Caesar, I would sin against the public good if I
Wasted your time with tedious chatter, since you
Bear the weight of such great affairs, guarding Italy
With armies, raising its morals, reforming its laws.
Romulus, Father Liber, and Pollux and Castor,
Were welcomed to the gods’ temples after great deeds,
But while they still cared for earth, and human kind
Resolved fierce wars, allocated land, founded cities,
They bemoaned the fact that the support they received
Failed to reflect their hopes or merit. Hercules crushed
The deadly Hydra, was fated to toil at killing fabled
Monsters, but found Envy only tamed by death at last.
He will dazzle with his brilliance, who eclipses talents
Lesser than his own: yet be loved when it’s extinguished.
We though will load you while here with timely honours,
Set up altars, to swear our oaths at, in your name,
Acknowledging none such has risen or will arise.
Yet this nation of yours, so wise and right in this,
In preferring you above Greek, or our own, leaders,
Judges everything else by wholly different rules
And means, despising and hating whatever it has
Not itself seen vanish from earth, and fulfil its time:
It so venerates ancient things that the Twelve Tables
Forbidding sin the Decemvirs ratified, mutual
Treaties our kings made with Gabii, or tough Sabines,
The Pontiffs’ books, the musty scrolls of the seers,
It insists the Muses proclaimed on the Alban Mount!
If, because each of the oldest works of the Greeks
Is still the best, we must weigh our Roman writers
On the same scales, that doesn’t require many words:
Then there’d be no stone in an olive, shell on a nut:
We’ve achieved fortune’s crown, we paint, make music,
We wrestle, more skilfully than the oily Achaeans.
Bear the weight of such great affairs, guarding Italy
With armies, raising its morals, reforming its laws.
Romulus, Father Liber, and Pollux and Castor,
Were welcomed to the gods’ temples after great deeds,
But while they still cared for earth, and human kind
Resolved fierce wars, allocated land, founded cities,
They bemoaned the fact that the support they received
Failed to reflect their hopes or merit. Hercules crushed
The deadly Hydra, was fated to toil at killing fabled
Monsters, but found Envy only tamed by death at last.
He will dazzle with his brilliance, who eclipses talents
Lesser than his own: yet be loved when it’s extinguished.
We though will load you while here with timely honours,
Set up altars, to swear our oaths at, in your name,
Acknowledging none such has risen or will arise.
Yet this nation of yours, so wise and right in this,
In preferring you above Greek, or our own, leaders,
Judges everything else by wholly different rules
And means, despising and hating whatever it has
Not itself seen vanish from earth, and fulfil its time:
It so venerates ancient things that the Twelve Tables
Forbidding sin the Decemvirs ratified, mutual
Treaties our kings made with Gabii, or tough Sabines,
The Pontiffs’ books, the musty scrolls of the seers,
It insists the Muses proclaimed on the Alban Mount!
If, because each of the oldest works of the Greeks
Is still the best, we must weigh our Roman writers
On the same scales, that doesn’t require many words:
Then there’d be no stone in an olive, shell on a nut:
We’ve achieved fortune’s crown, we paint, make music,
We wrestle, more skilfully than the oily Achaeans.