Letters from the Black Sea

Naso, no longer a new settler of the Tomitan land,
sends you this work from the Getic shore.
If you have leisure, Brutus, receive as guests these foreign
little books, and hide them away somehow, in whatever manner.
They dare not come within the public monuments,
for fear their own author has closed that road to them.
Ah, how often I have said: "Surely you teach nothing shameful;
go — that place lies open to chaste verses."
Still they will not approach, but, as you see yourself,
they think it safer to lie hidden under a private roof.
You ask where you can put them without injuring anyone?
Where the Arts once stood, that space is free for you.
You ask, perhaps, with what novelty they come, under that very head:
take whatever it is, only let it not be love.
You will find — though the title is no pitiable thing —
this no less mournful than the one I sent before.
The matter is the same; in title it differs, and each letter
tells, with no name hidden, to whom it is sent.
You do not wish this, but neither can you forbid it,
and the Muse comes dutiful to the unwilling.
Whatever it is, add it to mine; nothing forbids works
born of an exile to enjoy the City, the laws kept whole.
What you would fear is no such thing: Antony’s writings are read,
and learned Brutus keeps his book-cases ready to hand.
Nor do I, in madness, set myself beside such great names:
I have not, for all that, borne savage arms against the gods.
In short, no book of mine — and Caesar himself asks none of it —
lacks the honor of his Caesar’s name.
If you doubt me, admit the praises of the gods,
and, the name removed, take up my song.
The branch of peaceful olive helps in war:
shall it profit nothing to hold the author of peace?
When Aeneas’s neck was bent beneath his father,
the very flame, they say, gave the man passage.
The book bears a son of Aeneas — and shall not every road lie open?
Yet this one was father of his country; that one, of himself alone.
Who is so bold as to drive from the door
one shaking the shrill sistrum of Pharos in his hand?
When before the Mother of the gods the piper sounds
on his curved horn, who refuses the coin of a small alms?
We know that nothing of the kind is done at Diana’s bidding;
yet the prophet has something to live on all the same.
The very godhead of the powers above moves our minds,
and it is no shame to be caught by such belief.
See, I, in place of the sistrum and the Phrygian boxwood’s reed,
carry the sacred names of the Julian house.
I prophesy and warn: make way for one who bears holy things;
not for me, but for a great god, is that room required;
and do not, because I have either earned or felt the prince’s anger,
suppose that he himself wishes no worship from us.
I myself have seen one who confessed he had profaned
linen-robed Isis’s power sit before her Isiac hearths.
Another, robbed of his sight for a fault like that,
cried in the middle of the road that he had earned it.
The heavenly ones delight that such heralding is done,
to prove, by a witness, what their godhead can do.
Often they ease the penalties and give back the sight they took,
when they see the sinner has rightly repented.
I repent — oh, if any of the wretched is believed by anyone —
I repent, and am racked by my own deed.
And though it is exile, the fault grieves me more,
and suffering the penalty is the lesser thing to bear than earning it.
Though the gods may favor me, to whom He is plainer than they,
the penalty can be lifted; the fault will last forever.
Death, surely, will see to it I am no exile, once it comes;
that I did not sin, not even death will see to.
No wonder, then, if my mind, turned wasting,
runs like water melting from the snow.
As a ship is eaten, fouled by the hidden borer,
as the salt sea’s wave hollows out the rocks,
as iron laid aside is gnawed by the scaly rust,
as a stored book is fretted by the bookworm’s mouth,
so my heart has the unending gnawings of its cares,
by which, with no limit, it is worn away.
Nor will these goads leave my mind sooner than life,
and the one who grieves will fall sooner than the grief.
If the gods above, whose we are entirely, believe this of me,
perhaps I shall be held worthy of some slight help,
and shall be moved to a place empty of the Scythian bow.
Were I to pray for more than this, I should be of too hard a mouth.

Maximus, you who fill out the measure of so great a name
and double your stock with the nobility of your spirit,
you, that you might be born — though three hundred fell,
one day did not carry off all the Fabii —
perhaps you ask from whom this letter is sent,
and wish to be sure who it is that speaks with you.
Ah me! what shall I do? I fear that, the name once read,
you will read the rest hard-hearted and with your mind turned away.
Be it so — I will dare to confess I have written to you,
I who, though I confess I deserved a heavier penalty,
can scarcely endure things heavier still.
I am beset in the thick of enemies, among perils,
as if peace with my country had been taken from me.
To double the causes of death with a savage wound,
they smear all their arrows with viper’s gall.
On these the horseman, equipped, scouts the terrified walls,
in the manner of a wolf circling the penned sheep,
and once the light bow is strung tight to its horsehair string,
it stays always with its bindings undone.
The roofs bristle, as if veiled with fixed arrows,
and the gate scarcely keeps the assault off with its bar.
Add the face of the place, screened by neither leaf nor tree,
and a winter that runs unbroken into winter.
Here, fighting with the cold and with the arrows
and with my own fate, a fourth winter wears me out.
My tears have no end, unless a numbness blocks them
and a torpor like death holds my breast.
Happy Niobe, who, for all the many deaths she saw,
laid aside the sense of her woe when turned to stone!
And happy you whose mouths, crying out for your brother,
the poplar veiled in fresh bark!
I am that creature who am admitted into no wood;
I am that one who would, in vain, wish to be stone.
Though Medusa herself should come before my eyes,
Medusa herself would lose her power.
I live, that I may never lack the bitter taste,
and my punishment grows heavier with the long delay.
So the liver of Tityos, unconsumed and ever born again,
does not perish — that it may perish often.
But, I suppose, when rest, the public physic of care,
sleep comes, the night arrives stripped of the usual ills?
Dreams that mimic real disasters terrify me,
and my own senses wake to my own harm.
Now I seem to be dodging the Sarmatian arrows,
now to be giving my captive hands to the cruel chains,
or, when I am cheated by the image of a kindlier sleep,
I look on the abandoned roofs of my homeland,
and now with you, the friends I have revered, I talk much,
and now with my dear wife.
So, when a brief and untrue pleasure has been grasped,
this state of mine grows worse for the reminder of the good.
Whether, then, the day looks upon this pitiable head,
or the frosty horses of Night are driven on,
so my heart melts with its perpetual cares,
as new wax does when the fire is brought near.
Often I pray for death, and yet pray death away,
that the Sarmatian soil may not cover my bones.
When it comes to me what Augustus’s mercy is, I believe
gentle shores can be given to the shipwrecked.
When I see how stubborn my fate is, I am broken,
and slight hope, beaten by great fear, falls away,
yet I hope and pray for nothing further
than to be free of this badly-changed place.
This, or nothing, is what I may attempt for myself with restraint,
which your favor, with no breach of honor, could win.
Take up, Maximus, eloquence of the Roman tongue,
the gentle advocacy of a hard cause.
It is a bad one, I confess, but it will turn good with you to plead it:
only speak soft words for a wretched exile.
For Caesar does not know — though a god knows all —
in what condition this last place stands.
Great undertakings of affairs occupy that godhead;
this is a care too small for a heavenly breast.
He has no leisure to ask in what region the Tomitans
are set — a place barely known to the neighboring Getae —
or what the Sauromatae are doing, or the keen Iazyges,
and the Tauric land, the tilled land of Orestes’s goddess,
and the other tribes who, when the Hister stands fast with cold,
cross its hard back on a swift horse.
The greater part of these neither cares for you, fairest Rome,
nor fears the weapons of the Ausonian soldier.
Their bows give them spirit, and their full quivers,
and the horse fit for long courses at will,
and that they have learned to bear thirst and hunger long,
and that the pursuing enemy will find no water.
The anger of a gentle man would not have sent me into this land,
had this soil been well enough known to him.
Neither he nor any Roman rejoices that I am taken by an enemy,
and least of all that I, to whom he himself granted life, am taken.
He did not wish, as he could, to destroy me with the slightest nod:
there is no need of any Getae against my fate.
But he found nothing done by me to make me deserve to die,
and he can be less hostile than he was.
Even then he did nothing but what I myself forced him to do;
even his anger is almost gentler than my desert.
May the gods, then, whose most just one he himself is, grant
that the kindly earth bear nothing greater than Caesar.
And as the land has long been under him, so may it be under a Caesar,
and pass, handed on, through the hands of this house.
But you — by as gentle a judge as we too have felt him to be —
loose your lips for the sake of my tears.
I do not ask that it go well, but that ill go more safely,
and that my exile stand apart from the savage enemy,
and that the squalid Getan not take, with drawn sword,
the life the present gods have granted me,
and, in the end, if I die, that I go under a more peaceful ground,
and that my bones not be pressed by Scythian earth,
nor — as befits an exile, no doubt — that the hoof of a Bistonian horse
beat my ashes, ill-composed,
and that, if any sense survives after the funeral,
no Sarmatian shade should frighten even my ghost.
Caesar’s mind these words, once heard, could move,
Maximus — if only they had first moved yours.
Let your voice, I pray, soften the august ears for me,
your voice that is wont to be a help to trembling defendants,
and with the practiced sweetness of your learned tongue
bend the breast of a man the equal of the gods.
It is not Theromedon, nor raw Atreus, that will be entreated,
nor he who made men fodder for his own horses,
but a prince slow to punishment, swift to reward,
who grieves whenever he is forced to be fierce,
who always conquered so that he could spare the conquered,
and shut civil war behind an eternal bar,
who curbs much by fear of punishment, little by punishment,
and hurls his rare thunderbolts with an unwilling hand.
Therefore, an envoy sent to ears so mild,
plead that my exile be nearer my homeland.
I am the one who courted you, whom the festive board
was wont to see among your guests,
I am the one who led the Hymenaeon to your wedding fires
and sang songs worthy of a happy marriage-bed,
whose little books you remembered to praise — except those
that harmed their own master —
to whom you sometimes read your own writings, as I marveled,
I am the one to whom a bride was given from your house.
Marcia approves of her, loved from her earliest years,
and counts her among her own companions,
and held her dear before — Caesar’s aunt by marriage;
and by whose judgment any woman is approved is proven good.
By their praise, Claudia herself, better than her own repute,
would not have needed the divine aid.
I too have passed my former years without stain:
the latest part of my life must be leaped over.
But, to be silent about myself, my wife is your burden:
you cannot, your good faith intact, disown her.
She takes refuge with you, she clings to your altars —
each rightly comes to the gods he has worshipped —
and, weeping, begs that, Caesar softened by your prayers,
the grave of her husband be set nearer.

Naso, your friend, sends you this greeting, Rufinus —
if a wretch can be anyone’s friend.
The comfort lately given to my troubled mind
brought help and hope to my ills.
And as the Poeantian hero, by Machaon’s arts,
felt healing aid for his eased wound,
so I, lying low in spirit and stung by a bitter blow,
began at your warning to be stronger,
and, already failing, so revived at your words
as a vein recovers when wine is poured in.
Yet your eloquence did not show such power
that my breast was made whole by your words.
Though you draw much from the flood of my care,
no less will be left than has been drained away.
In time, perhaps, the scar will be drawn over;
raw wounds shudder at the touch of hands.
It is not always in the doctor’s power that the sick be relieved:
sometimes the malady is stronger than learned art.
You see how the blood let loose from the soft lung
leads by a sure path to the Stygian waters.
Though the god of Epidaurus himself bring his sacred herbs,
he will heal a wounded heart by no resource.
Medicine cannot lift the knotty gout,
nor does it help the dreaded dropsy.
Care too is sometimes curable by no art,
or, to be so, must be thinned out by long delay.
When your precepts had well steadied my prostrate spirit,
and the armor of your breast had been taken up by me,
again love of country, stronger than all reason,
unraveled the work your writings had done.
Whether you wish to call this dutiful, or call it womanish,
I confess my wretched heart is soft.
The wisdom of the Ithacan is not in doubt; yet still he longs
to be able to see the smoke from his native hearths.
By I know not what sweetness the native soil draws
all men, and does not let them be forgetful of it.
What is better than Rome? What worse than Scythian cold?
Yet the barbarian flees here from that city.
Though the daughter of Pandion fares well, caged,
she strives to return to her own woods.
Bulls seek their accustomed glades, lions their accustomed
caves — nor does their wildness hinder them.
Yet you hope the bites of exile can withdraw
from my breast at your soothings.
See to it that you yourselves not be so dear to me,
that having lost you may be a lighter ill.
But, I suppose, though I lack the land where I was born,
it has fallen to me to be in some human place?
I lie deserted on the sands of the world’s edge,
where the buried earth bears unending snows.
Here the field rears no fruit, no sweet grapes,
no willows green on the bank, no oaks on the hill.
And do not praise the sea above the land: the waters,
robbed of suns, swell always with the rage of winds.
Wherever you look, plains lie without a tiller,
and vast fields that no one claims.
The enemy is at hand, to be feared on right and left,
and with neighboring dread he terrifies either flank:
one side will feel the Bistonian pikes,
the other the spears flung by a Sarmatian hand.
Go now and recount to me the old examples of men
who bore their lot with a brave mind,
and marvel at the heavy steadfastness of great-souled Rutilius,
who would not use the terms of return that were offered.
Smyrna held the man, not Pontus and a hostile land,
Smyrna, scarcely to be sought less than any place.
The Cynic of Sinope did not grieve to be far from his country,
for he chose your seats, land of Attica.
The son of Neocles, who crushed the Persian arms with arms,
felt his first exile in an Argive city.
Driven from his homeland, Aristides fled to Lacedaemon,
between which two it was doubtful which stood first.
Patroclus, a murder done in boyhood, left Opus
and came, a guest, to the Thessalian soil of Achilles.
The exile from Haemonia withdrew to the Pirenian wave,
under whose lead the sacred timber ran on Colchian water.
Cadmus, son of Agenor, quit the walls of Sidon
to set his ramparts in a better place.
Tydeus, driven from Calydon, came to Adrastus,
and the land dear to Venus received Teucer.
Why should I recall the ancients of the Roman race,
to whom Tibur was the farthest land of exile?
Though I should run through them all, to none in any age
has a place so far from home, or harsher, been given.
The more let your wisdom forgive a man in grief:
he does, of your counsels, not so very much.
Yet I do not deny that, could my wounds knit together,
they could knit by your precepts.
But I fear that you labor in vain to save me,
and that I, undone and sick, am not helped by the aid you bring,
nor do I say this because there is more wisdom in me,
but because I am better known to myself than to my physician.
Yet, be it as it may, your great kindness as a gift
has reached me, and the good will is reckoned to your credit.

Already a worse season sprinkles me with white hairs,
already the wrinkle of age plows my features,
already vigor and strength languish in my shaken body,
nor do the sports that pleased the young man please me;
nor, if you saw me suddenly, could you know me,
so great is the ruin made of my years.
I confess the years do this, but there is another cause too,
anxiety of mind and unceasing toil;
for if anyone should portion out my ills through long years,
believe me, I shall be older than Pylian Nestor.
You see how in the hard fields — and what is firmer than the ox? —
the work breaks the strong bodies of bulls.
The soil that has never been wont to rest in empty fallow
grows old, wearied with relentless yield.
The horse will fall, if any goes forever, with no rest,
in unbroken courses to the contests of the circus.
Firm though she be, the ship will spring apart at sea
that, never dry, lacks the liquid waters.
Me too the boundless train of ills enfeebles,
and forces me, before my time, to be an old man.
Ease feeds the body, and the mind too is nourished by it;
immoderate toil, on the contrary, frets them both.
Look, because the son of Aeson came into these parts,
what praise he wins from late posterity.
Yet his toil was lighter and less than ours,
if only great names do not press down the truth.
He set out for Pontus, sent by Pelias,
who was scarcely to be feared at Thessaly’s border;
Caesar’s anger harmed me, at whom, from the sun’s rising
to its setting, each land trembles.
Haemonia is nearer the Left Pontus than Rome is,
and he completed a shorter road than I.
He had as comrades the first men of the Achaean land,
but all deserted my flight.
I in fragile wood furrowed the vast deep;
the keel that bore Aeson’s son was solid.
Nor had I Tiphys as helmsman, nor the son of Agenor,
to teach me which ways to flee and which to seek.
Him the royal Juno guarded along with Pallas:
no divine powers defended my head.
Him the stealthy arts of Cupid helped,
which I could wish that love had not learned from me.
He came home; we shall die in these fields,
if the heavy anger of the wronged god holds.
Harder, then, is ours, most faithful wife,
than the work the son of Aeson undertook.
You too, whom I left young when leaving the City,
it is likely have grown old with my ills.
Oh — may the gods grant it! — that I might see you such,
and bring dear kisses to your altered hair,
and clasp your body, no longer full, in my arms,
and say, "Care for me made this thin,"
and tell my labors to you, weeping, weeping myself,
and enjoy a converse never hoped for,
and offer incense to the Caesars, with a wife worthy of Caesar,
to true gods, with a remembering hand!
Oh, that the mother of Memnon, the prince once softened,
might call up that day as soon as may be with her rosy mouth!

He once not least among your friends — that you may read
his words, Maximus — Naso asks of you,
in which cease to look for my old talent,
lest you seem unaware of my exile.
You see how leisure corrupts the idle body,
how the waters take taint, unless they are stirred.
And whatever skill I had in drawing out a song
fails, and is grown less, gone slack with idleness.
These very lines you read, if you believe me at all, Maximus,
I write with an unwilling, scarcely forced hand.
There is no pleasure in straining the mind to such cares,
nor does the Muse, summoned, come to the hard Getae.
Yet, as you see yourself, I struggle to draw out a verse,
but it comes no softer than my fate.
When I reread it, I am ashamed to have written, for I see
much that even I, who made it, judge fit to be blotted.
Yet I do not correct: the labor is greater than to write,
and my sick mind can endure nothing hard.
Am I, forsooth, to begin to use the file more bitingly,
and call each single word to judgment?
Does fortune torment me too little, unless the Lixus
should flow into the Hebrus, and Athos add its leaves to the Alps?
The spirit must be spared that bears a pitiable wound:
oxen lift their galled necks from the burden.
But, I suppose, the fruit is there, the justest cause of toil,
and the field returns the sown seed with much increase?
To this hour no work — recount all you will — has profited me,
and would it had not harmed me!
Why, then, do I write, you wonder. I wonder myself,
and often ask with you what I seek from it.
Or does the crowd truly deny that poets are sane,
and am I the greatest proof of that saying,
I who, so often cheated by the barren field,
persist, to my own loss, in burying the seed in the soil?
No doubt each man is greedy of his own pursuits,
and it delights him to spend his time on a practiced art.
The wounded gladiator forswears the fight, and yet,
forgetful of his old wound, takes up arms again.
The shipwrecked man says he will have nothing to do with the sea’s waves,
and yet plies the oar on the water he just sailed.
So I steadfastly keep a useless pursuit,
and seek again the goddesses I wish I had not served.
What better should I do? I am not one to pass
slack leisure: idle time is reckoned death to me.
Nor does it please me to wither into the light with too much wine,
nor does the coaxing dice hold my doubting hands.
When I have given sleep the hours the body demands,
how am I, waking, to pass the long stretches?
Or, forgetting my fathers’ way, am I to learn to bend
the Sarmatian bows, and be drawn by the art of the place?
This pursuit too forbids me to take on its strength,
and my mind avails more in its slender body.
When you have well inquired what I do, nothing is more useful
than these arts that have no use at all.
From them I get forgetfulness of my plight:
that harvest is enough, if my soil yields it.
Let glory spur you on; do you, that your recited songs
win favor, keep watch for the Pierian choirs.
What comes easily it is enough for me to compose,
and the motive for too strained a labor is gone.
Why should I polish my songs with anxious care?
Am I to fear the Getan will not approve them?
Perhaps I shall do it boldly, but I boast that the Hister
has no greater talent than mine.
Where I must live, it is enough, if I attain to this in this field,
to be a poet among the inhuman Getae.
Why should I strive for fame into a distant world?
Let the place fortune gave me be my Rome.
With this theater my luckless Muse is content.
This I have earned; so the great gods would have it.
Nor do I think there is a road from here to there for my little books,
where Boreas comes with failing wing.
We are divided by the sky, and the Bear that is far from the city
of Quirinus looks close on the shaggy Getae.
Through so much land, so many waters, I can scarcely believe
the token of my study has crossed over.
Suppose it is read, and — wonder of wonders — suppose it pleases:
that does its author no good at all.
What would it profit you to be praised in hot Syene,
or where the Indian water dyes Taprobane?
Do you wish to go higher? Should the far-distant signs
of the Pleiades praise you, what would you carry off from that?
But I do not reach there with my middling writings,
and my fame fled the City along with its master,
and you, by whom I perished then, when my fame was buried,
now too, I suppose, are silent about my death.

Did you, when you heard — for a far-off land was holding you —
of my disasters, have a heart that grieved?
Though you may dissemble it and fear, Graecinus, to confess,
if I know you well, it is clear it grieved.
Unlovely savagery does not fall in with manners like yours,
nor does it differ less from your studies.
By the liberal arts, whose care is your greatest care,
hearts are softened, and harshness flees;
nor does anyone embrace those arts with better faith,
so far as duty and the soldier’s toil allow.
Surely I, as soon as I could feel what I was —
for long my mind, thunderstruck, was none —
felt this too, my fortune, that a friend was away,
who was to be a great defense to me.
With you were then absent the comforts of a sick mind,
and a great part of my spirit and my counsel.
But now, what is left, bring help, I beg, the one help, from afar,
and aid my breast with your address,
which — if you believe an unlying friend at all —
should be called foolish rather than wicked.
It is neither brief nor safe to write what the source
of my fault may be: my wounds dread the handling.
However those things were done to me, cease to ask;
do not stir them, if you wish them to close.
Whatever it is, as it is not a crime, so it must be called a fault:
or is every fault against the great gods a crime?
Hope, then, Graecinus, of easing my mind’s penalty
has not been left entirely none to me.
This goddess, when the divinities fled the wicked lands,
alone stayed on the earth the gods hated.
She makes the digger live, even bound in fetters,
and think his legs will be free of the iron to come.
She makes the shipwrecked man, when he sees no land anywhere,
fling his arms in the midst of the waters.
Often the skilled care of physicians has abandoned someone,
and his hope does not fall though the vein fails.
Those shut in prison are said to hope for safety,
and one hanging on the cross makes his vows.
This goddess, how many, binding their necks with the noose,
she has not let perish by the death they had purposed!
Me too, trying to end my grief with the sword,
she chided, and held back my hand laid on it:
"What are you doing?" she said. "There is need of tears, not blood;
often by these the prince’s anger is bent."
Though, then, it is undue to my deserts,
yet there is great hope in the goodness of the god.
That he be not hard to me, Graecinus, pray,
and add your words too to my vow.
And may I lie buried in the Tomitan sand,
if it is not clear that you make those vows for me.
For sooner will doves begin to shun the tower,
wild beasts the cave, flocks the grass, the gull the waters,
than Graecinus prove false to his old friend.
Not all things are so overturned by my fates.

A letter, in place of words, brings you, Messalinus,
the greeting it carries all the way from the savage Getae.
Does the place reveal its author? Or, unless the name is read,
does it lie hidden that I, Naso, write these words?
Is there anyone of yours, set at the world’s edge,
who — myself excepted — prays, as I do, to be yours?
Far may the gods will that all who revere and love you
should have acquaintance with this people!
For me it is enough to live among ice and Scythian arrows,
if life is to be reckoned a kind of death.
Let the land press me with war, or the sky with cold,
the grim Getan with arms, winter with hail,
let a region hold me teeming with no fruit nor grapes,
and whose every side has no rest from the enemy.
For the rest, may the throng of your worshippers be safe,
among whom, as one of a people, I was a small part.
Wretched me, if you take offense at these words,
and deny that I was in any part yours!
And were that true, you ought to forgive my falsehood.
My glory takes nothing from your praise.
Who, known to the Caesars, does not feign himself their friend?
Grant pardon to my confession: you were my Caesar.
Yet I do not burst in where it is not allowed to go, and it is enough
if you do not deny that your hall stood open to me.
And though there had been nothing more between us, with one
greeting less you are saluted than before.
Nor did your father disown us as friends,
the spur of my study, the cause and torch of it,
to whom we gave both tears, the last gift at a funeral,
and writings to be sung in the midst of the forum.
Add that there is a brother, joined to you by as great a love
as was in the sons of Atreus and of Tyndareus:
he did not scorn me as comrade nor as friend,
if you think this will not harm him;
if otherwise, in this part too I will confess myself a liar:
let that whole house rather be closed to me.
But it is not to be closed, and no power has the strength
to provide that a friend do no wrong.
And yet, though I could wish the fault too could be denied,
so no one is unaware the crime is far from me.
For unless the part of my offense were excusable,
the penalty of relegation would have been a small thing to come.
But Caesar himself saw this, who sees through all,
that my fault could be called folly.
And so far as I allowed, so far as the matter let him, he spared,
and used the fire of his thunderbolt with measure.
He took away neither life nor wealth nor the power to return,
if his anger be conquered by your prayers.
But I fell heavily. What wonder, if anyone
struck by Jove takes no light wound?
Achilles himself would have held back his own strength,
yet the heavy blow the Pelian spear, once thrown, dealt.
Since, then, the judgment of the avenger is with us,
there is no reason your door should refuse to know me.
Cultivated indeed, I confess, it was less than it should have been,
but this too was in my fates, I believe.
Yet your other house did not feel a lack of my service:
here and there I was always under your roof.
And such is your devotion that, though it should not court you yourself,
your brother’s friend has some claim with you.
Why, since gratitude must always be returned to the deserving,
is it not also to have deserved well of your fortune?
But if you allow me to advise what you should wish,
pray to the gods to give more than you have to repay.
And this you do, and — so far as it is allowed me to remember —
you used, for duty’s sake, to be a giver to many.
In whatever number you like, Messalinus, place me again,
only let me be no stranger to your house,
and grieve over Naso’s ills — since he seems to have earned them —
if you do not grieve to bear them, yet grieve that he earned them.

Receive the greeting sent by Naso, dear to you,
great part of my soul, Severus.
And do not ask how I fare. If I pursue it all, you will weep:
it is enough that the sum of my ill be known to you.
We live, with no share of peace, in unceasing arms,
the quivered Getan stirring savage wars.
And of so many banished, I alone am a soldier in exile:
the rest of the throng — I do not grudge it — lie safe.
And, that you may the more think my little books deserving of pardon,
you will read these songs made under arms.
There stands an old town, near the bank of the two-named Hister,
hard to approach for its walls and the lie of the land.
Caspian Aegisos, if we trust the people themselves,
founded it and called the work by his own name.
This, the Odrysians slain in unlooked-for war,
the fierce Getan took, and bore arms against the king.
He, mindful of his great line, which he augments by valor,
straightway comes, ringed with countless soldiery,
nor drew off before, by the deserved slaughter of the guilty,
...............
But to you, bravest king of our age, may it be given
to hold the scepter always in an honored hand,
and — what is even better, for what fuller thing could I wish you? —
may martial Rome, with great Caesar, approve you.
But, mindful whence I strayed, I complain, O pleasant comrade,
that savage arms are added to my ills.
While I am without you, thrust down to the Stygian shores,
the risen Pleiad makes four autumns.
Nor would you think Naso seeks the comforts
of city life: and yet he seeks those too.
For now I recall you, sweet friends, in my mind,
now my daughter comes to me, with my dear wife,
and again from home I turn to the places of the lovely City,
and my mind sees all those things with its own eyes.
Now the forums, now the temples, now the theaters roofed in marble,
now every colonnade on its leveled ground rises before me,
now the lawns of the Campus that looks on the lovely gardens,
the pools, the canals, and the Virgin’s water.
But, I suppose, so was the City’s pleasure snatched from me, a wretch,
that I might at least enjoy some countryside!
My mind does not long for the lost fields,
nor the lands to be seen in the Paelignian soil,
nor the gardens set on the pine-bearing hills,
which the Clodian, joined to the Flaminian road, looks on,
which I tended for I know not whom, to which I myself was wont
— nor am I ashamed — to add spring-water to the crops,
where there are, if they live, certain things planted by me too,
but the fruit not to be gathered by my hand.
For these things lost, would that it might fall to me
to have here at least, an exile, a clod to till!
I myself, if only it were allowed, would graze the goats
hanging on the cliff, I myself, leaning on a staff, the sheep.
I myself, lest my breast dwell on its wonted cares,
would lead the country-dwelling oxen under the curved yoke,
and learn the words the Getic bullock knows,
and add to them the accustomed threats.
I myself, guiding with my hand the pressed plow-handle,
would try to scatter the seed on the turned soil.
Nor would I doubt to clear the weeds with long mattocks,
and give the garden, now thirsty, the waters it should drink.
But whence this for me, between whom and the enemy
a wall and a shut gate make so slight a divide?
But for you at birth — at which I rejoice with my whole heart —
the deadly goddesses spun strong threads.
Now the Campus holds you, now the colonnade with its thick shade,
now the forum in which you set your rare hours;
now Umbria recalls you, and as you make for Alba
the Appian draws you on its hot wheel into the fields.
Perhaps here you wish that Caesar might check his just anger
and that your villa be my lodging.
Ah, it is too much, friend, that you ask: wish more moderately,
and shorten, I beg, the sails of your prayer.
Let a nearer land, subject to no war, be given me:
a good part will be taken from my ills.

The letter that came from you about Celsus snatched away
was straightway made wet with my tears,
and — a thing unspeakable to say, and which I thought could not be,
nor possible — your letter was read with unwilling eyes.
Nor did anything reach our ears more bitter,
as we are in Pontus — and may it not, I pray.
Before my eyes, as if of one present, the image
clings, and love feigns the dead man living.
Often my mind recalls his sports, free of all gravity,
and the serious matters often done with clear good faith.
Yet no times come to me thicker than those
which I would wish had been the last of my life,
when my house, sunk in sudden ruin,
fell, and lay prostrate upon its master’s head.
He stood by me, when a great part forsook me,
Maximus, and was not himself a comrade of Fortune.
Him I saw weeping for my funeral no otherwise
than if a brother were to be laid on the fire.
He clung in embrace and consoled me as I lay,
and ever mingled his tears with mine.
Oh, how often, the hated guardian of my bitter life,
he held back my hands, ready against my own fate!
Oh, how often he said: "The gods’ anger can be appeased:
live, and do not deny that you can be forgiven!"
Yet that was his most frequent word: "Look how much
help Maximus is bound to be to you.
Maximus will set to it, and, such is his devotion, will beg
that Caesar’s anger be not stubborn to the last,
and will bring his brother’s strength to bear, with his own,
and try every means to make your grief lighter."
These words lessened the loathing of my evil life:
see, Maximus, that they were not spoken in vain.
He used to swear he would come even here to me,
if you, granting the right of the long road, allowed.
For he revered your inner shrine with no other rite
than you yourself revere the lords of the lands, the gods.
Believe me, though you have many friends, as you deserve,
he was, of the many, lesser than none,
if only it is not wealth nor a famous name of ancestors,
but uprightness and talent that makes men great.
Rightly, then, we pour tears for Celsus taken from us,
which, when I was fleeing, he living gave to me;
rightly we give songs that attest his rare character,
that the coming ages may read your name, Celsus.
This is what I can send you from the Getic fields;
this alone is what may here be mine.
I could not attend your funeral, nor anoint your body,
and I am parted from your pyre by a whole world.
He who could, whom you held living as a god,
Maximus, performed every office for you.
He made you a funeral and the rites of a great honor,
and poured spices into your cold bosom,
and, grieving, dissolved the unguents with shed tears,
and laid your bones, buried, in the near ground.
Since he renders to the dead what he owes to friends,
he can count me too among the dead.

Naso, a fugitive, sends you, Flaccus, greeting —
if one can send a thing he himself lacks.
For a long languor, my body marred by bitter cares,
does not let my strength keep its own powers.
No pain is present, nor am I burned by panting fevers,
and the vein runs its accustomed course.
My palate is dull, and the served tables stir loathing,
and I complain when the hour of hated food comes.
Set before me what the sea, what the land, what the air
rears, there will be nothing there to whet my hunger.
Let nimble Youth give me with her lovely hand
nectar and ambrosia, the draughts and feasts of the gods,
yet that flavor would not sharpen the numb palate,
and the weight would stand long in my sluggish stomach.
These things, though most true, I would not dare to write
to anyone, lest he call my ills self-indulgence.
No doubt that is my state, that the look of my affairs
could even have a place for niceties!
I pray such niceties befall the man who fears
lest Caesar’s anger be lighter on me than on himself.
That food too, sleep, which in a slender body
nourishes, does not nourish my empty body with its office,
but I lie awake, and my pains keep watch without end,
for which the place itself gives me matter.
You could scarcely, then, recognize my face if you saw it,
and would ask where the color went that was there before.
A little juice comes through into my thin limbs,
and my members are paler than fresh wax.
I did not contract these losses by immoderate wine:
you know that almost only water is drunk by me.
I am not loaded with feasts; and if I were touched by love of them,
there is no plenty of them in the Getic lands.
Nor does the ruinous pleasure of Venus take my strength:
she is not wont to come to mournful beds.
The water and the place harm me, and a cause stronger than these,
the anxiety of mind that is always with me.
Unless you, equally with your like-minded brother, eased this,
my mind would scarcely have borne the burden of its sadness.
You are the land, not hard, to my shattered skiff,
and the help that many deny me, you bring.
Bring it, I pray, forever, for forever I shall need it,
as long as Caesar’s godhead is offended with me.
That he lessen for us the anger we earned, not end it,
each of you, suppliant, entreat your gods.

Hither too the fame of Caesar’s triumph has come,
where the faint breeze of the weary South scarce reaches.
I had thought nothing would be sweet to me in the Scythian region:
now this place is less hateful than it was before.
At last, the cloud of cares driven off, I saw something clear,
and gave the lie to my own fortune.
Though Caesar would not that any joys befall me,
yet he can wish this one thing be granted to anyone.
The gods too, that they be worshipped by all with glad devotion,
bid sadness be laid aside upon their festivals.
In short — and to dare confess it is sure madness —
in this gladness, though he himself forbid, I will take my joy.
As often as Jupiter helps the fields with useful showers,
the clinging burr too will grow, mixed among the corn.
We too, a useless weed, feel the fruit-bearing
power, and are often helped by aid we did not seek.
The joys of Caesar’s mind are, for my manly part,
mine: that house keeps nothing private.
Thanks to you, Fame, through whom the pageant of the triumph,
shut in the midst of the Getae, was mine to see!
By your report I lately learned that countless nations,
a sight to behold, had gathered to their leader’s face,
and that Rome, who holds the measureless world within her vast walls,
had scarcely room for her guests.
You told me how, though for many days before
the clouded south had poured unceasing waters,
by heaven’s power the sun shone clear
upon the day, with a look matching the people’s,
and how the victor, with the honor of a great proclaiming voice,
gave the prizes of war to the men he praised,
and, about to take up the embroidered robes, the bright insignia,
first laid incense on the holy hearths,
and chastely appeased the Justice of his father,
who keeps her temple ever in that breast;
and how, wherever he went, applause added a happy omen,
and the stones blushed with showered roses;
and straightway, in silver, mimicking overturned walls,
the barbarian towns borne broad with painted men,
and rivers and mountains and battles in high woods,
and arms with weapons mixed in their own heap,
and that, of the trophies — what the sun would kindle in gold —
golden were the roofs of the Roman forum;
and so many captive chiefs borne, chains added to their necks,
almost as many as it sufficed the enemy to be.
The greatest part of these carried off life and pardon,
among them Bato too, the sum and head of the war.
Why should I deny the god’s anger toward me can be lessened,
when I see the gods are gentle to their enemies?
This same report brought to us, Germanicus,
that towns went under the title of your name,
and that against you neither the mass of a wall nor arms
nor the cunning of the ground were safety enough.
May the gods grant you years! The rest you will take from yourself,
if only long seasons be given to your valor.
What I pray will come — there are certain oracles of bards —
for the god gave favorable signs to me as I wished.
You too, a victor, glad Rome shall see climb
the Tarpeian heights with garlanded horses,
and your father shall watch the ripe honors of his son,
taking the joys he himself once gave his own.
Even now mark these words from me, greatest of young men
in war and in the toga, as I prophesy them to you.
This triumph too perhaps I shall recount in songs,
if only life hold out for my ills,
if I do not first myself dye the Scythian arrows red
and the fierce Getan carry off this head with his sword.
But if, with me safe, your laurel be given to the temples,
you will say my omens twice came true.

He, a worshipper of your house from his earliest years,
Naso, driven to the Left of the Euxine strait,
sends from the untamed Getae this greeting, Messalinus,
which, present, he was wont to bring you.
Ah me, if, the name once read, your face is not
what it was, and you hesitate to read the rest!
Read on, and do not banish my words along with me:
my verses are allowed to be in your City.
I did not conceive — had Ossa carried Pelion —
that the bright stars could be touched by my hand,
nor, following the mad camp of Enceladus,
did we move arms against the gods, the lords of the world,
nor, what the rash hand of Tydeus’s son did,
were any divinities assailed by my weapons.
My fault is grave, but one that dared to ruin
me alone, and attempted no greater wickedness.
I can be called nothing but unwise and timid:
these two are the true names of my mind.
I confess indeed that, after Caesar’s anger, you too
are rightly hard to my prayers,
and that, such is your devotion to the whole name of Iulus,
you think yourself wronged when any is wronged from that house.
But though you bear arms and threaten savage wounds,
you will not bring it about that you are feared by me.
The Trojan ship received the Greek Achaemenides,
and the Pelian spear helped the Mysian chief.
The temple’s violator sometimes flees to its altar
and does not shrink to seek the offended god’s aid.
Someone will say this is not safe: I confess it,
but my ship does not go through quiet waters.
Let others seek safety: most wretched fortune is safe,
for fear is gone through the outcome of something worse.
He who is swept off.............
stretches out his hand even to thorns and hard rocks....
and the bird, dreading the hawk, with trembling wings,
weary, dares to come to human laps,
nor does she hesitate to trust the nearest roof,
the hind that, terrified, flees the hostile hounds.
Grant, I pray, access to my tears, most gentle one,
and do not bar the rigid door against my timid words,
and bear my words, favoring, to the Roman divinities,
worshipped by you no less than the Tarpeian Thunderer,
and as my envoy take up the cause I charge you with,
though no cause is good that bears my name.
Now nearly laid out, now surely cold, sick,
saved by you I shall be — if only I am saved.
Now let your favor strive for my wearied fortunes,
the favor the eternal prince’s love grants you;
now let that homebred luster of eloquence stand by you,
by which you could be of use to trembling defendants.
For the tongue of your eloquent father lives in you both,
and that gift has found its heir.
This I beseech, not that it try to defend me:
a confessed defendant’s case is not to be argued.
Yet whether you should excuse the deed by error’s origin,
or whether it profits nothing to stir such a thing — consider.
It is the kind of wound which, since it cannot be cured,
I think it safer not to handle.
Tongue, be silent! There is nothing more to be told.
I could wish to bury my own ashes myself.
So, then, as if no error had deceived me,
shape your words, that I may enjoy the life he gave.
And when he is serene and has unbent those looks
with which he moves lands and empire,
pray he let me be no scant prey of the Getae,
and grant a gentle soil to my wretched flight.
The time is fit for prayers. He is strong, and sees
how strong the powers are, Rome, that he has made yours.
His consort, unharmed, keeps her marriage-couch,
his son advances the Ausonian empire.
Germanicus himself outstrips his own years in spirit,
nor is Drusus’s vigor less than his nobility.
Add the dutiful daughters and granddaughters and the grandsons’ sons
and the other members of the Augustan house — that they thrive.
Add the Paeonians lately triumphed over, add the arms
of mountain Dalmatia laid low in quiet.
Nor did Illyria, her weapons cast away, disdain
to bear Caesar’s foot on her servile head.
He himself, conspicuous on the car with a placid face,
bore his temples bound with the Phoebean maiden’s leaf,
whom, as he went, his dutiful offspring escorted,
worthy of his sire and of the names bestowed,
like the brothers whom, holding the nearest temples,
the deified Julius beholds from his lofty shrine.
To these, to whom all things must yield, Messalinus
does not deny the first place of gladness belongs.
Whatever is left beyond these comes into the contest of love:
in this part he will be second to no man.
He will honor this day on which the laurel, worthy
of his honored locks, comes, decreed to the deserving.
O happy those to whom it fell to watch the triumphs
and enjoy the gods in their leader’s god-equalling face!
But for me, in place of Caesar’s face to behold, the Sauromatae,
a land barren of peace and a wave bound with ice.
Yet if you hear these things, and my voice reaches there,
let your favor be coaxing toward changing my place.
This that father of yours, courted by me from my first age —
if a learned shade has any feeling — asks.
This your brother asks too, though perhaps he fears
lest the care of saving me should harm you.
The whole house asks it, nor can you yourself deny
that I too was a part of your throng.
Of my talent — which I feel, to my cost, I misused,
the Arts excepted — you were often an approver,
nor, if you take away only my latest sins,
can my life be a shame to your house.
So, then, may the inmost shrine of your race flourish,
and may you be the care of the gods above and the Caesars.
Adore for me the godhead, gentle but justly angry with me,
that I may be drawn from the wildness of the Scythian place.
It is hard, I confess; but valor strives toward the steep,
and the favor of such a service will be greater.
Yet it is not Aetnaean Polyphemus in his vast cave,
nor Antiphates, who will receive your words,
but a calm, easy parent, ready for pardon,
who often thunders without the lightning’s fire,
who, when he decrees some sad thing, grows sad himself,
and for whom exacting a penalty is almost his own penalty.
Yet his clemency was overcome by my fault,
and his anger came, forced, to its full strength.
Since, then, I am removed from my homeland by a whole world,
and may not fall down before the gods themselves,
bear these charges, a priest, to the gods you worship,
but add your own prayers too to my words.
Yet attempt this only if you think it will do no harm.
You will forgive me: shipwrecked, I dread every sea.

Maximus, you who match your name with bright virtues
and do not let talent be crushed by nobility,
cherished by me — for how does this state differ from death? —
to the last hour of my life,
you do a thing — not having turned from a stricken friend —
than which none is rarer in your age.
A shameful thing to say, but — if only we confess the truth —
the crowd approves friendships by their use.
What is expedient comes before what is honorable,
and faith both stands and falls with fortune.
Nor easily would you find, in many thousands, one
who thinks virtue the reward of itself.
The mere beauty of a deed well done, if rewards are wanting,
does not move men, and to be honest for nothing irks them.
Nothing is dear but what profits, and take from the greedy mind
the hope of return, and no one will be worth seeking.
But now each loves his own returns, and reckons on anxious
fingers what may be of use to him.
That once venerable name of friendship
stands for hire and sits, a harlot, in the market.
The more I marvel that you too are not dragged,
like a common stream, by the taint of the common vice.
No one is loved but he whose fortune is favorable;
the moment it has thundered, it puts to flight all that is near.
Behold — I, once fenced by not a few friends,
while a favoring breeze blew on my sails,
when the wild seas swelled with the storm-laden wind,
am left in mid-waters in a shattered ship.
And though others were unwilling even to seem to know me,
scarcely two or three of you brought help to the castaway.
Of these you are the chief: for you were worthy to be no follower
but a leader, not to seek a precedent but to set one.
You, with me confessing nothing but that I had sinned,
are helped by your own uprightness and sense of duty.
With you for judge, virtue lacks a wage, and is to be sought
for itself, unattended by external goods.
You think it base to drive off a friend because he is pitiable,
and, because he is unhappy, to cease to call him yours.
It is gentler to set a finger beneath a wearied chin
than to plunge the face under the swimming waters.
See what the son of Aeacus renders his friend after death:
and think this life of mine has the likeness of death.
Theseus escorted Pirithous to the Stygian waters:
how far is my death from the Stygian wave?
The young Phocian stood by mad Orestes:
and my fault has no small share of madness.
You too admit the praises of great men,
as you do, and bring what help you can to the fallen.
If I know you well, if you are now what you used to be,
and your spirits have not failed,
the more Fortune rages, the more you yourself resist,
and, as is fitting, you take care she does not conquer you,
and the enemy, well fought, makes you fight well:
so the same cause both helps and harms me.
No doubt, dearest youth, you think it unworthy
to become the comrade of a goddess standing in her sphere.
You are firm, and, since things are not as you would have them,
you steer the sails of my shaken craft, such as they are.
And what was so shattered it was thought about to fall
still stands, a ruin propped on your shoulders.
Your anger indeed at first was just, nor was the one offended
milder than I had deserved he should be by right,
and whatever grief had touched the breast of high Caesar,
you swore at once was your own.
Yet when the origin of my disaster was heard by you,
they say you groaned at my mistakes.
Then first your letter began to console me
and to give hope the wronged god could be bent.
Then the constancy of long friendship moved you,
begun for me before your own birth,
and that, made a friend to others, you were born a friend to me,
and that I gave you your first kisses in the cradle,
and that, your house having been cherished by me always
from my tender years, I am forced to be an old burden to you.
That father of yours, the eloquence of the Latin tongue,
which was no lower than his nobility,
first urged me to dare to commit my songs to fame:
he was the guide of my talent.
Nor do I contend that your brother could recount
from what time he was first courted by me.
Yet I so embraced you before all that you alone,
in any chance, would be my favor.
The last to see me with you, and to catch the tears
falling from sad cheeks, was Aethalian Elba,
when, as you asked whether the report was true
that ill fame had brought you of my fault,
between confessing doubtfully and doubtfully denying,
I clung, fear giving the pale signs,
and, like snow the watery south wind melts,
a welling drop ran down my thunderstruck cheeks.
Recalling this, then, and that you see my charges
can lie hidden under the pardon due to a first error,
you look back, in my weariness, on an old friend
and aid my wounds with your soothing.
For which, if a store of wishing were given me,
I pray a thousand goods for one so well deserving.
But, if your prayers alone were granted me, I will pray
that, Caesar safe, your mother be safe to you.
This I remember you were wont, when you made the altars rich with incense,
to ask of the gods the first of all.

Receive a converse of Naso from the icy Hister,
Atticus, not to be doubted in my judgment.
Do you still remain mindful of your unhappy friend,
or has a languid care deserted its post?
So may the gods not be so harsh to me that I could believe
and think it right you now no longer remember me.
Before my eyes your image is ever set,
and I seem in my mind to see your face.
I recall many serious things conferred with you,
and not few hours given to pleasant jests.
Often the swift hours seemed long with our talk,
often the day was shorter than my words.
Often a poem just made came to your ears,
and the new Muse was submitted to your judgment.
What you had praised, I thought had pleased the people
— this was the sweet reward of recent care —
and, that my book might be polished by a friend’s file,
not once was a correction made at your prompting.
The forums saw us alike, every portico saw us,
the road, the curved theaters with their joined seats.
In short, our love, dearest, was always as great
as was in the son of Aeacus and the son of Nestor.
I would not believe, even should you drink the cups of carefree Lethe,
that these things could fall from your breast.
The long day will sooner come under the winter star,
and the solstice-night be slower than the winter’s,
and Babylon not have heat, nor Pontus cold,
and the marigold outdo Paestum’s roses in scent,
than forgetfulness of my affairs come over you:
not so utterly is there no white part to my fate.
Yet beware lest this confidence be called false,
and our credulity be reckoned foolish,
and with constant faith guard your old comrade,
so far as it is allowed, and so far as I shall not be a burden.

I, Naso, have sent to my Salanus words composed
in unequal numbers, a greeting set before them.
That it be ratified I long, and that the event confirm the omen
I pray, friend, it may be read by you in safety.
Your candor — a thing almost dead in this age —
demands that I make such vows.
For though I was joined to you by but modest acquaintance,
you are said to have grieved at my exile,
and when you read the songs sent from the Euxine Pontus,
your favor, such as they were, helped them,
and you wished a short anger of Caesar for me, kept safe —
a thing he himself, if he knew, would let be wished.
By your own character you gave such gentle vows,
nor are they the less welcome to me for that.
And that you are the more moved by our ills, most learned,
it is credible comes from the condition of the place:
scarcely will you find, believe me, in the whole world
a land that enjoys the Augustan peace less.
Yet here, among fierce battles, you both read
the verses I have built and, read, approve with favoring lips,
and at my talent, which flows from a poor vein,
you applaud, and make great rivers of a brook.
Grateful indeed are these votes to my mind,
though you would scarce think the wretched can please themselves.
Yet while in small matters I attempt my songs,
my talent suffices for the slender material.
Lately, when the fame of the great triumph reached here,
I dared to take up a work of such mass.
The weight and the splendor of the theme overwhelmed me as I dared,
nor could I bear the burdens of my undertaking.
There, however dutiful the will to praise may be,
the rest lies weakened by its own material.
If by chance that book has reached your ears,
I charge you, let it feel your protection.
To you, who will do this even if I did not ask,
let our gratitude be added, a light heap.
I am not the one to be praised; but your breast is whiter
than milk and than untrodden snow,
and you marvel at others, though you yourself are marvelous,
nor do your arts and eloquence lie hidden.
The prince of youth, to whom Germany gives a name,
Caesar is wont to keep as a partner of his study.
You, an old comrade, you, joined to him from his first years,
please him, your character matching your talent.
With you speaking first there came the impulse of his study,
and he has you to draw his own words from yours.
When you have ceased, and mortal mouths grow quiet,
and the hall is hushed for no long delay,
the youth worthy of the Iulean surname rises,
like Lucifer risen from the Eastern waters,
and while he stands silent, his bearing and face are eloquent,
and his seemly robe holds the promise of a learned voice.
Soon, when the delay is broken and the heavenly mouth is loosed,
you would swear the gods are wont to speak in this wise,
and you would say, "This is eloquence worthy of a prince":
so much nobility is in his speech.
Though you please him, and touch the stars with your head,
you still think the writings of a fugitive bard worth keeping.
Doubtless there is some concord among kindred talents,
and each keeps the covenants of his own pursuit:
the countryman loves the farmer, the soldier him who wages
fierce wars, the sailor the helmsman of a doubtful craft.
You too, devotee, are held by zeal for the Pierides,
and, ingenious, you favor my talent.
Our work differs, but it issues from the same springs
of art, and we are both tillers of the liberal craft.
The thyrsus is absent from you, the laurel tasted by me,
yet warmth must be in us both,
and as your eloquence gives sinews to my numbers,
so polish comes from me into your words.
Rightly, then, you think songs the borderers of your study,
and the rites of our fellow-service to be kept.
For which — that he by whom you are esteemed stay your friend —
I pray together with you, to the last hour of your life,
and that the ruler of the world succeed to his own reins:
which the people’s vows pray for, the same as mine.

In song Naso greets Graecinus — whom, present, with his voice
he was wont to greet — sadly, from the Euxine waters.
This is the exile’s voice: the letter lends me a tongue,
and, if I may not write, I shall be mute.
You chide, as you should, the sins of your foolish comrade,
and teach me I bear ills less than my deserts.
You speak truth, but late, the reproaches of my fault:
remit the harsh words to a confessed defendant.
When I could pass the Ceraunia with a straight sail,
I should have been warned to shun the savage rocks.
Now what does it profit me, the shipwreck made, to learn
by what way my boat ought to have run?
Give rather your arms to be gripped by the weary swimmer,
and do not grudge to set your hand beneath his chin.
And this you do, and may you do, I pray: so may your mother and wife,
so may your brothers and your whole house be safe,
and what you are ever wont to pray in heart and voice —
so may you make all your deeds approved to the Caesars.
It will be base for you to have brought no aid in any part
to an old friend in his wretched fortunes,
base to draw back your foot and not stand with a tenacious step,
base to have deserted the laboring ship,
base to follow chance and join Fortune’s friend,
and, unless he be happy, to deny he is yours.
Not so lived the sons of Strophius and of Agamemnon,
not such was the faith of the Aegid and Pirithous.
Whom the earlier age admired, the following will admire,
for whose applause whole theaters resound.
You too, having kept faith with a friend through a hard time,
are worthy to have a name among men so great,
worthy you are, and, since you earn praise by devotion,
the gratitude of your service will not be deaf.
Believe me, if our song is not to be mortal,
you will be often on the lips of posterity.
Only see that you stay faithful to the weary, Graecinus,
and that this ardor endure into long delays.
Though you grant these things, I still ply the oar in the breeze,
nor does it harm to set the spur to a galloping horse.

My letter, sent from the ill-pacified Getae, Atticus,
wishes you first to be greeted;
the next desire that follows is to hear how you fare,
and whether, whatever you do, you have care of me.
Nor do I doubt it; but the very fear of ills
often forces me to hold superfluous dreads.
Grant pardon, I beg, and forgive an excessive fear.
Even the shipwrecked man shudders at calm waters.
The fish once hurt by the deceiving hook
thinks barbed bronze lies under every bait;
often the lamb flees the dog seen far off, and believes
it a wolf, and, unknowing, avoids its own help;
wounded limbs dread even a soft touch,
and a vain shadow stirs an anxious fear.
So I, pierced by the unjust weapons of Fortune,
conceive nothing in my breast but grief.
Now it is clear the fates, keeping the courses they began,
will always go by the ways accustomed to them.
The gods watch that nothing fall out for me as a friend would,
and I think words can scarce be given to Fortune.
It is her care to destroy me, and she who used
to be fickle now harms me, constant and right sure.
Believe me, if I am known to you of a truthful mouth —
and let me not be thought to gloss my plight —
you will sooner count the ears of the Cinyphian harvest,
and how high Hybla flowers with its many thymes,
and how many birds press on the air with beating wings,
and how many fish swim — of these you will be sure —
than the sum be reckoned for you of my labors,
which I have suffered by land, which I have suffered by water.
No nation in the whole world is more savage than the Getae,
yet even they have groaned at my ills.
Were I to try to write these out in mindful verse,
it would prove a long Iliad of my fate.
I do not fear, then — you whom I judge worthy of reverence,
whose love has given me a thousand pledges —
but because every wretch is a fearful thing, and because long
the door of my gladness has been shut.
Now my grief has become a habit, and as falling
waters hollow stones by their frequent stroke,
so I am wounded by Fortune’s continual blow,
and scarcely now is there room in me for a new wound.
The plowshare is no more worn thin by constant use,
nor the Appian way more rubbed by curved wheels,
than my breast is, blinded by the train of ills,
and I have found nothing to bring me help.
Glory has been sought by many through the liberal arts;
unhappy, I have perished by my own gifts.
My former life is free of fault and passed without stain:
that brought no help to me in my wretchedness.
A grave fault is often forgiven at the prayers of one’s own:
for me, every favor was mute.
The presence of some helps in hard times:
this absent man a vast storm overwhelmed.
Who would not have shuddered even at the silent anger of Caesar?
Harsh words were added to my punishments.
Flight grows lighter with the seasons: cast upon the sea,
I underwent the threats of Arcturus and the Pleiades.
Often keels are wont to feel a calm winter:
no wave was crueler to mine than to the ship of Ithaca.
The straight faith of companions could have eased my ills:
the treacherous crowd was enriched with my spoils.
Places make exile gentler: no sadder land
than this lies under either pole.
It is something to be near one’s native borders:
the farthest land, the farthest world holds me.
Your laurel grants peace even to exiles, Caesar:
the Pontic land lies under a bordering enemy.
It is sweet to spend one’s time in the tilling of fields:
the barbarian foe does not suffer the soil to be turned.
Body and mind are helped by the sky’s temperateness:
the Sarmatian shore stiffens with perpetual cold.
There is in sweet water a pleasure none could envy:
here a marsh is drunk, mixed with the salt of the sea.
All things fail. Yet the mind conquers all;
it makes even the body keep its strength.
That you may bear the burden, one must strain with full head,
or, if you let your sinews bend, you will fall.
Hope too, that the prince’s anger may soften with delay,
takes care I do not refuse to live and give way.
Nor do you few give me small comforts,
you whose faith has been proved through my ills.
Hold to what you began, I beg, nor desert the ship
at sea, and save me and your own judgment at once.

Caesar has been given back to me with Caesar lately,
the gods you sent me, Maximus Cotta,
and, that your gift might have the number it should,
Livia is there, joined to her Caesars.
Silver more blessed than all gold and richer,
which, though its worth was raw, holds a godhead!
You would not, by giving riches, have given greater things
than these three heaven-dwellers sent beneath my eyes.
It is something to behold the gods and think them present,
and, as with a true divinity, to be able to speak.
As far as concerns you, I have come back, nor does the farthest land hold me,
and, as before, I dwell safe in the midst of the City.
I see the faces of the Caesars, as I saw before:
scarce any hope of this vow was mine.
And as I used to salute the heavenly power, I salute it.
Than what you grant to one restored you have, I think, nothing greater.
What is wanting to my eyes but the Palatine alone?
And that place, with Caesar taken away, will be worthless.
When I gaze on this, I seem to myself to behold Rome;
for it bears the face of its own country.
Am I deceived, or are the looks angry at me in the image,
and does the grim form hold something of one who threatens?
Spare, O man greater in virtues than the measureless world,
and check the just reins of your vengeance.
Spare, I pray, indelible glory of our age,
lord of the lands, whom his own care makes so.
By your country’s godhead, dearer to you than yourself,
by the gods never deaf to your vows,
and by the partner of your bed, who alone is found your equal,
and to whom your majesty is no burden,
and by your son, like you in the image of valor,
who can be known by his character to be yours,
and by your grandsons, worthy of grandsire or father,
who advance with great step at your commands,
relieve our punishment by its least part and draw it in,
and give a place that lies far from the Scythian foe.
And may your godhead, if it is lawful, O Caesar nearest after Caesar,
be not unfriendly to my prayers!
So may wild Germany, as soon as may be, with frightened face
be borne, a slave, before the triumphing horses;
so may your father live to Pylian, your mother to Cumaean years,
and may you long be able to be a son!
You too, bride well-matched to your mighty husband,
receive the suppliant’s prayers with no hard ear!
So may your husband be safe to you, so may there be grandsons with offspring,
and, with good daughters-in-law, what the daughters bore!
So may Drusus, whom dire Germany snatched from you,
be the only fallen part of your childbearing!
So may your purple-clad son, in good time the avenger of his brother’s death,
press on with snowy horses!
Nod, O most gentle powers, to timid vows;
let it profit something to have the gods present.
At Caesar’s coming the gladiator goes out safe
from the arena, and his face is no slight help.
Me too it helps that, so far as I may, I see your faces,
that one house has been entered by three of the gods.
Happy those who see not images, but the gods themselves,
and their true bodies face to face!
Since unprofitable fate has grudged this to me,
the faces and likeness art gave me, I worship.
So men have known the gods, whom the steep heaven
hides, and the form of Jove is worshipped for Jove.
In short — you who are with me and will be without end — beware
lest your figure stand in a hated place.
For my head shall sooner leave my neck,
and I shall suffer the light to go from my gouged cheeks,
than I should lack you, snatched away, O public powers:
you shall be the harbor and altar of my flight.
You I shall embrace, if I be ringed by Getic arms,
and as my eagles, so I shall follow my standards.
Either I deceive myself and am mocked by too much longing,
or the hope of a kinder exile is at hand;
for the face in the image is less and less sad,
and the mouths seemed to nod to my words.
May the presages of my fearful mind come true,
and the god’s anger, just though it is, be less.

Royal offspring, whose origin of nobility
reaches in name all the way to Eumolpus, Cotys,
if talkative Fame has now reached your ears
that I lie in a part of the soil near you,
hear, gentlest of young men, a suppliant’s voice,
and what you can — for you can — bring help to a fugitive.
Fortune handed me to you — and this is what I do not complain of in her —
in this one thing not hostile to me.
Receive my shipwreck on no hard shore,
lest your land prove less safe than the wave.
It is a royal thing, believe me, to succor the fallen,
and it befits a man as great as you yourself.
This becomes that fortune of yours, which, though it is greatest,
can yet scarce be equal to your spirit.
Power is never seen in a better cause
than as often as it does not let prayers be vain.
This the very luster of your race demands, this is
the work of nobility sprung from the gods.
This Eumolpus, the most famous founder of your line,
and, before Eumolpus, Erichthonius, urges you to.
This you have in common with a god, that each of you, when asked,
is wont to bring help to your suppliants.
Will there be any reason to honor the gods with their wonted honor,
if you take from the gods the wish to help?
If Jupiter offered deaf ears to one praying,
why should the victim fall, struck, before Jove’s temple?
If the sea grant me no peace as I go,
why do I bring fruitless incense to Neptune?
If the empty field cheat the laboring farmer,
why does Ceres receive the inwards of a pregnant sow?
Nor will the goat give its throat, a victim to unshorn Bacchus,
if no must flow beneath the pressed foot.
We pray that Caesar guide the reins of empire,
because he so well takes thought for his country.
Usefulness, then, makes great both men and gods,
each favoring with his own aid.
You too, see that you profit one lying within your camp,
O Cotys, offspring worthy of your father.
It is a pleasure becoming a man to save a man,
and favor is sought by no better art.
Who does not curse Antiphates the Laestrygonian, or who
blames the manners of munificent Alcinous?
Your father is not the Cassandrean, nor of the Pheraean race,
nor he who roasted the inventor by his own art,
but, as fierce in war and not knowing how to be conquered in arms,
so, peace once made, never loving blood.
Add that to have learned the liberal arts faithfully
softens the manners and does not let them be savage.
Nor is any of kings more furnished by those
gentle studies, or has given more time to them.
Your songs attest it, which, if you took your name away,
I would deny a Thracian youth composed.
And, lest under this clime Orpheus were the only bard,
the Bistonian land is proud of your talent.
And as your spirit is, when the matter so demands,
to take up arms and dye your hand with hostile slaughter,
and as you are taught to whirl the javelin from a swung arm
and to bend the neck of a swift horse,
so, when due time is given to your fathers’ pursuits
and the work by chance has rested on your shoulders,
lest your leisure wither away in idle slumbers,
you stretch toward the shining stars by the Pierian way.
This thing too brings me some bond with you:
we are both worshippers of the same rite.
To a bard, a bard, I stretch out praying arms,
that your land be faithful to my exile.
I did not come to the shores of Pontus guilty of slaughter,
nor were dire poisons mixed by my hand,
nor was my seal convicted, set to a forged tablet,
of having put a lying mark on the wax.
Nor have I done anything I am forbidden by law to commit:
yet a graver offense than these I must confess.
And do not ask what it is: I wrote a foolish Art.
This forbids my hands to be guiltless.
Whether I sinned besides, do not seek to ask,
that my fault may lie hidden under the Art alone.
Whatever it is, the avenger’s anger was measured,
who took from me nothing but my native soil.
Since I lack that, let your neighborhood now grant
that I may be able to be safe in a hated place.

Do you recognize, from the image impressed on the wax,
that Naso writes you these words, Macer?
And if its author’s ring is no token,
is the letter known, made by my hand?
Or does the delay of time snatch the knowledge of these from you,
and do your eyes not recall the old signs?
Though you be forgetful alike of seal and hand,
let only the care of me not have slipped from you.
Which you owe either to the fellowship of a long age,
or because my wife is no stranger to you,
or to the studies which you used more wisely than I,
and, as is fitting, were made guilty by no Art.
You sing whatever was left to eternal Homer,
lest the Trojan wars lack their final hand.
Naso, too little prudent, while he hands down the Art of loving,
the teacher, has the sad reward of his teaching.
Yet there are rites common among poets,
though each of us follow a different road.
Of which I suspect you are mindful, though we are far apart,
and that you wish to lighten my misfortunes.
Under your lead I surveyed the magnificent cities of Asia,
under your lead Trinacria was seen by my eyes;
we saw the sky glitter with Aetnaean flame,
which the giant set beneath the mountain vomits from his mouth,
and the Hennaean lakes and the reeking pools of Palicus,
and where Anapus mingles Cyane with his waters.
Nor far from here is the nymph who, while she flees the Elean river,
even now runs hidden under the sea-water.
Here a great part of the gliding year was passed for me.
Alas! how unlike is that place to the Getae!
And how small a part are these of the things we both saw,
you making the ways pleasant for me,
whether in a painted boat we furrowed the blue waves,
or the car bore us on a nimble wheel.
Often the way seemed short to us with the turns of our talk,
and, if you count, the words were more than the steps.
Often the day was shorter than our converse, and the slow hour
failed us for talking through the summer days.
It is something to have feared the sea-perils alike
and to have brought joined vows to the gods of the deep,
and now to have done business together, now again
to be able to recall the jests one need not be ashamed of.
When these come over you, though I be absent, in all the years
I shall be before your eyes, as if just seen.
I myself indeed, though I am under the world’s pole
that always stands higher above the liquid waters,
yet behold you, with the only breast I can,
and often, under the cold axis, talk with you.
You are here, and know it not, and present, most renowned, though absent,
and come, summoned from the midst of the City, to the Getae.
Return the like, and, since that region is happier,
keep me there always in a mindful breast.

This work, Rufus, hurried in a brief span of time, Naso,
the founder of the too-little-lucky Art, sends you,
that, though we are far removed by the whole world,
you may yet know we remember you.
Forgetfulness of my own name will come to me
before your devotion be driven from my breast,
and I shall sooner give back this soul into the empty airs
than the gratitude for your service grow vain.
I call it a great service, those tears with which you wet your face,
when mine were dry with frozen grief.
I call it a great service, the comforts of my sad mind,
when you gave them alike to me and to yourself.
My wife is praiseworthy of herself and through herself,
yet she is made better by your reminding.
For what Castor was to Hermione, Hector to Iulus,
this I rejoice that you are to my wife.
She labors, lest she be unlike you in uprightness,
and proves by her life that she is of your blood.
So, what she would have done without any goads,
having got you too as her prompter, she does more fully.
The keen horse, even of himself about to run for the palm’s honors,
will yet go more bravely if you urge him.
Add that you faithfully fulfill an absent man’s charges,
and are not burdened to bear any load.
O, may the gods return you thanks — since we ourselves cannot —
the gods who will return them, if they see pious deeds,
and may your body too long suffice for those manners,
Rufus, greatest glory of the Fundan soil!

Sea first beaten by the Jasonian oar,
and you, land, that lack neither fierce foe nor snow,
will there ever be a time when I, Naso, leave you,
bidden to be absent in a less hostile place?
Or must I live forever in that barbarism
and be buried in Tomitan soil?
By your leave — if you have any leave, Pontic land,
which the bordering foe wears down with his swift horse —
by your leave I would say: "You are the worst part
in my hard exile, you weigh my ills down.
You feel no spring girt with a flowering garland,
you see no naked bodies of reapers,
nor does autumn hold out to you the vine-clad grapes,
but all the seasons keep an immoderate cold.
You hold the straits bound with ice, and in the sea the fish,
shut in, has often swum beneath a roof of water.
Nor have you springs, save almost of sea-brine,
which, drunk, leaves it doubtful whether it stays or stirs thirst.
Rare, and that not fruitful, a tree stands out in the open fields,
and the land is a second form of the sea.
No bird sings, save if some one, far off in the woods,
drinks the sea-water with a raucous throat.
Sad wormwood bristles through the empty plains,
a bitter harvest fitting its own place."
Add fears, and that the wall is battered by the foe,
and the arrow drips, soaked with deadly venom,
that this region is far and off the track of every route,
and no one goes safe, by foot or by ship.
No wonder, then, if, seeking an end of these,
another soil is asked by me without cease.
It is more a wonder that you do not overcome this, wife,
and can hold back your tears amid my ills.
You ask what you should do? Ask that very thing:
you will find it out, if you truly wish to find.
To wish is too little: you must long to gain it in fact,
and let this care make your sleep short.
I think many wish it: for who is so unfair to me
as to wish my exile to lack peace?
It befits you to lean with your whole breast and all your sinews
and to strive for me by night and day.
And though others help, you, a wife, ought to surpass your friends
and come first to your own part.
A great character is laid upon you in my little books:
you are said to be the example of a good wife.
Beware lest you fall away from it, that my heralding be
true; see that you guard the work of Fame.
Though I myself complain of nothing, Fame, silent, will complain of me,
unless your care of me has been what it ought.
Fortune has set me out for the people to behold,
and gave more notice than there was before.
Capaneus is the better known for the bolt’s stroke,
Amphiaraus known for his horses sunk in the ground.
Had he wandered less, Ulysses would be less known,
great is Philoctetes’ fame from his own wound.
If there is any place among such names for the small,
our ruin too makes us conspicuous.
Nor does my page let you go unknown, by which you have
a name no lower than Coan Bittis.
Whatever you do, then, you will be watched on a great stage,
and a faithful wife before no few witnesses.
Believe me, whenever you are praised in my song,
he who reads these praises asks whether you deserve them.
And as I think more favor those virtues of yours,
so not a few will wish to carp at your deeds.
Of whom take care that envy cannot say:
"She is slow for the safety of her wretched husband."
And since I fail and cannot draw the car,
do you support the crippled yoke alone.
Sick, I look to the doctor as my veins flee me:
while the last part of my breath remains to me, be present,
and what I would render, if I myself were the stronger,
render that to me, since you are yourself the stronger now.
This our wedded love demands, and the marriage bond.
This, wife, by your own character you yourself demand.
This you owe to the house from which you are reckoned,
that you honor it no more by services than by uprightness.
Though you do all things, unless you are a praiseworthy wife,
Marcia cannot be believed cultivated by you.
Nor am I unworthy; nor, if you wish to confess the truth,
is no gratitude owed to my deserts.
It is returned to me indeed with great interest,
nor has rumor the power to harm you, should it wish;
yet add this one thing to your former deeds,
that you be eager-suited for my ills.
Labor that I may lie in a less hostile region,
and let no part of your duty be lame.
I ask great things, yet not invidious to the one who asks,
and, though you gain them not, your repulse is safe.
Nor be angry with me if so often in my song
I ask you to do what you do, and to imitate yourself.
The trumpeter is wont to help the brave, and the leader
with his own voice spurs on the men who fight well.
Your uprightness is known and attested for all time:
let your valor too be not less than your uprightness.
Nor need you take up the Amazon’s axe for me,
or bear the crescent shield cut by a light hand.
The godhead is to be adored — not that it be made my friend,
but that it be angry less than it was before.
If there is no favor, your tears shall be your favor:
by this, or by no part, can you move the gods.
That these be not wanting to you, my ills take good care,
and a rich store of weeping is at hand for you, your husband living;
and, as my affairs stand, you will weep, I think, at all times:
these resources my fortune furnishes you.
If my death had to be ransomed by yours — which I abhor —
Admetus’s wife is whom you would follow.
You would become a rival of Penelope, if, chaste by guile,
a bride, you wished to cheat the pressing suitors.
If, a comrade, you would follow your dead husband’s shade,
Iphias would be the guide of your deed.
The daughter of Iphis must be set before your eyes, willing
by chance to cast your body into the kindled pyre.
There is no need of death, no need of the Icarian web:
Caesar’s wife is to be entreated by your mouth,
she who ensures by her virtue that no ancient antiquity
outdo our age in the praise of chastity,
who, having Venus’s beauty, Juno’s manners,
alone was found worthy of the heavenly bed.
Why tremble and fear to approach? It is not impious Procne
nor the daughter of Aeetes to be moved by your voice,
nor the brides of Aegyptus, nor the savage wife of Agamemnon,
nor Scylla who terrifies the Sicilian waters with her loins,
nor Telegonus’s parent, born to change shapes,
nor Medusa with her knotted hair bound with the snake,
but a woman foremost, in whom Fortune proves she can see,
and clears the false charges of her blindness,
than whom the world holds nothing on earth, from the sun’s rising
to its setting, brighter — Caesar excepted.
Choose a time, often watched for, of asking,
lest your ship go out upon an adverse tide.
Not always do the oracles render the sacred lots,
and the shrines themselves are not open at every hour.
When the state of the City is such as I now augur it,
and no grief of the people contracts their faces,
when the house of Augustus, to be honored like the Capitol,
shall be glad — as it is, and may be — and full of peace,
then may the gods grant you a store of approaching,
then think your words will avail something.
If she is doing some greater thing, defer your beginnings, and beware
lest you dash my hope down by hastening.
Nor again do I bid you seek her when she is most at leisure:
scarcely is she at leisure for the care of her own body.
All...............
through the throng of affairs you too must go.
When it falls to you to approach Juno’s face,
see that you be mindful of the character you uphold.
And do not defend my deed: a bad cause must be kept silent.
Let your words be nothing but anxious prayers.
Then must delay be put off for tears, and, prostrate on the ground,
stretch your arms to the immortal feet.
Then ask nothing else but that I withdraw from the savage foe:
let it be enough that Fortune is my enemy.
More indeed comes over me, but it is confused by fear;
even this you will scarcely be able to say with trembling voice.
I suspect this will be no loss to you: she will feel
that you have greatly dreaded her majesty.
Nor, if your words are torn with weeping, will it harm:
sometimes tears have the weight of a voice.
See too that a good day attend such beginnings,
and a fitting hour and a favoring auspice,
but first, fire laid on the holy altars,
bring incense and pure wine to the great gods,
among whom above all adore the Augustan godhead,
and the pious offspring, and the partner of his bed.
May they be mild to you in their wonted way,
and look on your tears with no hard faces!

The greeting you read, sent to you by us, Cotta,
I pray was truly sent, and truly arrives.
For you, kept safe, take much from my torments,
and make a good part in me be safe.
And though some waver and leave the tossing sails,
you remain the sole anchor of my torn craft.
Grateful, then, is your devotion; I forgive those
who turned their backs to flight along with Fortune.
Though the bolts strike one, they terrify not one alone,
and the crowd, joined to the stricken, is wont to quail.
And when a wall has given signs of coming ruin,
that place is left empty in anxious dread.
Who of the timid does not shun the contagion of the sick,
fearing lest the neighboring ill draw him in?
Me too some forsook through excessive terror and fear,
not through any hatred of me.
Devotion was not lacking to them, nor dutiful will:
they dreaded the hostile gods.
And as they can seem cautious and timid,
so they did not deserve to be called bad.
Or else my candor so excuses my dear friends,
and so favors them, that they have no charges from me.
Let these be content with pardon, and they may mark
that their deed is cleared with even me for witness.
You are the better part, you few, who in straits
thought it base to bring me no help.
Then, indeed, the gratitude for your service will die,
when, my body consumed, I shall be made ash.
I am wrong: it will outlast the times of my life,
if only I am read by a mindful posterity.
Bloodless bodies are owed to the sad pyres;
name and honor escape the built-up pyres.
Theseus too died, and he who accompanied Orestes,
yet each lives on in his own praises.
You too late descendants will often praise,
and your glory will be bright in my writings.
Here too the Sauromatae and Getae now know you,
and the barbarian throng approves such spirits.
And when I lately told of your uprightness —
for I have learned to speak Getic and Sarmatian —
by chance a certain old man, as he stood in that company,
gave to my sounds such words as these:
"We too, good guest, know the name of friendship,
we whom Pontus and Hister hold far from you.
There is a place in Scythia — the elders called it Tauris —
not so far distant from the Getic land.
In that land I was born — nor am I ashamed of my country.
That people worships the goddess who shares Phoebus.
The temples remain today, propped on vast columns,
and one goes up to them by four times ten steps.
Fame reports a heavenly image was there,
and, that you doubt the less, the base stands bereft of its goddess,
and the altar, which had been white by the stone’s nature,
stained with poured blood, reddens, discolored.
A woman, unknown to the marriage-torch, performs the rites,
who surpasses the Scythian women in nobility.
The kind of sacrifice is this — so our fathers ordained —
that the stranger fall, slain by a maiden’s sword.
Thoas held the realm, famed on the Maeotic shore,
nor was another better known on the Euxine waters.
While he held the scepter, they say one Iphigenia
made a journey through the clear airs,
whom, borne by light winds beneath a cloud over the seas,
Phoebe is believed to have set down in these places.
She had duly presided over the temple for many years,
performing the sad rites with unwilling hand,
when two young men came in a sailing ship
and pressed our shores with their feet.
Their age and love were equal, of whom one was Orestes,
the other Pylades: fame keeps the names.
Straightway they are led to the pitiless altar of Trivia,
their two hands bound behind their backs.
The Greek priestess sprinkles the captives with lustral water,
that the long fillet may circle their golden hair,
and while she prepares the rite, while she veils her temples with bands,
while she herself finds causes for slow delay:
’I am not cruel — forgive me, youths,’ she said —
’I do rites more barbarous than my place.
It is the people’s rite. Yet from what city do you come,
or to what journey did you set out on an ill-starred ship?’
She spoke, and the pious maiden, her homeland’s name heard,
learned they were sharers of her own city:
’Let one of you,’ she says, ’fall a victim to the rites,
let the other go a messenger to his fathers’ seats.’
Pylades, about to die, bids dear Orestes go;
he refuses, and each in turn fights to die.
This one thing stood out, in which they did not agree:
in all else they were a concord pair, and without strife.
While the fair youths wage the contest of love,
she traces written marks to her brother.
She gave charges to her brother, and he to whom they were given —
behold the chances of men! — was her brother.
Nor is there delay: they snatch Diana’s image from the temple,
and secretly are borne by ship over the measureless waters.
Wondrous the love of the youths; though so many years have gone,
in Scythia they have a great name even now."
After this common tale was told by him,
all praised the deeds and the pious faith.
Doubtless on this shore too, than which none is fiercer,
the name of friendship moves barbarian hearts.
What ought you, born in the Ausonian city, to do,
when such deeds touch the hard Getae?
Add that your spirit is ever mild, and they hold
a token of high nobility in their manners,
which Volesus, founder of your father’s name, would own,
which Numa, your mother’s ancestor, would not deny to be his,
and which the Cottae, added to your inherited names, approve —
a house that would have perished, had you not been.
Worthy man of this line, think it suited to your character
to come to the aid of a weary friend.

If you have leisure to give a little time to a fugitive friend,
O star of the Fabian race, Maximus, be present,
while I tell you what I saw — whether it was a body’s shadow,
or the likeness of a real thing, or sleep.
It was night, and the moon was entering the double windows,
shining as it is wont about the middle of the month.
Sleep, the public rest of cares, held me,
and my languid limbs lay spread over the whole bed,
when suddenly the air, stirred by wings, shuddered,
and the window, moved, groaned with a small sound.
Terrified, I lift my limbs onto my left elbow,
and sleep, driven from my trembling breast, departs.
Love stood there, with a face not such as he was wont to wear,
sad, holding the maple bedpost with his left hand,
having neither a collar on his neck nor a clasp in his hair,
nor his locks well-ordered, trim, as before.
His soft hair hung disheveled over his face,
and his wing seemed rough to my eyes,
such as is wont to be on the back of an airy dove
that many hands have handled and touched.
As soon as I knew him — for none is better known to me —
my free tongue addressed him with such sounds:
"O boy, the cause of your deceived master’s exile,
whom it had been more useful for me not to have taught,
have you come here too, where there is peace at no time,
and the barbarian Hister joins with bound waters?
What cause have you for the journey, unless to see my ills,
which are — if you know it not — hateful to you?
You first dictated to me my youthful songs,
and at your lead I set five feet to six.
You did not let me rise in Maeonian song,
nor tell the deeds of great leaders.
Perhaps your bow and your fires have worn down
the slight — yet some — powers of my talent.
For while I sang your realm and your mother’s,
my mind had leisure for no great work.
Nor was this enough: with a foolish song too I brought it about
that you could be no novice by my Arts.
For which exile was given me, wretch, as my reward,
and that too in the farthest places, and without peace.
But Eumolpus, Chione’s son, was not such toward Orpheus,
nor was Olympus such toward the Phrygian Satyr,
nor did Chiron take such rewards from Achilles,
and they say Numa did no harm to Pythagoras.
And not to recount names gathered through a long age,
I alone have perished by my own pupil.
While I give you arms, while I teach you, wanton one,
these gifts the master has from his pupil.
Yet you know, and on oath could clearly say,
that I did not tempt lawful marriage-beds.
I wrote these things for those whom neither the fillet touches
on their chaste hair, nor the long robe their feet.
Tell me, I pray, when did you learn to deceive wives,
and to make offspring doubtful by my biddings?
Or is every woman whom the law keeps from having
stealthy husbands sternly barred from these little books?
Yet what does this profit, if by a severe law
I am believed to have composed the marks of adultery?
But you — so may you have the arrows that strike all things,
so may your torches never lack their swift fire,
so may Caesar rule the empire and curb all lands,
Caesar, who through Aeneas is kin to you —
bring it about that his anger be not implacable to me,
and that he wish me punished in a more convenient place."
These things I seemed to have said to the winged boy,
and he seemed to me to have given these sounds:
"By my weapons, my torches, and by my weapons, my arrows,
by my mother and by Caesar’s head I swear,
you learned nothing from me, your master, but what was allowed,
by my Arts, and there is no crime in them.
And would that, as this, so I could defend the rest!
You know there is something else that harmed you more.
Whatever it is — for the grief itself ought not to be recalled,
nor can you say you are far from your own fault —
though you cloak the crime under the image of error,
the judge’s anger was no heavier than your desert.
Yet, that I might see you and console you in your lying low,
my wing glided over the measureless ways.
These places I first saw then, when, at my mother’s asking,
the Phasian girl was pierced by my weapons.
Why I now revisit them again after long ages,
you make it so, O soldier friendly to my camp.
Lay aside your fears, then: Caesar’s anger will soften,
and a milder breeze will come to your prayers.
Nor fear delay: the time we seek is at hand,
and the triumph holds all things full of gladness.
While the house and the sons, while mother Livia rejoices,
while you rejoice, great father of your country and of its leader,
while the people congratulate themselves, and through the whole City
every altar grows warm with fragrant fires,
while the venerable temple offers easy approach,
we must hope our prayers can prevail."
He spoke, and either glided away into the thin airs,
or my senses began to wake.
If I should doubt that you favor these words, O Maximus,
I should think swans were of Memnon’s color.
But the milky fluid is not changed by black pitch,
nor does what was gleaming ivory become terebinth.
Your nature is suited to your spirit; for you have a noble
breast and the simplicity of Hercules.
Envy, a sluggish vice, does not pass into high characters,
but like a hidden viper creeps along the lowest ground.
Your mind, sublime, towers above your very birth,
and your name is not greater than your talent.
So let others harm the wretched and wish to be feared,
and bear darts dipped in biting gall.
But your house is accustomed to helping suppliants,
in whose number I pray you wish me to be.

These words, carrying you a greeting not vain,
Naso, your friend, sends from the Tomitan city,
and bids you, Rufinus, favor his Triumph,
if indeed it comes into your hands.
It is a slight work, unequal to your fine standards:
yet such as it is, I ask you to protect it.
Strong things prevail of themselves and seek no Machaon;
the sick man, in doubt, flees to the doctor’s aid.
Great poets have no need of a placid reader:
they hold any reader, unwilling and hard.
We, whose talent long labors have lessened,
or who perhaps had none before,
weak in strength, prevail by your candor;
and if you take that from me, I should think all was snatched away.
And since all my things lean on a favoring goodwill,
that book in particular has a right to pardon.
Other bards wrote the triumph they had watched:
it is something to mark with a mindful hand what was seen.
I wrote it as it was scarce caught by a greedy ear from the crowd,
and rumor was the eyes of my work.
As if the same feeling, or the same impulse,
came from things heard and from things beheld!
Nor do I complain that the luster of silver, which you saw, and of gold
failed me, and that famous purple,
but the places, the nations shaped in a thousand figures,
and the battles themselves, would have nourished my song,
and the faces of kings, the surest pledges of the mind,
would perhaps have helped that work.
From the very applause of the people and their glad favor
any talent could have caught fire,
and I should have taken vigor from such a shout
as the raw soldier does at the trumpet heard for arms.
Though my breast be colder than snows and ice,
and colder than this place I suffer,
that face of the leader standing in the ivory car
would shake all cold from my senses.
Lacking these, and using doubtful authorities,
I come, by the right of your favor, for aid.
Neither the names of the leaders nor of the places are known to me:
my hands had no material.
How small a part of such great things was it
that rumor could report, or anyone write to me?
The more, O reader, you must forgive, if anything
was there erred or passed over by me.
Add that, ever brooding on my master’s complaints,
my lyre was scarce turned to a glad song.
Scarce, after so long, did good words come as I sought them,
and to rejoice in anything seemed a strange thing to me,
and as the eyes dread the unaccustomed sun,
so my mind was sluggish toward gladness.
Novelty too is the dearest of all things,
and the grace a delay slows is gone from the service.
The rest, written eagerly about the great triumph,
I suspect were long since read on the people’s lips.
Those the reader drank thirsting, mine when full.
Those were drunk fresh; my water will be lukewarm.
I did not idle, nor did sloth make me late:
the farthest shore of the vast sea holds me.
While rumor comes here, and the songs are hurried,
and, made, go to you, a year can pass.
Nor does it least matter whether you pluck the untouched rose-beds
first, or late, with a hand almost left behind.
What wonder, the flowers picked, the garden drained,
if a garland worthy of its leader has not been made?
This I beg: let no one think the bards’ words spoken
against their own songs! My Muse has spoken for herself.
I have rites in common with you, poets,
if a wretch may be in your choir,
and you lived with me, a great part of my soul, friends:
in this part I now, absent, still cherish you.
Let my songs, then, be commended to your favor,
songs for which I myself cannot speak.
Writings please mostly after death, because envy is wont
to wound the living and gnaw with an unjust tooth.
If to live badly is a kind of death, the earth delays me,
and only a tomb is wanting to my fate.
In short, though the work of my care be blamed on every side,
there will be no one to reproach the service.
Though strength be wanting, yet the will is to be praised:
with this, I augur, the gods are content.
This makes the poor man too come welcome to the altars,
and a lamb please no less than a slain ox.
The theme too was so great that to sustain it would have been
a great burden even to the supreme bard of the Aeneid.
The soft elegies too could not bear so vast
a weight of triumph on their unequal wheels.
What foot I should now use is a doubtful judgment to me:
for another triumph over you, Rhine, is at hand.
The presages of bards are not void of fulfillment.
The laurel must be given to Jove, while the first is green.
Nor do you read my words, I who am thrust away to the Hister,
whose rivers the ill-pacified Getae drink.
That is a god’s voice: a god is in my breast;
with a god for leader I foretell and prophesy these things.
Why do you delay, Livia, to make ready the car and the pageant
for the triumphs? The wars now give you no delays.
Perfidious Germany casts away her condemned spears:
now you will say my omen carries weight.
Believe, and shortly the proof will come. The son
will double the honor, and go, as before, with yoked horses.
Bring out the purple you will throw on the victors’ shoulders:
the garland itself can know its wonted head.
But let the shields and helms gleam with gems and gold,
and the lopped trophies stand over the bound men.
Let the ivory towns be girt with turreted walls,
and let the feigned thing be thought done in true fashion.
Let the Rhine, squalid, his loosed hair under a broken reed,
bear his waters stained with blood.
Now the captive kings demand the barbarian insignia,
and woven stuffs richer than their own fortune
‹...................... ›
and what besides the unconquered valor of your house
has often made ready for you, and often will.
O gods, by whose warning I have spoken what shall come,
prove my words, I pray, with swift fulfillment.

Whence the letter you read is sent to you, you ask?
From here, where the Hister joins with the blue waters.
When the region is named, the author too should come to mind,
Naso the poet, harmed by his own talent.
Who would far rather, present, bring you his greeting,
sends it from the shaggy Getae, Maximus Cotta.
I have read, O youth not degenerate from your father’s eloquence,
the eloquent words spoken by you in the full forum.
Which, though read by me with hurrying tongue through hours
many enough, I complain were too few.
Yet I made them more by rereading them often, nor ever
were they not more welcome to me than at first.
And since, read so often, they lose nothing of their sweetness,
they please by their own strength, not by novelty.
Happy those to whom it fell to know these in the very act
and to enjoy a mouth so eloquent!
For, though the flavor is sweet in water brought,
waters are more pleasantly drunk from the very spring.
And it delights more to pluck the apple from the drawn-down bough
than to take it from a chased dish.
But, had I not sinned, had not my Muse driven me out,
what I read your voice would have shown me as a work,
and, as I was wont, I should perhaps have sat, one
of the hundred judges, in judgment on your words,
and a greater pleasure would have filled my heart,
as I was drawn by your sayings and nodded assent.
Since fate, my country and you left behind,
preferred me to be among the inhuman Getae,
what is allowed — that I may seem more with you by reading —
often, I pray, send me the pledges of your study,
and by my example, unless you scorn that very thing,
use what you yourself might more rightly give to me.
For I, who long since perished, Maximus, to you,
strive by my talent not to have perished.
Return the like, nor let my hands receive
too rarely the welcome memorials of your labor.
Yet tell me, O youth full of my studies,
are you in any way reminded of me by these very things?
Are you, when either you recite a song just made to friends,
or — as you often do — require that they recite,
prompted, so that sometimes your mind, forgetting what is absent,
yet surely feels something of its own to be away,
and, as you were wont to speak much of me when present,
is Naso’s name now too in your mouth?
May I myself indeed perish, struck by the Getic bow —
and you see how near the perjurer’s penalty stands —
if I do not, absent, see you almost every moment!
Thanks that the mind is allowed to go where it will.
When I have come by this into the City, seen by none,
I often talk with you, often enjoy your talking.
Then it is hard to say how good it is, and how
bright that hour is to my judgment.
Then I — if there be any faith — received into a heavenly seat,
suspect I am among the fortunate gods.
Again, when I have come back here, I leave the sky and the gods above,
and the Pontic soil lies not far from the Styx.
Whence if I strive to return, fate forbidding,
take from me, Maximus, hope without profit.

Naso — how nearly he set down the name! — sends his comrade
this brief song from the Euxine waters.
But had his too-careless hand written who you were,
perhaps a complaint had been born of the service.
Why, though others think it safe, do you alone
ask that my songs not name you?
How great is Caesar’s clemency in the midst of anger,
if you know it not, you can be surer from me.
From this penalty I suffer I could take nothing away,
were I forced to be the judge of my own desert.
He forbids no one to remember his comrade,
nor prevents me writing to you, or you to me.
Nor would you commit a crime, if you consoled a friend
with soft words and eased his harsh fate.
Why, while you fear safe things, do you make such reverence
become invidious toward the Augustan gods?
We have seen men breathed on by the bolt’s weapons sometimes live
and be restored, with Jove not forbidding,
nor, because Neptune had torn the ship of Ulysses,
did Leucothea deny aid to the swimmer.
Believe me, the heavenly powers spare the wretched,
nor always press the wronged, and without end.
Nor is any god more moderate than our prince:
he tempers his strength with justice;
lately Caesar set her up, a temple made of marble,
but long since had set her in the shrine of his mind.
Jupiter hurls his rash bolts at many
who did not by their fault deserve to suffer the penalty.
When the god has overwhelmed so many with the sea’s savage waves,
what part of them was worthy to be sunk?
When the bravest fall in battle, even by his own
judgment the choice of Mars will be unfair.
But if by chance you should inquire into us, there is no one
who would deny he had earned what he suffers.
Add that those put out by water or war or fire
no day can ever restore again.
Caesar has restored many, or eased part of the penalty,
and I pray he wish me among the many.
But you — since we live under such a prince —
do you believe there is fear in addressing a fugitive?
Perhaps you would rightly fear these things under a master Busiris,
or under one wont to burn men shut in the bronze.
Cease to defame a mild spirit with vain fear.
Why dread savage rocks in placid waters?
I myself, that I wrote to you at first without a name,
scarcely seem able to be excused.
But terror had taken the use of reason from one stunned,
all counsel had yielded to the strange ills,
and, fearing my own fortune, not the avenger’s anger,
I was myself frightened by the title of my own name.
Thus far admonished, allow the mindful poet
to set dear names upon his pages.
It will be base for us both, if you, nearest to me by long use,
be read in no part of my book.
Yet, lest this fear can break your sleep,
I shall be no more officious than you wish,
and I shall conceal who you are, save when you yourself permit.
No one shall be forced to take my gift.
Only you — whom you could have loved openly and safe —
if that matter is doubtful, love in secret.

Words fail me, asking the same so often,
and now I am ashamed that my vain prayers lack an end.
I think a weariness of a like song comes over you,
and that all have learned by heart what I seek.
And now you know what my letter carries,
though the paper be not loosened from its bonds.
So let the purport of my writing be changed,
lest so often I go against the stream that sweeps me.
That I hoped well of you, forgive me, friends:
such sinning shall now have an end for me.
Nor shall I be called a burden to my wife, who indeed
is as upright toward me as she is timid and too little bold.
This too, Naso, you will bear, for you have borne worse:
now no burden can be felt by you.
Let the bull, led from the herd, balk at the plow
and draw his young neck from the hard yoke.
I, whom fate has accustomed to use cruelly,
am long since no novice at any ills.
I have come to the Getic borders: let me die in them,
and let my Parca go to the end by the way she began!
It helps to embrace hope, which, vain, never helps,
and, if you would have anything happen, to think it will be.
The next step to this is well to despair of safety,
and once, with true faith, to know that one has perished.
We see some wounds made greater by treating,
which it had been better not to have touched.
He perishes more gently who is sunk by a sudden wave
than he who tosses his arms in the swollen waters.
Why did I conceive I could be free of the Scythian
borders and enjoy a more prosperous land?
Why did I ever hope anything milder for myself?
Or was my fortune so known to me?
Behold, I am tortured the more, and the recalled image of the places
renews my sad exile and makes it fresh.
Yet it is more useful that the zeal of my friends has ceased
than that the prayers they brought to bear did not avail.
It is a great thing indeed, which you do not dare, friends,
but had anyone asked it, there was one who would give.
Provided Caesar’s anger has not denied us this,
bravely we shall die in the Euxine waters.

What gifts, attesting my mindful care, I was seeking
that the Tomitan field could send you!
You are worthy of silver, worthier too of yellow gold,
but those things are wont to help you when you give them.
Yet these places are precious by no metal:
the foe scarce lets the farmer dig them.
Gleaming purple often borders your robes,
but it is not dyed in the Sarmatian sea.
The flocks bear harsh fleeces, and the Tomitan women
have not learned to use Pallas’s art.
The woman, instead of wool, grinds Ceres’s gifts
and carries the heavy water on her bent head.
Here the elm is not clothed with the vine’s tendrils,
no apples weigh their boughs down.
The ugly fields bear sad wormwood,
and the land teaches by its fruit how bitter it is.
Nothing, then, in the whole region of the Left Pontus
was there that my diligence could send.
Yet I have sent you darts, shut in a Scythian quiver:
I pray they be made bloody by your foe.
These reeds, these pages, this shore has:
this Muse thrives, Maximus, in our parts!
Which, though I am ashamed to have sent, because they seem small,
yet take, I pray, these things sent in good part!

That there is in these little books the same sentiment, Brutus,
you report that someone carps at my songs —
that I ask nothing but to enjoy a nearer land,
and speak of how I am ringed by a dense foe.
O, of how many faults one alone is reproached!
If my Muse sins in this only, it is well.
I myself see the faults of my books,
though each approve his own songs more than is just.
The author praises his work: so perhaps Agrius once
would have said Thersites was of good face.
Yet this error does not deceive my judgment,
nor do I straightway love whatever I have begotten.
Why then, if I see myself erring, do I sin,
and suffer a charge to be in my writing, you ask?
It is not the same thing to feel and to remove diseases:
feeling is in all; the ill is taken away by art.
Often, wishing to change some word, I left it,
and strength fails my judgment.
Often it irks me — for why should I doubt to confess the truth to you? —
to correct, and to bear the burden of long labor.
The labor itself delights the writer and lessens the labor,
and the work, growing, glows with its own heart.
As to correct is a thing the less hard, by so much
as great Homer was greater than Aristarchus,
so it harms the mind with the slow chill of cares,
and checks the reins of the eager, running horse.
And so may the mild gods lessen Caesar’s anger for me,
and may my bones be covered by a peaceful ground,
as sometimes the bitter look of my fortune stands in the way
when I try to bend my cares to the task,
and I scarce seem to myself sound, who make songs
and try to correct them among the fierce Getae.
Yet nothing of my writings is more excusable
than that almost one sense is in them all.
Glad, I mostly sang glad things; sad, I sing sad:
each season is suited to its own work.
What should I write of but the fault of the bitter region,
and pray that I may die in a more convenient place?
Since I say the same so often, I am scarce heard by any,
and my words, dissembled, lack effect.
And yet, though these are the same, I have not written them in the same words,
and my one voice through many letters tries for aid.
Or, lest the reader find the same sense twice,
was one of my friends, Brutus, to be asked?
This was not worth so much; forgive a confessed man, learned ones!
The fame of the work is cheaper to me than my safety.
In short, the material that each has feigned for himself
the poet varies much by his own choice.
My Muse is the index, all too true, of my ills,
and holds the weight of an uncorrupted witness.
Nor was it my purpose and care that a book be made,
but that to each his own letter be given.
Afterward I joined them, gathered somehow without order:
do not think this work was chosen by me.
Grant pardon to my writings, of which not glory was
my cause, but utility and duty.

Receive, Pompey, a song drawn out by him
who is the debtor of his life to you, Sextus.
Who, whether you forbid not your name to be set down by me,
this sum too will be added to your deserts,
or whether you frown — I will indeed confess I have sinned,
yet the cause of my offense must be approved.
My mind could not be kept from being grateful:
let your anger, I pray, not lie heavy on a dutiful service.
O, how often I seemed to myself impious in those books,
because you were read in no place!
O, how often, when I wished to write another’s name,
my unknowing hand carried yours into the wax!
The very error in such mistakes pleased me,
and the blot was scarce made by an unwilling hand.
"Let him see to it, in the end," I said, "though he himself complain!
Ah, it shames me not to have earned offense before."
Give me, if there be any, Lethe that dulls the breast,
yet I shall not be able to forget you,
and allow it, I pray, nor repel my words with disdain,
nor think a crime is in the service,
and let this slight gratitude be returned for deserts so great;
if not, I shall be grateful even against your will.
Never was your favor slow to my affairs,
nor did your coffer deny me munificent wealth.
Now too your clemency, in no way terrified by sudden fates,
brings and will bring aid to my life.
Whence, you ask perhaps, comes so great a confidence of the future
to me? Because each one guards the work he has made.
As Venus is the labor and glory of the Coan artificer,
who presses her hair wet with the sea’s spray,
as the citadel of Athens has, in ivory or bronze,
its warlike guardian goddess, made by Phidias’s hand,
as Calamis claims the praise of the horses he made,
as the heifer, like a true one, is Myron’s work,
so I am not the last of your concerns, Sextus,
and am called the gift and work of your protection.

What you read, O greatest bard of great kings,
comes all the way from the unshorn Getae, Severus,
whose name that my little books have hitherto kept silent —
if only you permit me to speak the truth — shames me.
Yet my letter, bereft of verse, never ceased
to go dutifully through our alternate exchanges.
Songs alone, attesting my mindful care,
were not given you: for why should I give what you yourself make?
Who would give honey to Aristaeus, who Falernian wine to Bacchus,
corn to Triptolemus, apples to Alcinous?
You have a fertile breast, and among those who till Helicon
to none does that crop come more richly.
To send a song to this man was to add leaves to the woods.
This was my cause of delaying, Severus.
Nor yet does my talent answer me as before,
but I plow a dry shore with a barren share.
As mud blinds the veins in the waters,
and the water, its spring choked, stands checked,
so my breast is fouled with the mud of ills,
and my song flows from a poorer vein.
If anyone had set Homer himself in this land,
he too, believe me, would have become a Getan.
Forgive a confessed man: I have loosed the reins of my studies too,
and a rare letter is drawn by my fingers.
That sacred impulse that nourishes the breasts of bards,
which used to be in me before, is gone.
Scarce does the Muse come to her part, scarce, the tablets taken up,
does she lay her sluggish hands on them, almost forced,
and small — not to say none — is the pleasure of writing
for me, nor does it please to weave words into numbers,
whether because I have taken no fruit at all from this,
so that that very thing is the beginning of my ill,
or because to make rhythmic gestures in the dark,
and to write a song for no one to read, is one and the same:
a listener rouses zeal, and praised virtue
grows, and glory has a measureless spur.
Here, to whom should I recite my writings but to the flaxen Coralli,
and the other nations the barbarian Hister holds?
But what should I do alone, and with what matter waste
my unhappy leisure, and steal away the day?
For since neither wine nor deceiving dice hold me,
through which the silent time is wont secretly to slip,
nor — what I should wish, if through the fierce wars it were allowed —
does the land, renewed by its tillage, delight me,
what remains but the Pierides, cold comforts,
goddesses who have not deserved well of me?
But you, for whom the Aonian fount is more happily drunk,
love the study that profitably yields to you,
and worship the rites of the Muses as you deserve, and send
here some recent work of your care, for us to read.

Shall I complain, or be silent? Shall I set the charge down without a name,
or wish it known to all who you are?
I will not use your name, lest you be commended by my complaint,
and fame be sought for you by my song.
While my ship was founded on a strong keel,
you were the first who would wish to run with me.
Now, because Fortune has knit her brow, you withdraw,
since you know there is need of your help.
You even dissemble, and do not wish to seem to know me,
and ask who Naso is, the name once heard.
I am that man — though you wish not to hear it — joined to you
from of old, almost a boy to a boy, in friendship,
I am that man who first used to know your serious matters,
and first to be present at your pleasant jests,
I am that messmate, intimate by constant use,
I am that man, the only Muse to your judgment,
I am that man whom now, perfidious, you know not whether I live,
about whom you had no care to ask.
Whether I was never dear, you confess you feigned it,
or, if you did not feign, you will be found fickle.
Or come, name some anger that has changed you.
For unless yours is just, my complaint is just.
What charge now forbids you to be like your former self?
Or do you call it a charge that I have begun to be wretched?
If you brought no aid to my affairs and deeds,
a page marked with three words would have come.
I scarce believe it, but rumor reports that you even insult
me as I lie, and do not spare your words.
What do you, ah, madman? Why, if Fortune withdraw,
do you yourself snatch the tears from your own shipwreck?
This goddess confesses how fickle she is on her unstable wheel,
who always has her summit under a doubtful foot.
She is more uncertain than any leaf, than any breeze.
Equal to her in lightness, wicked one, is your levity alone.
All things of men hang by a thin thread,
and what was strong falls by sudden chance.
Who has not heard of the opulence of rich Croesus?
Yet, taken by the foe, he kept his life.
He, lately dreaded in the Syracusan city,
scarce repelled hard hunger by a humble art.
What was greater than Magnus? Yet he, fleeing, begged
with lowered voice the help of a client,
and the man whom the whole world obeyed
...............
He, famed for the Jugurthine and Cimbric triumph,
under whose consulship Rome was so often victorious,
Marius lay in the mud, and in the marsh-reed
endured many shameful things for so great a man.
Divine power plays in human affairs,
and the present hour scarce bears sure faith.
"To the Euxine shore," had anyone said to me, "you will go,
and fear lest you be struck by the Getan’s bow,"
"Go, drink," I should have said, "the juices that purge the breast,
whatever is born in all Anticyra."
Yet I have suffered these things, nor, could I have guarded against
mortal things, could I have guarded against the highest god’s weapons.
You too, see that you fear, and what seems glad to you,
even while you speak, think can become sad.

No day is so wet with the southern rains
that the shower flows with unbroken waters;
nor is any place so barren that in it
some useful herb is not mixed, mostly, with the hard brambles.
Heavy Fortune has made nothing so pitiable
that joys lessen the ill in no part.
Behold, lacking home and country and the sight of my own,
a castaway, driven onto the waters of the Getic shore,
yet I have found a cause by which I can clear my face
and not remember my fortune.
For as I walked alone on the yellow sand,
a wing seemed from behind to have given a sound.
I look back, nor was there a body I could see,
yet these words were taken in by my ear:
"Behold, I come to you a messenger of glad things,
Fame, gliding through the measureless air:
with Pompey consul — than whom none is dearer to you —
the coming year will be bright and happy!"
She spoke, and, when she had filled Pontus with glad rumor,
the goddess turned her way hence to other nations,
but for me, my cares scattered amid the new joys,
the unjust harshness of this place fell away.
So when, two-headed Janus, you unbar the long year,
and December, driven from the sacred month, shall be gone,
purple will clothe Pompey with the highest honor,
that he owe nothing to his own titles.
Now I seem to see the halls almost burst with the throng,
and the people hurt by the failing space,
and the temples of the Tarpeian seat first approached by you,
and the gods made easy to your vows,
the snowy oxen offer their necks to the sure axe,
which the Faliscan grass fed in its fields,
and, when all the gods, then those whom you would more earnestly
wish kind to you — with Jove will be Caesar.
The Senate-house will receive you, and the fathers, called by custom,
will bend their ears to your words.
When your voice has gladdened these with eloquent mouth,
and the day, as is wont, has borne prosperous words,
and you have given due thanks to the gods above, with Caesar —
who will give cause why you should do so often! —
thence you will seek home, the whole Senate attending,
your house scarce holding the duty of the people.
Wretched me, that I shall not be seen in that crowd,
nor will my eyes be able to enjoy those things!
What is allowed, I shall see you absent, with what mind I can;
that mind will behold the face of its own consul.
May the gods grant that at some time our name come over you,
and you say, "Alas! what is that wretch doing?"
If anyone has brought me these words of yours, I shall confess
at once that my exile is gentler.

Go, light elegies, to the learned ears of the consul,
and bear words to be read by the honored man.
The way is long, nor do you proceed on equal feet,
and the land lies hidden under winter snow.
When you have crossed icy Thrace and cloud-covered Haemus
and the waters of the Ionian sea,
in less than ten days you will reach the sovereign City,
provided you make not a hurried journey.
Straightway thence let the Pompeian house be sought by you:
none is joined nearer to the Augustan forum.
If anyone, as in a crowd, asks who you are and whence,
let him carry off any names you like, his ear deceived.
For though it be safe, as I think it is, to confess
the truth, fictions at least have less of fear.
Nor will there be a lack, none forbidding, of seeing
the consul for you, when you have touched the threshold:
either he will rule his Quirites by declaring the law,
when, on high, he presses the ivory conspicuous with figures,
or he will settle the people’s revenues at the planted spear,
and not suffer the great city’s wealth to be lessened,
or, when the fathers are called into the Julian temples,
he will deal with matters worthy of so great a consul,
or he will bear the wonted greeting to Augustus and his son,
and take counsel on a duty too little known — the time —
and Caesar Germanicus will carry off all his vacant hours:
him, after the great gods, he worships.
Yet when he has rested from the throng of these affairs,
he will stretch his gentle hands to you,
and will ask, perhaps, what I, your parent, am doing.
Such words I wish you to return to him:
"He still lives, and confesses he owes his life to you,
which before he held a gift from gentle Caesar.
He is wont, with mindful mouth, to tell that you, when he fled,
showed him safe ways through barbarism.
That he did not warm the Bistonian sword with his blood,
he says was wrought by the care of your heart.
Added besides were many gifts to guard his life too,
lest he should thin his own resources.
For which deserts, that gratitude be returned, he swears
he will be your chattel for all time.
For sooner shall the mountains lack their shady tree,
and the straits not have sail-flying ships,
and the rivers return in backward course to their springs,
than the gratitude of your desert can depart."
When you have said these things, ask that he keep his gifts!
So will the cause of your journey be accomplished.

The letter you read comes to you, Brutus, from those places
in which you would not wish Naso to be,
but what you would not, pitiable fate has willed.
Ah me! that prevails more than your vows.
In Scythia a five-year olympiad has been passed by me;
now the time passes into another lustrum.
For tenacious Fortune persists, and against my vows
sets, insidious, her malign foot.
You were sure, Maximus, praise of the Fabian race,
to speak for me with suppliant voice to the Augustan godhead.
You fall before the prayers, and I think, Maximus, I am the cause
of your death — nor may I be worth so much!
Now I fear to entrust my safety to anyone;
the very help fell with your death.
Augustus had begun to forgive my deceived fault,
and forsook our hope and the earth at once.
Yet such a song as I could, Brutus, on the new god,
set far off, I gave to your lips.
Would that this devotion profit me, and that there be now
a measure of my ills, and a milder anger of the sacred house!
You too I can clearly swear pray the same,
O Brutus, known to me by no doubtful mark.
For though you have always shown me true love,
yet this love grew in the adverse time,
and whoever should see your tears and mine alike
would believe two men were about to suffer the penalty.
Nature bore you gentle to the wretched, nor to any
did it give a milder nature than to you, Brutus,
so that one who knew not what you avail in forensic war
would scarce think defendants could be dispatched by your mouth.
Doubtless it is the same man’s part — though they seem to fight —
to be easy to suppliants, fierce to the guilty.
When the vengeance of the stern law is taken up by you,
single words have, as it were, a dipped venom.
Let it befall your foes to feel how violent you are in arms,
and to undergo the weapons of your tongue,
which are filed by you with so fine a care that all
deny the talent is of that body.
But if you see anyone hurt by unjust fortune,
no woman is softer than your spirit.
This I felt especially, when a great part of mine
disowned the acquaintance of me.
Forgetful of those, never forgetful of you
who, anxious, lighten my ills, I shall be.
And sooner shall this Hister, too near a neighbor to me,
turn its course into its head from the Euxine sea,
and, as if the times of the Thyestean banquet should return,
the Sun’s chariot be driven to the Eastern waters,
than any of you who grieved that I was taken away
charge me, ungrateful, with not remembering him.

Since you have been sent, Vestalis, to the Euxine waves,
to render law in the places set under the pole,
you see, present, in what a field we lie,
nor will you be a witness that I am wont to complain falsely.
There will be added to my voice, through you, no vain
faith, young man sprung from Alpine kings.
You yourself surely see Pontus thicken with ice,
you yourself see the wine standing in the rigid frost;
you yourself see how the fierce Iazyx ox-driver leads
his laden wagons through the midst of the Hister’s waters.
You see too the poisons sent under the hooked iron,
and the weapon having two causes of death.
And would that this part had only been beheld by you,
not also known to you by your own warfare!
You strove toward the first spear-rank through dense perils,
the honor that lately fell to you by desert.
Though this title be full of fruits for you, the huge
valor itself will be greater than the rank.
The Hister does not deny it, whose water your right hand once
made crimson with Getic blood.
Aegisos does not deny it, which, taken at your coming,
felt there was no help in the nature of the place.
For, doubtful whether better defended by position or by hand,
the city stood on a high ridge, level with the clouds.
The fierce foe had intercepted it from the Sithonian king
and, victor, held the wealth he had snatched,
until Vitellius, borne down on the river’s wave,
brought, the soldier landed, the standards against the Getae.
But to you, bravest offspring of high Donnus,
came the impulse to go against the opposing men.
Nor delay: conspicuous far in gleaming arms,
you take care your brave deeds cannot lie hidden,
and with a huge stride against the iron and the place
and the stones, more than winter’s hail, you go.
Nor does the throng of javelins flung from above delay you,
nor the weapons wet with viperish gore.
The darts cling with their painted feathers in your helm,
and scarce any part of your shield is free of a wound.
Nor did your body luckily escape all the blows,
but the grief is less than the keen love of praise.
Such, at Troy, for the Greek ships, Ajax
is said to have withstood the torches of Hector.
When it came nearer, and right hand was joined to right hand,
and the matter could be waged hand to hand with the fierce sword,
it is hard to say what your Mars did there,
and how many you gave to death, and whom, and in what ways.
Victor, you trod the heaps made by your sword,
and many a Getan was under your set foot.
The lesser in rank fights to the example of the first spear,
and the soldier bears many wounds, and makes many.
But your valor surpasses all the others as far
as Pegasus went before swift horses.
Aegisos is conquered, and your deeds, Vestalis,
are attested for all time by my song.

A letter — late indeed, Suillius, you who are polished in studies —
your letter has come here, yet welcome to me,
by which, if a pious gratitude could soften the gods by asking,
you say you will bring me aid.
Though now you grant nothing, I am made the debtor
of a friendly mind, and call the wish to help a desert.
Let that impulse of yours only last into a long age,
nor let your devotion grow weary of my ills!
The bonds of kinship make some right for us,
which I pray ever remain unshaken.
For she who is your wife is almost my daughter,
and she who calls you son-in-law calls me husband.
Ah me, if, these verses read, you draw your face down
and are ashamed to be my kinsman!
But you can find here nothing worthy of shame
except Fortune, who was blind to me.
Whether you sift my stock, we shall be found knights
from the first origin through innumerable forebears;
or if you wish to inquire what my character is,
take error from a wretch — it lacks all stain.
You, only, if you hope anything can be done by praying,
entreat with suppliant voice the gods you worship.
Let the young Caesar be your gods: appease your divinities!
Surely no altar is better known to you than this.
He never lets the prayers of his own priest
be vain: from here seek help for my affairs!
However slight a breeze of his shall help me,
my sunk boat will rise from the mid-waters.
Then I shall bear the solemn incense to the swift flames,
and shall be a witness how much divinities avail.
Nor will I set you up a temple of Parian marble, Germanicus:
that ruin plucked away my resources.
Temples for you the blessed houses and cities will make;
Naso, with his own wealth, will be grateful with a song.
Small gifts indeed, I confess, are returned for great,
when for granted safety I give words.
But he who gives the greatest he could is grateful in abundance,
and that devotion has reached its end.
Nor is the incense the poor man pours to the gods from a small censer
of less avail than that given on a great dish,
and a suckling lamb, as much as a victim fed on Faliscan grass,
struck, stains the Tarpeian hearths.
Yet, the bards’ duty once done through songs,
there is no thing fitter for princely men.
Songs accomplish the heraldings of your praises,
and take care that the fame of your deeds be not perishable.
By song valor becomes long-lived, and, free of the tomb,
has the notice of late posterity.
Wasting age consumes iron and stone,
and no thing has greater strength than time.
Writings bear the years: by writings you know Agamemnon,
and whoever bore arms against him or with him.
Who would know Thebes and the seven leaders without song,
and whatever was after these, and whatever before?
The gods too, if it is right to say it, are made by songs,
and so great a majesty needs the singer’s mouth.
So we know Chaos, from that mass of earlier nature,
was sorted out and has its own parts;
so the Giants, aspiring to the heavenly realms,
were given to the Styx by the avenger’s cloud-bearing fire;
so victor Liber drew his praise from the conquered Indians,
Alcides from captured Oechalia,
and lately, Caesar, songs have, in some part, consecrated
your grandsire, whom his valor added to the stars.
If, then, anything yet living remains in my talent, Germanicus,
it shall all serve you.
You, a bard, cannot scorn the bard’s office:
by your judgment that thing has its worth.
And had not so great a name called you to greater things,
you would have been the highest glory of the Pierides.
But to give us matter is greater than songs,
yet you cannot wholly forsake them.
For now you wage wars, now you curb words in numbers,
and what is toil to others, this will be sport to you.
And as Apollo is sluggish neither at the cithara nor the bow,
but each string comes to his sacred hands,
so to you neither the learned nor the prince’s arts are wanting,
but the Muse is mixed in your spirit with Jove.
Since that wave too has not removed me from her
which the hollow hoof of the Gorgonian horse made,
may it profit, and bring aid, to guard the rites we share
and to have set my hand to the same studies.
The shores too much subject to the skin-clad Coralli —
that I may at last escape them and the savage Getae,
and, if my country is closed to a wretch, that I be set in some
place that stands less distant from the Ausonian city,
whence I may celebrate your fresh praises
and recount your great deeds with the least delay.
That this vow may touch the heavenly powers, dear Suillius,
pray for your father-in-law, almost your own.

Whence it is allowed, not whence it pleases, Graecinus, this greeting
Naso sends you from the Euxine shoals,
and, may the gods grant, sent, let it meet that dawn
which first will give you the twin-six fasces,
so that, since without me you will touch the Capitol as consul,
and I shall be no part of your throng,
my letter may take a master’s part and render a friend’s
office on the appointed day.
And had I been born to better fates,
and my wheel run on a sound axle,
what now my hand performs by writing,
my tongue would have performed, the office of greeting you,
and, congratulating, I should give kisses with sweet words,
nor would that honor be less mine than yours.
On that day, I confess, I should be so proud
that scarce any house would hold my haughtiness,
and while the throng of the holy senate girds your side,
before the consul’s feet I, a knight, should be bidden go,
and, though I should wish ever to be nearest you,
I should rejoice to have had no place at your side,
nor, though I were crushed by the crowd, should I complain,
but it would then be sweet to me to be pressed by the people.
I should look out, rejoicing, how great the order of the column was,
and how long a way the dense throng held,
and, that you may know the more how common things touch me,
I should mark what purple covered you.
The figures too, fashioned on the curule chair, I should know,
and the whole sculptured work of the Numidian tusk.
But when you had been led down to the Tarpeian heights,
while the sacred victim fell at your command,
me too the great god who sits in the midst of the shrine
would have heard giving secret thanks to himself,
and with a mind more full than the dish I should give incense,
glad three and four times at the honor of your office.
Here I should be numbered among your present friends,
if only the mild fates gave me the right of the City,
and the pleasure now caught by my mind alone
would then be taken in by my eyes too.
Not so it seemed to the gods — and perhaps justly.
For why should denied punishment help me?
Yet with my mind, which alone is not exiled from the place,
I shall use it, and behold your bordered robe and fasces.
It will now see you rendering law to the people,
and feign itself present at your secret affairs,
now will believe you set the long returns of a five-year span
beneath the spear, and let out all things on exact faith,
now make eloquent words in the midst of the senate,
seeking what the public good requires,
now decree thanks for the Caesars to the gods above,
or strike the white necks of the fat oxen.
And would that, when you have prayed for greater things,
you would ask that the prince’s anger be appeased for me!
Let the pious fire rise full at this voice from the altar,
and the bright peak give a good omen to the vow!
Meanwhile, in the part allowed — that I complain not of all —
here too I shall keep this time festive, you being consul.
Another cause of gladness, yielding not to the first, there is:
your brother will be the successor of so great an honor.
For your power, ended, Graecinus, on the last of December,
he takes up on the day of Janus,
and, such is the devotion in you, you will bear alternate
joys, you in your brother’s fasces, he in yours.
So you will have been twice consul, and he twice consul,
and a double honor will be seen in your house.
Which, though it is huge, and martial Rome sees no power
higher than the supreme consul,
yet the weight of its giver multiplies this honor,
and the granted thing has the majesty of the giver.
By such judgments, then, let it be allowed to Flaccus and to you
to enjoy the time of Augustus for all time.
Yet whatever shall be free from the nearer care of affairs,
add, I pray, your vows to my vows,
and, if any wind gives a hollow, shake out the ropes,
that my ship may go out from the Stygian waters.
Flaccus lately governed these places, Graecinus, and under him
the bank of the fierce Hister was safe.
He held the Mysian peoples in faithful peace,
he, with the sword, terrified the Getae who trust their bow.
He, by swift valor, recovered captured Troesmis
and dyed the Danube with savage blood.
Ask the look of the place and the discomforts of the Scythian sky,
and ask how near a foe I am frightened by,
whether the slender arrows are smeared with serpent’s gall,
whether a human head is made the grim victim,
whether I lie, or Pontus, hardened by cold, freezes,
and ice holds many acres of the strait.
When he has told these things, ask what my fame is,
and ask in what way I pass the hard times.
I am not hated here, nor indeed do I deserve to be,
nor, with my fortune, is my mind too changed.
That quiet of mind which you used to praise,
that old modesty, persists in my wonted face.
So I am far off, so here, where the barbarian foe
makes savage arms avail more than the laws,
that no woman, Graecinus, nor man nor boy
can complain of me through so many years now.
This makes the Tomitans favor and stand by a wretch,
since this land must be called to witness for me.
They, because they see I wish it, prefer that I depart,
yet, for their own sake, wish me here.
Nor would you believe me: there exist decrees by which
they praise me, and the public wax makes me immune.
Though it be no glory, befitting the wretched,
the nearest towns give me the same gift.
Nor is my devotion unknown: the host-land sees
that Caesar’s shrine is in our house.
There stand alike the pious son and the priestess-consort,
divinities now no lighter than the god once made;
and, lest any part of the house be wanting, both grandsons stand,
this one nearest the grandmother’s side, that one the father’s.
To these I give, so often, words of prayer with incense,
as often as day rises from the Eastern world.
The whole Pontic land, ask if you will, will say
I do not feign this, a witness of my duty.
The Pontic land knows that I celebrate, with what games
I can, at this altar, the birthday of the god.
Nor is such devotion less known to my guests,
if the long Propontis has sent any into these waters.
He too, under whom the Left Pontus had been as governor —
your brother — has perhaps heard these things.
My fortune is unequal to my spirit, and gladly
with such a gift, poor, I pluck my scant resources.
Nor do I give these to your eyes, removed far from the City,
but am content with silent devotion.
And yet these will touch Caesar’s ears at some time:
nothing done in the whole world is hidden from him.
You surely know these things, taken among the gods above, and see,
Caesar, how the earth is set beneath your eyes,
you hear, placed among the vaulted stars,
the prayers we give with anxious mouth.
Let those songs too perhaps reach there
which I sent about you, made a new god!
I augur, then, that your godhead is bent by these,
nor undeservedly do you bear the mild name of Father.

This is now twice the third summer drawn out for me on the Cimmerian
shore, to be spent among the skin-clad Getae.
Do you, dearest Albinovanus, compare any flints, any iron,
to my hardness?
The drop hollows the stone, the ring is worn by use,
the curved share is rubbed away by the pressed earth.
Devouring time, then, destroys all things but me:
death too, conquered, gives way to my hardness.
The example of a too-enduring spirit is Ulysses,
tossed through a doubtful sea for two lustra,
yet he did not bear all the times of an anxious fate,
and there were often calm respites.
Or was it heavy to have cherished fair Calypso six years
and to have lain with the sea-goddess?
The son of Hippotes receives him, who gives winds as a gift,
that a useful breeze may curve the driven sails.
Nor is it a labor to hear sweetly-singing girls,
nor was the lotus bitter to the taster.
These juices, that make forgetfulness of one’s country,
I would buy with part of my life, if only they were given.
Nor would you ever compare the Laestrygonian’s city
to the nations the Hister skirts with its slanting water,
nor will the Cyclops conquer fierce Piacches in savagery;
and he, what small part is he wont to be of my terror?
That Scylla barks from her maimed loins with fierce monsters:
the ships of the Heniochi have harmed sailors more.
Nor can you compare Charybdis to the hostile Achaei,
though three times she swallow, three times spew the strait;
who, though they range more freely on the right-hand region,
yet do not let this side be safe.
Here the fields are leafless, here the darts dipped in poisons,
here winter makes the straits passable even to the foot,
so that where the oar just now made its way through the beaten waves,
the dry traveler goes, the ship despised.
Those who come from there say you scarce believe these things.
How wretched is he who bears things harsher than belief!
Yet believe, nor will I let you not know the causes
why the Sarmatian sea hardens with bristling winter.
Nearest to us are the stars that offer the wagon’s shape,
and that hold the chief cold.
Hence Boreas rises, and to this shore he is native,
and takes his strength from the nearer place.
But Notus, who blows warm from the opposite pole,
is far off, and comes rare and more languid.
Add that here the rivers are mingled in the closed Pontus,
and the strait loses its force from the much river.
Hither flow Lycus, hither Sagaris, and Penius and Hypanis and Cales,
and Halys, twisted with frequent eddy,
and rapid Parthenius, and Cynapses, rolling stones,
glides, and Tyras, slower than no river,
and you, Thermodon, known to the women’s squadrons,
and Phasis, once sought by the Greek men,
and, with the Borysthenian stream, most limpid Dyraspes,
and Melanthus, quietly making his gentle way,
and he who separates two lands, Asia and Cadmus’s sister,
and makes his course between the two,
and innumerable others, among whom the greatest of all,
Danube, denies, Nile, that he yields to you.
The store of so many waters adulterates the waves it swells,
and does not suffer the sea to keep its force.
Nay, like a pool and a sluggish marsh,
the blue color is scarce there, and is washed away.
The sweet water floats on the strait and is lighter than the sea-water,
which has its own weight from the mingled salt.
If anyone should ask why these things are told to Pedo,
or what it profited to say them in fixed measures:
"I have beguiled my cares," I shall say, "and cheated the time.
This fruit the present hour has brought me.
We have been away from our wonted grief while we write these things,
and have not felt ourselves to be in the midst of the Getae."
But you, I doubt not, since you praise Theseus in song,
would defend the titles of your matter,
and imitate the man you tell of: he forbids, surely,
faith to be the comrade only of a tranquil time.
Who, though he is huge in deeds, and is founded by you,
a man to be sung with as great a mouth as he deserved,
yet there is in him something imitable for us,
and in faith anyone can be a Theseus.
You have no foes to be tamed with iron and club,
through whom the Isthmus was scarce passable to any,
but love is to be shown — a thing not laborious to the willing.
What labor is it not to have profaned pure faith?
These things, to you, who show yourself unswerving to a friend,
there is no reason to think spoken by a tongue, struck, complaining.

Gallio, it will be a charge scarce excusable in me
that you had no name in my song;
for you too, I remember, soothed with your tears
the wounds made in me by the heavenly point.
And would that, hurt by the loss of your snatched friend,
you had felt nothing further to complain of!
Not so it pleased the gods, who did not hold it a cruel
wrong to despoil you of your chaste wife.
For a letter, messenger of mourning, lately came to me,
and your losses were read with my tears.
But I would not, less wise, dare to console the wise,
nor report to you the noted words of the learned,
and your grief, ended now — if not by reason —
I suspect long since by time itself.
While your letter comes, while mine, running back,
passes so many seas and lands, a year goes by.
It is the office of a fixed time to speak comforts,
while the grief is in its course and the sick man seeks aid.
But when a long day has stilled the wounds of the mind,
he who stirs them out of season makes them new.
Add that — and would that the omen come true to me! —
you can now be happy in a new marriage.

That you are the less set in my little books, friend,
comes about by the condition of your name;
else I should deem no other worthy of this honor before you,
if only there is any honor in my song.
The law of the foot and the fortune of your name stand in the way,
and by no way can you enter my measures.
For I am ashamed so to split your name into twin verses,
that the first end in this and the lesser begin it,
and I should be ashamed, if, where a syllable holds a part,
I should call you too tightly, and name you Tuticanus.
And you can come into verse in Tuticanus’s manner only
if the first syllable be made short from long,
or if that which now goes out more clipped be drawn out,
and the second be long by lengthened delay.
If I should dare to corrupt your name with these faults,
I should be laughed at, and rightly denied to have a heart.
This was my cause of deferring this gift,
which my love will repay with added interest,
and I shall sing you under whatever mark, and send you songs,
you, known to me almost a boy when I was almost a boy,
and through so long a series of years as we both have,
loved by me no less than a brother by a brother.
You were a good encourager, you were leader and comrade,
when I ruled the new reins with a tender hand.
Often I corrected my little books under you as censor,
often a blot was made at your prompting,
when the Pierian goddesses had thoroughly taught you
to compose a Phaeacid worthy of Maeonian pages.
This tenor, this concord begun in green youth,
has come, unshaken, to whitening hair.
Which, unless they move you, I should think your breast
closed with hard iron or unconquered adamant.
But sooner shall these lands lack both war and frosts,
the two things, hateful to me, that Pontus has,
and Boreas be warm and Auster very cold,
and my fate be able to be milder,
than your heart be hard to a weary comrade.
Let this last heap be absent — and it is absent — from my ills.
Only you, by the gods above, of whom that one is the surest
under whose princehood your honor has steadily grown,
bring it about, guarding the fugitive with steady devotion,
that the hoped-for breeze forsake not my ship.
What do I charge you with, you ask? May I perish, unless it is hard to say —
if only he can perish who has perished already.
Nor do I find what to do, nor what I would or would not,
nor is my own advantage well enough known to me.
Believe me, prudence first forsakes the wretched,
and sense, with their fortune, and counsel flee.
Do you yourself, I pray, seek in what part I am to be helped by you,
and by what ford you may make a way to my prayers.

O, to be remembered among my friends not doubtful,
who are truly called what you are, Carus — hail!
Whence you are greeted, this color is at once an index to you,
and the structure of my song can be,
not because it is wondrous, but because it is surely not common:
for, such as it is, it does not lie hidden to be mine.
You yourself too, though you tear the title from the page’s front,
I seem able to say what is your work.
Set among however many little books, you will be known,
and will be found through the marks observed.
The strength will betray the author, which we know worthy
of Hercules, and equal to him whom you yourself sing.
And my Muse too, caught by her own color,
can perhaps be marked out by her own faults.
As ugly a form forbade Thersites to lie hidden
as beautiful Nireus was to be gazed upon.
Nor will it become you to wonder if the songs are faulty
which I make, almost a Getan poet.
Ah! I am ashamed — I have written a little book in the Getic tongue too,
and barbarian words are set to our measures:
and I pleased — congratulate me! — and began to have a poet’s
name among the inhuman Getae.
You ask the matter? Praises: I spoke of Caesar!
My novelty was helped by the godhead of the god.
For I taught that the body of father Augustus had been
mortal, that his godhead had gone to the ethereal homes,
that he who, asked, took up the reins of the empire he had
often refused, was equal in valor to his father,
that you, Livia, are the Vesta of chaste matrons,
doubtful whether worthier of son or of husband,
that there are two youths, firm supports of their parent,
who have given sure pledges of their spirit.
When I had read these writings through, not in my native Camena,
and the last page came to my fingers,
they all moved their heads and their full quivers,
and there was a long murmur in the Getic mouth,
and someone said, "Since you write these things about Caesar,
you ought to be restored to Caesar’s rule."
He indeed said so; but already, Carus, the sixth snowy
midwinter sees me relegated under the pole.
Songs profit nothing; songs once harmed me,
and were the first cause of so wretched a flight.
But you, by the shared covenants of our sacred study,
by the name of friendship not cheap to you —
so may Germanicus, the foe taken in Latin chains,
bring matter to your talents,
so may the boys thrive, the common vow of the gods,
whom, a great praise, are given you to shape! —
give, as much as you can, weight to my safety,
which will be none unless my place be changed.

These are sent to you, whom I lately complained of in song
for having a name not fit for my measures,
in which, except that I am still somehow well,
you will find nothing else to please you.
Safety itself too is hateful, and my last vows are
surely to go from these places to anywhere at all.
I have no care to what land I am sent from this,
since any will be more pleasing than this, which I see:
into the midst of the Syrtes, into mid-Charybdis send my sails,
provided I lack the present soil.
The Styx too, if it is anything, will be well exchanged for the Hister,
and anything the world holds lower than the Styx.
The grass hates the tilled field, the swallow the cold, less
than Naso the places near the Mars-worshipping Getae.
Such words anger the Tomitans against me,
and a public wrath is moved by my songs.
Shall I, then, never cease to be hurt through my songs,
and always be punished by my heedless talent?
Shall I, then, lest I write, delay to cut my fingers,
and, mad, still follow the weapons that harmed me?
Do I turn aside again to the old rocks, and to those
waters in which my wrecked ship once struck?
But I have admitted nothing, there is no fault of mine, Tomitans,
whom I love, though I hate your place.
Let anyone shake out the records of my labor:
my letter has complained of you in nothing!
I complain of the cold, and the incursions to be feared on every side,
and that the wall is battered by the foe.
Against places, not men, I have spoken most true charges:
you yourselves too often blame your own soil.
Though her own Ascra were forever to be shunned,
the Muse of the old farmer dared to teach it,
and though he who wrote was born in that land,
yet Ascra swelled against her own bard.
Who loved his country more than skilled Ulysses?
Yet by his showing the harshness of the place was taught.
Not places, but characters, the Scepsian harassed with bitter
writings, the Ausonian, and Rome was put on trial;
yet, falsely accused, she bore the charges with an even mind,
nor did the wild tongue hurt its author.
But a bad interpreter rouses the people’s anger against me
and calls my songs to a new charge.
Would that I were as happy as I am candid of breast!
There exists to this day no one wounded by my mouth.
Add that, were I now blacker than Illyrian pitch,
the faithful crowd was not to be bitten by me.
Mildly my lot was received by you, Tomitans,
which shows the Greek men to be so gentle.
My people, the Paeligni, and Sulmo, my homeland’s region,
could not be milder to my ills.
The honor which you would scarce give anyone safe and sound,
that honor was lately given me by you:
I alone am immune still on your shores,
those excepted who hold immunities by law;
my temples are veiled with a sacred crown,
which the public favor laid on, against my will.
As grateful, then, as the Delian land is to Latona,
which alone gave a safe place to her wandering,
so dear to me is Tomis, which, to one driven from his fathers’
seat, remains to this time a faithful host;
would only the gods had made it able to hope for placid peace,
and set farther from the icy pole.

If anyone anywhere still exists not forgetful of me,
or asks what I, relegated Naso, am doing,
let him know I owe my life to the Caesars, my safety
to Sextus. After the gods above, he will be first to me.
For, to embrace all the times of my wretched life,
no part of them is free from his deserts.
Which are as many in number as, in the garden of a fertile field,
the red grains of the pomegranate redden under the tough rind,
as many as Africa’s harvests, as Tmolus’s land its clusters,
as Sicyon its olives, as Hybla brings forth honeycombs.
I confess it: you may bear witness. Mark it down, Quirites!
There is no need of the law’s force; I myself speak.
Set me among your father’s wealth, a small thing,
I am part of your estate, however tiny.
As your Trinacria is, and the land ruled by Philip,
as your house joined to the Augustan forum,
as your Campania, a countryside pleasing to its master’s eyes,
and whatever, Sextus, you hold, left to you or bought,
so much am I yours — behold — by whose sad gift
you cannot say you have nothing in Pontus.
And would that you could, and a friendlier field were given,
and you could set your property in a better place!
Since this is in the gods’ hands, try to soften by praying
the divinities you worship with perpetual devotion.
For whether you are the proof or the help of my error,
it is scarce possible to discern.
Nor do I pray doubting; but often, with a favoring stream,
the course of the going water is increased by the oars.
And I am ashamed, and I fear ever to pray the same things,
lest a just weariness come over your mind.
But what shall I do? Desire is an immoderate thing:
grant pardon, mild friend, to my fault.
Often, wishing to write something else, I slip into the same:
my very letter, of itself, asks for the place.
Yet whether gratitude is to have its effect, or whether
the hard Parca bids me die under the icy pole,
I shall ever, with unforgetting mind, recall your gifts,
and my land shall hear that I am yours.
It shall hear — and whatever is set under any sky,
if only my Muse pass beyond the fierce Getae —
and shall know you the cause and savior of my safety,
and me yours by less than the balance and the bronze.

Envious one, why do you tear the songs of snatched Naso?
The last day is not wont to harm talents,
and after the ashes fame comes greater, and I had a name
even then, when I was counted among the living,
when there were Marsus and Rabirius of the great mouth,
and Iliac Macer and starry Pedo,
and he who had wounded Juno in his Hercules, Carus,
were he not already Juno’s son-in-law,
and Severus, who gave Latium a kingly song,
and both the Prisci, with subtle Numa,
and you, Montanus, who suffice in unequal numbers
or in equal, and have a name by a double song,
and he who bade Ulysses write back to Penelope,
wandering for two lustra over the savage sea,
and Sabinus, who left his own Troezen and his unfinished
work of the Days by a swift death,
and Largus, called by the surname of his talent,
who led the Phrygian old man into the Gallic fields,
and Camerinus, who sings Troy from conquered Hector,
and Tuscus, who has a name from his own Phyllis,
and the bard of the sail-flying sea, whom you could believe
the blue gods had composed his songs,
and he who told the Libyan battle-lines and the Roman fights,
and Marius, a writer apt for every kind,
and the Trinacrian author of his Perseid, and the author,
Lupus, of the returning Tantalid and the Tyndarid,
and he who turned the Maeonian Phaeacis, and you too,
Rufus, sole player of the Pindaric lyre,
and the Muse of Turranus, propped on the tragic buskins,
and your Muse, Melissus, on the light sock;
when Varius and Gracchus gave fierce words to tyrants,
Proculus kept the soft path of Callimachus,
Passer returned, a Tityrus, to the ancient grasses,
and Grattius gave fit arms to the hunter,
Fontanus sang the Naiads loved by Satyrs,
Capella shut up his words in unequal measures,
and though there were others, whose names to recount all
is a long delay, whose songs the crowd has,
and there were young men, whose works, because unpublished,
I have no right to name —
yet you, Cotta, in the throng I should not dare to pass in silence,
light of the Pierides and bulwark of the forum,
to whom redoubled nobility gave the maternal Cottae
and the paternal Messallas, Maximus.
If it is right to say it, my Muse too was of bright name,
and was one to be read among so many.
So cease, Envy, to rend one removed from his country,
and do not scatter my ashes, bloody one!
I have lost all things; only life is left,
to give me the sense and matter of ill.
What does it profit to plunge the iron into extinguished limbs?
There is now no room in me for a new wound.