Guiltless, you will pay for your ancestors' failure,
Roman, until you rebuild the temples
and fallen shrines of the gods and
the statues filthy with black smoke.
Because you consider yourself lesser than the gods, you hold power:
Derive every beginning from this, and to this each ending:
Negelcted gods gave many misfortunes
to mournful Hesperia.
Now twice Monaeses and the band of Pacorus
has crushed our unblessed attacks
and smiles to have added plunder
to their tiny neckbands.
The Dacian and Ethiopian have almost destroyed
our city, taken up with civil war,
this one dreaded with (her) fleet, that one
better with his shot arrows.
Generations fertile in sin first defiled
marriage,, their families, and homes;
derived from this origin, disaster
flowed upon our homeland and people.
A grown up girl delights to be taught Ionian dancing,
and is moulded in its techniques,
now already she also dreams of illicit love
from her tender fingernail.[1]
Soon she seeks younger lovers
among her husband's wines, and does not choose
to whom she hastily gifts forbidden
joys when the lights are taken away,
but, commanded, she rises openly, not without her husband
aware, if a salesman calls her
or a master of a Spanish ship,
a lavish spender on disgraces.
The youth who did not arise from these parents
stained the sea with Carthaginian blood,
and felled Pyrrhus and huge
Antiochus and dread Hannibal;
but the male offspring of rustic
soldiers, taught with Sabellian mattocks
to turn the clods and, at the command of a strict
mother, to carry the logs which were
cut down, when the sun changed the mountains'
shadows and removed the yoke from the tired
cows, bringing the friendly time
with departing chariot.
What has accursed daytime not diminished?
Our parents' era, worse than their ancestors, bore
us still worse, and soon we will give
more wicked offspring.
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delicta maiorum inmeritus lues,
Romane, donec templa refeceris
aedesque labentes deorum et
foeda nigro simulacra fumo.
dis te minorem quod geris, imperas:
hinc omne principium, huc refer exitum.
di multa neglecti dederunt
Hesperiae mala luctuosae.
iam bis Monaeses et Pacori manus
non auspicatos contudit impetus
nostros et adiecisse praedam
torquibus exiguis renidet.
paene occupatam seditionibus
delevit urbem Dacus et Aethiops,
hic classe formidatus, ille
missilibus melior sagittis.
fecunda culpae saecula nuptias
primum inquinavere et genus et domos:
hoc fonte derivata clades
in patriam populumque fluxit.
Motus doceri gaudet Ionicos
matura virgo et fingitur artibus,
iam nunc et incestos amores
de tenero meditatur ungui.
mox iuniores quaerit adulteros
inter mariti vina, neque eligit
cui donet inpermissa raptim
gaudia luminibus remotis,
sed iussa coram non sine conscio
surgit marito, seu vocat institor
seu navis Hispanae magister,
dedecorum pretiosus emptor.
non his iuventus orta parentibus
infecit aequor sanguine Punico
Pyrrhumque et ingentem cecidit
Antiochum Hannibalemque dirum;
sed rusticorum mascula militum
proles, Sabellis docta ligonibus
versare glaebas et severae
matris ad arbitrium recisos
portare fustis, sol ubi montium
mutaret umbras et iuga demeret
bobus fatigatis, amicum
tempus agens abeunte curru.
damnosa quid non inminuit dies?
aetas parentum, peior avis, tulit
nos nequiores, mox daturos
progeniem vitiosiorem.
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