Extant Works

The rivers drive out, thus the Bruttian shore, separated by the deep,
looks across at the Sicilian Pelorus.
What shall I sing of first, or in the middle, or at what end shall I rest,
The gilded beams? Or the Moorish doorposts on every side?
Shall I marvel at the marbles shining with their painted vein?
Or the waters sent forth through all the bedchambers?
Hither I am drawn by my eyes, hither by my mind. Shall I speak
40 Of the venerable old age of the groves? The shallows of the river below
or "silent" which you see? Or to the woods, where you look back, the hall of the silent one.
Where you have total peace, and night is silent, troubled by no gust,
And imitates dark slumbers?
Or where the baths, taken up on a grassy embankment, smoke,
And the fire placed upon the cooling banks?
And where the river, joined to the vaporous furnaces,
Laughs at the panting Nymphs in the neighboring stream.
I saw the arts, and the hands of the ancients, and the living metals
In various modes; it is a labor to recount the figures of gold,
Or the ivory, or to touch the gems worthy of the fingers.
50 Whatever, whether in silver or in bronze, Myron famed Greek sculptor
Sported, and the hand that tested enormous colossi.