one plank will do for a pair of lovers, whether the prow’s my bed, or the stern.

        I’ll patiently endure it all: though the savage East Wind blows; or the chill South drives our sails in uncertainty; or whatever winds vexed unhappy Ulysses, and the thousand ships of Greece by Euboea’s shore; or the one that separated those two coasts, when a dove led a ship, the Argo, into an unknown sea.

        Let Jupiter himself set our boat on fire, so long as she is never absent from my eyes. Surely we’ll both be hurled on one shore, naked, together: the wave can carry me off, so long as earth protects you.

        Yet Neptune’s not so cruel to great love: Neptune matches his brother Jove in loving. Amymone’s a witness, taken in the fields, seeking water, Lerna’s marshes struck by the trident. The god redeemed his pledge for that embrace, and the golden urn poured out a celestial stream. And Orithyia, though raped, denied that Boreas was cruel: while this god tames the earth and deep oceans.

        Believe me Scylla will be gentle to us and huge Charybdis who never ceases her rhythmic flow: no shadows will hide from us the stars themselves: Orion will show clear, as will the Kids. What matter if my life’s laid down for your body? It would be no dishonourable death.

Book II.27:1-16 Fate and Love      

You mortals, then, ask after the uncertain funeral hour, and by what road your death will come to you: you enquire of the cloudless sky, by Phoenician art, which stars are good for man, and which are evil!

Whether we chase the Parthians on foot, the Britons at sea, the dangers of earth’s and ocean’s paths are hidden. You weep again that your head is threatened by war, when Mars joins the wavering ranks on either side: beside your burning house, by your house in ruins: and no cup of darkness to lift to your lips. Only the lover knows when he will perish, by what death, and fears no weapons, blasts of the North Wind.

Though he sits at the oar among the Stygian reeds, and views the mournful sails of the boat of Hell, should the breath of his mistress’s voice but recall him, he’ll return by a road acknowledged by no known law.

Book II.28:1-46 Cynthia is ill

         Jupiter, be merciful, at last, to the poor girl: such a beauty’s death would be a crime. That time has come when the scorching air burns, and Earth begins to blaze beneath the torrid Dog-star. But it’s not the heat that’s guilty, or heaven to blame, it’s her, so often failing to hold the gods sacred. It undoes girls, it’s undone them before: what they promise the winds and the waves carry away.

        Was Venus annoyed that you were compared to her? She’s jealous of those who vie with her in beauty. Or did you slight Pelasgian Juno’s temple, or dare to deny Athene’s eyes were fair? You beauties have never learned to be sparing of words. Your tongue was a harmful thing to you in this: your beauty gave it to you. But vexed as you have been by so many of life’s dangers there comes the gentler hour of a final day.

        Io lowed in her youth with altered forehead: she’s a goddess now, she who drank the Nile as a heifer. Ino strayed as a girl over the earth: she the wretched sailors call on, as Leucothoe. Andromeda was given to the sea-monster: even she became Perseus’ honoured wife. Callisto, a she-bear, wandered Arcadian pastures: now she rules sails at night by her star.

        But if the Fates by chance hurry their silence on you, the Fates, blessed, of your tomb, you can tell Semele about the dangers of beauty, and she’ll believe you, a girl taught by her ills: and you’ll be first among all of Homer’s heroines, without question. Now, as best you can, comply, stricken, with fate: the god and the harsh day itself may alter. Juno, the wife, might even forgive you: even Juno is moved if a young girl dies.

        The chanting of magic, the whirling bullroarers cease, and the laurel lies scorched in the quenched fires. Now the Moon refuses as often to descend from heaven, and the dismal night bird sounds its funeral note. One raft of fate carries both our loves, setting dark-blue sail to the lake of Hell. But take pity on us both, not just on one! I will live if she lives: and die, if she should die. 

        I bind myself with a sacred verse against this wish: I write: ‘By Jupiter, the Mighty, the girl is saved’: having taken such pains, she herself can sit at your feet, and, sitting there, tell you all her troubles.

Book II.28A:47-62 Transience

Persephone, let your mercy endure: Dis, why set out to be crueller than her? There are so many thousands of lovely girls among the dead: if allowed, leave one beautiful one up here! Down there with you is Iope; with you shining Tyro; with you Europa, and wicked Pasiphae; and whatever beauty old Troy and Achaia bore, the bankrupt kingdoms of ancient Priam and Apollo; and whoever among their number was a Roman girl, perished: every one of them the greedy fire possesses. No one has endless fortune, eternal beauty: sooner or later death awaits us all.

        Since you’ve escaped, mea lux, from great danger pay Diana the gift of song and dance you owe her, and keep vigil as well for that heifer, now a goddess; and, for my sake, grant her the ten nights you vowed.

Book II.29:1-22 Drunk and out late

While I wandered last night, mea lux, in drink, and with never a servant’s hand there to guide me, a crowd of I don’t know how many tiny boys came against me (it was fear alone stopped me counting them); some held little torches, and some held arrows, and some seemed ready to drape me with chains. But all were naked, and one more lascivious than the rest, said: ‘Take him, you all know him well, already: this is the one the angry woman has given us.’

        Saying this, in a flash a rope was round my neck. Another one ordered me thrust into their midst, and a third cried: ‘Let him die, if he thinks we’re not gods! She’s waited up all hours for you, wretched man, while you searched for who knows what door: you fool. When she’s loosed the windings of her Sidonian turban, and flickers her heavy eyelids, it won’t be Arabian perfumes will breathe on you, but the ones Love made himself with his own fingers.

        Stop, now, brothers, now he promises true love, and look, now, we’ve come to the house as ordered.’ And so they led me back to my lover’s roof, saying: ‘Go, now, learn how to stay home of nights.’

Book II.29A:23-42 Waking Cynthia

It was dawn; I wanted to see if she slept alone: and alone she was there, in her bed. I was stunned: she’d never looked lovelier to me, not even when she went, in her purple shift, and told her dreams to virginal Vesta, lest they threatened harm to her or me. So she looked to me, shedding recent sleep. Oh, how great is the power of beauty in itself! ‘Why,’ she said: ‘you’re an early spy on your mistress, do you think my morals then are yours? I’m not so easy: it’s enough for me, one man, either you, or someone who’ll be truer. There are no traces deep in the bed, signs of writhing about, or mutual slumber. Look, no breath panting from my whole body, confessing to some adultery.’ Speaking, she pushed my face away with her hand, and leapt up, loosened sandals on her feet. Thus I ceased my spying on such chaste love: since then I’ve had not one happy night.

Book II.30:1-40 No escape from Love

Now, you’re ready to go to Phrygia, cruel one, now, across the waves and seek by ship the shore of Hyrcanian seas. Where are you going, O, mad one? There’s no escape: though you head for Tanais, Love will pursue you there. Not even if coursing the air on Pegasus’s back, nor if the wings of Perseus moved your feet. Even if winds, divided, snatch you on winged sandals, the highways of Mercury will do you no good. Love always flies overhead, follows lovers, and sits heavy himself on the neck that was free. He’s the shrewd spy who watches, he’ll never let you raise your captive eyes from the ground. But then if you sin, he’s a sympathetic god, if only prompt prayer is forthcoming.

        Let harsh old men denounce the revels: mea vita, let us wear out the path we chose. Their ears are filled with ancient laws: yet this is the place where the skilled pipe should play that which floated in Maeander’s shallows, hurled there unjustly swelling Minerva’s cheeks, to make her ugly.

Should I be ashamed to serve but one mistress? If it’s a crime, well, it’s a crime of Love. Don’t reproach me with it. Cynthia, delight to lie with me, in caves of dew, by mossy hills. There you’ll see the Muses cling to cliffs, singing Jove’s sweet thefts in ancient times, how he burned for Semele, was ruined for Io, and flew, at last a bird, to the roofs of Troy. (Though if no one exists who withstood the Winged One’s power why am I the only one charged with a common crime?) Nor will you trouble the Virgins’ decorous faces: their choir is not unknowing of what Love is, given a certain one lay entwined on the rocks of Bistonia, clasped by Oeagrus’ form.

        Then, when they set you in the front rank of the circling dance, and Bacchus there in the middle with his cunning wand, then will I let the sacred ivy berries hang about my head: since without you my genius has no power.

Book II.31:1-16 The New Colonnade

You ask why I came so late? Phoebus’s gold colonnade was opened today by mighty Caesar; such a great sight, adorned with columns from Carthage, and between them the crowd of old Danaus’s daughters. There in the midst, the temple reared in bright marble, dearer to Phoebus than his Ortygian land. Right on the top were two chariots of the Sun, and the doors of Libyan ivory, beautifully done. One mourned the Gauls thrown from Parnassus’s peak, and the other the death, of Niobe, Tantalus’s daughter. Next the Pythian god himself was singing, in flowing robes, between his mother and sister. He seemed to me more beautiful than the true Phoebus, lips parted in marble song to a silent lyre. And, about the altar, stood four of Myron’s cattle, carved statues of oxen, true to life.

Book II.32:1-62 Cynthia talked about

        He who sees you sins: so he who can’t see you can’t desire you: the eyes commit the crime. O Cynthia, why else do you search out dubious oracles at Praeneste, or the walls of Aeaean Telegonus? Why do chariots take you to Herculean Tibur? Why the Appian Way, so often, to Lanuvium? Cynthia, I wish you’d walk here when you’re free! But the crowd tell me to put no trust in you, when they see you rush faithfully, carrying a torch on fire, to the sacred grove, bearing light to the goddess Trivia.

        No wonder Pompey’s Portico with its shady colonnade, famed for its canopy of cloth of gold, seems worthless, and its rising rows of evenly planted plane-trees, and the waters that fall from slumbering Maro, lightly bubbling liquid through the city, till Triton buries the stream again in his mouth.

        You betray yourself: these trips show some furtive passion: mad girl, it’s our eyes you flee, and not the city. It won’t do, you plot mad schemes against me: you spread familiar nets for me with scant skill. But I’m the least of it: losing your good name will bring you the pain that you deserve. Lately a rumour spoke evil in my ear, and nothing good was said of you in the city.

        But give no credence to hostile tongues: the tales have always punished beauties. Your name’s not been tarnished by being caught with drugs: Apollo bears witness that your hands are clean. If a night or two has been spent in lengthy play, well, such petty crimes don’t move me. Helen abandoned her country for a foreign lover, and was brought home again alive without being judged. They say that Venus herself was corrupted by libidinous Mars, but was always honoured, nevertheless, in heaven. Though Ida’s mount tells how a nymph loved shepherd Paris, sleeping with him among the flocks, the crowd of Hamadryad sisters saw it, and Silenus, head of the ancient troop of Satyrs, with whom, in the hollows of Ida, Naiad, you gathered falling apples, catching them below in your hands.

        Contemplating such debaucheries, surely no one asks: ‘Why’s she so rich? Who gave her wealth? Where did the gifts come from?’ O great your happiness Rome, these days, if a single girl swims against the stream. Lesbia did all these things before, with impunity: anyone who follows her is surely less to blame. He’s only lately set foot in this city who asks for the ancient Tatii or the strict Sabine. You’ll sooner have power to dry the waves of the sea, or gather the stars in a human hand, than change things so our girls don’t want to sin: that was the custom no doubt in Saturn’s age, and when Deucalion’s waters flooded the globe: but after Deucalion’s ancient waters, who could ever keep a chaste bed, what goddess could live alone with a single god?

        The snow-white shape of a savage bull corrupted great Minos’s wife once, they say, and Danae enclosed in a tower of bronze, was no less unable, in her chastity, to deny great Jove. So if you imitate Greek and Roman women, I sentence you to be free for life!

Book II.33:1-22 Cynthia performing the rites

        The wretched rites are back again: Cynthia’s been occupied these ten nights. And I wish they’d end these sacraments that Inachus’s daughter sent from tepid Nile to Italy’s women! This goddess, whoever she was, who so often separates lovers, was always ill-natured. Surely Io you learnt from hidden couplings with Jove, what it is to wander, when Juno ordered you, a girl, to wear horns, and lose your speech to the harsh sound cows make.

        Oh, how often you galled your mouth on oak-leaves, and chewed, in your stall, on once-eaten strawberry leaves! Surely it’s not because Jupiter removed the wild aspect from your face, you’ve for that reason been made a proud goddess? Surely you’ve enough swarthy acolytes in Egypt? Why take such a long journey to Rome? What good’s it to you to have girls sleep alone? Believe me, your horns shall appear again, and we’ll chase you, savage one, from our city: there was never friendship between Tiber and Nile.

        But you, for whom my sorrows prove far too calming, let’s make the journey three times, those nights when we’re free.

Book II.33A:23-44 Cynthia drinking late

        You don’t listen; you let my words rattle around, though Icarius’s oxen now draw their slow stars downward. You drink, indifferent: are you not wrecked by midnight, and is your hand not weary throwing the dice? Perish the man who discovered neat wine, and first corrupted good water with nectar! Icarius you were rightly killed by Cecropian farmers, you’ve found how bitter the scent is of the vine. You, Eurytion the Centaur, also died from wine, and Polyphemus, you by Ismarian neat. Wine kills our beauty, and corrupts our youth: often through wine a lover can’t recognise her man.

        Alas for me, much wine doesn’t change you! Drink then: you’re lovely: wine does you no harm, though your garland droops down, and dips in your glass, and you read my verse in a slowing voice. Let your table be drenched with more jets of Falernian, and foam higher in your golden cup.

        No girl ever willingly goes to bed alone: something there is desire leads us all to search for. Passion is often greater in absent lovers: endless presence reduces the man who’s always around.

Book II.34:1-94 His poetic role, and his future fame

        Why should any man trust his girl’s beauty to Amor, now? Mine was nearly stolen away like that. I speak as an expert: no one’s to be trusted in love: it’s rare that anyone doesn’t aim to make beauty his own. The god corrupts families, separates friends; issues sad calls to arms to those in happy agreement. The stranger who came in friendship to Menelaus, he was an adulterer though, and didn’t the Colchian woman go off with an unknown man?

        Lynceus, you traitor, then, how could you lay hands on my darling? Why didn’t your hands let you down? What if she hadn’t been so constant and true? Could you have lived then with the shame? Kill me with daggers or poison: but take yourself off, leave my mistress alone. You can be a companion in life and body: I will make you the lord of my fortune, my friend, it’s merely the bed, the one bed, I beg you to shun. I can’t accept Jove as a rival. I’m jealous of my shadow even, a thing of nothing, a fool who often trembles with fear. Still there’s one excuse for which I’d forgive such crime, that your words were astray from too much wine. But the frown of strict morality can’t fool me: all know by now how good it is to love.

My Lynceus, himself, insane at last with love! I’m only glad you’ve joined our god. What use now the wisdom of Socratic works, or being able to talk ‘on the nature of things’? What use to you are songs on Aeschylus’s lyre? Old men are no help with a grand affair. You’d do better to imitate Coan Philetus, and the dreams of diffident Callimachus.

 Now though you speak again of Aetolian Achelous’s water flowing weakly with vast love; and how Maeander’s deceptive flood wanders across the Phrygian plain, confusing its course; and how Arion, Adrastus’s victorious stallion, was vocal in grief at Archemorus’s funeral: yet the fate of Amphiarus’s four-horse chariot’s no use to you, nor Capaneus’s downfall, pleasing to mighty Jove. Stop composing tragic Aeschylean verse, cease; let your limbs go in soft choric dancing. Begin to turn your verse on a tighter lathe, and come at your own flames, hardened poet. You shall not go more safely than Homer, or than Antimachus: a virtuous girl even looks down on the gods.

However the bull’s not yoked to the heavy plough until his horns are caught in a strong noose. Nor will you be able to suffer harsh love on your own. First, your truculence must be quelled by me.

Of all these girls none will ask the source of the universe, or why the Moon eclipses her brother’s course, or if there’s really a judge beyond the Stygian waters, or if the lightning crashes down on purpose. Look at me, with hardly any wealth left my family, with no ancestral triumphs long ago, but here I rule the fun, among the crowd of girls, by means of the intellect you disparage!

Let me, whom the god has surely struck to the marrow, languish set among last night’s wreaths. Virgil can sing of Actium’s shores that Phoebus watches over, and of Caesar’s brave ships: he, who brings to life the battles of Aeneas of Troy, and the walls that he built on Lavinium’s coast. Give way you Roman authors! Give way you Greeks! Something more than the Iliad’s being born.

Under the pine-trees of shadowed Galaesus, you sing, of Thyrsis and Daphnis, with practised flute, and how the gift of ten apples, or an un-weaned kid, can corrupt a girl. Happy who buys their love cheaply with apples! Tityrus herself, the unkind, might sing for that. Happy that Corydon who tries to snatch virgin Alexis, delight of his master, the farmer! Though he rests, exhausted, from playing his pipe, he’s praised by the loose Hamadryads. And you sing the precepts of old Hesiod the poet, what plains crops grow well on, which hills grow vines. You make such music as Apollo mingles, fingers plucking his cunning lyre.

Yet, my songs will not be unwelcome to one who can sing them, whether he’s expert in love or a total novice. The swan dies, melodious, with no less spirit, though with less effrontery than the ignorant song of the goose.

So, Varro amused himself, when he’d done with Jason: Varro, Leucadia’s hottest lover. So sing the writings of lustful Catullus, whose Lesbia’s known more widely than Helen. So even the pages of learned Calvus confessed, when he sang of wretched Quintilia’s death. And but now, drowned in the waters of Hell, dead Gallus washed multiple wounds, from lovely Lycoris!

Why not Cynthia then praised by Propertius’s verse, if Fame should wish to place me among them?

Book III

Book III.1:1-38 Invocation

        Ghosts of Callimachus, and shrines of Coan Philetas, I pray you let me walk in your grove: I, the first to enter, a priest of the pure fountain, to celebrate Italian mysteries to the rhythms of Greece. Tell me in what valley did you both spin out your song? On what feet did you enter? Which waters did you drink?

        Away with the man who keeps Phoebus stuck in battle! Let verse be finished, polished with pumice – because of it Fame raises me high above Earth, and, born of me, a Muse goes in triumph with flower-hung horses, and young Loves ride with me in the chariot, and a crowd of writers hangs there at my wheels. Why struggle, vainly, against me, with slack reins? It was never given us to reach the Muses by a broad road.

        Rome, many will add praise to your story, singing that Persia will set a bound to Empire: but my art carries its text down from the Sister’s mountain, so you can read it in peace, on a path that’s undefiled.

        Muses grant your poet gentle garlands: a hard crown would never suit my head. But what the envious crowd have stolen from me in life, Honour will pay, once I’m dead, with double interest. The future ages render all things greater once they’re dead: names come dearer to the lips after the funeral. Otherwise who would know of the citadel breached by a Horse of fir; or of how the rivers fought with Achilles the hero, Idaean Simois, and Scamander, Jupiter’s child; or of how the chariot wheels three times stained the ground with Hector’s blood.

        Their own soil would scarcely know Deiphobus, Helenus, Pulydamas, or Paris embraced any kind of arms. Yes, there’d be little talk of Ilium, of Troy twice captured by Hercules, god of Oeta. Nor will Homer, himself, who wrote your fall, not find his work made greater by posterity. And Rome will praise me among later generations: I foresee that day myself, after the fire. Apollo, Lycia’s god, accepts my prayers, and ordains that grave will not be scorned whose stone shall mark my bones.

Book III.2:1-26 Mind endures

        Let me return, meanwhile, to the world of my poetry: let my girl take delight, stirred by familiar tones. They say Orpheus with his Thracian lyre tamed the wild creatures; held back flowing rivers: Cithaeron’s stones were whisked to Thebes by magic, and joined, of their own will, to form a piece of wall. Even, Galatea, it’s true, below wild Etna, wheeled her brine-wet horses, Polyphemus, to your songs.

        No wonder if, befriended by Bacchus and Phoebus, a crowd of girls should cherish my words? Though my house isn’t propped on Taenarian columns, or ivory-roofed with gilded beams, though my orchards aren’t Phaeacia’s woods, nor does Marcian water moisten elaborate grottoes; the Muses are my companions, my songs are dear to the reader, and Calliope never tires of my music.

        Happy the girl, who’s famed in my book! My poems are so many records of your beauty. The Pyramids reared to the stars, at such expense; Jupiter’s shrine at Elis that echoes heaven; the precious wealth of the tomb of Mausolus; not one can escape that final state of death. Their beauty is taken, by fire, by rain, by the thud of the years: ruined; their weight all overthrown. But the name I’ve earned, with my wit, will not be razed by time: Mind stands firm, a deathless ornament.

Book III.3:1-52 A dream of Helicon

I dreamt I lay in Helicon’s soft shade, where the fountain of Pegasus flows, and owned the power, Alba, to speak of your kings, and the deeds of your kings, a mighty task. I’d already put my lips to those lofty streams, from which Ennius, thirsting father, once drank, and sang of the Curiatii, the brothers, and the Horatii, their spears; and the royal tokens carried by Aemilius’s boat; Fabius’s victorious delays, the cock-up at Cannae, the gods moved by prayer; the Lares driving Hannibal out of their home in Rome, and Jupiter saved by the voice of geese.

Then Phoebus, spotting me, from his Castalian grove, leant on his golden lyre, by a cave-door, saying: ‘What’s your business with that stream, you madman? Who asked you to meddle with epic song? There’s not a hope of fame for you from it, Propertius: soft are the meadows where your little wheels should roll, your little book often thrown on the bench, read by a girl waiting alone for a lover. Why is your verse wrenched from its destined track? Your mind’s little boat’s not to be freighted. Scrape an oar through the water, the other through sand: you’ll be safe: the big storm’s out at sea.’

He said it then showed me a place, with his ivory plectrum, where a new path had been made in mossy ground. Here was an emerald cavern lined with pebbles, and timbrels hung from its pumice stone; orgiastic emblems of the Muses; a statue of father Silenus made of clay; and your reed-pipes too, Pan of Tegea; and birds, a crowd of doves of my mistress Venus, dipped their red beaks into the Gorgon’s pool; while nine assorted girls busied soft hands in the place given to each of them by fate. This one chose ivy for a wand, that one tuned the strings for a song, and another planted roses with either hand.

And of this crowd of goddesses one touched me (it was Calliope, I think, by her face), saying: ‘You’ll always be happy pulled by snow-white swans. The sound of the war-horse won’t lead you to fight. It’s not for you to blow war cries from blaring trumpets, staining Boeotia’s grove with Mars; or care in what fields the conflict’s fought beneath Marius’ standard, how Rome repels German force, how barbaric Rhine, steeped with Swabian blood, sweeps mangled corpses through its sorrowing waves.

You’ll sing wreathed lovers at another threshold, and the drunken signals of nocturnal flight so that he who wishes with skill to plunder irksome husbands knows through you how to spirit off captive girls.’

So Calliope said, and drawing liquid from her fount, sprinkled my lips with the waters of Philetas.

Book III.4:1-22 War and peace

Caesar, our god, plots war against rich India, cutting the straits, in his fleet, across the pearl-bearing ocean. Men, the rewards are great: far lands prepare triumphs: Tiber and Euphrates will flow to your tune.  Too late, but that province will come under Ausonian wands, Parthia’s trophies will get to know Latin Jupiter. Go, get going, prows expert in battle: set sail: and armoured horses do your accustomed duty! I sing you auspicious omens. And avenge that disaster of Crassus! Go and take care of Roman history!

Father Mars, and fatal lights of sacred Vesta, I pray that the day will come before I die, when I see Caesar’s axles burdened with booty, and his horses stopping often for vulgar cheers, and then I’ll begin to look, pressing my dear girl’s breast, and scan the names of captured cities, the shafts from fleeing horsemen, the bows of trousered soldiers, and the captive leaders sitting beneath their weapons!

May Venus herself protect your children: let it be eternal, this head that survives from Aeneas’ line. Let the prize go to those who earn it by their efforts: it’s enough for me I can cheer them on their Sacred Way.

Book III.5:1-48 The poetic life

        Amor’s the god of peace: and it’s peace we lovers worship: the hard fight I have with my lady’s enough for me. My heart’s not so taken with hateful gold; nor does my thirst drink from cut gems; nor is rich Campania ploughed for my gain by a thousand yokes; nor do I buy bronzes from your ruins, wretched Corinth.

        O primal earth shaped badly by Prometheus! He set to work on the heart with too little care. He laid the body out with skill, but forgot the mind: the right road for the spirit should have been first.

        Now we’re hurled by the wind over such seas, and seek out enemies, weaving new wars on wars. But you’ll take no wealth to the waters of Acheron: carried, naked fool, on the boat of Hell. Conquered and conqueror mingled one in the shadows: Captive Jugurtha, you sit by Marius the Consul: Croesus of Lydia not far from Dulichian Irus: that death’s best that comes the day our part is done.

        It pleases me to have lived on Helicon when I was young, and entangled my hands in the Muses’s dance. It pleases me too to cloud my mind with wine, and always weave spring roses round my head. And when the weight of years obstructs Venus, and age flecks the dark hair with white, then let me discover the laws of nature, what god controls this bit of the world by his skill; how the moon rises and how it wanes, and how each month returns, horns merged, to the full; where the winds come from to rule the sea; where the East Wind gets to with his gales; where the unfailing water comes from in the clouds; whether some future day will burrow under the citadels of the world; why the rainbow drinks the rain; why the peaks of Perrhaebian Pindus trembled, and the sun’s orb mourned, his horses black; why Bootes is late to turn his oxen and wain; why the dance of the Pleiades is joined in a crowd of fires; why the deep ocean never leaves its bounds, and why the whole year has four seasons; whether, below ground, gods rule, Giants are tortured; if Tisiphone’s hair is plagued with black snakes, Alcmaeon by Furies, Phineus by hunger; and if there’s a wheel, and a rock to roll, and thirst beside the water; and Cerberus, triple-throated, guarding the cave of Hell, and Tityos’s scant nine acres; or whether an idle tale has come down to wretched mortals, and there’s no fear found beyond the fire.

        This is the end of life that waits for me. You to whom war’s more pleasing: you bring Crassus’ standards home.

Book III.6:1-42 After the quarrel

        If you want our mistress’ yoke to be lifted from your neck, Lygdamus, tell me truly how you judge the girl. Surely you wouldn’t fool me into swelling with empty joy, telling me things you think I’d like to believe. Every messenger should lack deceit: a fearful servant should be even truer. Now, start to tell it from the first inception, if you can: I shall drink it in through thirsty ears.

        So, did you see her weep with dishevelled hair, vast streams pouring from her eyes? Did you see no mirror, Lygdamus, on the covers, on the bed? No rings on her snow-white fingers? And a mourning-robe hanging from her soft arms, and her letter-case closed lying by the foot of the bed. Was the house sad, her servants sad, carding thread, and she, herself spinning among them, and pressing the wool to her eyes, drying their moisture, going over our quarrel in querulous tones?

        ‘Is this what he promised me, Lygdamus, you’re a witness? There’s punishment for breaking faith, with a slave as witness. How can he leave me here and so wretched (I’ve done nothing) open his house to one of whom I couldn’t speak? He’s glad that I melt away, alone, in an empty bed. If that pleases him, let him mock at my death, Lygdamus. She won not by her morals, but by magic herbs, the bitch: he’s led by the bullroarer whirling on its string. He’s drawn to her by omens, of swollen frogs and toads, and the bones of dried snakes she’s fished out, and the feathers of screech owls found by fallen tombs, and a woollen fillet bound to a murdered man. If my dreams tell no lies (you’re witness Lygdamus) he’ll be punished, in full, if late, at my feet. The spider will weave corruption deep in his empty bed, and Venus will fall asleep, on their nights together.’

        If my girl moaned to you with truth in her heart, run back, Lygdamus, the same way again, and carry my message back with lots of tears, that there’s anger but no deceit in my love, that I’m tortured too by the selfsame fires: I’ll swear to be virtuous for twelve days. Then if sweet peace exists, after such war, Lygdamus you’ll be freed by me.

Book III.7:1-72 The death of his friend Paetus.

        So money you’re the cause of a troubled life! It’s because of you we go death’s path too soon: you offer human vices cruel nurture: from your source the seeds of sorrow spring. Three or four times with wild seas you overwhelmed Paetus, as he was setting sail towards Pharos’ harbour.

        While he was chasing you, the poor man drowned in his prime, and floats an alien food for far-off fish. And his mother can’t give due burial to his pious dust, or bury him among his kinsfolk’s ashes.

Paetus, the seabirds hover above your bones, and you’ve the whole Carpathian Sea for tomb now. Cruel North-Wind whom ravished Orithyia feared how great are the spoils to be won from him? Why do you find joy in shipwreck, Neptune? That ship carried righteous men.

Paetus, why number your years: why as you swim is your dear mother’s name on your lips? The waves have no gods: though your cables were fastened to rocks, the storms in the night fell on them: frayed them: tore them away. Return his body to earth: his spirit is lost in the deep. Worthless sands, of your own will, cover Paetus. And the sailor, as often as he sails past Paetus’s tomb, let him say: ‘You make even the brave man afraid.’

Go, and shape curving keels, and weave the causes of death: these deaths come from the action of human hands. Earth was too small for fate, we have added the oceans: by our arts we have added to the luckless paths of fortune. Can the anchor hold you, whom the household gods could not? What would you say he’s earned, whose country’s too small for him? 

         Whatever you build is the winds’: no keel ever grows old: the harbour itself belies your faith. Nature lying in wait has paved the watery paths of greed: it can scarcely happen you shall, even once, succeed. There are shores that witnessed Agamemnon’s pain, where Argynnus’ punishment makes Mimas’ waters famous: Atrides wouldn’t allow the fleet to sail, for loss of this boy, and Iphigenia was sacrificed through this delay. The cliffs of Caphareus shattered a triumphant fleet, when the Greeks were shipwrecked drawn down by the salt mass. Ulysses wept for his comrades sucked down one by one: his wiliness was worth nothing confronting the sea.

        Yet if Paetus had been content to plough the fields with his father’s oxen, had he accepted the weight of my advice, he would still be alive, a gentle guest, in front of his household gods: a poor man, but on dry land crying only for wealth. Paetus couldn’t bear to hear the shrieking storm, or wound his soft hands with hard ropes: but rested his head on multi-coloured down, among Chian marble, on Orician terebinth wood. From him, still living, the surge tore his nails, and unwillingly, poor man, his throat swallowed the waters: then the wild night saw him borne on a piece of plank: so many evils gathered for Paetus to perish.

        Still he gave this command, weeping, with his last moan, as the dark wave closed over his dying breath: ‘Gods of Aegean seas, with power over waters, you winds and every wave that bows down my head, where are you taking the sad years of my first manhood? Are these guilty hands I bring to your seas? Alas for me, the sharp cliffs of the halycon will tear me! The dark-green god has struck me with his trident. At least let the tides hurl me on Italian shores: what is left of me will suffice should it only reach my mother.’ At these words, the flood pulled him down in its whirling vortex.

        O you hundred sea-nymphs, Nereus’s daughters, and you Thetis, whom a mother’s indignation once drew from the sea, you should have placed your arms beneath his weary head: he was no heavy weight for your hands. And you, fierce Northern Wind, will never see my sails: I would rather lie indolent at my lady’s portals.

Book III.8:1-34 His mistress’ fury

        Our quarrel by lamplight last night was sweet to me and all those insults from your furious tongue, when frenzied with drinking you pushed the table back, and threw full glasses at me, with angry hand. Truly bold, attack my hair, you, and mark my face with your lovely nails, threaten to scorch my eyes, set a flame beneath them, rip my clothes and strip bare my chest!

        You grant me the certain signs of love: no woman is in pain unless from deep passion. This woman who hurls abuse with raving mouth, she rolls around at mighty Venus’ feet, she packs guards round her in a crowd, or takes  the middle of the road like a stricken Maenad, or demented dreams terrify the frightened girl, or some woman in a painting moves her to misery.

        I’m a true augur of the soul’s torments: I’ve learnt these are always the certain signs of love. There is no constant faithfulness that won’t turn to quarrelling: let cold women be my enemies’ lot. Let my friends see the wounds in my bitten neck: let the bruises show my girl has been with me.

        I want to suffer with love, or hear of suffering: I’d rather see your tears or else my own, whenever your eyebrows send me hidden messages, or you write with your fingers words that can’t be spoken. I hate those sighs that never shatter sleep: I’d always wish to turn pale at an angry girl.

        Passion was dearer to Paris when he cut his way through Greek ranks to bring pleasure to Helen, daughter of Tyndareus. While the Danaans conquered, while savage Hector held them, he fought a nobler war in her lap. I’ll always be fighting with you, or a rival for you: you at peace will never satisfy me.

Book III.8A:34-40 Words for a rival

        Be glad, that no one matches your beauty: you’d be sorry if one did: but as of now you’ve a right to your pride.

        As for you, Vulcan, who wove a net for our bed, may your father-in-law live forever, and may your house never lack her mother! You who were granted the wealth of one stolen night, it was anger against me, not love of you that yielded.

Book III.9:1-60 He asks for Maecenas’ favour

        Maecenas, knight of the blood of Etruscan kings, you who are so keen to achieve success: why set me adrift on so vast a literary sea? Such wide sails don’t suit this boat of mine.

        It’s shameful to carry on your head a weight it can’t bear, and soon sag at the knees, and turn to go. All things are not equally suited to all: the palm’s not won by dragging at the selfsame yoke. 

        Lysippus’ glory is to carve with the stamp of life: Calamis’ I consider is perfect at horses. Apelles claims highest place for paintings of Venus: Parrhasius deserves his for art in miniature. Mentor’s theme is rather in sculpted groups: through Mys, acanthus winds its brief way. For Phidias, Jupiter clothes himself in an ivory statue: the marble of Cnidos, Triop’s city, gives praise to Praxiteles. Some race their four-horse chariots for the palms of Elis: glory is born in others’ fleetness of foot: this man’s made for peace, that one for camps and war: every man pursues the seeds of his nature.

        But I’ve yielded to your rule of life Maecenas, and I’m forced to counter you with your own example. Though an officer of the Roman state, allowed to set up the axes of law, and play judge in the midst of the Forum; though you pass through the fierce spears of the Medes, and burden your house with weapons on nails; though Caesar grants you power to achieve things, and easy money slithers in all the time; you hold back, humbly, and crouch in the lowly shadows: you draw your bellying sails in yourself.

        Trust me such judgement will equate you with great Camillus, and you’ll also be on men’s lips, and your steps will be bound to Caesar’s glory: Maecenas’ loyalty will be his true memorial.

        I don’t plough the swollen sea in a sailing boat: my whole dalliance is close by a little stream. I won’t weep for Cadmus’s city sunk in its native embers, nor of the seven equally fateful battles: I won’t tell of the Scaean Gate, Pergama, Apollo’s stronghold, or how the Danaan fleet came back at the tenth Spring, how the Wooden Horse, by Athene’s art, was victor, driving walls that Neptune built under the Greek plough. Enough to have given satisfaction, amongst Callimachus’ slim volumes: and to have sung, Philetas, Dorian poet, in your style. Let these poems inflame our youths, and our girls: let them celebrate me as a god, and bring me sacrifice!

        Lead me on, and I’ll sing of Jupiter’s weapons, and Coeus threatening Heaven, and Eurymedon on Phlegra’s hills: and I’ll bring on the pair of kings from a she-wolf’s teat, the strong walls built at Remus’s death, and the high Palatine Hill cropped by the Roman bulls, and my ingenuity will rise at your command!

        I’ll honour your chariot’s minor triumphs from either wing, the shafts of the Parthian’s cunning flight when they’re taken, the camp of Pelusium demolished by the Roman sword, and Antony’s hands heavy with his fate.

        Seize, gentle patron, the reins of my fresh undertaking, and give the sign with your right hand when my wheels are let loose. Concede this praise to me Maecenas, and of you they’ll testify, that I was of your party.

Book III.10:1-32 Cynthia’s birthday.

        I wondered what the Muses had sent me, at dawn, standing by my bed in the reddening sunlight. They sent a sign it was my girl’s birthday, and clapped their hands three times for luck. Let this day pass without a cloud, let winds still in the air, threatening waves fall gently on dry land. Let me see no one sad today: let Niobe’s rock itself suppress its tears. Let the halcyons’ cries be silent, leaving off their sighing, and Itys’s mother not call out his loss.

        And oh, you, my dearest girl, born to happy auguries, rise, and pray to the gods who require their dues. First wash sleep away with pure water, and dress your shining hair with deft fingers. Then wear those clothes that first charmed Propertius’ eyes, and never let your brow be free of flowers.

        And ask that the beauty that is your power may always be yours, and your command over my person might last forever. Then when you’ve worshipped with incense at wreathed altars, and their happy flames have lit the whole house, think of a feast, and let the night fly by with wine, and let the perfumed onyx anoint my nostril with oil of saffron. Submit the strident flute to nocturnal dancing, and let your wantonness be free with words, and let sweet banqueting stave off unwelcome sleep, and the common breeze of the neighbouring street be full of the sound.

        And let fate reveal to us, in the falling dice, those whom the Boy strikes with his heavy wings. When the hours have gone with many a glass, and Venus appoints the sacred rites that wait on night, let’s fulfil the year’s solemnities in our room, and so complete the journey of your natal day.

Book III.11:1-72 Woman’s power

        Why do you wonder if a woman entwines my life and brings a man enslaved under her rule? Why fabricate charges of cowardice against my person, because I can’t break the yoke and snap my chains?  The sailor can best foretell his future fate, the soldier is taught by his wounds to nurture fear. I once boasted like you when I was young: now let my example teach you to be afraid.

        The witch of Colchis drove the fiery bulls in a yoke of steel, and sowed civil war in the warrior-bearing soil, and closed the serpent guard’s fierce jaws, so the Golden Fleece would come to Aeson’s halls. Amazon Penthesilea once dared to attack the Danaan fleet with arrows fired from horseback: she whose bright beauty conquered the conquering hero, when the golden helmet laid bare her forehead.

        Omphale the Lydian girl bathing in Gyges’ lake gained such a name for beauty that Hercules who had established his pillars in a world at peace, drew out soft spinner’s tasks with hardened hands. Semiramis built Babylon, the Persian city, so that it rose a solid mass with ramparts fashioned of baked brick, and twin chariots might round the walls, in contrary directions, without their axles touching or sides scraping: she diverted the River Euphrates through the centre of the city she founded, and commanded Bactra to bow its head to her rule.

        Why should I seize on heroes, why gods, who stand accused? Jupiter shames himself and his house. Why Cleopatra, who heaped insults on our army, a woman worn out by her own attendants, who demanded the walls of Rome and the Senate bound to her rule, as a reward from her obscene husband? Noxious Alexandria place so skilled in deceit and Memphis so often bloody with our grief where the sand robbed Pompey of his three triumphs? Rome, no day will ever wipe away the stain. Better for you Pompey, ill at Naples, if your funeral procession had crossed the Phlegraean Plain or that you’d bowed your neck to Caesar, your father-in-law.

        Truly that whore, queen of incestuous Canopus, a fiery brand burned by the blood of Philip, dared to oppose our Jupiter with yapping Anubis, and forced Tiber to suffer the threats of Nile, banished the Roman trumpet with the rattle of the sistrum, chased the Liburnian prow with a poled barge, spread her foul mosquito nets over the Tarpeian Rock, and gave judgements among Marius’ weapons and statues.

        The city, high on its seven hills, that directs the whole Earth, was terrified of a woman’s power and fearful of her threats. What was it worth to have shattered Tarquin’s axes, whose life branded him with the name of ‘Proud’, if now we had to endure this woman? Celebrate a triumph Rome, and saved by Augustus beg long life for him! You fled then to the wandering mouths of frightened Nile: your hands received Romulus’ chains. I saw your arms bitten by the sacred asps, and your limbs draw sleep in by a secret path. And your tongue spoke overpowered by endless wine: ‘This is not as much to be feared, Rome, as is your fellow-citizen!’

        Curtius closing the Forum’s chasm, created his own monument, and Decius’ cavalry charge shattered the line, Horatius’ Way attests to the holding of the bridge, and there’s one to whom the raven, Corvus, has given a name. The gods founded them, may the gods protect these walls: with Caesar alive, Rome scarcely need fear Jove.

        Where are Scipio’s ships now, where are Camillus’ standards, or Bosphorus lately captured by Pompey’s might, or Hannibal’s spoils, or conquered Syphax’ Libyan trophies, or Pyrrhus’ glory trampled under our feet?

Apollo of Actium will speak of how the line was turned: one day of battle carried off so great a host. But you, sailor, whether leaving or making for harbour, be mindful of Caesar through all the Ionian Sea.

Book III.12:1-38 Chaste and faithful Galla

         Postumus, how could you leave Galla crying, to follow Augustus’ brave standard, as a soldier? Was the glory of Parthia’s spoils worth so much to you, with Galla repeatedly begging you not to do it? If it’s permitted may all you greedy ones perish equally, and whoever else prefers his weapon to a faithful bride!

        You, you madman, wrapped in your cloak for a covering, weary, will drink Araxes’ water from your helm. She in the meantime will pine away at each idle rumour, for fear your courage will cost you dear, or the arrows of Medes enjoy your death, or the armoured knight on a golden horse, or some bit of you be brought back in an urn to be wept over. That’s how they come back, those who fall in such places. O Postumus you are three or four times blessed by Galla’s chastity! Your morals deserve a different wife! What shall a girl do with no fear to guard her, with Rome to instruct her in its voluptuousness? But rest secure: gifts will not win Galla, and she will not recall how harsh you were.

        On whatever day fate sends you safely home, modest Galla will hang about your neck. Postumus will be another Ulysses with a wifely wonder: such long delay did him no harm: ten years of war; the Cicones’ Mount Ismara; Calpe; then the burning of your eye-socket Polyphemus; Circe’s beguilement; the lotus, its binding spell; Scylla and Charybdis, separated by alternate tides; Lampetie’s oxen bellowing on Ithacan spits (Lampetie his daughter grazed them for Phoebus); then fleeing the bed of Calypso, Aeaea’s weeping girl, swimming for so many nights and wintry days; entering the black halls of the silent spirits; approaching the Sirens’ waters with deafened sailors; renewing his ancient bow at the death of the suitors; and so making an end of his wanderings.

        Not in vain, since his wife stayed chaste at home. Aelia Galla will outdo Penelope’s loyalty.

Book III.13:1-66 Money the root of corruption

        You ask why a night with eager women is expensive, and why our exhausted powers bemoan Venus’s losses. The reason for such ruin is clear and certain: the path to voluptuousness has been made too easy.

        The Indian ants bring gold from the vaulted mine, and Venus’s conch, the nautilus, comes from the Red Sea, and Cadmus’ Tyre sends purple dyes, and the Arabian shepherd strong scented cinnamon. These weapons take sheltered modesty by storm: even those who show disdain like yours Penelope. Wives go out dressed in a spendthrift’s fortune, and drag the results of disgrace before our faces. There’s no respect shown in asking or supplying, or if there is, money dispels reluctance.

        Happy that singular custom at the funerals of Eastern husbands that the reddening dawn colours with her chariot! For when the last brand is thrown on the dead man’s bier, his dutiful crowd of wives stand round with spreading hair, and compete in a fatal contest, as to who shall follow the husband while alive: it is shame for them not to be allowed to die. The winners are enflamed and offer their breasts to the fire and rest their scorched faces on their husband. Here the race of brides is treacherous: here no girl has Evadne’s loyalty or Penelope’s sense of duty.

        Happy were the young country folk once, and peaceful: whose wealth was in orchards and harvests. Their gifts were Cydonian apples shaken from the branches, and they gave punnets full of blackberries, now took violets in their hands, now brought back shining lilies mingled together in the virgins’ baskets, and carried grapes wrapped in their own leaves, or some multi-coloured bird of various hue.

        With such blandishments as these the kisses of girls were won, given to sylvan youths in secret hollows. The skin of a roe deer sufficed to cover lovers, and the tall grass grew as nature’s bed. The pine leaned over them and threw its rich shadows round them: and it was not a sin to see the goddesses naked. The horned ram, head of the flock, led back his sated ewes himself to the empty fold of Pan the shepherd god. All the gods and goddesses, by whom the land’s protected, offered kindly words to our hearths: ‘Stranger, whoever you are, you may hunt the hare on my paths, or the bird if perhaps you seek it: and whether you hunt your quarry with dogs or with limed sticks, call on me, from the crag, for Pan to be your companion.’

        But now the shrines decay in deserted groves: all worship money, now piety is vanquished. Money drives out loyalty, justice is bought for money, money rules the law, and, without the law, then shame.

        Scorched thresholds testify to Brennus’ sacrilege, attacking the Pythian kingdom of Apollo, the unshorn god: and then Parnassus shook its laurel-crowned summit, and scattered fearful snow over the army of Gaul. For money, vile Polymestor of Thrace, reared you, Polydorus, in impious hospitality. Amphiaraus is lost, and his horses swallowed up, so that you Eriphyla can cover your shoulders with gold.

        I will speak:  – and I wish I might be my country’s true prophet! – Proud Rome is being destroyed by wealth. I speak truth, but no one will believe me. Since, neither was Cassandra, the Trojan Maenad, believed to speak true in Pergama’s ruins: she alone cried out that Paris was forging Phrygia’s doom, she alone that the deceitful horse was entering her house. Her frenzies were fitting for her father and her house: in vain her tongue experienced the true gods.

Book III.14:1-34 The Spartan Girls

        I admire many of the rules of your training, Sparta, but most of all the great blessings derived from the girls’ gymnasia, where a girl can exercise her body, naked, without blame, among wrestling men, when the swift-thrown ball eludes the grasp, and the curved rod sounds against the ring, and the woman is left panting at the furthest goal, and suffers bruises in the hard wrestling.

        Now she fastens near the glove the thongs that her wrists delight in, now whirls the discus’ flying weight in a circle, and now, her hair sprinkled with hoar frost, she follows her father’s dogs over the long ridges of Taygetus, beats the ring with her horses, binds the sword to her white flank, and shields her virgin head with hollow bronze, like the crowd of warlike Amazons who bathe bare-breasted in Thermodon’s stream; or like Helen, on the sands of Eurotas, between Castor and Pollux, one to be victor in boxing, the other with horses: with naked breasts she carried weapons, they say, and did not blush with her divine brothers there.

        So Sparta’s law forbids lovers to keep apart, and lets the man walk by her side in the crossways, and there is no fear for her, no guardians for captive girls, no dread of bitter punishment from a stern husband. You yourself can speak about things without a go-between: no long waiting rebuffs you. No Tyrian garments beguile roving eyes, no affected toying with perfumed hair.

        But my love goes surrounded by a great crowd, without the slimmest chance of my sticking an oar in: and you can’t come upon how to act, or what words to ask with: the lover’s forever in a blind alley.

        Rome, if you’d only follow the rules and wrestling of Sparta you’d be dearer to me for that blessing.

Book III.15:1-46 He asks Cynthia not to be jealous

        So, let me have no more storms in love, now, and let no night come when I lie awake without you! When the modesty of my boyhood’s purple-bordered toga was hidden from me, and I was given freedom to know the ways of love, she, Lycinna, was my confederate: oh not one to be taken with gifts, she initiated my inexperienced spirit on its first nights.

        While three years have passed (it is not much less) I can barely remember ten words between us. Your love has buried everything, no woman, since you, has thrown a sweet chain about my neck.

        Dirce’s my evidence, made jealous by a true reproach that Antiope had slept with her Lycus. Ah, how often the queen tore at Antiope’s lovely hair, and pierced her tender cheeks with ungentle fingernails! How often she loaded the servant girl with unreasonable tasks, and ordered her to sleep on the hard ground! Often she suffered her to live in filth and darkness; often she refused her foul water for her thirst. Jupiter can you not help Antiope’s deep trouble? Heavy chains scar her wrists. If you’re a god, your girl’s slavery’s a shame on you: whom but Jupiter should Antiope cry to when fettered?

        Yet, by herself, with whatever strength was in her body, she broke the royal manacles with both hands. Then with frightened step she ran to Cithaeron’s heights. It was night, and her sad couch sprinkled with frost. Often troubled by the echoing sound of the rushing Asopus, she thought that her mistress’ steps were behind her. Driven from her house, their mother tested her hard-hearted son Zethus, and her son Amphion easily moved to tears.

        And as the sea ceases its vast heaving, when the East wind leaves its assault on the South-West, and the coast is quiet, and the sounds of the shore diminish, so the girl sank on her bended knees. Still piety came though late: her sons knew their error. Worthy old shepherd who reared Jupiter’s sons, you restored the mother to her boys, and they bound Dirce, to be dragged to death beneath the wild bull’s horns. Antiope, know Jupiter’s power: Dirce is your glory, dragged along to meet death in many places. Zethus’ fields are bloodied, and Amphion sings the Paeans from your cliffs, Aracynthus.

        But be careful of tormenting Lycinna who does not deserve it: your headlong anger knows no retreat. May no story, about us, strike your ear: you alone will I love though burned in the funeral pyre.

Book III.16:1-30 A letter

        Midnight, and a letter comes to me from my lady ordering me, without delay, to Tibur, where the white peaks show their twin towers, and Anio’s water falls in spreading pools. What to do? Commit myself to covering darkness, fearing audacious hands on my members? Yet if I ignore her message out of fear, her weeping will be worse than an enemy in the night. I sinned once, and suffered a year’s exclusion: her hands on me show no mercy.

        Yet no one would hurt a sacred lover: he could go like this down the middle of Sciron’s road. Whoever’s a lover might walk on Scythia’s shore, with no one there so barbarous as to harm him. The Moon helps him on his way; the stars light the ruts; Love shakes the blazing torch up ahead; raging wild dogs avert their gaping jaws. The road’s safe at any time for such as him. Who’s so cruel as to scatter the impoverished blood of a lover and one whom Venus herself befriends?

        But if I knew my certain death followed the event, perhaps such a fate would be worth more to me. She’ll bring perfumes and deck my tomb with garlands, and sit by my bust and guard it. You Gods don’t let her stick my bones in a crowded place, where the vulgar make a busy track of the highway! Lovers’ tombs, after death, are dishonoured by it. Let a leafy tree hide me in quiet ground, or bury me entrenched in unknown sands: it would give me no joy for my name to mark the street.

Book III.17:1-42 A Prayer to Bacchus

Now, O Bacchus, I prostrate myself humbly in front of your altars: father, give me tranquillity: prosper my passage. You can restrain the disdain of angry Venus, and there’s a medicine for sorrows in your wine. Lovers are joined by you, by you set free. Bacchus, cleanse this trouble from my soul. That you also are not innocent of love, Ariadne bears witness, drawn through the sky by lynxes of yours to the stars.

This disease that has kept the flame in my bones from of old, the funeral pyre or your wine will heal. A sober night is always a torment for lonely lovers, and hope and fear strain their spirits this way and that.

But if your gifts by heating my brain summon sleep to my bones, then I’ll sow vines and plant the hills in rows, watching, myself, to see no creature harms them. If only I can crown my vats with purple unfermented wine, and the new grape stain my trampling feet, then what’s left of my life I’ll live by you and your horns, and Bacchus, they’ll say I’m the poet who sang your worth.

I’ll tell how your mother gave birth from Etna’s lightning bolt; of the Indian warriors routed by Nysa’s dancers; of Lycurgus raging vainly at the new-found vine; of Pentheus’s death pleasing to the three-fold Maenads; and the Tuscan sailors in the curved bodies of dolphins sliding into the depths from the vine-tangled ship; and sweet-smelling streams for you through the midst of Dia, from which the Naxian people drank your wine.

Your white neck burdened with trailing clusters of ivy-berries, Bassareus, a Lydian turban crowns your hair. Your smooth throat glistening with scented oil, the flowing robe will brush your naked feet. Dircean Thebes will beat the soft drums, and goat-footed Pans will play on unstopped reeds. Nearby the Great Goddess, Cybele, with turreted crown, will clash harsh cymbals in the Idaean dance. The mixing bowl will stand by your temple doors, to pour wine on your sacrifice from the golden ladle.

These I’ll tell of not humbly, but in elevated style, in such a breath as sounded from Pindar’s lips. Only do you set me free from this despotic servitude, and overcome this anxious mind with sleep.

Book III.18:1-34 The death of Marcellus, Augustus’s nephew.

        Where the sea, barred from shadowy Lake Avernus, plays by Baiae’s steamy pools of water; where Misenus, trumpeter of Troy, lies in the sand, and the road built by Hercules’s effort sounds; there, where the cymbals clashed for the Theban god when he sought to favour the cities of men – but now Baiae hateful with this great crime, what hostile god exists in your waters? – there, burdened, Marcellus sank his head beneath Stygian waves, and now his spirit haunts your lake.

        What profit did he get from birth, courage, or the best of mothers, from being embraced at Caesar’s hearth? Or, a moment ago, the waving awnings in the crowded theatre, and everything fondled by his mother’s hands? He is dead, and his twentieth year left ruined: so bright a day confined in so small a circle.

        Go now, indulge your imagination, dream of your triumphs, enjoy the whole theatre’s standing ovation, outdo Attalus’s cloths of gold, and let the great games be all a glitter: you’ll yet yield them to the flames. All must still go there, high or low of station: though evil, this road’s frequented by all: the triple-headed baying hound, Cerberus, must be entreated, the grim old boatman Charon’s common ferry must be boarded. Though a cautious man sheathe himself in iron or bronze, death will still drag down his hidden head.

        No beauty saved Nireus, no courage Achilles, no wealth Croesus, produced from Pactolus’s streams. This was the sadness that unknowingly ravaged the Achaeans, when Agamemnon’s new passion cost them dear.

        Let them carry this body void of its soul, to you, Boatman, that ferries across the dutiful shades: where Marcus Claudius conqueror of Sicily’s land, and Julius Caesar are, he leaves mankind, takes the path to the stars.

Book III.19:1-28 Female desire

You often taunt me with my passion: believe me, it controls you more. You, when you’ve snapped the reins of that modesty you despise, can set no limits to your mind ensnared. A fire in burning corn will sooner be quenched, the rivers return to the founts where they were born, the Syrtes offer quiet harbour, and Cape Malea offer the sailor a kind welcome on its wild shore, than any man be able to restrain your course, or curb the spurs of your impetuous wantonness.

Witness Pasiphae who suffered the disdain of the Cretan bull and wore the deceptive horns of the wooden cow; witness Tyro, Salmoneus’s daughter, burning for Thessalian Enipeus, longing to yield completely to the river-god. Myrrha too is a reproach, on fire for her aged father, buried in the foliage of a new-created tree. Why need I mention Medea, who, in her time as a mother, satisfied her fury by the murder of her children? Or Clytemnestra through whom the whole House of Mycenean Pelops remains infamous for her adultery?

And you Scylla, oh, sold on Minos’ beauty, shore off your father’s kingdom with his purple lock of hair. That was the dowry the virgin pledged his foe! Nisus, treacherous love opened your city gates. And you, unmarried ones, burn torches of happier omen: the girl clutched the Cretan ship and was dragged away.

Still Minos does not sit as a judge in Hell without reason: though he conquered, he was merciful to his foe.

Book III.20:1-30 A new contract of Love

        Do you think the man you’ve seen set sail from your couch remembers your beauty now? Cruel the man who could exchange his girl for riches! Was all Africa worth as much as those tears? But you, foolish girl, think idle words are gods. Perhaps he wears out his heart on another passion.

        Beauty is your power, the chaste arts that are Minerva’s, and brilliant glory reflects on you from your grandfather’s learning. Your house is fortunate, if only your lover is true. I’ll be true: run, girl, to my bed!

        My first night has come! Grant me the space of a first night: Moon, linger longer over our first couch. You also Phoebus, who prolongs the fires of summer, shorten the path of your lingering light.

        First the terms must be laid out, and the pledges sealed, and the contract written for my new love. Amor with his own seal binds these tokens: the witness, the whirling crown of Ariadne, starry goddess.

        How many hours must give way to my discourse, before Venus urges sweet battle on us! For, if the bed’s not bound round with certain terms, nights without sleep have no gods to avenge them, and passion soon loosens the chains it imposed. Let the first omens keep us loyal.

        So then, who breaks the pledges sworn on the altars, and dishonours the nuptial rites on a strange bed, let him know all the miseries love is used to: may he offer his person to sly gossip, and may his mistress’ window not open to his weeping at night: may he love forever, and forever lack love’s fruition.

Book III.21:1-34 Recipes for quenching love

I’m compelled to set out on the long route to learned Athens, so the journey’s distance might free me of love’s burden. For love for my girl grows with constant gazing: love offers itself as its greatest nourishment.

I’ve tried every way, by which love can be put to flight: but the god himself presses on every side. Still she’ll barely ever admit me, often denies me: or if she comes sleeps fully clothed at the edge of the bed. There’s only one solution: changing countries, love will travel as far from my mind, as Cynthia from my eyes.

Let’s go then, my friends, launch our ship on the sea, and draw lots in pairs for your turn at the oars. Hoist happy sails to the tops of the masts: now the wind favours the sailor’s watery path. Towers of Rome, and you, my friends, farewell, and farewell you too, girl, whatever you meant to me!

So now I’ll be carried off, the Adriatic’s untried guest, and now be forced to approach with prayers the gods of the sounding wave. Then when my boat has crossed the Ionian Sea and dropped its sails in Lechaeum’s placid waters, hurry feet, to endure the task that’s left, where the fields of the Isthmus keep back either sea. Then, where the shores of Piraeus’s harbour greet me, I’ll climb the long reaches of Theseus’ road.

There will I mend my soul in Plato’s School, or in your Gardens, learned Epicurus; or pursue Demosthenes’ weapon, the study of oratory; the salty wit of your books, learned Menander; or ornate pictures will captivate my eyes; or what hands have finished in ivory, or more frequently in bronze.

Either the passage of years, or the long spaces of the deep will heal the wounds in my silent breast: or if I die, fate will crush me, not shameful love: and the day of death will be an honour to me.

Book III.22:1-42 Come home Tullus

        Tullus has cool Cyzicus pleased you all these years, where the isthmus flows with Propontus’ waters? And Cybele of Dindymus fashioned from carved tusks; and the path run by the horses of Dis the rapist? Though the cities of Helle, daughter of Athamas, delight you, perhaps, Tullus, you’ll still be moved by my longing.

        Though you gaze at Atlas holding up the sky; or the head of Medusa severed by Perseus’s hand; the stables of Geryon; or the marks, in the dust, of Hercules and Antaeus, or of the Hesperides’ dances: though your oarsmen drive back the Colchian River Phasis, follow the whole route of those timbers cut on Pelion, a rough pine tree cut to the form of a new prow, sailed through the rocks led by Argos’ dove: though Ortygia is to be seen and the shores of Cayster, and the Nile water governing seven channels: all these miracles give way to Roman lands: here nature has placed all that has ever been. It’s a land better fitted for defence than for attack: Fame is not ashamed of your history Rome. Since our power is established by loyalty as much as weapons, our wrath restrains victorious hands.

        Here flows Tibur’s Anio; Clitumnus from Umbrian tracks; and Marcius’s works with eternal water; Alba’s lake and Nemi thick with leaves, and the healing spring Pollux’s horse drank. But no horned snakes slither on scaly bellies: Italian waters are not seething with strange monsters. Here Andromeda’s chains do not clink for her mother’s sin; no Phoebus flees Ausonian banquets in terror; no distant fires have burned a single person, as Althaea brought about her son Meleager’s ruin. No savage Bacchantes hunt Pentheus through the trees, nor are Greek ships set free by the substitution of a doe. Juno has no power to curve horns from her rival’s brow, or disfigure her beauty with a cow’s ugliness. No torturing trees of Sinis, nor rocks that gave no welcome to the Greeks; nor beams curved to one’s fate.

        This place gave you birth, Tullus, this is your sweetest home, here is honour to seek, worthy of your people. Here are citizens for your oratory: here is ample hope of offspring, and the fitting love of a future wife.

Book III.23:1-24 The lost writing tablets

        So, my cunning writing-tablets are lost, then, and so are many good texts too! They were worn away by my hand’s former usage, and they sought good faith by not being sealed. Moreover they knew how to pacify girls, without me, and how without me to utter eloquent words. No gold fittings made them precious: they were dingy wax on ordinary boxwood. Such as they were they stayed ever-faithful to me, and always produced a good effect.

        Perhaps the tablets were entrusted with these words: ‘I am angry because you were late yesterday, you laggard. Or did someone else seem lovelier to you? Or did you spread some unkind slander about me?’ Or she said: ‘Come today, we’ll rest together: all night, Love has been preparing a welcome.’ And whatever else a willing and talkative girl invents when she sets a time, with flattering wiles.

        Oh well, now some miser writes his accounts on them, and places them with his dire ledgers! Whoever gives me them back can have gold: who would keep pieces of wood and not have money? Go boy, and quickly stick these words on some column, and write that your master lives on the Esquiline.

Book III.24:1-20 Coming to his senses

        Woman the faith you place in your beauty is mistaken: for a while now my eyes have made you far too proud. My love has paid such tributes to you Cynthia it shames me that you’re honoured by my verse.

        I often praised the many beauties combined in you, because love thought you were what you are not. Your aspect was often compared with rosy Dawn, though the beauty of your face was all done by hand: my father’s friends couldn’t divert me from it, nor any Thessalian witch, with the wide sea, wash it away. This I confess, in truth, not compelled by knife or flame, wrecked on Aegean waters, I was seized and seethed in Venus’s cruel cauldron: I was bound, my hands twisted behind my back.

        Behold, my wreathed boats reach harbour, the Syrtes are past, and I cast anchor. I come to my senses now at last, weary of the wild surge, and my wounds are closed and healed.

        Good Sense, if there is such a goddess, I dedicate myself to your shrine!  Jupiter was deaf to all my prayers.

Book III.25:1-18 The End of the Affair

        I was laughed at among the guests seated for the banquet, and whoever wished was able to gossip of me. I managed to serve you faithfully for five years: you’ll often grieve for my loyalty with bitten nails.

        Tears have no effect on me: I was ensnared by those wiles: Cynthia you only ever wept with guile. I will weep, in departing, but insult overcomes tears: you would not allow the yoke to move in harmony.

        Now goodbye to the threshold weeping at my words: to the entrance never hurt by my hand in anger. But let age’s weight burden you with secret years and luckless lines furrow your features! May you long then to tear out your white hairs by their roots, ah, when the mirror rebukes you with your wrinkles, and may you in turn, rejected, suffer proud arrogance, and, changed to an old woman, regret your deeds!

        These are the dread events my pages prophesy: learn to fear the fate of your beauty!

Book IV

Book IV.1:1-70 Rome and its history

        Here, whatever you see, stranger, which is now mighty Rome, before Trojan Aeneas was hills and grass: and Evander’s fugitive herd lay where the Palatine stands, sacred to Apollo of Ships. These golden temples sprang from earthly gods: there was no disgrace in houses made without art: Tarpeian Jupiter thundered from a bare cliff, and Tiber was foreign to our cattle.

        Where Remus’ house raises itself from that stairway, a single hearth was a whole kingdom to the brothers. The Curia that shines up there, adorned with the purple hem of the Senate, held the Fathers, clothed in animal skins to its rustic heart. A shepherd’s horn called the citizens to speak in ancient times: often the Senate was a hundred of them in a field.

        No billowing awnings hung over the theatre’s space: no scent on stage of its customary saffron. No man cared to seek out alien gods: while the awed people trembled at their father’s rites. But, they celebrated the Parilia, annually, with bonfires of straw, and such purification as we repeat now with the docked horse’s blood.

        Vesta, poor, delighted in garlanded donkeys, and skinny cattle dragged along cheap emblems. At the Compitalia the narrow crossroads were purified with the blood of fatted pigs, and the shepherd offered sheep’s guts to the sound of reed pipes. The ploughman, dressed in skins, flourished his hairy scourge, from which lawless Fabius Lupercus took the Lupercalia’s sacred rite.

        Their raw soldiers did not gleam with threatening armour: they joined in battle naked, with fire-hardened pikes. Lycmon, the countryman, pitched the first general’s tent, and the greater part of Tatius’s wealth was in sheep. Such were the Titienses, heroic Ramnes, and the Luceres of Solonium, such Romulus who drove four white triumphal horses.

        Indeed, Bovillae was hardly a suburb of the tiny city, and Gabii greatly crowded, that now is nothing. And Alba stood, powerful, founded through the omen of a white sow, when it was far from there to Fidenae. The Roman child has nothing of his fathers save the name, nor reflects that a she-wolf was his race’s foster-mother.

        Here, Troy, for the best, you sent your exiled household gods. Here, at such auguries, the Trojan vessel sailed! Even then the omens were good, since the open womb of the Wooden Horse did not fatally wound her, when the trembling father clung to his son’s back, and the flames were afraid to scorch those pious shoulders.

        Then came the spirited Decii, and the consulship of Brutus, and Venus herself carried Caesar’s arms here, bore the victorious arms of a resurgent Troy. Iulus, a fortunate country received your gods, since the tripod of Avernus’s quivering Sybil told Remus on the Aventine to purify the fields. And Cassandra, the prophetess of Troy’s ravings proved truthful in time, concerning ancient Priam: ‘Wheel your horses, Greeks! You win in vain! Troy’s earth will live, and Jupiter grant arms to her ashes!’

        Wolf of Mars, the best of nurses to our State, what towers have sprung from your milk! Now to try and portray those towers in patriotic verse, ah me, how puny the sound that rises from my mouth! But however thin the streams that flow from my chest, it is all in the service of my country. Let Ennius crown his verse with a shaggy garland: Bacchus, hold out to me leaves of your ivy, so that my books might make Umbria swell with pride, Umbria fatherland of the Roman Callimachus! Whoever sees the towers of Assisi climbing from the valley, honour those walls according to my genius! Rome favour me, the work soars up for you: citizens grant me good omens, and let a bird on the right sing at my inception! I will cry: ‘Fall Troy, and Trojan Rome arise!’ and I’ll sing lengthy perils on sea and land. I will sing rites and days, and the ancient names of places: my horses need to strain towards that goal.

Book IV.1A:71-150 Horos’ soliloquy: Propertius’ role.

        ‘Where are you rushing to, Propertius, wandering rashly, babbling on about Fate? The threads you spin are not from a true distaff. Singing, you summon tears: Apollo’s averted: you demand words you’ll regret from an unwilling lyre. I’ll speak the truth from true sources, or prove myself a seer ignorant of how to move the stars on their bronze sphere. Orops of Babylon, child of Archytas, fathered me, Horos, and my house is descended from Conon. The gods are my witnesses; I’ve not disgraced my family. Now men make profit from the gods (Jupiter’s tricked by gold) and the return of stars on the slanting zodiac’s circle, Jupiter’s fortunate planet, rapacious Mars, and heavy Saturn a weight on every head: what Pisces determines, Leo’s fierce sign, and Capricorn washed in the western sea.

        When Arria was in labour with her twin sons (forbidden by a god, she gave her sons weapons), I foretold they’d fail to bring back their spears to their father’s household gods: and now in truth two graves confirm my word. Since Lupercus, protecting his horse’s wounded head, failed to defend himself, when the horse fell: while Gallus guarding the standards, entrusted to him in camp, died for the eagle’s beak, bathing it in his blood. Ill-fated boys, both killed by a mother’s greed! My prophecy touched on truth, though unwillingly.

        I, too, cried out, when Lucina prolonged Cinara’s labour pains, and her womb’s tardy burden delayed: “Make Juno a vow she must hear!” She gave birth: my books won the prize! These things are not expounded in the desert cave of Jupiter Ammon, or by entrails that speak what the gods commit to them, or by him who interprets the crow’s wing-beats, or by the dead shade produced from mystic waters. The track of the heavens must be examined, and the path of truth among the stars, and knowledge looked for from the five zones. 

        Calchas was a profound example: since he freed at Aulis the ships clinging rightly to god-fearing cliffs: the same who bloodied a sword on the neck of Agamemnon’s girl, and granted the Atrides bloodstained sails. Yet the Greeks did not return: quench your tears, razed Troy, and consider Euboea’s bay! Nauplius raises his fires by night in vengeance, and Greece sails weighed down by her spoils. Victorious Ajax, son of Oileus, rape, then love, your prophetess, Cassandra, though Minerva forbids her to be stripped of her robe!

        So much for history: now I turn to your stars: prepare yourself impartially to witness new grief. Ancient Umbria gave birth to you, at a noble hearth: am I lying? Or has my mouth revealed your country? Where misty Mevania wets the open plain, and the summer waters of the Umbrian lake steam, and the wall towers from the summit of climbing Assisi, that wall made more famous by your genius?

        Not of an age to gather them, you gathered your father’s bones, and yourself were forced to find a meaner home. Since though many bullocks ploughed your fields, the merciless measuring-rod stole your wealth of land. Soon the bulla of gold was banished from your untried neck, and the toga of a free man assumed in front of your mother’s gods, then Apollo taught you a little of his singing, and told you not to thunder out your words in the frantic Forum.

        But you create elegies, deceptive art: – this is your battlefield – that the rest of the crowd might write by your example. You will suffer the charming struggles of Venus’s arms, and will be an enemy fit for Venus’s boys. Since whatever victories your labour wins you, one girl will escape your grasp: and though you shake the deeply fixed hook from your mouth, it will do no good: the fishing-spear will spike your jaw.

        You’ll gaze at night or day at her whim: unless she commands it the tear won’t fall from your eye. A thousand sentries won’t help you, or a thousand seals on her threshold: a crack is enough once she’s decided to cheat you.

        Now whether your ship is tossed about in mid-ocean, or you go unarmed among armed men, or the trembling earth yawns in a gaping chasm: fear the avaricious back of the Crab, eight-footed Cancer.’