EPODE X Bad Luck to Mevius UNDER evil omen the ship sets sail, bearing unsavoury Mevius. With fearful waves, O Auster, remember to lash both her sides! Let lowering Eurus scatter sheet and broken oars on upturned sea! Let Aquilo arise in all the fury with which he rends the quivering oaks on lofty mountain-tops! And may no friendly star appear on the murky night when grim Orion sets! And on no gentler sea may he be borne than was the host of the victorious Greeks, when Pallas turned her wrath from Ilium's ashes against Ajax' impious bark! Oh! What toil awaits thy sailors! And thyself, what ghastly pallor, and what unmanly wailing, and prayers to Jove estranged, when the Ionian Sea whistling with rainy Notus, shall wreck thy vessel! But if, stretched out as fat carrion on the curving shore, thou give pleasure to the gulls, then a sportive goat and a lamb shall be offered to the gods of storms. XI PETTI, nihil me sicut antea iuvat scribere versiculos amore percussum gravi, amore, qui me praeter omnes expetit mollibus in pueris aut in puellis urere. hic tertius December, ex quo destiti Inachia furere, silvis honorem decutit. heu me, per urbem, nam pudet tanti mali, fabula quanta fui! conviviorum et paenitet, in quis amantem languor et silentium arguit et latere petitus imo spiritus. "contrane lucrum nil valere candidum pauperis ingenium!" querebar adplorans tibi, simul calentis inverecundus deus fervidiore mero arcana promorat loco. quod si meis inaestuet praecordiis libera bilis, ut haec ingrata ventis dividat fomenta, vulnus nil malum levantia, desinet imparibus certare summotus pudor." ubi haec severus te palam laudaveram, iussus abire domum ferebar incerto pede ad non amicos heu mihi postis et heu limina dura, quibus lumbos et infregi latus. 10 20 EPODE XI O PETTIUS, no more do I delight as formerly to write my verses, for I am stricken with the heavy dart of Love, yea of Love who seeks to kindle me beyond all others with passion for tender boys and maids. The third December is now shaking the glory from the woods since I lost my infatuation for Inachia. Ah me! (for I'm ashamed of such a sore affliction), how people talked of me throughout the town! I hate to recall the feasts at which my listlessness and silence and the sighs drawn from my bosom's depths proved my love-lorn state. "To think that a poor man's guileless heart can naught avail against the power of gold," did I oft complain, unburdening my grief to thee, so soon as the god that banishes reserve had warmed me with the quickening wine and brought my secrets from their hiding-place. "But if a righteous. indignation should boil up within my heart, so as to scatter to the winds these thankless consolations that nowise ease my grievous suffering, I'll banish modesty and cease to vie with rivals not my peers." When with stern resolve I had praised this course before thee, bidden go home, I went my way with step irresolute towards door-posts to me, alas! unfriendly, and to thresholds hard, on which I racked nunc gloriantis quamlibet mulierculam my loins and side. Affection for Lyciscus now enthrals me, for Lyciscus, who claims in tenderness to outdo any woman, and from whom no friends' frank counsels or stern reproaches have power to set me free, but only another flame, either for some fair maid or slender youth, with long hair gathered in a knot. |