Venus, after stopping for so long,
are you moving to war again? Have mercy, I pray, I pray.
I am not the man I was
under the reign of Cinara the good. Stop, savage
mother of sweet desires,
trying to sway one of around fifty years, hardened now
to your soft commands: leave,
to where the alluring prayers of young men call you back.
More fittingly, in the house
of Paulus Maximus you, winged with shining
swans, will revel,
if you want to burn a suitable seat of the soul;
for he is noble and worthy
and not silent on the behalf of anxious defendants
and, a boy of a hundred skills,
he will carry the standard of your army widely
and, when he is more powerful
than the gifts of his extravagant rival, he will laugh
and near an Alban lake
he will set you up in marble under a cedar roof.
There you will inhale
incense in profusion and you will enjoy the lyre
and the Berecyntian pipe,
mixed with songs, not without the panpipes;
there, twice a day, boys
with tender maidens, praising your divinity,
with white feet
will beat the ground in triple time in the Salian way.
Neither a woman nor a boy
nor the innocent hope of a mutual feeling pleases me now
nor competing with wine,
nor decorating my temple with fresh garlands.
But why, alas, why, Ligurinus,
is a rare tear dripping down my cheeks?
Why does my eloquent tongue
fall into an all too undignified silence between words?
At night in my dreams, I
now hold you tightly, now follow you in flight
through the grass of Mars'
park, through running water, hard-hearted as you are.
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intermissa, Venus, diu
rusus bella moves? parce, precor precor.
non sum qualis eram bonae
sub regno Cinarae. desine, dulcium
mater saeva Cupidinum,
circa lustra decem flectere mollibus
iam durum imperiis: abi,
quo blandae iuvenum te revocant preces.
tempestivius in domum
Pauli purpureis ales oloribus
comissabere Maximi,
si torrere iecur quaeris idoneum;
namque et nobilis et decens
et pro sollicitis non tacitus reis
et centum puer artium
late signa feret militiae tuae
et, quandoque potentior
largi muneribus riserit aemuli,
Albanos prope te lacus
ponet marmoream sub trabe citrea.
illic plurima naribus
duces tura lyraeque et Berecyntiae
delectabere tibiae
mixtis carminibus non sine fistula;
illic bis pueri die
numen cum teneris virginibus tuum
laudantes pede candido
in morem Salium ter quatient humum.
me nec femina nec puer
iam nec spes animi credula mutui
nec certare iuvat mero
nec vincire novis tempora floribus.
sed cur heu, Ligurine, cur
manat rara meas lacrima per genas?
cur facunda parum decoro
inter verba cadit lingua silentio?
nocturnis ego somniis
iam captum teneo, iam volucrem sequor
te per gramina Martii
campi, te per aquas, dure, volubilis.
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