1. Lucretius Carus, On The Nature of Things, 2.1-2.6, 5.94-5.96 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 2.1. Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis 2.2. e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem; 2.3. non quia vexari quemquamst iucunda voluptas 2.4. sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suavest. 2.5. per campos instructa tua sine parte pericli; 2.6. suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri 5.94. tris species tam dissimilis, tria talia texta 5.95. una dies dabit exitio, multosque per annos 5.96. sustentata ruet moles et machina mundi. | 2.1. BOOK II: PROEM 'Tis sweet, when, down the mighty main, the winds Roll up its waste of waters, from the land To watch another's labouring anguish far, Not that we joyously delight that man Should thus be smitten, but because 'tis sweet To mark what evils we ourselves be spared; 'Tis sweet, again, to view the mighty strife of armies embattled yonder o'er the plains, Ourselves no sharers in the peril; but naught There is more goodly than to hold the high Serene plateaus, well fortressed by the wise, Whence thou may'st look below on other men And see them ev'rywhere wand'ring, all dispersed In their lone seeking for the road of life; Rivals in genius, or emulous in rank, Pressing through days and nights with hugest toil For summits of power and mastery of the world. O wretched minds of men! O blinded hearts! In how great perils, in what darks of life Are spent the human years, however brief!- O not to see that nature for herself Barks after nothing, save that pain keep off, Disjoined from the body, and that mind enjoy Delightsome feeling, far from care and fear! Therefore we see that our corporeal life Needs little, altogether, and only such As takes the pain away, and can besides Strew underneath some number of delights. More grateful 'tis at times (for nature craves No artifice nor luxury), if forsooth There be no golden images of boys Along the halls, with right hands holding out The lamps ablaze, the lights for evening feasts, And if the house doth glitter not with gold Nor gleam with silver, and to the lyre resound No fretted and gilded ceilings overhead, Yet still to lounge with friends in the soft grass Beside a river of water, underneath A big tree's boughs, and merrily to refresh Our frames, with no vast outlay- most of all If the weather is laughing and the times of the year Besprinkle the green of the grass around with flowers. Nor yet the quicker will hot fevers go, If on a pictured tapestry thou toss, Or purple robe, than if 'tis thine to lie Upon the poor man's bedding. Wherefore, since Treasure, nor rank, nor glory of a reign Avail us naught for this our body, thus Reckon them likewise nothing for the mind: Save then perchance, when thou beholdest forth Thy legions swarming round the Field of Mars, Rousing a mimic warfare- either side Strengthened with large auxiliaries and horse, Alike equipped with arms, alike inspired; Or save when also thou beholdest forth Thy fleets to swarm, deploying down the sea: For then, by such bright circumstance abashed, Religion pales and flees thy mind; O then The fears of death leave heart so free of care. But if we note how all this pomp at last Is but a drollery and a mocking sport, And of a truth man's dread, with cares at heels, Dreads not these sounds of arms, these savage swords But among kings and lords of all the world Mingles undaunted, nor is overawed By gleam of gold nor by the splendour bright of purple robe, canst thou then doubt that this Is aught, but power of thinking?- when, besides The whole of life but labours in the dark. For just as children tremble and fear all In the viewless dark, so even we at times Dread in the light so many things that be No whit more fearsome than what children feign, Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark. This terror then, this darkness of the mind, Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light, Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse, But only nature's aspect and her law. ATOMIC MOTIONS Now come: I will untangle for thy steps Now by what motions the begetting bodies of the world-stuff beget the varied world, And then forever resolve it when begot, And by what force they are constrained to this, And what the speed appointed unto them Wherewith to travel down the vast ie: Do thou remember to yield thee to my words. For truly matter coheres not, crowds not tight, Since we behold each thing to wane away, And we observe how all flows on and off, As 'twere, with age-old time, and from our eyes How eld withdraws each object at the end, Albeit the sum is seen to bide the same, Unharmed, because these motes that leave each thing Diminish what they part from, but endow With increase those to which in turn they come, Constraining these to wither in old age, And those to flower at the prime (and yet Biding not long among them). Thus the sum Forever is replenished, and we live As mortals by eternal give and take. The nations wax, the nations wane away; In a brief space the generations pass, And like to runners hand the lamp of life One unto other. |
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7. Ovid, Tristia, 1.8.1, 2.118, 2.219-2.244, 2.246-2.316, 2.318-2.319, 2.321, 2.323, 2.339-2.340, 2.353-2.357, 2.359-2.424, 2.426-2.490, 2.497-2.520, 2.533, 2.536, 4.10.1-4.10.2, 4.10.41-4.10.42, 5.7.25-5.7.26 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. CE)
2.118. grande tamen toto nomen ab orbe fero 2.219. scilicet imperii princeps statione relicta 2.220. imparibus legeres carmina facta modis? 2.221. non ea te moles Romani nominis urguet 2.222. inque tuis umeris tam leve fertur onus 2.223. lusibus ut possis advertere numen ineptis 2.224. excutiasque oculis otia nostra tuis. 2.225. nunc tibi Pannonia est, nunc Illyris ora domanda 2.226. Raeticanunc praebent Thraciaque arma metum 2.227. nunc petit Armenius pacem, nunc porrigit arcus 2.228. Parthus eques timida captaque signa manu 2.229. nunc te prole tua iuvenem Germania sentit 2.230. bellaque pro magno Caesare Caesar obit; 2.231. denique, ut in tanto, quantum non extitit umquam 2.232. corpore pars nulla est, quae labet, imperii. 2.233. urbs quoque te et legum lassat tutela tuarum 2.234. et morum, similes quos cupis esse tuis. 2.235. nec | 1.8.1. A FRIEND’S TREACHERY From the sea, deep rivers will flow backwards to their source: the hurrying Sun reverse his wheeling team, earth will bear stars, and skies be cut by the plough, water yield flames, and fire yield water: all things will move against the natural laws, no part of the universe will hold its course: now all things will be, that I denied could be, and there’ll be nothing that you can’t believe. This I prophesy since I’ve been betrayed by one whom I thought would bring me help in misery. Traitor, did you forget me so completely, or were so afraid to come near my disaster, cruel one, that you’d no regard, or solace for my downfall, not even to follow in my funeral train? Does that sacred and honoured name of friend lie beneath your feet, a worthless thing? What effort to visit a comrade, crushed by a mighty blow, and comfort him, you also, with your words, and if not to shed a tear at my misfortune still to offer a few words of feigned distress, and, at least, say something, as even strangers do, follow the common speech, public phrases – see my mournful features, never to be seen again, while you could, on that final day, and hear, and return to me, in the same tone, the never to be repeated, forever, ‘Farewell’? Others, bound to me by no ties, did this, and shed tears in token of their feelings. What, weren’t there powerful reasons for our friendship in our mutual life and our continuing love? What, didn’t you share so many of my serious and trivial moments, and didn’t I share yours? What, didn’t you not only know me in Rome, but in so many sorts of foreign places? Was it all in vain, lost in the ocean winds? Is it all gone, drowned in Lethe’s waters? I don’t think of you as born in Quirinus’s tranquil city, the city my feet must never more re-enter, but on cliffs, that this sinister Black Sea raises, or in the wild Scythian or Sarmatian hills, and your heart circled with veins of flint, and iron seeded in your rigid breast, and your nurse a tigress, once, offering full udders to be drained by your tender throat, or you’d think my ills less alien to you now, and wouldn’t stand accused by me of harshness. But since it is added to my fatal loss, that those youthful times are discounted, now endeavour to make me forget this failing, and praise your efforts with these lips with which I complain. 2.253. HIS PLEA: HIS DEFENCE ‘But,’ you may say, ‘the wife can use others’ art, have what she takes from it, without being taught.’ Let a wife read nothing then, since she can learn about how to do wrong from every poem. If she’s partial to what’s perverse, then she’ll equip her character for sin, whatever she touches. Let her take the Annals – nothing’s coarser than them – she’ll surely read who made Ilia pregt. Let her take Lucretius, she’ll ask straight away by whom kindly Venus became Aeneas’s mother. If I’m allowed to present it in order, I’ll show, below, the mind can be harmed by every sort of poem. Yet every book’s not guilty because of it: nothing’s useful, that can’t also wound. What’s more useful than fire? Yet whoever sets out to commit arson, arms his bold hands with fire. Medicine sometimes grants health, sometimes destroy it, showing which plants are helpful, which do harm. The robber and cautious traveller both wear a sword: one for ambush, the other for defence. Eloquence is learnt to plead just causes: it protects the guilty, crushes the innocent. So with verse, read with a virtuous mind it’ll be established nothing of mine will harm. But I ‘corrupt some’? Whoever thinks so, errs, and claims too much for my writings. Even if I’d confessed it, the games also sowseeds of iniquity: order the theatres closed! Many have often found an excuse for sin when the hard earth’s covered with Mars’s sand! Close the Circus! The Circus’s freedom isn’t safe: here a girl sits close to an unknown man. Why’s any portico open, since certain girls stroll there, to meet a lover in the place? What location’s more ‘august’ than a temple? She’s to avoid them too, if she’s clever in sinning. When she stands in Jove’s shrine, it’ll come to her, shrined, how many mothers that god has made: as she enters Juno’s temple in adoration, how many rivals caused the goddess pain. Seeing Pallas she’ll ask why the virgin raised Ericthonius, the child of sin. If she enters your gift, the temple of Mars, Venusstands joined to the Avenger, the husband’s outside the door. Sitting in Isis’s shrine, she’ll ask why Juno drove her over the Ionian Sea and the Bosphorus. It’ll be Anchises reminds her of Venus, Endymion of Luna, Iasion of Ceres. Anything can corrupt a perverted mind: everything’s harmless in its proper place. The first page of my ‘Art’, a book written only for courtesans, warns noblewomen’s hands away. Any woman who bursts in, where a priest forbids, taking his guilt away, is herself the sinner. Yet it’s no crime to unroll sweet verse: the chaste read many things they shouldn’t be doing. often grave-browed women consider naked girls positioned for every kind of lust. And Vestals’ eyes see prostitutes’ bodies: that’s no reason for punishing their owners. 2.313. HIS PLEA: HIS CHARACTER But why is my Muse so wildly wanton, why does my book tempt one to love? Nothing for it but to confess my sin and my open fault: I’m sorry for my wit and taste. Why didn’t I attack Troy again in my poems, that fell before the power of the Greeks? Why silent on Thebes, Eteocles, Polynices, mutual wounds, heroes at the seven gates? Warring Rome didn’t deny me matter, it’s virtuous work to tell one’s country’s tale. Lastly, since you’ve filled the world with deeds, some part of it all was mine to sing, as the sun’s radiant light attracts the eye so your exploits should have drawn my spirit. I’m undeservedly blamed. Narrow the furrow I plough: while that was a great and fertile theme. A little boat shouldn’t trust itself to the waves because it dares to fool about in a tiny pond. Perhaps – and I should even question this – I’m fit for lighter verse, adequate for humble music: but if you order me to sing of the Giants, beaten by Jove’s lightning, the weight will cripple me if I try. It’s a rich mind can tell of Caesar’s mighty deeds, if the content’s not to overpower the work. Still I was daring: but I thought I detracted from it, and what was worse, it harmed your authority. I returned to my light labours, the songs of youth, stirring my feelings with imaginary desires. I wish I hadn’t. But destiny drew me on, and my cleverness punished me. Ah, that I ever studied! Why did my parents educate me, or letters entertain my eyes? This lewdness made you hate me, for the arts, you were sure, troubled sacred marriage-beds. But no bride learned deception from my teaching, no one can teach what he scarcely knows. I made sweet pleasurable songs in such a way that no scandal ever touched my name. There’s no husband even in the lower ranks, who doubts his paternity through my offence. Believe me, my character’s other than my verse – my life is modest, my Muse is playful – and most of my work, deceptive and fictitious, is more permissive than its author. A book’s not evidence of a life, but a true impulse bringing many things to delight the ear. Or Accius would be cruel, Terence a reveller, and those who sing of war belligerent. 2.361. HIS PLEA: GREEK PRECEDENTS I’m not alone in having sung tender love-songs: but I’m the one punished for singing of love. What did old Anacreon’s lyric Muse teach but a mixture of love and plenty of wine? What did Sappho, the Lesbian, teach the girls, but love? Yet Sappho was acceptable, and so was he. It didn’t harm you, Callimachus, who often confessed your pleasures to the reader, in poetry. No plot of playful Meder’s is free of love, yet he’s commonly read by boys and girls. The Iliad itself, what’s that but an adulteress over whom a husband and a lover fought? What’s first in it but a passion for Briseis, and how her abduction made the leaders quarrel? What’s the Odyssey but Penelope wooed by many suitors while her husband’s away, for the sake of love? Who but Homer tells of Mars and Venustheir bodies snared in a flagrant act? On whose evidence but great Homer’s do we know of Calypso and Circe, goddesses burning for a guest? All forms of writing are surpassed in seriousness by tragedy, yet this too always deals with matters of love. What’s in the Hippolytus but Phaedra’s blind passion? Canace’s famed for love of her brother. Again, didn’t ivory-shouldered Pelops, with Phrygian steeds abduct the Pisan girl, while Cupid drove? Medea, who dipped her sword in her children’s blood, was roused to do it by the pain of slighted love. Passion suddenly changed King Tereus, Philomela, and Procne, the mother still mourning her Itys, to birds. If Thyestes, her wicked brother, hadn’t loved Aeropewe’d not read about the swerving horses of the Sun. Impious Scylla would never have touched tragedy if she hadn’t shorn her father’s hair, through love. Who reads of Electra and maddened Orestes, reads of Aegisthus’s and Clytemnestra’s crime. Why tell of Bellerophon, who defeated the Chimaera, whom a deceitful woman brought near to death? Why speak of Hermione, or you, virgin Atalanta, or you Cassandra, Apollo’s priestess, loved by Agamemnon? Or of Danae, Andromeda, of Semele mother of Bacchus, of Haemon, or Alcmena for whom two nights were one? Why tell of Admetus, Theseus, Protesilausfirst of the Greeks to touch the Trojan shore? Add Iole, and Deidamia, Deianira Hercules’s wife, Hylas and Ganymede the Trojan boy. Time will fade if I repeat all the passions of tragedy, and my book will scarcely hold the naked names. There’s ‘tragedy’ too, involving obscene laughter, with many exceedingly shameful words: it didn’t harm one author to show an effeminate Achilles, belittling brave actions with his verse. Aristides associated himself with Milesian vice, but Aristides wasn’t driven from his city. Eubius wasn’t exiled, writer of a vile story, who described the abortion of an embryo, nor Hemitheon who’s just written Sybaritica, nor those who’ve not concealed their adventures. These things are shelved with records of learned men, and are open to the public through our leaders’ gifts. 2.421. HIS PLEA: ROMAN PRECEDENTS I’ll not defend myself with so many foreign weapons, Roman books too have plenty of frivolous matter. Though Ennius sang of war, with grave speech – Ennius great in talent, primitive in his art – though Lucretius explains the cause of impetuous fire, and predicts the triple death of earth, water, air, yet wanton Catullus often sang of his girl, she whom, deceptively, he called Lesbia: not content with her, he broadcast many love poems, in which he confessed to his own affairs. Equal and similar licence from little Calvuswho revealed his intrigues in various metres. Why speak of Ticidas’ or Memmius’ verse in which things are named, and shameful things? Cinna belongs with them, Anser bolder than Cinna, and the light things of Cornificus and Cato, and others, in whose books she who was disguised as Perilla is now called by your name, Metella. Varro, too, who guided Argo to the waves of Phasis, couldn’t keep silent about his own affairs. Hortensius’ and Servius’ poems are no less perverse. Who’d hesitate to follow such great names? Sisenna did Aristides and wasn’t harmed for weaving vile jokes into the tale. It was no disgrace to Gallus that he wrote about Lycoris, that came from his indulgence in too much wine. Tibullus thinks it’s hard to believe his girl’s denials, when she swears the same about him, to her husband. He also admits to teaching her how to cheat her guards, saying, the wretch, that he’s checked by his own arts. often he recalls how he touched her hand as if appraising the gem in his girl’s ring: and tells how he often signalled by nods, or fingers, and traced silent letters on the table’s surface: and he teaches what juices erase the bruise that the imprint of a love-bite often makes: finally he begs her more than careless husband to keep watch too, so she’ll sin a little less. He knows who’s barked at, when someone prowls outside, why there’s so much coughing by the door. He teaches many maxims for such affairs, and by what arts a wife can cheat her spouse. It didn’t do him harm, Tibullus is read and pleases, and he was known when you were first called prince. You’ll find the same maxims in charming Propertius: yet he’s not censured in the slightest way. I succeeded them, since honesty forbids me to reveal the names of well-known living men. I confess I’d no fear that where so many sailed, one would be wrecked, and all the rest unharmed. 2.471. HIS PLEA: DUBIOUS ENTERTAINMENTS Others have written about the art of playing dice – to our ancestors that was no light sin – how to tally the bones, what throw scores the most, and how to avoid the ruinous ‘dogs’: how the dice count, when a side is challenged how one should throw, and move given the throw: how a multi-coloured piece attacks in a straight line, when a piece between two enemy pieces is lost, how to pursue with force, and then recall the piece in front, and retreat again safely, in company: how a small board’s set with three ‘stones’ a side, and winning rests in keeping them together: and those other games – I’ll not describe them all that tend to waste that precious thing, our time. Look, this man tells of various kinds of ball-game, that one teaches swimming, this, bowling hoops. others have written works on painting with cosmetics: that one the etiquette for dinner-parties: another shows the clay from which pots are moulded, or teaches what storage jar’s best for clear wine. Such things are toyed with, in December’s smoky month, but nobody was damned for writing them. Misled by these I made poems, without gravity, but a grave punishment has followed my jests. In the end I’ve not seen one of all those many writers who’s been ruined by his Muse – they picked on me. 2.497. HIS PLEA: THE OTHER ARTS What if I’d written lewd and obscene mimes, that always show the sin of forbidden love, in which a smart seducer constantly appears, and the skilful wife cons her stupid husband? They’re seen by nubile girls, wives, husbands, sons, indeed most of the Senate attend. It’s not enough your ears are burned by sinful words: your eyes get used to many shameful things: and when the lover’s newly tricked the husband, he’s applauded, given a prize, to vast acclaim: because it’s common, theatre’s profitable for poets, and the praetor pays for sin at no small price. Check the cost of your own games, Augustus, you’ll scan many pricey items like these. You’ve seen them yourself and often shown them others – your greatness is so generous everywhere – and with your eyes, that the whole world employs, you’ve calmly watched these staged adulteries. If it’s right to scribble mimes that copy vice, a smaller punishment is due my matter. Or is this kind of writing safe on stage, where it’s allowed, and theatre grants licence to the mime? Well my poems have often been danced to, publicly, often they’ve even detained your eyes. As images of the bodies of ancient heroes, some hand has painted, glow in our houses, so isn’t there a little painting too in some place showing the various forms and acts of love. Not only does Ajax sit there, his look betraying wrath, and savage Medea, a mother with sin in her face, but Venus, damp, too, wringing wet hair in her fingers, rising, scarce decent, from her natal waves. Some sing the noise of war, its blood-stained weapons, some of your actions, some of your ancestors’. Nature, grudgingly, shut me in a narrow space, gave my ingenuity slender powers. Yet Virgil, the happy author of your Aeneid, brought the man and his arms to a Tyrian bed, and no part of the whole work’s more read than that love joined in an improper union. Before, in youthful pastoral music, the same poet played out the passions of Phyllis and sweet Amaryllis. I too, long ago, sinned with that kind of writing: a fault that’s not new earns new punishment: I’d published those songs when I passed before you, so many times, a faultless knight, as you reviewed our sins. So the writing I thought, in my youth, would never hurt me, scarcely foreseeing it, hurts me now I’m old. Late vengeance in excess for those early books, remote the penalty from the time of guilt. 4.10.1. OVID’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY: CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD Listen Posterity, and find out who this ‘I’ was, this playful poet of tender passions you read. Sulmo’s my native place, rich in icy streams, and ninety miles distant from the City. There I was born: if you want to know the date, it was when both Consuls died at Mutina. If it matters, I was heir to an ancient line, not a knight new-made by fortune’s gift. I was not the first child: I’d an elder brother, who was born twelve months before me. The same day of the year saw both our birthdays: one day celebrated with both our offering of cakes, the first day stained with the blood of combat, in armed Minerva’s festival, the Quinquatrus. We began our education at a tender age, and, through our father’s care, went to men distinguished in the city’s arts. My brother tended towards oratory from his early years: he was born to the harsh weapons of the noisy forum: but even as a boy the heavenly rites delighted me, and the Muse was drawing me secretly to her work. My father often said: ‘Why follow useless studies?’ Maeonian Homer himself left no wealth behind.’ Moved by his words, and leaving Helicon alone, I tried to write words that were free of metre. But verse came, of itself, in the right measures, and whatever I tried to write was poetry. Meanwhile, as the silent-footed years slipped by, my brother and I assumed the freer adult toga: our shoulders carried the broad purple stripe, our studies remained what they were before. My brother had just doubled his first ten years of life, when he died, and I went on, part of myself lost. Still, I achieved tender youth’s first honours, since at that time I was one of the tresviri. The Senate awaited me: I narrowed my purple stripe: it would have been an effort too great for my powers. I’d neither the strength of body, nor aptitude of mind for that vocation, and I shunned ambition’s cares, and the Aonian Muses urged me on to seek that safe seclusion my tastes always loved. 4.10.41. YOUTH AND MANHOOD I cherished and cultivated the poets of those times, I thought the bards that existed so many gods. often old Macer read to me about those birds of his, the snakes that harm you, and the herbs that heal. often Propertius would tell about his passions, by right of that friendship by which we were united. Ponticus, too, famous for epic, Bassus for iambics, were members of that mutual circle dear to me. And many-metered Horace captivated us, when he sang his polished songs to the Italian lyre. Virgil I only saw: and greedy fate granted Tibullus no time for my friendship. He came after you, Gallus: Propertius after him: I was the fourth, after them, in order of time. And the younger poets cultivated me, as I the elder, since my Muse, Thalia, was not slow to become known. When I first read my youthful efforts in public, my beard had only been shaved once or twice. She who was called Corinna, by me, not her real name, she stirred my wit, she who was sung throughout the City. I wrote a good deal, but what I considered lacking I gave to the flames myself, for them to revise it. Even then, when I was leaving, I burnt certain things, that were pleasing, angry with my studies and my verse. Soft, and never safe from Cupid’s arrows, was my heart, that the slightest thing could move. But though I was such, fired by the smallest spark, no scandal was associated with my name. I was given a worthless and useless wife when I was scarcely more than a boy: married to me for a brief while. A bride succeeded her, who, though she was blameless, was not destined to remain sharing my bed. Lastly she who remained with me till I was old, who’s lived to be the bride of an exiled husband. My daughter, twice a mother, by different husbands, when she was young, has made me a grandfather. And my father had already completed his fated time, after adding years to years till he was ninety. I wept for him as he would have wept for me if I had died. Next I bore my mother to her grave. Both lucky to have been buried at the right time, dying before the days of my punishment! And I’m fortunate my trouble wasn’t while they lived, and that they never had to grieve for me! Yet if the dead are left something more than a name, if a slender ghost escapes the towering pyre, if news of me has reached you, spirits of my parents, and my guilt is proclaimed in the courts of Styx, know, I beg you ( it would be a sin to deceive you) the cause of the exile decreed was an error not a crime. Let this suffice the shades: I turn again, to you, studious spirits, who wish to know the facts of my life. | |
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