Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

World-weary wand'rer touches home, returns, sinks down

In joy to slumber on the bed desir'd so long.

This meed, this only counts for e'en an age all toil.

O take a welcome, lovely Sirmio, thy lord's,

And greet him happy; greet him all the lake Lydian;

Laugh out whatever laughter at the hearth rings clear.

Table of Contents

List, I charge thee, my gentle Ipsithilla,

Lovely ravisher and my dainty mistress,

Say we'll linger a lazy noon together.

Suits my company? lend a farther hearing:

See no jealousy make the gate against me,

See no fantasy lead thee out a-roaming.

Keep close chamber; anon in all profusion

Count me kisses again again returning.

Bides thy will? with a sudden haste command me;

Full and wistful, at ease reclin'd, a lover

Here I languish alone, supinely dreaming.

Table of Contents

Master-robber of all that haunt the bath-rooms,

Old Vibennius, and his heir the wanton;

(His the dirtier hands, the greedy father,

Yours the filthier heart, his heir as hungry;)

Please your knaveries hoist a sail for exile,

Pains and privacy? since by this the father's

Thefts are palpable, and a rusty favour,

Son, picks never a penny from the people.

Table of Contents

Great Diana protecteth us,

Maids and boyhood in innocence.

Maidens virtuous, innocent

Boys, your song be Diana.

Hail, Latonia, thou that art

Throned daughter of enthronis'd

Jove; near Delian olive of

Mighty mother y-boren.

Queen of mountainous heights, of all

Forests leafy, delightable;

Glens in bowery depths remote,

Rivers wrathfully sounding.

Thee, Lucina, the travailing

Mother haileth, a sovereign

Juno; Trivia thou, the bright

Moon, a glory reflected.

Thou thine annual orb anew,

Goddess, monthly remeasuring,

Farmsteads lowly with affluent

Corn dost fill to the flowing.

Be thy heavenly name whate'er

Name shall please thee, in hallowing;

Still keep safely the glorious

Race of Romulus olden.

Table of Contents

1.

Take Caecilius, him the tender-hearted

Bard, my paper, a wish from his Catullus.

Come from Larius, haste to leave the new-built

Comum's watery city, seek Verona.

Some particular intimate reflexions

One would tell thee, a friend we love together.

2.

So he'll quickly devour the way, if only

He's no booby; for all a snowy maiden

Chide imperious, and her hands around him

Both in jealousy clasp'd, refuse departure.

She, if only report the truth bely not,

Doats, as hardly within her own possession.

3.

For since lately she read his high-preluding

Queen of Dindymus, all her heart is ever

Melting inly with ardour and with anguish.

Maiden, laudable is that high emotion,

Muse more rapturous, you, than any Sappho.

The Great Mother he surely sings divinely.

Table of Contents

1.

Vilest paper of all dishonour, annals

Of Volusius, hear my lovely lady's

Vow, and pay it; awhile she swore to Venus

And fond Cupid, if ever I returning

Ceased from enmity, left to launch iambics,

She would surely devote the sorry poet's

Choicest rarities unto sooty Vulcan,

The lame deity, there to blaze lamenting.

With such drollery, such supreme defiance,

Swore strange oath to the gods the naughty wanton.

2.

Now, O heavenly child of azure Ocean,

Queen of Idaly, queen of Urian highlands,

Who Ancona the fair, the reedy Cnidos

Hauntest, Amathus and the lawny Golgi,

Or Dyrrhachium, hostel Adriatic;

Hear thy votaress, answer her petition;

'Tis most graceful, a dainty thought to charm thee.

But ye verses, away to fire, to burning,

Rank rusticities, empty vapid annals

Of Volusius, heap of all dishonour.

Table of Contents

1.

O frowsy tavern, frowsy fellowship therein,

Ninth post in order next beyond the twins cap-crown'd,

Shall manly service none but you alone employ,

Shall you alone whatever in the world smiles fair,

Possess it, every other hold to lack esteem?

Or if in idiot impotence arow you sit,

One hundred, yes two hundred, am not I, think you,

A man to bring mine action on your whole row there?

So think not, he that likes not; answer how you may,

With scorpion I, with emblem all your haunt will scrawl.

2.

For she the bright one, lately fled beyond these arms,

The maid belov'd as maiden is belov'd no more,

Whom I to win, stood often in the breach, fought long,

Has sat amongst you. Her the grand, the great, all, all

Do dearly love her; yea, beshrew the damned wrong,

Each slight seducer, every lounger highway-born,

You chiefly, peerless paragon of the tribe long-lock'd,

Rude Celtiberia's child, the bushy rabbit-den,

Egnatius, so modish in the big bush-beard,

And teeth a native lotion hardly scours quite pure.

Table of Contents

Cornificius, ill is your Catullus,

Ill, ah heaven, a weary weight of anguish,

More more weary with every day, with each hour.

You deny me the least, the very lightest

Help, one whisper of happy thought to cheer me.

Nay, I'm sorrowful. You to slight my passion?

Ah! one word, but a tiny word to cheer me,

Sad as ever a tear Simonidean.

Table of Contents

1.

Egnatius, spruce owner of superb white teeth,

Smiles sweetly, smiles for ever: is the bench in view

Where stands a pleader just prepar'd to rouse our tears,

Egnatius smiles sweetly; near the pyre they mourn

Where weeps a mother o'er the lost, the kind one son,

Egnatius smiles sweetly; what the time or place

Or thing soe'er, smiles sweetly; such a rare complaint

Is his, not handsome, scarce to please the town, say I.

2.

So take a warning for the nonce, my friend; town-bred

Were you, a Sabine hale, a pearly Tiburtine,

A frugal Umbrian body, Tuscan huge of paunch,

A grim Lanuvian black of hue, prodigious-tooth'd,

A Transpadane, my country not to pass untax'd,

In short whoever cleanly cares to rinse foul teeth,

Yet sweetly smiling ever I would have you not,

For silly laughter, it's a silly thing indeed.

3.

Well: you're a Celtiberian; in the parts thereby

What pass'd the night in water, every man, come dawn,

Scours clean the foul teeth with it and the gums rose-red;

So those Iberian snowy teeth, the more they shine,

So much the deeper they proclaim the draught impure.

Table of Contents

What fatality, what chimera drives thee

Headlong, Ravidus, on to my iambics?

What fell deity, most malign to listen,

Fires thy fury to quarrel unavailing?

Wouldst thou busy the breath of half the people?

Break with clamour at any cost the silence?

Thou wilt do it; a wretch that hop'd my darling

Love to fondle, a sure retaliation.

Table of Contents

Ameana, the maiden of the people,

Asks me sesterces, all the many thousands.

Maiden she with a nose not wholly faultless,

Bankrupt Formian, your declar'd devotion.

Wherefore look to the maiden, her relations:

Call her family, summon all the doctors.

Your poor maiden is oddly touch'd; a mirror