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

When once again they seek and crave to reach

They know not what, all powerless to find

The artifice to subjugate the bane.

In such uncertain state they waste away

With unseen wound.

To which be added too,

They squander powers and with the travail wane;

Be added too, they spend their futile years

Under another's beck and call; their duties

Neglected languish and their honest name

Reeleth sick, sick; and meantime their estates

Are lost in Babylonian tapestries;

And unguents and dainty Sicyonian shoes

Laugh on her feet; and (as ye may be sure)

Big emeralds of green light are set in gold;

And rich sea-purple dress by constant wear

Grows shabby and all soaked with Venus' sweat;

And the well-earned ancestral property

Becometh head-bands, coifs, and many a time

The cloaks, or garments Alidensian

Or of the Cean isle. And banquets, set

With rarest cloth and viands, are prepared—

And games of chance, and many a drinking cup,

And unguents, crowns and garlands. All in vain,

Since from amid the well-spring of delights

Bubbles some drop of bitter to torment

Among the very flowers—when haply mind

Gnaws into self, now stricken with remorse

For slothful years and ruin in baudels,

Or else because she's left him all in doubt

By launching some sly word, which still like fire

Lives wildly, cleaving to his eager heart;

Or else because he thinks she darts her eyes

Too much about and gazes at another,—

And in her face sees traces of a laugh.

These ills are found in prospering love and true;

But in crossed love and helpless there be such

As through shut eyelids thou canst still take in—

Uncounted ills; so that 'tis better far

To watch beforehand, in the way I've shown,

And guard against enticements. For to shun

A fall into the hunting-snares of love

Is not so hard, as to get out again,

When tangled in the very nets, and burst

The stoutly-knotted cords of Aphrodite.

Yet even when there enmeshed with tangled feet,

Still canst thou scape the danger-lest indeed

Thou standest in the way of thine own good,

And overlookest first all blemishes

Of mind and body of thy much preferred,

Desirable dame. For so men do,

Eyeless with passion, and assign to them

Graces not theirs in fact. And thus we see

Creatures in many a wise crooked and ugly

The prosperous sweethearts in a high esteem;

And lovers gird each other and advise

To placate Venus, since their friends are smit

With a base passion—miserable dupes

Who seldom mark their own worst bane of all.

The black-skinned girl is "tawny like the honey";

The filthy and the fetid's "negligee";

The cat-eyed she's "a little Pallas," she;

The sinewy and wizened's "a gazelle";

The pudgy and the pigmy is "piquant,

One of the Graces sure"; the big and bulky

O she's "an Admiration, imposante";

The stuttering and tongue-tied "sweetly lisps";

The mute girl's "modest"; and the garrulous,

The spiteful spit-fire, is "a sparkling wit";

And she who scarcely lives for scrawniness

Becomes "a slender darling"; "delicate"

Is she who's nearly dead of coughing-fit;

The pursy female with protuberant breasts

She is "like Ceres when the goddess gave

Young Bacchus suck"; the pug-nosed lady-love

"A Satyress, a feminine Silenus";

The blubber-lipped is "all one luscious kiss"—

A weary while it were to tell the whole.

But let her face possess what charm ye will,

Let Venus' glory rise from all her limbs,—

Forsooth there still are others; and forsooth

We lived before without her; and forsooth

She does the same things—and we know she does—

All, as the ugly creature, and she scents,

Yes she, her wretched self with vile perfumes;

Whom even her handmaids flee and giggle at

Behind her back. But he, the lover, in tears

Because shut out, covers her threshold o'er

Often with flowers and garlands, and anoints

Her haughty door-posts with the marjoram,

And prints, poor fellow, kisses on the doors—

Admitted at last, if haply but one whiff

Got to him on approaching, he would seek

Decent excuses to go out forthwith;

And his lament, long pondered, then would fall

Down at his heels; and there he'd damn himself

For his fatuity, observing how

He had assigned to that same lady more—

Than it is proper to concede to mortals.

And these our Venuses are 'ware of this.

Wherefore the more are they at pains to hide

All the-behind-the-scenes of life from those

Whom they desire to keep in bonds of love—

In vain, since ne'ertheless thou canst by thought

Drag all the matter forth into the light

And well search out the cause of all these smiles;

And if of graceful mind she be and kind,

Do thou, in thy turn, overlook the same,

And thus allow for poor mortality.

Nor sighs the woman always with feigned love,

Who links her body round man's body locked

And holds him fast, making his kisses wet

With lips sucked into lips; for oft she acts

Even from desire, and, seeking mutual joys,

Incites him there to run love's race-course through.

Nor otherwise can cattle, birds, wild beasts,

And sheep and mares submit unto the males,

Except that their own nature is in heat,

And burns abounding and with gladness takes

Once more the Venus of the mounting males.

And seest thou not how those whom mutual pleasure

Hath bound are tortured in their common bonds?

How often in the cross-roads dogs that pant

To get apart strain eagerly asunder

With utmost might?—When all the while they're fast

In the stout links of Venus. But they'd ne'er

So pull, except they knew those mutual joys—

So powerful to cast them unto snares

And hold them bound. Wherefore again, again,

Even as I say, there is a joint delight.

And when perchance, in mingling seed with his,

The female hath o'erpowered the force of male

And by a sudden fling hath seized it fast,

Then are the offspring, more from mothers' seed,

More like their mothers; as, from fathers' seed,

They're like to fathers. But whom seest to be

Partakers of each shape, one equal blend

Of parents' features, these are generate

From fathers' body and from mothers' blood,

When mutual and harmonious heat hath dashed

Together seeds, aroused along their frames

By Venus' goads, and neither of the twain

Mastereth or is mastered. Happens too

That sometimes offspring can to being come

In likeness of their grandsires, and bring back

Often the shapes of grandsires' sires, because

Their parents in their bodies oft retain

Concealed many primal germs, commixed

In many modes, which, starting with the stock,

Sire handeth down to son, himself a sire;

Whence Venus by a variable chance

Engenders shapes, and diversely brings back

Ancestral features, voices too, and hair.

A female generation rises forth

From seed paternal, and from mother's body

Exist created males: since sex proceeds

No more from singleness of seed than faces

Or bodies or limbs of ours: for every birth

Is from a twofold seed; and what's created

Hath, of that parent which it is more like,

More than its equal share; as thou canst mark,—

Whether the breed be male or female stock.

Nor do the powers divine grudge any man

The fruits of his seed-sowing, so that never

He be called "father" by sweet children his,