Octavia
Octavia
Headnote
Octavia is the only fabula praetexta — Roman historical tragedy — to survive whole from antiquity, and the only ancient play whose characters are real, recent, named Romans rather than figures of myth. It dramatizes a single day in AD 62: the day the emperor Nero divorces and exiles his wife Octavia, daughter of the deified Claudius, to marry his mistress Poppaea Sabina, while the city rises in Octavia’s favor and is crushed. It is transmitted with the corpus of Senecan tragedy and is cast wholly in Seneca’s theatrical idiom — the same declamatory trimeters, anapaestic laments, choral odes, and stichomythic combat — so the reader meets it on the terms of the other nine plays. But Seneca himself appears in it as a character, and the action turns on events of AD 62 and after, including Nero’s own death, foretold in detail; for these reasons the play is now almost universally judged to be post-Senecan, the work of an anonymous dramatist writing under the Flavians, perhaps within a generation of the events. The edition keeps it where the manuscripts keep it, among the tragedies, and renders it in the one voice of the corpus; the disputed authorship is a fact about the text, not about how the lines should sound.
The play is built as a series of laments and confrontations rather than a plot. The first act belongs to Octavia and her Nurse: Octavia, already half a ghost “kept alive for my own mourning,” rehearses the destruction of her whole family — her mother Messalina executed, her father Claudius poisoned by his last wife Agrippina, her brother Britannicus poisoned by Nero — and measures her own helplessness against Electra, who at least had a brother to avenge her. The Nurse counsels the Stoic-tinged prudence of submission; Octavia answers with refusal. A chorus of Romans loyal to her closes the act with the play’s first great set-piece, the narrative of Agrippina’s murder: Nero’s collapsing pleasure-boat, her swim to shore, and the soldier’s sword, ending on her command that the blade be driven into the womb “that bore such a monster.”
The second act is the famous confrontation between Seneca and Nero. Seneca enters with a long soliloquy lamenting his recall from Corsican exile to the dangerous height of the court, and surveying the decline of the world from the Golden Age of Justice and Astraea down to the iron present — a Stoic cosmology and moral history that is the play’s philosophical center. Then Nero arrives, having just ordered the heads of his rivals Plautus and Sulla, and the two men fight a stichomythic duel that is a textbook of the tyrant and his philosopher: Seneca urging clemency, the saving of citizens, the model of Augustus, the rule of law and consent; Nero answering with the maxims of absolute power — “my Fortune permits me all things,” “foolish, to fear the gods when I myself make them” — and with a cold catalogue of the proscriptions and civil wars by which the first Augustus in fact climbed to his deification. The act ends with Nero overriding every argument and fixing the wedding to Poppaea for the next day.
The third act opens the underworld onto the stage in the manner of Senecan tragedy: the ghost of Agrippina rises from Tartarus with a bridal torch turned funeral, to curse the marriage of her son and prophesy his ruin and squalid death. The fourth act gives Poppaea her single scene — a nightmare, recounted to her own Nurse, in which she sees Agrippina’s bloody torch, the gaping earth, her former husband Crispinus, and Nero plunging a sword — glossed reassuringly by the Nurse and answered by a chorus praising her beauty above Helen’s, before a Messenger reports the people in revolt, tearing down Poppaea’s statues and threatening to burn the palace. The fifth act is Nero’s revenge: he rages at his soldiers’ slowness, orders Octavia’s death and contemplates burning Rome, and overrides the Prefect’s horror in a second stichomythic duel. Octavia is led to the ship for Pandataria and her execution; the chorus, in the play’s last words, prays the winds to carry her off as they once snatched Iphigenia from the altar, and closes on the bitterest line in the play: gentler than Rome is the barbarous land of the Taurians, where a god is appeased by a stranger’s blood — “Rome rejoices in the blood of her own.”
Historically, Octavia was banished to Pandateria (Pandataria, modern Ventotene) and killed there in June AD 62, aged about twenty; Poppaea died in 65, Seneca was forced to suicide the same year, and Nero fell in 68 — so the chorus’s prophecy of the tyrant’s “shameful flight” and abandonment was, for the play’s first audience, already history. The translation keeps the line-by-line structure of the verse and the cut of the stichomythia, renders the gods and the underworld in their Roman forms, and leaves the rhetorical heightening — the horror, the curses, the cosmic despair — to stand as the style intends.
Now shining Dawn puts the wandering stars to flight in the sky. Titan rises with radiant hair and gives the bright day back to the world. Come now — laden with so many, such heavy ills, take up again the laments grown familiar to you, and outdo the halcyons of the sea, outdo the birds of Pandion too: for your fortune is heavier than theirs. Mother, forever to be wept by me, first cause of my sorrows, hear your daughter’s sad laments, if any feeling remains among the shades. Would that with her own aged hand Clotho had broken my threads before I, grieving, saw your wounds and your face spattered with foul gore! O daylight, always deadly to me, from that hour you are a light more hateful than the dark: I have borne a savage stepmother’s commands, her hostile spirit and her grim looks. She, she, the grim Fury of my marriage, carried Stygian fires before my wedding and put you out, pitiable father, you whom but lately the whole world obeyed, from whom the Britons beyond the Ocean turned and fled, till then unknown to our generals and masters of themselves. By a wife’s treachery, father — ah me — you lie crushed, and the house with your children is held captive by a tyrant.
Iam vaga caelo sidera fulgens Aurora fugat. surgit Titan radiante coma mundoque diem reddit clarum, age. tot tantis onerata malis, repete assuetos iam tibi questus atque aequoreas vince Alcyonas, vince et volucres Pandionias: gravior namque his fortuna tua est. semper, genetrix, deflenda mihi, prima meorum causa malorum, tristes questus natae exaudi, si quis remanet sensus in umbris, utinam ante manu grandaeva sua mea rupisset stamina Clotho, tua quam maerens vulnera vidi oraque foedo sparsa cruore! o lux semper funesta mihi, tempore ab illo lux es tenebris invisa magis: tulimus saevae iussa novercae, hostilem animum vultusque truces, illa illa meis tristis Erinys thalamis Stygios praetulit ignes teque extinxit, miserande pater, modo cui totus paruit orbis cuique Britanni ultra Oceanum terga dedere, ducibus nostris ante ignoti iurisque sui. coniugis, heu me, pater, insidiis oppresse iaces servatque domus cum prole tua capta tyranno.
Whoever, caught by its first glitter and the brittle good of a deceiving court, stands stunned and amazed, let him see — by the sudden onset of lurking Fortune — the once all-powerful house thrown down, the stock of Claudius, to whose command the world lay subject, whom the Ocean, long free, obeyed and, unwilling, received his ships. See — he who first laid the yoke on the Britons, who screened with such great fleets the straits unknown to them, and was safe among barbarous nations and savage seas, fell by his wife’s crime; and she soon by her son’s. Her brother lies dead by poison; his unhappy sister grieves — she who is also his wife — and cannot, forced to it, hide her heavy grief from her cruel husband’s anger; him, chaste, she always shuns, and her husband, burning with equal hatred, blazes with a matching fire. My loyalty and devotion console her grieving spirit in vain: relentless grief defeats my counsels, and her noble passion cannot be governed, but draws strength from its very woes. Alas, what unspeakable crime my fear foresees — may the will of the gods avert it.
Fulgore primo captus et fragili bono fallacis aulae quisquis attonitus stupet, subito† latentis ecce Fortunae impetu modo praepotentem cernat eversam domum stirpem que Claudi, cuius imperio fuit subiectus orbis, paruit liber diu Oceanus et recepit invitus rates. en qui Britannis primus imposuit iugum, ignota tantis classibus texit freta interque gentes barbaras tutus fuit et saeva maria, coniugis scelere occidit; mox illa gnati: cuius extinctus iacet frater venenis, maeret infelix soror eademque coniunx nec graves luctus valet ira coacta tegere crudelis viri; quem sancta refugit semper, atque odio pari ardens maritus mutua flagrat face. animum dolentis nostra solatur fides pietasque frustra: vincit immitis dolor consilia nostra nec regi mentis potest generosus ardor, sed malis vires capit. heu quam nefandum prospicit noster timor scelus, quod utinam numen avertat deum.
O my fortune, to be matched by no other’s woes — though I recall, Electra, your griefs. You in mourning were allowed to weep a slain father, to avenge the crime through an avenging brother, whom your devotion snatched from the enemy and your faith hid: but me fear forbids to mourn my parents, torn from me by a cruel lot, and bars me from weeping my brother’s death, in whom had been my one hope and the brief solace of so many ills. Now, kept alive for my own mourning, I remain the shadow of a great name.
O mea nullis aequanda malis fortuna, licet repetam luctus, Electra tuos. tibi maerenti caesum licuit flere parentem, scelus ulcisci vindice fratre, tua quem pietas hosti rapuit texitque fides: me crudeli sorte parentes raptos prohibet lugere timor fratrisque necem deflere vetat, in quo fuerat spes una mihi totque malorum breve solamen. nunc in luctus servata meos magni resto nominis umbra.
Hark — my sad ward’s voice has struck my ears; shall slow old age delay to carry its steps to her chamber?
Vox en nostras perculit aures tristis alumnae; cesset thalamis inferre gradus tarda senectus?
Receive my tears, nurse, faithful witness of my grief.
Excipe nostras lacrimas, nutrix, testis nostri fida doloris.
What day, poor child, will free you from such great cares?
Quis te tantis solvet curis, miseranda, dies?
The day that sends me to the Stygian shades.
Qui me Stygias mittet ad umbras.
Far from us, I pray, be such omens.
Omina quaeso sint ista procul.
Not your prayers govern my fortunes now, but the fates.
Non vota meos tua nunc casus, sed fata regunt.
A gentle god will give the afflicted better times; only do you, appeased, win over your husband by soft compliance.
Dabit afflictae meliora deus tempora mitis; tu modo blando vince obsequio placata virum
Sooner shall I tame savage lions and fierce tigers than the wild heart of the savage tyrant. He hates those born of noble blood, he scorns the gods and men alike, and cannot himself bear his own fortune, which his unspeakable mother gave him through a monstrous crime — though the ingrate be ashamed to have taken this empire as the gift of a dread mother, though he repay so great a gift with her death, yet that woman will bear this title through the long ages, forever, even past death.
Vincam saevos ante leones tigresque truces, fera quam saevi corda tyranni. odit genitos sanguine claro, spernit superos hominesque simul, nec fortunam capit ipse suam quam dedit illi per scelus ingens infanda parens, licet ingratum dirae pudeat munere matris hoc imperium cepisse, licet tantum munus morte rependat, feret hunc titulum post fata tamen femina longo semper in aevo.
Hold back the words of your raging spirit, check the speech rashly let slip.
Animi retine verba furentis, temere emissam comprime vocem.
Though I endure what must be borne, my ills can never be ended save by a sorrowful death. My mother slain, my father snatched by crime, robbed of my brother, sunk in miseries and grief, crushed by sorrow, hateful to my husband and made subject to my own handmaid, I enjoy a daylight I do not want, my heart forever trembling — not from fear of death but of crime. Let no guilt touch my fate; it will be a joy to die. For it is a punishment worse than death for me, wretched, to look on the swollen, grim face of the tyrant, and to join my kisses with my enemy’s, to dread his nod — whose every wish my grief could not endure to obey, after my brother’s death, murdered by crime, whose power the author of that unspeakable killing now holds, and gloats in his lot. How often my brother’s sad shade is set before my eyes, when rest unbinds my limbs and sleep weighs down my eyes worn out with weeping: now he arms his feeble hands with black torches and, hostile, strikes at his brother’s eyes and face, now the same, in terror, flees into my chamber; the enemy pursues, and as he clings to me drives the savage sword through my side. Then trembling and huge dread shake off my sleep and renew the grief and fear in wretched me. Add to these that proud concubine, gleaming with the spoils of our house, for whose reward the son set his own mother aboard the Stygian boat, whom, after the dread shipwreck, when she had overcome the sea, he killed with the sword, crueler than the straits of the deep: what hope of safety is left to me after so great a crime? My victorious enemy looms over my marriage-bed, blazes with hatred of me, and demands from my husband, as the wage of her adultery, the lawful wife’s head. Rise from the shades and bring help to your daughter who calls you, father, or break the earth and open the gulfs of Styx, where I may rush headlong.
Toleranda quamvis patiar, haud umquam queant nisi morte tristi nostra finiri mala. genetrice caesa, per scelus rapto patre, orbata fratre, miseriis luctu obruta, maerore pressa, coniugi invisa ac meae subiecta famulae luce non grata fruor, trepidante semper corde non mortis metu, sed sceleris— absit crimen a fatis meis, mori iuvabit; poena nam gravior nece est videre tumidos et truces miserae mihi vultus tyranni iungere atque hosti oscula. no timere nutus cuius obsequium meus haud ferre posset fata post fratris dolor scelere interempti, cuius imperium tenet et sorte gaudet auctor infandae necis. quam saepe tristis umbra germani meis offertur oculis, membra cum solvit quies et fessa fletu lumina oppressit sopor: modo facibus atris armat infirmas manus oculosque et ora fratris infestus petit, modo trepidus idem refugit in thalamos meos persequitur hostis atque inhaerenti mihi violentus ensem per latus nostrum rapit. tunc tremor et ingens excutit somnos pavor renovatque luctus et metus miserae mihi. adice his superbam paelicem, nostrae domus spoliis nitentem”, cuius in munus suam Stygiae parentem natus imposuit rati, quam dira post naufragia superato mari ferro interemit saevior pelagi fretis: quae spes salutis post nefas tantum mihi? inimica victrix imminet thalamis meis odioque nostri flagrat et pretium stupri iustae maritum coniugis poscit caput. emergere umbris et fer auxilium tuae natae invocanti, genitor, aut Stygios sinus tellure rupta pande, quo praeceps ferar.
In vain you call your father’s shade, poor child, in vain — he who keeps among the shades no care at all for his own offspring: he who could prefer to his own son one sprung of another’s blood, and, having pledged his brother’s daughter as his wife, joined her to himself in an unspeakable bed with a mournful torch. From this arose the chain of crimes: murders, treacheries, lust for the throne, thirst for noble blood; the son-in-law fell, sacrificed at his father-in-law’s wedding, a victim, lest your marriage make him great. What a monstrous deed! Silanus was given as a gift to a woman, and with his own blood defiled his father’s household gods — charged with a trumped-up crime. The enemy entered — ah me — the captured house, made by the stepmother’s wiles the prince’s son-in-law and at once his son, a youth of unspeakable nature, fit for any crime, for whom his dread mother lit the torch and joined you to him, unwilling, by fear. And, made fierce by so great a success in victory, she dared to reach for the empire of the sacred world. Who can recount so many shapes of crime, the woman’s unspeakable hopes and coaxing wiles as she sought the throne through every degree of wickedness? Then holy Piety carried her trembling steps away, and the savage Fury with deadly foot entered the emptied palace, defiled with a Stygian torch the sacred household gods, and in frenzy broke every law of nature and all right: the wife mixed savage poisons for her husband, and she herself soon fell by the crime of her own son; you too lie dead, unhappy boy, forever to be wept by us, but lately the star of the world, the pillar of the august house, Britannicus — ah me — now only a little ash and a sad shade; for whom even the savage stepmother gave tears, when she gave your limbs to the pyre to be burned, and the funeral flame bore away your limbs and face, like a god in flight.
Frustra parentis invocas manes tui, miseranda, frustra, nulla cui prolis suae manet inter umbras cura: qui nato suo praeferre potuit sanguine alieno satum genitamque fratris coniugem pactus sibi toris nefandis flebili iunxit face. hinc orta series facinorum: caedes, doli, regni cupido, sanguinis clari sitis; mactata soceri concidit thalamis gener victima, tuis ne fieret hymenaeis potens. pro facinus ingens! feminae est munus datus Silanus et cruore foedavit suo patrios penates,-criminis ficti reus. intravit hostis, ei mihi, captam domum, dolis novercae principis factus gener idemque natus, iuvenis infandi ingeni, scelerum capacis, dira cui genetrix facem accendit et te iunxit invitam metu. tantoque victrix facta successu ferox ausa imminere est orbis imperio sacri. quis tot referre facinorum formas potest et spes nefandas feminae et blandos dolos regnum petentis per gradus scelerum omnium? tunc sancta Pietas extulit trepidos gradus vacuamque Erinys saeva funesto pede intravit aulam, polluit Stygia face sacros penates, iura naturae furens fasque omne rupit: miscuit coniunx viro venena saeva, cecidit atque eadem sui mox scelere nati; tu quoque extinctus iaces, deflende nobis semper infelix puer, modo sidus orbis, columen augustae domus, Britanniae, heu me, nunc levis tantum cinis et tristis umbra; saeva cui lacrimas dedit etiam noverca, cum rogis artus tuos dedit cremandos membraque et vultus deo similes volanti funebris flamma abstulit.
Let him destroy me too — lest I fall by my own hand!
Extinguat et me, ne manu nostra cadat!
Nature has not given you such strength.
Natura vires non dedit tantas tibi.
Grief, anger, sorrow, misery, mourning will give it.
Dolor ira maeror miseriae luctus dabunt.
Rather conquer your harsh husband by obeying.
Vince obsequendo potius immitem virum.
That he may give me back my brother, taken by crime?
Vt fratrem ademptum scelere restituat mihi?
That you yourself may be safe, and one day restore your father’s falling house with offspring of your own.
Incolumis ut sis ipsa, labentem ut domum genitoris olim subole restituas tua.
The house awaits another offspring of the prince; for me the dread fate of my unhappy brother draws me down.
Expectat aliam principis subolem domus; me dira miseri fata germani trahunt.
Let the citizens’ great favor steady your spirit.
Confirmet animum civium tantus favor.
That consoles my ills, but does not lift them.
Solatur iste nostra, non relevat mala.
The people’s strength is great.
Vis magna populi est.
Yet the prince’s is greater.
Principis maior tamen.
He will yet have regard for his wife —
Respiciet ipse coniugem,
The concubine forbids it.
Paelex vetat.
Hated by all, surely.
Invisa cunctis nempe.
But dear to her husband.
Sed cara est viro.
She is not yet a wife.
Nondum uxor est.
Soon she will be — and a mother at once.
Iam fiet, et genetrix simul.
Youthful passion rages in its first onset, yet easily slackens and does not last long in a base love, like the light heat of a flame: the love of a chaste wife endures forever. She who first dared to violate your marriage-bed and, a slave, long possessed her master’s heart, now herself fears —
Iuvenilis ardor impetu primo furit, languescit idem facile nec durat diu in Venere turpi, ceu levis flammae vapor: amor perennis coniugis castae manet. violare prima quae toros ausa est tuos animumque domini famula possedit diu, iam metuit eadem—
Yes — that another is preferred to her.
Nempe praelatum sibi.
Submissive and lowly, she even raises monuments by which, confessing her fear, she bears witness to it. And her too the fickle, deceiving, winged god, Cupid, will desert: though she go forth supreme in beauty and proud in wealth, she will seize but a brief joy. The queen of the gods herself suffered like sorrows, when the lord of heaven and father of the gods turned himself into every shape — and now took on a swan’s wings, now the horns of a Sidonian bull, and once flowed down as a golden rain; Leda’s stars shine in the sky, Bacchus sits on his father’s Olympus, the god Alcides possesses Hebe and no longer fears Juno’s wrath — he who was her enemy is now her son-in-law; yet the wise compliance of his high-born wife prevailed, and her grief was mastered: Juno alone, the greatest, secure, holds the Thunderer in her heavenly bed, and Jupiter, no longer caught by mortal beauty, does not desert his lofty hall. You too, a second Juno upon earth, sister and wife of Augustus, overcome your heavy sorrows.
Subiecta et humilis, atque monumenta extruit quibus timorem fassa testatur suum. et hanc levis fallaxque destituet deus volucer Cupido: «it licet forma eminens. opibus superba, gaudium capiet breve. Passa est similes ipsa dolores regina deum, cum se formas vertit in omnes dominus caeli divumque pater- et modo pennas sumpsit oloris modo Sidonii cornua tauri, aureus idem fluxit in imbri; fulgent caelo sidera Ledae, patrio residet Bacchus Olympo, deus Alcides possidet Heben nec Iunonis iam timet iras, cuius gener est qui fuit hostis, vicit sapiens tamen obsequium coniugis altae pressusque dolor: sola Tonantem tenet aetherio’ secura toro maxima Iuno, nec mortali captus forma deserit altam Iuppiter aulam, tu quoque, terris altera Iuno, soror Augusti coniunxque, graves vince dolores.
Sooner shall the savage seas be joined to the stars, and fire to water, the sky to gloomy Tartarus, kindly light to darkness, day to dewy night, than my mind to the impious mind of my wicked husband, forever mindful of my slain brother. Would that the ruler of the heaven-dwellers were making ready to crush the accursed head of the unspeakable prince with flames — he who so often shakes the earth with hostile lightning and terrifies our minds with sacred fires and strange portents; we have seen in the sky a blazing radiance, a comet, spread its hostile torch where slow Boötes wheels his wain in night’s eternal round, stiff with the cold of the North: see — the very air is fouled by the dread breath of the savage leader; the stars threaten the nations with new disasters — the nations the impious leader rules. Not so fierce a Typhon did mother Earth, enraged, once bring forth, slighting Jupiter: this plague is heavier than that one; this enemy of gods and men has driven the gods from their own temples, the citizens from their homeland, has taken his brother’s breath, drained his mother’s blood — and he looks on the light and enjoys his guilty life and draws his breath! O highest father, why so often do you hurl in vain, rashly, your unconquered bolts from your royal hand? Against one so guilty why does your right hand hold back? Would that the tyrant of the world might pay the penalty of his own crimes — he who weighs the world with a shameful yoke and stains the name of Augustus with his vices!
Iungentur ante saeva sideribus freta et ignis undae, Tartaro tristi polus, lux alma tenebris, roscidae nocti dies, quam cum scelesti coniugis mente impia mens nostra, semper fratris extincti memor. utinam nefandi principis dirum caput obruere flammis caelitum rector paret, qui saepe terras fulmine infesto quatit mentesque nostras ignibus terret sacris novisque monstris; vidimus caelo iubar ardens cometam pandere infestam facem, qua plaustra tardus noctis aeterna vice regit Bootes, frigore Arctoo rigens: en ipse diro spiritu saevi ducis polluitur aether, gentibus clades novas minantur astra, quas regit dux impius. non tam ferum Typhona neglecto Iove irata Tellus edidit quondam parens: hic gravior illo pestis, hic hostis deum hominumque templis expulit superos suis civesque patria, spiritum fratri abstulit, hausit cruorem matris— et lucem videt fruiturque vita noxiam atque animam trahit! pro summe genitor, tela cur frustra iacis invicta totiens temere regali manu? in tam nocentem dextra cur cessat tua? utinam suorum facinorum poenas luat orbis tyrannus, quem premit turpi iugo morumque vitiis nomen Augustum inquinat!
Unworthy of your bed, I confess, is he — Nero the grafted, born of Domitius as his father — but yield to the fates and to your fortune, my ward, I beg, and do not stir your husband’s violent anger; perhaps some avenging god will arise, and a glad day will come.
Indignus ille, fateor, est thalamis tuis, Nero insitivus, Domitio genitus patre, sed cede fatis atque fortunae tuae, alumna, quaeso neve violentam move iram mariti, forsitan vindex deus existet aliquis, Iactus et veniet dies.
Long now has our house been weighed down by the heavy wrath of the gods, which Venus first oppressed through the madness of my wretched mother, who, married, in madness married again with an unchaste torch, forgetful of us, of her husband, heedless of the laws. To her, with hair unbound and girt with serpents, the avenging Fury came to that Stygian wedding and quenched in blood the torches snatched from the marriage: she kindled the prince’s heart in savage wrath to an unspeakable killing: my unhappy mother fell, alas, by the sword, and in her death overwhelmed me with everlasting grief; she dragged down her husband and her son to the shades, and gave the fallen house to ruin.
Gravi deorum nostra iam pridem domus urgetur ira, prima quam pressit Tenus furore miserae dura genetricis meae, quae nupta demens nupsit incesta face, oblita nostri, coniugis, legum immemor. illi soluta crine, succincta anguibus ultrix Erinys venit ad Stygios toros raptasque thalamis sanguine extinxit faces: incendit ira principis pectus truci caedem in nefandam: cecidit infelix parens, heu, nostra ferro meque perpetuo obruit extincta luctu; coniugem traxit suum natumque ad umbras, prodidit lapsam domum.
Spare to renew with tears your pious griefs, and do not trouble your mother’s shade, who paid heavy penalties for her own madness.
Renovare luctus parce cum fletu pios, manes parentis neve sollicita tuae, graves furoris quae sui poenas dedit.
What rumor has just come to our ears? Would that, believed though false, it might lose the credit so often vainly bruited, and that no new wife enter our prince’s chamber, and that Claudia’s offspring keep, a wedded bride, her own household gods; may she bring forth in childbirth the pledges of peace in which a tranquil world may rejoice and Rome keep her glory forever. Greatest Juno holds, allotted, her brother’s marriage-bed; why is the sister of Augustus, joined to his bed, driven from her father’s hall? What good to her is holy devotion, or her deified father, what good her maidenhood and chaste modesty? We too are forgetful of ourselves after our leader’s death, whose stock we betray at the urging of sick fear. True Roman valor once belonged to the men of old, and in those men was the true seed of Mars, and his blood; they drove the proud kings from this city and well avenged your shade, maiden, slain by your father’s hand, lest you suffer grievous slavery and triumphant, shameless lust bear off its wicked prize. You too a sad war followed, sacrificed, poor woman, by your own hand, daughter of Lucretius, having borne the savage tyrant’s outrage. Tullia the wife, with Tarquin, paid the penalty of unspeakable crime — she who drove her cruel chariot, impious, over her slain father’s limbs and, a violent daughter, denied the mangled old man his pyre. These ages too have seen a son’s great abomination, when over the Tyrrhenian sea, in a deadly boat, the prince sent his mother, caught by guile, out upon the deep. The sailors, ordered, hasten to leave the calm harbor, the waters struck by oars resound: the ship is carried out, borne into the deep, which, its timbers loosened, gives way, sinks open, and swallows the sea. A huge cry is raised to the stars, mingled with women’s wailing. Dread death roams before their eyes; each seeks his own escape from doom: some cling, naked, to the planks of the shattered stern and cut through the waves, others, swimming, make for the shore; many the fates drown in the deep. The Augusta tears her garments and rends her hair and wets her face with mournful weeping. After no hope of safety is left, blazing with anger, now overcome by her woes: ’This,’ she cries, ’is the reward you pay me for so great a gift, my son? Worthy am I, I confess, of this boat — I who bore you, who gave you the light and the empire and the name of Caesar, out of my senses. Lift your face from Acheron, my husband, and feed on my punishments: I was the cause of your death, poor man, and to your son the author of his funeral — see, as I deserved, I am borne to your shade unburied, overwhelmed by the savage waves of the sea.’ The waves strike her face as she speaks, she plunges into the deep and, pressed down by the brine, rises again, beats the waters with her palms, fear driving her, but, worn out, yields to the toil. In silent hearts there remained a loyalty that now scorned grim death: many dare to bring help to their mistress though their strength is broken by the sea, and as she drags her slow arms they cheer her with their voice and lift her with their hands. What did it profit you to have fled the waves of the savage sea? You are to die by your own son’s sword, whose crime posterity will scarcely, the slow ages always, believe. The impious one rages that his mother, snatched from the sea, still lives, and grieves at it, and doubles his huge abomination: he rushes upon his wretched mother’s death and brooks no delay in his crime. The henchman, sent, carries out his orders: he opens his mistress’s breast with the sword. Dying, she, unhappy, begs the agent of her murder to bury the dread sword in her womb: ’Here, here it must be pierced,’ she says, ’with the steel — the womb that bore such a monster.’ After this cry, mingled with her last groan, at length she gives up her sad spirit through the savage wounds.
Quae fama modo venit ad aures? utinam falso credita perdat frustra totiens iactata fidem, nec nova coniunx nostri thalamos principis intret teneatque suos nupta penates Claudia proles; edat partu pignora pacis qua tranquillus gaudeat orbis servetque decus Roma aeternum, fratris thalamos sortita tenet maxima Iuno; soror Augusti sociata toris cur a patria pellitur aula? sancta quid illi prodest pietas divusque pater, quid virginitas castusque pudor? nos quoque nostri sumus immemores post fata ducis, cuius stirpem prodimus aegro suadente metu. vera priorum virtus quondam Romana fuit verumque genus Martis in illis sanguisque viris, illi reges hac expulerunt urbe superbos ultique tuos sunt bene manes, virgo, dextra caesa parentis ne servitium paterere grave et improba ferret praemia victrix dira libido. te quoque bellum triste secutum est, mactata tua miseranda manu, nata Lucreti, stuprum saevi passa tyranni. dedit infandi sceleris poenas cum Tarquinio Tullia coniunx, quae per caesi membra parentis egit saevos impia currus laceroque seni violenta rogos nata negavit. haec quoque nati videre nefas saecula magnum, cum Tyrrhenum rate ferali princeps captam fraude parentem misit in aequor. properant placidos linquere portus iussi nautae, resonant remis pulsata freta: fertur in altum provecta ratis, quae resoluto robore labens pressa dehiscit sorbetque mare. tollitur ingens clamor ad astra cum femineo mixtus planctu. mors ante oculos dira vagatur; quaerit leti sibi quisque fugam: alii lacerae puppis tabulis haerent nudi fluctusque secant, repetunt alii litora nantes; multos mergunt fata profundo, scindit vestes Augusta suas laceratque comas rigat et maestis fletibus ora. postquam spes est nulla salutis, ardens ira, iam victa malis: ’haec’ exclamat ’mihi pro tanto munere reddis praemia, nate? hac sum, fateor, digna carina, quae te genui, quae tibi lucem atque imperium nomenque dedi Caesaris amens. exere vultus Acheronte tuos poenisque meis pascere, coniunx: ego causa tuae, miserande, necis natoque tuo funeris auctor en, ut merui, ferar ad manes inhumata tuos, obruta saevis aequoris undis’. feriunt fluctus ora loquentis, ruit in pelagus rursumque salo pressa resurgit, pellit palmis cogente metu freta, set cedit fessa labori. mansit tacitis in pectoribus spreta tristi iam morte fides: multi dominae ferre auxilium pelago fractis viribus audent, bracchia quamvis lenta trahentem voce hortantur manibusque levant. quid tibi saevi fugisse maris profuit undas? ferro es nati moritura tui, cuius facinus vix posteritas, tarde semper saecula credent. furit ereptam pelagoque dolet vivere matrem impius, ingens geminatque nefas: ruit in miserae fata parentis patiturque moram sceleris nullam. missus peragit iussa satelles: reserat dominae pectora ferro. caedis moriens illa ministrum rogat infelix, utero dirum condat ut ensem: ’hic est, hic est fodiendus’ ait ’ferro, monstrum qui tale tulit post hanc vocem cum supremo mixtam gemitu animam tandem per fera tristem vulnera reddit.
Why, mighty Fortune, having flattered me with a deceiving face — content with my lot — did you raise me high, that, set on a height, I might crash the harder, and from the citadel look out on so many fears? Better did I lie hidden, far from the evils of envy, withdrawn among the crags of the Corsican sea, where my mind was free and its own master, ever at leisure for me as I took up again my studies. Oh, how it delighted me — than which mother Nature, craftsman of a measureless work, brought forth nothing greater — to gaze on the heavens, the sacred chariots of the sun, the world’s motions, the sun’s alternating turns, the sphere that Phoebus drives, which the wandering stars encircle, and the far-shining glory of the great sky; which, if it grows old, so vast, is bound to fall again into blind chaos: then that last day is at hand for the world, the day to crush the impious race by the fall of heaven, that, born again the better, it may breed a new stock, as once it bore when young, while Saturn held the kingdoms of the sky. Then that maiden, goddess of great power, Justice, sent down from heaven with holy Faith, ruled the human race on earth, and was gentle. The nations knew no wars, no fierce blare of trumpets, no arms, nor had they grown used to ring their cities with walls: the road lay open to all, and the use of all things was held in common; and Earth herself, glad, opened her fertile lap unbidden, a parent so blessed and so safe for such devoted nurslings. But another stock, seen to be less gentle, a third, ingenious race, arose bent on new arts, yet still unstained; soon restless — daring to chase fierce beasts at the run, to draw out with the heavy net the fish hidden beneath the waves, or with the light reed to trick the birds, or hold them with the snare, to press fierce bulls beneath the yoke, to furrow with the plowshare the earth, untouched before, which, wounded, hid its fruits deeper within its sacred lap. But a worse age entered into the vitals of its own parent: it dug out heavy iron and gold, and soon armed savage hands; it set up kingdoms with parted borders, built new cities, defended roofs of its own, or sought another’s with the sword, bent on plunder. Slighted, the maiden Astraea fled the lands, the savage ways of men, and hands defiled with bloody slaughter — Astraea, great glory of the stars. The lust for war grew, and the hunger for gold, throughout the whole world; the greatest evil arose — luxury, a coaxing plague, to which long time and grievous error gave their strength and force. The vices gathered through so many ages now flood down on us: we are crushed by a heavy time, in which crimes reign, raging impiety runs wild, lust rules, mighty, in its foul desire, and luxury, victor over the world, has long since snatched its measureless wealth with greedy hands — to squander it. But see — Nero is borne here with frenzied step and grim face; I shudder in my mind at what he brings.
Quid me, potens Fortuna, fallaci mihi blandita vultu, sorte contentum mea alte extulisti, gravius ut ruerent edita.receptus arce totque prospicerem metus? melius latebam procul ab invidiae malis remotus inter Corsici rupes maris, ubi liber animus et sui iuris mihi semper vacabat studia recolenti mea. o quam iuvabat, quo nihil maius parens Natura genuit, operis immensi artifex, caelum intueri, solis et currus sacros mundique motus solis alternas vices orbemque Phoebea, astra quem cingunt vaga, lateque fulgens aetheris magni decus; qui si senescit, tantus in caecum chaos casurus iterum: tunc adest mundo dies supremus ille, qui premat genus impium caeli ruina, rursus ut stirpem novam generet renascens melior, ut quondam tulit iuvenis, tenente regna Saturno poli. tunc illa virgo, numinis magni dea, Iustitia, caelo missa cum sancta Fide terris regebat mitis humanum genus. non bella norant, non tubae fremitus truces, non arma gentes, cingere assuerant suas muris nec urbes: pervium cunctis iter, communis usus omnium rerum fuit; et ipsa Tellus laeta fecundos sinus pandebat ultro, tam piis felix parens et tuta alumnis. alia sed suboles minus conspecta mitis, tertium sollers genus novas ad artes extitit, sanctum tamen; mox inquietum, quod sequi cursu feras auderet acres, fluctibus tectos gravi extrahere pisces rete vel calamo levi decipere volucres crate vel tenere laqueo, premere subiectos iugo tauros feroces, vomere immunem prius sulcare terram, laesa quae fruges suas interius alte condidit sacro sinu. sed in parentis viscera intravit suae deterior aetas: eruit ferrum grave aurumque, saevas mox et armavit manus; partita fines regna constituit, novas extruxit urbes/ tecta defendit sua, aliena telis aut petit praedae imminens. neglecta terras fugit et mores feros hominum et cruenta caede pollutas manus Astraea virgo, siderum magnum decus. cupido belli crevit atque auri fames totum per orbem, maximum exortum est malum luxuria, pestis blanda, cui vires dedit roburque longum tempus atque error gravis. collecta vitia per tot aetates diu in nos redundant: saeculo premimur gravi, quo scelera regnant, saevit impietas furens, turpi libido Venere dominatur potens, luxuria victrix orbis immensas opes iam pridem avaris manibus, ut perdat, rapit. sed ecce, gressu fertur attonito Nero trucique vultu, quid ferat mente horreo.
Perage imperata: mitte, qui Plauti mihi Sullaeque caesi referat abscisum caput.
I will not delay your orders: I will make for the camp at once.
Iussa haud morabor: castra confestim petam.
It befits a man to decide nothing rashly against his kin.
Nihil in propinquos temere constitui decet.
It is easy to be just for one whose heart is free of fear.
Iustum esse facile est cui vacat pectus metu.
Mercy is a great remedy for fear.
Magnum timoris remedium clementia est.
To destroy an enemy is a leader’s greatest excellence.
Extinguere hostem maxima est virtus ducis.
To save the citizens is greater, for a father of his country.
Servare cives maior est patriae patri.
It suits a mild old man to school boys.
Praecipere mitem convenit pueris senem.
It is hot-blooded youth that more needs governing.
Regenda magis est fervida adolescentia.
At this age I think there is judgment enough.
Aetate in hac sat esse consilii reor.
May the gods above always approve your deeds.
Vt facta superi comprobent semper tua.
Foolish, to fear the gods when I myself make them.
Stulte verebor, ipse cum faciam, deos.
Fear this the more — that so much is permitted you.
Hoc plus verere quod licet tantum tibi.
My Fortune permits me all things.
Fortuna nostra cuncta permittit mihi.
Trust the compliant goddess more sparingly: she is fickle.
Crede obsequenti parcius: levis est dea.
It is the weakling’s part not to know what he is allowed.
Inertis est nescire quid liceat sibi.
The praise lies in doing what is fitting, not what is allowed.
Id facere laus est quod decet, non quod licet.
The mob tramples the man who is down.
Calcat iacentem vulgus.
It crushes the man it hates.
Invisum opprimit.
The sword guards the prince.
Ferrum tuetur principem.
Loyalty guards him better.
Melius fides.
It is fitting that Caesar be feared.
Decet timeri Caesarem.
But better that he be loved.
At plus diligi.
They must needs fear —
Metuant necesse est—
Whatever is wrung out by force is hateful.
Quicquid exprimitur grave est.
And let them obey my commands.
Iussisque nostris pareant.
Command what is just.
Iusta impera.
I will decide that myself.
Statuam ipse.
Things that consent makes binding.
Quae consensus efficiat rata.
Respect for the sword will make them so.
Respectus ensis faciet.
May this abomination be far off.
Hoc absit nefas.
Shall I endure my blood to be hunted still, and be crushed all at once, unavenged and despised? Exile has not broken Plautus and Sulla, banished far off, whose stubborn madness arms the agents of crime for my murder, while even in their absence great favor remains in our city, which feeds the exiles’ hopes. Let the enemies I suspect be taken off by the sword; let my hated wife perish and follow her dear brother; let whatever stands lofty fall.
An patiar ultra sanguinem nostrum peti, inultus et contemptus ut subito opprimar? exilia non fregere summotos procul Plautum atque Sullam, pertinax quorum furor armat ministros sceleris in caedem meam, absentium cum maneat etiam ingens favor in urbe nostra, qui fovet spes exulum. tollantur hostes ense suspecti mihi, invisa coniunx pereat et carum sibi fratrem sequatur, quicquid excelsum est cadat.
It is a fair thing to stand out among illustrious men, to take thought for one’s country, to spare the afflicted, to keep from savage slaughter, to give anger time, quiet to the world, peace to one’s own age. This is the highest virtue; by this road is heaven sought. So that first Augustus, father of his country, embraced the stars, and is worshipped, a god, in temples. Yet Fortune long tossed him on land and sea through the hard turns of war, until he crushed his father’s enemies, and his own; to you she has bowed her power without bloodshed and given the reins of empire with an easy hand, and laid the lands and seas beneath your nod. Grim envy, conquered by loyal consent, gave way; the favor of the Senate, of the knights, took fire; and by the people’s prayers and the fathers’ judgment you, author of peace, arbiter of the human race, chosen, now rule the world with a sacred majesty, father of your country: and Rome asks that you keep that name, and entrusts her own citizens to you.
Pulcrum eminere est inter illustres viros, consulere patriae, parcere afflictis, fera caede abstinere tempus atque irae dare, orbi quietem, saeculo pacem suo. haec summa virtus, petitur hac caelum via. sic ille patriae primus Augustus parens complexus astra est colitur et templis deus. illum tamen Fortuna iactavit diu terra marique per graves belli vices, hostes parentis donec oppressit, sui; tibi numen incruenta summisit suum et dedit habenas imperi facili manu nutuque terras maria subiecit tuo. invidia tristis victa consensu pio cessit; senatus, equitis accensus favor; plebisque votis atque iudicio patrum tu pacis auctor, generis humani arbiter electus orbem iam sacra specie regis patriae parens: quod nomen ut serves petit suosque cives Roma commendat tibi.
It is the gift of the gods that Rome herself and the Senate serve me, and that fear of me wrings prayers and humble words from the unwilling. To spare citizens dangerous to prince and country, swollen with their famous birth — what madness is that, when with a single word one may order those he suspects to die? Brutus armed his hands for the murder of the leader from whom he had received his life: unconquered in battle, tamer of nations, made equal to Jove through the high degrees of office, Caesar fell by the unspeakable crime of his citizens. How much of her own blood Rome saw then, torn so many times over! He who earned heaven by devoted virtue, divine Augustus — how many noble men he destroyed, young and old, scattered across the world, when, in fear of death, they fled their own homes and the sword of the three leaders, given over to grim slaughter by the marking list! The fathers, in mourning, saw the heads of the slain set out on the Rostra, and were not allowed to weep their own, nor to groan in the Forum fouled with dread decay, as heavy gore dripped down the rotting faces. Nor did the bloodshed or the slaughter halt here: grim Philippi long fed the birds and savage beasts, and the Sicilian sea swallowed fleets and men, its own, often as they yielded. The world was shaken by the great forces of its leaders: defeated in battle, he made for the Nile in ships made ready for flight, himself soon to perish: unchaste Egypt drank, once again, the blood of a Roman leader; now it hides their flitting shades. There was buried at last the civil war long impiously waged; there the victor, now weary, sheathed his swords, blunted by savage wounds, and fear held the empire together. He was kept safe by arms and the soldier’s faith, made a god by his son’s outstanding devotion, consecrated after death and given to temples. The stars await me too, if first with the savage sword I forestall whatever is hostile to me and found my house with worthy offspring.
Munus deorum est, ipsa quod servit mihi Roma et senatus quodque ab invitis preces humilesque voces exprimit nostri metus. servare cives principi et patriae graves, claro tumentes genere quae dementia est, cum liceat una voce suspectos sibi mori iubere? Brutus in caedem ducis, a quo salutem tulerat, armavit manus: invictus acie, gentium domitor, Iovi aequatus altos ipse per honorum gradus Caesar nefando civium scelere occidit. quantum cruoris Roma tum vidit sui. lacerata totiens! ille qui meruit pia virtute caelum, divus Augustus, viros quot interemit nobiles, iuvenes senes sparsos per orbem, cum suos mortis metu fugerent penates et trium ferrum ducum, tabula notante deditos tristi neci! exposita rostris capita caesorum patres videre maesti, flere nec licuit suos, non gemere dira tabe polluto foro, stillante sanie per putres vultus gravi. nec finis hic cruoris aut caedis stetit: pavere volucres et feras saevas diu tristes Philippi, † hausit et Siculum mare classes virosque † saepe cedentes suos. concussus orbis viribus magnis ducum: superatus acie puppibus Nilum petit fugae paratis, ipse periturus brevi: hausit cruorem incesta Romani ducis Aegyptus iterum; nunc leves umbras tegit. illic sepultum est impie gestum diu civile bellum, condidit tandem suos iam fessus enses victor hebetatos feris vulneribus, et continuit imperium metus. armis fideque militis tutus fuit, pietate nati factus eximia deus, post fata consecratus et templis datus. nos quoque manebunt astra, si saevo prior ense occuparo quicquid infestum est mihi dignaque nostram subole fundaro domum.
She will fill your hall with a heavenly stock — born of a god, the glory of the Claudian line, allotted, like Juno, her brother’s bed.
Implebit aulam stirpe caelesti tuam generata divo Claudiae gentis decus, sortita fratris more Iunonis toros.
Her unchaste mother strips the line of credit, and my wife’s heart was never joined to mine.
Incesta genetrix detrahit generi fidem, animusque numquam coniugis iunctus mihi.
In tender years faith is not yet clearly shown, when love, mastered by modesty, hides its flames.
Teneris in annis haud satis clara est fides, pudore victus cum tegit flammas amor.
This I too believed, in vain, for a long time, though plain signs from her unloving heart and face press forth her hatred of me — a hatred my burning grief has at last resolved to avenge. And I have found a wife worthy of my bed in birth and beauty, to whom, defeated, Venus would yield, and the wife of Jove, and the goddess fierce in arms.
Hoc equidem et ipse credidi frustra diu, manifesta quamvis pectore insociabili vultuque signa properent odium mei, tandem quod ardens statuit ulcisci dolor. dignamque thalamis coniugem inveni meis genere atque forma, victa cui cedat Venus Iovisque coniunx et ferox armis dea.
Let a wife’s uprightness and faith, her character, her modesty please a husband: these alone endure forever, the goods of mind and spirit, subject to none; the flower of beauty each passing day plucks away.
Probitas fidesque coniugis, mores pudor placeant marito: sola perpetuo manent subiecta nulli mentis atque animi bona; florem decoris singuli carpunt dies.
Into one woman the god has gathered every excellence, and the fates willed that such a one be born for me.
Omnes in unam contulit laudes deus talemque nasci fata voluerunt mihi.
Love will withdraw from you — do not rashly trust it.
Recedet a te (temere ne credas) amor.
Love, whom the lord of the thunderbolt cannot drive off — the tyrant of heaven — who pierces the savage seas and the realms of Dis, and drags the gods down from the sky?
Quem summovere fulminis dominus nequit, caeli tyrannum, saeva qui penetrat freta Ditisque regna, detrahit superos polo?
Mortal error feigns that Love is a winged, pitiless god, arms his sacred hands with arrows and the bow, equips him with a cruel torch, and believes him born of Venus, fathered by Vulcan: Love is a great force of the mind, a coaxing warmth of the spirit; it is born of youth, and nursed by luxury and idleness amid Fortune’s glad goods. If you cease to cherish and feed it, it falls, and quickly, snuffed out, loses its strength.
Volucrem esse Amorem fingit immitem deum mortalis error, armat et telis manus arcuque sacras, instruit saeva face genitumque credit Venere, Vulcano satum: vis magna mentis blandus atque animi calor Amor est; iuventa gignitur, luxu otio nutritur inter laeta Fortunae bona. quem si fovere atque alere desistas, cadit brevique vires perdit extinctus suas.
This I hold to be life’s greatest cause, through which pleasure arises; it knows no death, since the human race is forever begotten by welcome Love, who soothes the savage beasts. Let this god carry the wedding torches before me and with his fire join Poppaea to my bed.
Hanc esse vitae maximam causam reor, per quam voluptas oritur; interitu caret, cum procreetur semper humanum genus Amore grato, qui truces mulcet feras. hic mihi iugales praeferat taedas deus iungatque nostris igne Poppaeam toris.
The people’s grief could scarcely bear to see this marriage, nor would holy devotion allow it.
Vix sustinere possit hos thalamos dolor videre populi, sancta nec pietas sinat.
Shall I alone be forbidden to do what all are allowed?
Prohibebor unus facere quod cunctis licet?
The people always demand more of the man at the top.
Maiora populus semper a summo exigit.
I have a mind to test whether their favor, rashly conceived, will yield, once broken by my strength.
Libet experiri, viribus fractus meis an cedat animis temere conceptus favor.
Rather, be gentle and give way to your citizens.
Obsequere potius civibus placidus tuis.
Rule goes badly when the mob governs its leaders.
Male imperatur, cum regit vulgus duces.
When it can win nothing, its grief is just.
Nihil impetrare cum valet, iuste dolet.
Is it right to wring out by force what prayers cannot win?
Exprimere ius est, ferre quod nequeunt preces?
To refuse is hard.
Negare durum est.
To compel a prince is sacrilege.
Principem cogi nefas.
Let him relent of his own accord.
Remittat ipse.
But rumor will call him beaten.
Fama sed victum feret.
Fickle rumor, and empty.
Levis atque vana.
Be it so — yet it brands many.
Sit licet, multos notat.
It fears the lofty.
Excelsa metuit.
Yet it gnaws at them no less.
Non minus carpit tamen.
It will easily be put down. Let the deserts of your divine father move you, your wife’s youth, her uprightness, her modesty.
Facile opprimetur. merita te divi patris aetasque frangat coniugis, probitas pudor.,
Cease at last — already too tiresome to me — to press me: let me be free to do what Seneca condemns. I too have long put off the people’s prayers, when she already carries in her womb a pledge, a part of me. Why do we not appoint tomorrow for the wedding?
Desiste tandem, iam gravis nimium mihi, instare: liceat facere quod Seneca improbat. et ipse populi vota iam pridem moror, cum portet utero pignus et partem mei. quin destinamus proximum thalamis diem?
The earth split, and I have brought my step up out of Tartarus, bearing in my bloody right hand a Stygian torch for a wicked marriage: by these flames let Poppaea wed, joined to my son — flames an avenging hand and a mother’s grief will turn to a mournful pyre. Among the shades the memory of that impious murder stays with me always, heavy on my ghost, still unavenged: for my deserts was paid the deadly wage — the ship — and, as the price of empire, that night on which I wept my own shipwreck; it had been my wish to weep my companions’ death and my son’s cruel crime — but no time was given for tears; he doubled the huge abomination with crime. Slain by the sword, foul with wounds, within the sacred household I poured out my heavy breath, snatched from the sea, and with my own blood I quenched not even my son’s hatred: the savage tyrant rages against his mother’s name, longs to bury her desert, destroys her statues and inscriptions, out of fear of her, through the whole world — the world my unhappy love gave the boy to rule, to my own ruin. My dead husband, hostile, harries my shade and with flames assails my guilty face, presses, threatens, charges me with his fate and his son’s tomb, demands the author of the murder: now stop — he will be given you; I ask but a little time. The avenging Fury makes ready for the impious tyrant a death he deserves — the lash, and shameful flight, and punishments by which he shall outdo the thirst of Tantalus, the dread toil of Sisyphus, the bird of Tityos, and the wheel that snatches round the limbs of Ixion. Though, proud, he build with marble and roof his hall with gold, though armed cohorts guard the leader’s threshold, though the drained world send him measureless wealth, though the Parthians as suppliants seek his bloody hand and kingdoms bring their riches: the day and the hour will come when he gives up his guilty soul to his crimes, his throat to his enemies, deserted, undone, and in want of all things. Alas, to what have my toil, my prayers come down? To what has your frenzy carried you, distracted, and your fate, my son, that a mother’s anger — she who died by your crime — should give way before such great evils? Would that, before I brought you, a tiny thing, into the light and reared you, savage beasts had torn my vitals: without any crime, without feeling, innocent, you would have died, my own; joined and clinging to me, you would forever look on the quiet seat of the dead, your forefathers and your father, men of a great name, whom now shame and unending grief await because of you, abominable one, and me, who bore such a son. Why do I delay to hide my face in Tartarus — stepmother, wife, and unhappy mother to my own?
Tellure rupta Tartaro gressum extuli, Stygiam cruenta praeferens dextra facem thalamis scelestis: nubat his flammis meo Poppaea nato iuncta, quas vindex manus dolorque matris vertet ad tristes rogos. manet inter umbras impiae caedis mihi semper memoria, manibus nostris gravis adhuc inultis: reddita est meritis meis funesta merces puppis et pretium imperi nox illa qua naufragia deflevi mea; comitum necem natique crudelis nefas deflere votum fuerat— haud tempus datum est lacrimis, sed ingens scelere geminavit nefas. perempta ferro, foeda vulneribus sacros intra penates spiritum effudi gravem erepta pelago, sanguine extinxi meo nec odia nati: saevit in nomen ferus matris tyrannus, obrui meritum cupit, simulacra, titulos destruit matris metu totum per orbem quem dedit poenam in meam puero regendum noster infelix amor. extinctus umbras agitat infestus meas flammisque vultus noxios coniunx petit, instat’, minatur, imputat fatum mihi tumulumque nati, poscit auctorem necis, iam parce: dabitur, tempus haud longum peto. ultrix Erinys impio dignum parat letum tyranno, verbera et turpem fugam poenasque quis et Tantali vincat sitim, dirum laborem Sisyphi, Tityi alitem Ixionisque membra rapientem rotam. licet extruat marmoribus atque auro tegat superbus aulam, limen armatae ducis servent cohortes, mittat immensas opes exhaustus orbis, supplices dextram petant Parthi cruentam, regna divitias ferant: veniet dies tempusque quo reddat sui3 animam nocentem sceleribus, iugulum hostibus desertus ac destructus et cunctis egens. heu, quo labor, quo vota ceciderant mea? quo te furor provexit attonitum tuus et fata, nate, cedat ut tantis malis genetricis ira quae tuo scelere occidit? utinam antequam te parvulum in lucem edidi aluique, saevae nostra lacerassent ferae viscera: sine ullo scelere, sine sensu innocens meus occidisses; iunctus atque haerens mihi semper quietam cerneres sedem inferum, proavos patremque, nominis magni viros, quos nunc pudor luctusque perpetuus manet ex te, nefande, meque quae talem tuli. quid tegere cesso Tartaro vultus meos, noverca coniunx mater infelix meis?
Spare your tears on the city’s festal and joyful day, lest such great love and favor for me rouse the prince’s fierce anger, and I become to you a cause of evils. This is not the first wound my heart has felt: I have borne heavier; this day will give my cares an end, even by death: I shall not be forced to look on my savage husband’s face, nor to enter the chamber, hateful to me, of a handmaid; the sister of Augustus I shall be, not the wife. Only let grim punishments be far off, and the fear of death.
Parcite lacrimis urbis festo laetoque die, ne tantus amor nostrique favor principis acres suscitet iras vobisque ego sim causa malorum, non hoc primum pectora vulnus mea senserunt: graviora tuli; dabit hic nostris finem curis vel morte dies: non ego saevi cernere cogar coniugis ora, non invisos intrare mihi thalamos famulae; soror Augusti, non uxor ero. absint tantum tristes poenae letique metus.
Poor woman, mindful of your husband’s dread crimes, can you in madness hope for this? Kept long for this marriage, at last you will fall, a deadly victim. But why do you keep looking back at your father’s house, your cheeks wet and confused with weeping? Hasten to carry your steps from the house, leave the bloody palace of the prince.
scelerum diri, miseranda, viri potes hoc demens sperare memor? hos ad thalamos servata diu victima tandem funesta cades. sed quid patrios saepe penates respicis udis confusa genis? propera tectis efferre gradus, linque cruentam principis aulam.
See — the day long feared has dawned, the day so often bruited by rumor: Claudia has yielded the marriage, driven out by dread Nero, which now victorious Poppaea holds, while our devotion falters, crushed by heavy fear, and our grief lies sluggish. Where is the strength of the Roman people, which often broke famous leaders, gave laws to a conquered fatherland, and once the rods of office to worthy citizens, decreed war and peace, tamed savage nations, and shut captive kings in prison? See — heavy to our eyes on every side Poppaea’s image now gleams, joined to Nero! Let a violent hand dash to the ground that face too like its mistress, and drag the woman herself from her high bed, and then make for the prince’s hall with hostile flames and savage weapons.
En illuxit suspecta diu, fama totiens iactata dies: cessit thalamis Claudia diri pulsa Neronis, quos iam victrix Poppaea tenet, cessat pietas dum nostra gravi compressa metu segnisque dolor. ubi Romani vis est populi, fregit claros quae saepe duces, dedit in victae leges patriae, fasces dignis civibus olim, iussit bellum pacemque, feras gentes domuit, captos reges carcere clausit? gravis en oculis undique nostris iam Poppaeae fulget imago, iuncta Neroni! affligat humo violenta manus similes nimium vultus dominae ipsamque toris detrahat altis petat infestis mox et flammis telisque feris principis aulam.
Where, trembling, do you carry your step from your husband’s chamber, my ward, or what hidden place do you seek, your face distraught? Why are your cheeks wet with weeping? Surely the day sought by our prayers and vows has shone forth: you are joined to your Caesar by the wedding torch — your Caesar, whom your beauty captured and the fault of Seneca, and whom the mother of Love, Venus, mightiest of powers, handed over to you in chains. Oh how splendidly, how grandly you pressed the high couch, seated in the hall! The Senate, astonished, saw your beauty, when you offered incense to the gods and sprinkled the holy altars with grateful wine, your head veiled at the crown with the thin bridal flame-veil; and the prince himself, joined and clinging to your side, exalted amid the citizens’ glad omens, moved with proud bearing and a face that wore its joy: so did Peleus receive his bride Thetis, risen from the foaming sea — whose marriage, they say, the heavenly ones thronged to honor, and every power of the deep, with like accord. What sudden cause has changed your looks? What means this pallor, what your tears? Tell me.
Quo trepida gressum coniugis thalamis tui effers, alumna, quidve secretum petis turbata vultu? cur genae fletu madent? certe petitus precibus et votis dies nostris refulsit: Caesari iuncta es tuo taeda iugali, quem tuus cepit decor et culpa †Senecae, tradidit vinctum tibi genetrix Amoris, maximum numen, Venus. o qualis altos quanta pressisti toros residens in aula! vidit attonitus tuam formam senatus, tura cum superis dares sacrasque grato spargeres aras mero, velata summum flammeo tenui caput; et ipse lateri iunctus atque haerens tuo sublimis inter civium laeta omina incessit habitu atque ore laetitiam gerens princeps superbo: talis emersam freto spumante Peleus coniugem accepit Thetin, quorum toros celebrasse caelestes ferunt, pelagique numen omne consensu pari. quae subita vultus causa mutavit tuos? quid pallor iste, quid ferant lacrimae doce.
Confounded by the grim fear and vision of last night, nurse, I am carried along with my mind in turmoil, my senses failing. For after the glad day gave way to the dark stars, and the sky to night, joined within my Nero’s embrace I was loosened in sleep; but not long was I allowed to enjoy calm rest. For a mournful throng seemed to crowd my chamber: with hair unbound the Latin matrons gave forth tearful wailing; amid the often terrible blare of trumpets my husband’s mother, spattered with blood, savage, with threatening face, was shaking a torch, and as I followed her, forced by the fear upon me, suddenly the earth split and opened before me in a vast chasm; down which, falling headlong, I see my own marriage-bed, and marvel at it, and on it I sank down, worn out. I see, coming with an attending throng, my husband of former days and his son; Crispinus hastens to seek my embrace and renew the kisses long broken off: when Nero burst, trembling, within my house and buried his savage sword in his throat. At last great fear shook off my sleep; a shuddering tremor shakes my bones and limbs and beats my breast; fear holds my voice, which now your faith and devotion have drawn out. Alas, what do the shades below threaten me with, or whose blood — my husband’s — did I see?
Confusa tristi proximae noctis metu visuque, nutrix, mente turbata feror, defecta sensu. laeta nam postquam dies ’sideribus atris cessit et nocti polus, inter Neronis iuncta complexus mei somno resolvor; nec diu placida frui quiete licuit. visa nam thalamos meos celebrare turba est maesta: resolutis comis matres Latinae flebiles planctus dabant; inter tubarum saepe terribilem sonum sparsam cruore coniugis genetrix mei vultu minaci saeva quatiebat facem, quam dum sequor coacta praesenti metu, diducta subito patuit ingenti mihi tellus hiatu; lata quo praeceps toros cerno iugales pariter et miror meos, in quis residi fessa. venientem intuor comitante turba coniugem quondam meum natumque; properat petere complexus meos Crispinus, intermissa, libare oscula: irrupit intra tecta cum trepidus mea ensemque iugulo condidit saevum Nero. tandem quietem magnus excussit timor; quatit ossa et artus horridus nostros tremor pulsatque pectus; continet vocem timor, quam nunc fides pietasque produxit tua. heu quid minantur inferum manes mihi aut quem cruorem coniugis vidi mei?
Whatever the mind’s strained energy stirs by day, a sacred and secret and swift perception brings back through sleep. Do you wonder that you saw a husband, a marriage, a bed, while you lay clinging in the embrace of your new husband? But do the breasts beaten with the palms on this glad day disturb you, and the loosened hair? They were mourning Octavia’s divorce amid the sacred household gods of her brother and her father’s hearth. That torch which you followed, carried before you by the Augusta’s hand, foretells a famous name won for you through envy. The seat of the dead pledges that your marriage will stand firm, and your house eternal. That your prince buried his sword in a throat: he will stir no wars, but keep his steel sheathed in peace. Gather your spirit again, take back your joy, I beg. Drive off your fear and return to your chamber.
Quaecumque mentis agitat intentus vigor, ea per quietem sacer et arcanus refert veloxque sensus. coniugem thalamos toros vidisse te miraris amplexu novi haerens mariti? sed movent laeto die pulsata palmis pectora et fusae comae? Octaviae discidia planxerunt sacros inter penates fratris et patrium larem. fax illa, quam secuta es, Augustae manu praelata clarum nomen invidia tibi partum ominatur. inferum sedes toros stabiles futuros spondet aeternae domus. iugulo quod ensem condidit princeps tuus: bella haud movebit, pace sed ferrum teget. recollige animum, recipe laetitiam, precor. timore pulso redde te thalamis tuis.
I have resolved to seek the shrines and the sacred altars, to appease the power of the gods with slaughtered victims, that the threats of night and sleep be expiated and the wild terror turn back upon my enemies. Do you take up vows for me, and with pious prayers worship the gods above, that my present state may stand.
Delubra et aras petere constitui sacras, caesis litare victimis numen deum, ut expientur noctis et somni minae terrorque in hostes redeat attonitus meos. tu vota pro me suscipe et precibus piis superos adora, maneat ut praesens status.
If talkative rumor tells true of the Thunderer’s stolen joys and welcome loves (whom they say now pressed Leda’s breast, covered with plumage and wings, now, as a fierce bull, carried Europa snatched across the waves on his back), he who rules the stars will now desert them too and seek your embraces, Poppaea — embraces he might prefer even to Leda’s, and to yours, Danae, into whom long ago, as you marveled, he flowed in tawny gold. Though Sparta boast the beauty of her nursling, and the Phrygian shepherd his prize: this woman’s face will outdo the face of Tyndareus’ daughter, the face that stirred the bristling wars and laid the Phrygian kingdoms in the dust. But who comes rushing with frantic step, or what does he bring with panting breast?
Si vera loquax fama Tonantis furta et gratos narrat amores (quem modo Ledae pressisse sinum tectum plumis pennisque ferunt, modo per fluctus raptam Europen taurum tergo portasse trucem), quae regit et nunc deseret astra, petet amplexus, Poppaea, tuos, quos et Ledae praeferre potest et tibi, quondam cui miranti fulvo, Danae, fluxit in auro. formam Sparte iactet alumnae licet et Phrygius praemia pastor: vincet vultus haec Tyndaridos qui moverunt horrida bella Phrygiaeque solo regna dedere. Sed quis gressu ruit attonito aut quid portat pectore anhelo?
Let every soldier keeping watch over the leader’s house defend the palace, on which the people’s frenzy bears down; see, the alarmed prefects are dragging cohorts as guards to the city, and the madness rashly conceived does not yield, mastered by fear, but gathers strength.
Quicumque tectis excubat miles ducis, defendat aulam cui furor populi imminet, trepidi cohortes ecce praefecti trahunt praesidia ad urbis, victa nec cedit metu concepta rabies temere, sed vires capit.
What is this frantic frenzy that drives their minds?
Quis iste mentes agitat attonitus furor?
Crowds struck with favor for Octavia, wild for an enormous outrage, are on the rampage.
Octaviae favore percussa agmina et efferata per nefas ingens ruunt.
What do they dare to do, and with what design? Tell me.
Quid ausa facere quove consilio doce.
They mean to give back to Claudia the home of the deified one and her brother’s bed, her owed share of the empire.
Reddere penates Claudiae divi parant torosque fratris, debitam partem imperi.
Which Poppaea now holds in harmonious wedlock?
Quos iam tenet Poppaea concordi fide?
This is what inflames their spirits — a favor too stubborn — and drives them headlong, rashly, into frenzy: every statue that stood of bright marble or gleaming bronze, bearing Poppaea’s face, lies dashed down by the mob’s hands and overthrown by the savage blade; the limbs they drag piece by piece, hauled down with ropes, and bury them, long trampled, in foul mud; their words match their savage deeds — words my fear keeps silent. They make ready to ring the prince’s house with flames, unless he yield to the people’s anger his new wife, unless, conquered, he give Claudia back her home. That he himself may learn of the citizens’ uprising, I will not delay, by my own report, to carry out the prefect’s orders.
Hic urit animos pertinax nimium favor et in furorem temere praecipites agit: quaecumque claro marmore effigies stetit aut aere fulgens, ora Poppaeae gerens, afflicta vulgi manibus et saevo iacet eversa ferro; membra per partes trahunt deducta laqueis, obruunt turpi diu calcata caeno, verba conveniunt feris immixta factis quae timor reticet meus. sepire flammis principis sedem parant, populi nisi irae coniugem reddat novam, reddat penates Claudiae victus suos. ut noscat ipse civium motus, mea voce haud morabor iussa praefecti exequi.
Why do you stir savage wars in vain? Cupid wields unconquered weapons: he will overwhelm your fires with flames — he who has often quenched the lightning and dragged Jove, his captive, down from heaven. Wronged, you will pay grim penalties with your own blood. He is not patient, hot with anger, nor easy to govern: he it was who bade fierce Achilles strum the lyre, who broke the Greeks, broke the son of Atreus, overturned the kingdom of Priam, and laid famous cities low: and now my spirit shudders at what the pitiless, violent force of the god may bring.
Quid fera frustra bella movetis? invicta gerit tela Cupido: flammis vestros obruet ignes quis extinxit fulmina saepe captumque Iovem caelo traxit. laeso tristes dabitis poenas sanguine vestro. non est patiens fervidus irae facilisque regi: ille ferocem iussit Achillem pulsare lyram, fregit Danaos, fregit Atridem, regna evertit Priami, claras diruit urbes: et nunc animus quid ferat horret vis immitis violenta dei.
O hand of my soldiery, far too slow, and my anger, too long-suffering after so great an outrage, in that the blood of citizens does not quench the torches kindled against us, and funeral Rome, which bred such men, does not run with the people’s slaughter. But she, to whom the citizens’ frenzy subjects me, a wife and sister always suspect to me, let her at last yield up her life to my grief and quench my anger with her blood. But it is too little now to punish her with the death already set: the impious crime of the plebs has earned heavier things: soon let the roofs of the city be stirred to flame at my command; let fire and ruin weigh down the guilty people, and shameful destitution, and savage famine with grief. The huge mob, corrupted, exults in the goods of our age and cannot grasp my mercy, ungrateful, nor endure to bear the peace, but is swept on, restless, by its boldness here, hurled headlong there by its own rashness: it must be tamed by hardships and pressed down forever by a heavy yoke, lest it dare to attempt the like and lift its eyes against the sacred face of my wife: broken by punishments, through fear it will learn to obey at its prince’s nod. But I see approaching the man whom rare devotion and a faith well known in the camp have set over my forces.
O lenta nimium militis nostri manus et ira patiens post nefas tantum mea, quod non cruor civilis accensas faces extinguit in nos, caede nec populi madet funerea Roma quae viros tales tulit. at illa. cui me civium subicit furor, suspecta coniunx et soror semper mihi, tandem dolori spiritum reddat meo iramque nostram sanguine extinguat suo. admissa sed iam morte puniri parum est: graviora meruit impium plebis scelus: mox tecta flammis" concitant urbis meis, ignes ruinae noxium populum premant turpisque egestas, saeva cum luctu fames. exultat ingens saeculi nostri bonis corrupta turba nec capit clementiam ingrata nostram ferre nec pacem potest, sed inquieta rapitur hinc audacia, hinc temeritate fertur in praeceps sua: malis domanda est et gravi semper iugo premenda, ne quid simile temptare audeat contraque sanctos coniugis vultus meae attollere oculos: fracta per poenas metu parere discet principis nutu sui. sed adesse cerno rara quem pietas virum fidesque castris nota praeposuit meis.
I bring word that the people’s frenzy has been put down by the killing of a few who long held out, rashly.
Populi furorem caede paucorum, diu qui restiterunt temere, compressum affero.
And is this enough? Is this how a soldier has heard his commander? ’Put down’! Is this the vengeance owed me?
Et hoc sat est? sic miles audisti ducem? compressit! haec vindicta debetur mihi?
The ringleaders of the rising have fallen by the wicked sword.
Cecidere motus impio ferro duces.
What of that mob, which dared to assail my house with flames, to lay down the law to the prince, to drag my dear wife from my bed, to defile her, so far as it could, with unclean hand and dread voice? Does the owed penalty go unpaid?
Quid illa turba, petere quae flammis meos ausa est penates, principi legem dare, abstrahere nostris coniugem caram toris, violare quantum licuit incesta manu et voce dira? debita poena vacat?
Will your grief decree a penalty against your own citizens?
Poenam dolor constituet in cives tuos?
It will — one that no age shall strike from memory.
Constituet, aetas nulla quam famae eximat.
Let your anger govern us, not our fear.
Tua temperet nos ira, non noster timor.
She who first earned my anger will atone for it.
Iram expiabit prima quae meruit meam.
Name whom it demands, that my hand may not spare her.
Quam poscat ede, nostra ne parcat manus.
It demands my sister’s death, and her accursed head.
Caedem sororis poscit et dirum caput.
Frozen horror has bound and gripped me, trembling.
Horrore vinctum trepidus astrinxit rigor.
Do you hesitate to obey?
Parere dubitas?
Why do you condemn my faith?
Cur meam damnas fidem?
Because you spare an enemy.
Quod parcis hosti.
Does a woman take that name?
Femina hoc nomen capit?
If she has taken on crimes.
Si scelera cepit.
Is there anyone to prove her guilty?
Estne qui sontem arguat?
The people’s frenzy.
Populi furor.
Who can govern madmen?
Quis regere dementes valet?
He who was able to stir them up.
Qui concitare potuit.
No one, I think.
Haud quemquam reor.
A woman — to whom nature gave a mind prone to evil, and armed her heart with wiles for harm.
Mulier, dedit natura cui pronum malo animum, ad nocendum pectus instruxit dolis.
But it denied her strength —
Sed vim negavit,
So that she should not be unassailable, but fear or punishment might break her feeble strength; punishment which, late now, will weigh down the condemned, long-guilty woman. Away with counsel and entreaty, and carry out my orders: bid her be carried off by ship to some far, remote shore, and there be killed, that at last the fear in my heart may settle.
Vt ne inexpugnabilis esset, sed aegras frangeret vires timor vel poena; quae iam sera damnatam premet diu nocentem, tolle consilium ac preces et imperata perage: devectam rate procul in remotum litus interimi iube, tandem ut residat pectoris nostri timor.
O the people’s favor, deadly to many and dire, which, when with a following breeze it has filled the ship’s sails and carried it far out, then slackens, the same favor, and deserts it on the deep and savage sea. A pitiable mother wept the Gracchi, whom the people’s vast love destroyed, and favor in its storms — men illustrious in birth, renowned in devotion, faith, and eloquence, brave in heart, keen in the framing of laws. You too, Livius, Fortune gave to a like death, whom neither your own rods of office nor the roof of your house could shield; present grief forbids me to recount more examples: her to whom the citizens but now wished to restore her country, the palace, and her brother’s bed, they can now see dragged to punishment and death, weeping, wretched. Well does poverty lie hidden, content beneath a lowly roof: storms often shake the lofty houses, or Fortune overturns them.
O funestus multis populi dirusque favor, qui cum flatu vela secundo ratis implevit vexitque procul, languidus idem deserit alto saevoque mari. flevit Gracchos miseranda parens, perdidit ingens quos plebis amor nimbisque favor genere illustres, pietate fide lingua claros, pectore fortes, legibus acres. te quoque, Livi, simili leto Fortuna dedit, quem neque fasces texere suae nec tecta domus, plura referre prohibet praesens exempla dolor: modo cui patriam reddere cives aulam et fratris voluere toros, nunc ad poenam letumque trahi flentem miseram cernere possunt. bene paupertas humili tecto contenta latet: quatiunt altas saepe procellae aut evertit Fortuna domos.
Where do you drag me, or what exile does the tyrant, or the queen, command, if, softened, she grants me life, now conquered by so many of my woes? But if she means to heap up our griefs with my murder, why does she even grudge me a cruel death in my own homeland? But now there is no hope of safety: wretched, I see my brother’s ship. See — the keel on which his mother once was carried; on it now I too, a sister driven from her marriage, wretched, shall be borne. Piety has no power now, nor are there gods above: a grim Fury reigns over the world. Who can worthily weep my woes? What nightingale can answer my tears with its lament? Would that the fates would give wretched me her wings! Borne off on a swift wing, I would flee my griefs far away, and the grim gatherings of men, and their savage slaughter. Alone in an empty grove, hanging from a slender branch, I could pour out a mournful murmur from my plaintive throat.
Quo me trahitis quodve tyrannus aut exilium regina iubet, si mihi vitam fracta remittit tot iam nostris et victa malis? sin caede mea cumulare parat luctus nostros, invidet etiam cur in patria mihi saeva mori? sed iam spes est nulla salutis: fratris cerno miseranda ratem. hac en cuius vecta carina quondam genetrix, nunc et thalamis expulsa soror miseranda vehar. nullum Pietas nunc numen habet nec sunt superi: regnat mundo tristis Erinys. quis mea digne deflere potest mala? quae lacrimis nostris questus reddere aedon? cuius pennas utinam miserae mihi fata darent! fugerent luctus ablata meos penna volucri procul et coetus hominum tristes caedemque feram. sola in vacuo nemore et tenui ramo pendens querulo possem gutture maestum fundere murmur.
The mortal race is ruled by the fates, nor can anyone pledge himself anything firm and lasting, since the day, ever to be feared by us, rolls round its shifting chances; let examples steady your spirit, the many your own house has already borne: how is Fortune crueler to you? You first I must name, mother of so many children, daughter of Agrippa, daughter-in-law of Augustus, wife of a Caesar, whose name shone bright over the whole world, so often delivered from your heavy womb of the pledges of peace, then suffering exile, the lash, savage chains, deaths, mournings, and at last death, tormented long. Livia, blessed in her marriage to Drusus and in her children, rushed to a savage crime and her own punishment. Julia followed her mother’s fate; yet after long years she was cut down by the sword, though guilty of no crime. What could she not do once, your own mother, who ruled the prince’s hall, dear to her husband and powerful in her offspring? She, the same, made subject to her own slave, fell by the sword of a grim soldier. And she who was allowed to hope for a kingdom reaching to heaven — Nero’s mighty mother? Was she not first defiled by the deadly hand of an oarsman, then long mangled by the sword, and laid low, the victim of her savage son?
Regitur fatis mortale genus, nec sibi quisquam spondere potest firmum et stabile per quam casus volvit varios semper nobis metuenda dies; animum firment exempla tuum, iam multa domus quae vestra tulit: quid saevior est Fortuna tibi? tu mihi primum tot natorum memoranda parens, nata Agrippae, nurus Augusti, Caesaris uxor, cuius nomen clarum toto fulsit in orbe, utero totiens enixa gravi pignora pacis, mox exilium verbera, saevas passa catenas, funera, luctus, tandem letum cruciata diu. felix thalamis Livia Drusi natisque ferum ruit in facinus poenamque suam. Iulia matris fata secuta est; post longa tamen tempora ferro caesa est, quamvis crimine nullo. quid non potuit quondam genetrix tua quae rexit principis aulam cara marito partu que potens? eadem famulo subiecta suo cecidit diri militis ense. quid cui licuit regnum in caelum sperare, parens tanta Neronis? non funesta violata manu remigis ante, mox et ferro lacerata diu saevi iacuit victima nati?
See — the savage tyrant sends me too to the grim shades and the ghosts; why do I, wretched, delay now in vain? Drag me to death, you to whom Fortune has given power over us — I call the gods above to witness —
Me quoque tristes mittit ad umbras ferus et manes ecce tyrannus, quid iam frustra miseranda moror? rapite ad letum quis ius in nos Fortuna dedit, testor superos—
What are you doing, madwoman? Cease to pray to the powers of the gods, to whom you are hateful.
quid agis, demens? parce precari quis invisa es numina divum.
I call Tartarus to witness, and the goddesses of Erebus who avenge crime, and you, my father — one worthy of such a death and penalty: this death of mine is not hateful to me. Arm the ship, spread the sails to the straits, and let the helmsman with the winds make for the shores of the land of Pandataria.
Tartara testor Erebique deas scelerum ultrices et te. genitor, dignum tali morte et poena: non invisa est mors ista mihi. armate ratem, date vela fretis ventisque petat puppis rector Pandatariae litora terrae.
Light breezes and gentle west winds, you who once carried Iphigenia, hidden in a cloud of air, snatched from the altar of the savage maiden, carry this woman too, far from grim punishment, I pray, to the temple of Trivia. Gentler than our city is Aulis, and the barbarous land of the Taurians: there a god above is appeased by the slaughter of a stranger; Rome rejoices in the blood of her own.
Leues aurae zephyrique leves, tectam quondam nube aetheria qui vexistis raptam saevae virginis aris Iphigeniam, hanc quoque tristi procul a poena portate, precor, templa ad Triviae. urbe est nostra mitior Aulis et Taurorum barbara tellus: hospitis illic caede Utatur numen superum, civis gaudet Roma cruore.