Carmina

We, upright maids and youths, are in Diana's care: upright youths and maids, we sing Diana. 0 Latonia, progeny great of greatest Jove, whom your mother bore beneath Delian olive, that you might be queen of lofty mounts, of foliaged groves, of remote glens, and of winding streams. You are called Juno Lucina by the mother in the pangs of childbirth, you are named potent Trivia and Luna with an ill-got light. You, Goddess, with monthly march measuring the yearly course, glut with produce the rustic roofs of the farmer. Be you hallowed by whatever name you prefer; and cherish, with your good aid, as you are accustomed, the ancient race of Romulus.

Paper, I would like you say to that sweet poet, my comrade, Caecilius, that he come to Verona, quitting New Comum's city-walls and Larius' shore; for I want him to receive certain thoughts from a friend of his and mine. Therefore, if he is wise, he'll devour the way, although a bright-hued girl a thousand times calls him back when he goes, and flinging both arms around his neck asks him to delay—she who now, if truth is reported to me, is undone with immoderate love of him. For, since the time she read the beginning of his Mistress of Dindymus, flames have been devouring the innermost marrow of the poor little girl. I forgive you, girl, more learned than the Sapphic muse: for charmingly has the Great Mother been begun by Caecilius.

Volusius' Annals, defiled sheets, fulfil a vow for my girl: for she vowed to sacred Venus and to Cupid that if I were reunited to her, and I desisted hurling savage iambics, she would give the choicest writings of the worst poet to the slow-footed god to be burned with ill-omened wood. And the wretched girl saw herself vow this to the gods in jest. Now, O Creation of the pale blue sea, you who dwell in sacred Idalium and in storm-beaten Urium, and foster Ancona and reedy Amathus, Cnidos and Golgos and Dyrrhachium, the tavern of the Adriatic, accept and acknowledge this vow if it lacks neither grace nor charm. But meantime, off with you to the flames, crammed with boorish speech and vapid, Annals of Volusius, defiled sheets.

Tavern of lust and you, its tentmates (at ninth pillar from the Cap-donned Brothers), do you think that you alone have mentules, that it is allowed to you alone to have sex with whatever may be feminine, and to think the rest are goats? But, because you sit, tasteless, hundred or maybe two hundred in a row, do you think I would not dare to bone you entire two hundred loungers at once! Just think it! for I'll scrawl dirty pictures all over the front of your tavern. For my girl, who has fled from my embrace, she whom I loved as none will be loved, for whom I fought fierce fights, has seated herself here. All of you, good men and rich, and also (0 cursed shame) all of you piddling back-alley fornicators, are making love to her; and you above all, Egnatius, one of the long-haired race, the son of Celtiberia full of rabbits, whose quality is stamped by dense-grown beard, and teeth scrubbed with Spanish urine.