lustration by Frederico Righi
Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD
Don’t be shy of promising: promises entice girls:
add any gods you like as witness to what you swear.
Jupiter on high laughs at lovers’ perjuries,
and orders Aeolus’s winds to carry them into the void.
Jupiter used to swear by the Styx, falsely, to Juno:
now he looks favourably on his own example.
Gods are useful: as they’re useful, let’s think they’re there:
take wine and incense to the ancient altars:
indifferent calm and it’s like, apathy, don’t chain them:
live innocently: the divine is close at hand:
pay what you owe, hold dutifully to agreements:
commit no fraud: let your hands be free from blood.
Delude only women, if you’re wise, with impunity:
where truth’s more to be guarded against than fraud.
Deceive deceivers: for the most part an impious tribe:
let them fall themselves into the traps they’ve set.
They say in Egypt the life-giving waters failed
in the fields: and there were nine years of drought,
then Thrasius came to Busiris, and said that Jove
might be propitiated by shedding a stranger’s blood.
Busiris told him: ‘You become Jove’s first victim,
and you be the stranger to give Egypt water.’
And Phalaris roasted impetuous Perillus’s body
in the brazen bull: the unhappy creator was first to fill his work.
Both cases were just: for there’s no fairer law
than that the murderous maker should perish by his art.
As liars by liars are rightfully deceived,
wounded by their own example, let women grieve.
Translated by A. S. Kline 09/04/2026
everythinglatin.co.uk 
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