You shun me like a fawn that’s seeking
through trackless hills her mother peeking,
      ill with fear of the woods and breeze;
When pliant leaves the spring winds rustle
or lizards through the bushes bustle
      she trembles in her heart and knees.
But not I like the tiger savage
or wild lion seek to ravage:
      so come, you’re ripe a man to please.
[translation [...]

Come here to me from Crete, to your holy temple,
Where your lovely grove of apple stands,
Where the altars smoke with frankincense;
Here cold water sounds through apple branches,
The ground is all carpeted with roses,
Enchanted sleep falls from shimmering leaves;
Here the horse-grazed field
Is lush with spring flowers
And the winds sweetly blow….
Here, Cyprian goddess, you grasp
The golden cup [...]

[lang_la]Cenabis bene, mi Fabulle, apud me
paucis, si tibi di favent, diebus,
si tecum attuleris bonam atque magnam
cenam, non sine candida puella
et vino et sale et omnibus cachinnis.
Haec si, inquam, attuleris, venuste noster,
cenabis bene; nam tui Catulli
plenus sacculus est aranearum.
Sed contra accipies meros amores,
seu quid suavius elegantiusve est:
nam unguentum dabo, quod meae puellae
donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque;
quod tu cum [...]

It’s better to live, Licinius, neither
always pressing out on the deep nor, trembling
and cautious, hugging overly close to the
   dangerous shoreline.
Whosoever cherishes the golden mean
safely avoids the squalor of a hovel
and discreetly keeps away from a palace
   that excites envy.
Most often it’s the huge pine that is shaken
by the wind, and the highest towers that fall
the greatest [...]

Why don’t I send you my books?
Pontilianus, lest you send me yours.

I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask.
I do not know, but I sense that it is happening and I am tortured.

Tongilianus, you paid two hundred for your house;
An accident much common in this city destroyed it.
You collected ten times more. Doesn’t it seem, I pray,
That you set fire to your own house, Tongilianus?

To your shades Fronto, and Flacilla, this child
I commend: she was my sweet and my delight.
Little Erotion shall not fear the darkened shades
nor the vast mouths of the Tartarean hound.
She’d have completed her sixth chill winter,
if she’d not lived a mere six days too few.
Now let her frisk and play among old friends
now let her [...]

The gleaming stars all about the shining moon
Hide their bright faces, when full-orbed and splendid
In the sky she floats, flooding the shadowed earth
with clear silver light.

Far from my land, Italy, I stay,
from my home-town, Tarentum.
That is more bitter than death,
the wanderer’s vain life.
But the Muses have loved me
and in return of my suffering
have given me honey sweetness.
Leonidas’ name is not dead.
The Muses’ gifts hand it down
forever.