Priapeia
Priaepia
by divers poets in English verse and prose. Translated by Sir Richard Burton and Leonard C. Smithers
- Corpses by fellow-slaves were coffined in biers of the vilest.
- This was the common yard to ensepulchre wretched plebeians,
- Pantolabus the buffoon and Nomentanus the rake-hell.
- Frontage a thousand feet, three hundred fieldwards, a land mark
- Here assigned, lest the ground monumental follow the heir folk.
- Now 'tis salubrious made: one fives in th' Esquiliae, also
- Walks on the sunny mound, where erstwhile showed to folk sad-eyed
- Fields by bones deformed a-glistening ghostly and ghastly;
- Yet for me never was aught, or thieves or ferals accustomed
- This foul spot to behaunt, a cause of such care and such trouble