Extant Works

They would have longed to praise the day; nor is Naso Ovid sad in his letters, nor Tibullus, rich with a glowing hearth.
To me, certainly, not one love, nor a simple cause for singing
drags me; together with you, the joined Muses are like referring to his fellow poets
260 me, Stella, and we revel much at the equal altars,
And we draw pure water from the learned streams.
But my first Parthenope Naples received you at your birth, and you, a glory,
did creep upon my soil; the Euboean land a reference to the Greek origin of Naples rises to the shining sky,
and Sebetos a river in Naples swells with its beautiful foster-child.
Nor let the Naiads of the Lucrine a lake near Baiae in their sulfurous caves,
Nor the leisure of the Pompeian Sarnus a river near Pompeii please you more.
Come now, hasten to produce famous descendants for Latium,
or "read" Who may read laws, who may command camps, who may play with poems.
270 May good Cynthia Diana, the goddess of childbirth hasten the tenth month of the birth,
But spare him, Lucina goddess of childbirth, I pray; and you yourself, boy,
Spare your parent, that you may not injure the soft womb or the firm
breasts; and when nature in a quiet retreat
has formed your face, may you bear much beauty from your father,
and more from your mother. But you, most beautiful form
of the Italian women, finally possessed by a deserving husband,
cherish the bonds so long sought. Thus, may no loss of beauty
come to you; thus, may your face last, green with the flower of long youth,
and may this form be slow to grow old.

THE TIBURTINE VILLA OF MANLIUS

VOPISCUS.

If anyone were to behold the cool Tibur of the eloquent Vopiscus,
And the two households estates on either side of the river with the Anio flowing between