Liber I.i

Cynthia was the first to capture
With her eyes my pitiable self:
Till then I was free from desire's contagion.
Love then forced me to lower my gaze of steady hauteur
And trampled my head with his feet
Until, perverse, he had taught me to demur
And live without taking thought.
A whole year, and my frenzy does not flag,
Though I'm forced to know the god's disapprobation

And, friends, that call me back from decline,
seek out remedies for unsound hearts:
I shall bear with fortitude cauterization and knife,
If only I'm free to speak as my anger wants,
Carry me through the farthest peoples and seas,
Where never a woman can follow my spoor.

Stay, to whom the god inclines a compliant ear:
Be always nicely matched in a safe love.
Our Venus plies bitter nights against me,
And at no time does Love either rest or cease.
Be warned, avoid my woe. Let each be held by
His own suit, don't change the seat of accustomed love!
But if anyone heeds my warning too late, alas,
How grievously he will recall my words.

Translated by W.G.Shepherd

Liber I.xviii

Haec certe deserta loca et taciturna querenti

Here is a silent, lonely region for grieving:
The breath of Zephyr possesses the empty grove.
Here may I reveal unchecked my hidden sorrows,
If only these isolated rocks keep faith.

Is it because I give few signs of changing color,
And no other token declares itself in my face?
You shall be my witness, if trees know love,
Beech and pine-tree dear to Arcadia's god -
How often my words resound in your gentle shade,
An Cynthia's name is graven in your bark!

Or because your injustice has given me pain?
But that's known only to your silent doors:
I'm accustomed to bearing timidly all your haughty
Commands without lamenting pointedly the facts -
For which I'm given holy wells and freezing rocks
And harsh repose by some neglected track:
And whatever my plaint may publish, I'm forced
To tell in solitude to whistling birds.

Be what you will, the woods re-echo Cynthia:
Your name does not vacate these lonely crags.


Liber II.viii

Even Achilles, abandoned, his mistress snatched away,
Endured his arms hung idle in his tent.
He saw the routed Achaeans strewn on the shore,
The Dorian camp that seethed with Hector's torches:
He saw Patroclus stretched out shapelessly
On the multitudinous sand,
His carnage-bespattered locks spread wide,
And suffered all for the sake of the lovely Briseis:
Grief was ruthless when love was snatched away.
But when as tardy dues his prize was given back,
That same brave Hector he trailed from his steeds.
Since I am much less by mother and by arms,
What wonder Love triunphs as by right over me?



Liber II.xvi

Yet no one would harm a consecrated lover;
He may go down the middle of Sciron's road.
Whoever's in love, though he stroll on Scythian shores,
No one will be so savage as to harm him.
The moon attends his way, stars point out the potholes,
Love himself shakes up the lighted torch ahead.
Mad raging watchdogs turn aside their gaping bites:
For such as him the road is safe at any time.
Who so unfeeling as to spatter his hands with a lover's blood?
Venus herself befriends the man kept off.



Liber III.i

Callimachi Manes et Coi sacra Philetae

Callimachus' shade and holy rites of Coan Philetas,
Permit me, I pray, to enter your grove. I am
The first initiate to attempt by pure spring water
To lead Italia Mysteries into the dances of Greece.
In what dell did you together spin your poems?
Where did you direct your feet? What water drink?

Farewell the man who detained Phoebus in arms!
Let verse go neatly, fined by pumice -
By such, Fame raises me aloft from earth,
And the Muse, my daughter triumphs with garlanded horses,
And with me in my chariot ride small Loves,
And a crowd of writers follow my wheels.
Why loose your reins to compete in vain with me?
It is not given to rush the Muses by a wide road.
Many, Rome, shall add new praise to your annals,
And sing that Bactra shall be the empire's bound:
That you may read in peacetime, my page has fetched.
Muses, garland your poet with gentle flowers;
An oppresive crown would never do for my head.



Liber III.xiv

The Spartan wrestlers and their rules amaze me-
but, more, the school in which their women train,
where they may exercise their naked bodies
on the same ground on which those wrestlers strain,
That dusty figure at the goal's a woman;
a woman in this rough-and-tumble fight!
Another binds her eager hands for boxing;
a fourth girl whirls the discus overhead,
or, with hoarfrost on her hair, goes racing
after her father's hounds, where they have sped;
fierce as the Amazonian warriors bathing
barebreasted in Thermodon's river bed,
nor blushed before her brothers, one the horseman
and one the champion who fought with fists.
This is Sparta that indulges lovers,
where couples hand-in-hand in public walk,
no girl goes guarded, no one rants of honour,
none dreads a husband's wrath or threatening talk.
All unannounced, there you may state your business
with neither deputy nor long delay;
a lover's not beguiled by nonessentials,
his dear does not arrange her hair all day.
Rome, learn from Sparta's healthy point of view.
Yield! Give us cause to further honor you!

Translated by Constance Carter


Liber IV.i

Hoc quodcumque vides, hospes, qua Maxima Roma est

Whatever you see here, stranger, which is mighty Rome,
Was hill and grass before Phrygian Aeneas:
And where the Palantine shrines of Phoebus stand,
Evander's exiled cattle sank to the ground.
These golden temples arose from earthenware gods,
There was no disgrace in a cabin made without art:
The Tarpeian Father thundered from the naked rock,
And Tiber was still foreign to our cattle.

Where Remus' house stands up there at the head of the steps,
One heath was once the brothers' mighty kingdom.
The Curia, now shining aloft with
Senators' purple-fringed togas,
Held skin-clad Fathers, rural hearts.
No billowing awning draped the hollow theatre,
The stage was not scented with ceremonial saffron.
No one was concerned to seek exotic gods,
But trembled in suspense before the rites of his fathers.