Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD
I don’t tell you to give your mistress expensive gifts:
give little but of that little, skilfully, give what’s fitting.
When the field is full of riches, when the branches bend
with the weight, let the boy bring a gift in a rustic basket.
You can say it was sent from your country villa,
even though it was bought on the Via Sacra.
Send grapes, or those nuts Amaryllis loved,
chestnuts, but she doesn’t love them now.
Why even thrushes are fine, and the gift of a dove,
to witness your remembrance of your mistress.
Shameful to send them hoping for the death of some childless
old man. Ah, perish those who make giving a crime!
Do I also teach that you send tender verses?
Ah me, poems are not honoured much.
Songs are praised, but its gifts they really want:
barbarians themselves are pleasing, so long as they’re rich.
Truly now it is the Age of Gold: the greatest honours
come with gold: love’s won by gold.
Even if you came, Homer, with the Muses as companions,
if you brought nothing with you, Homer, you’d be out.
Still there are cultured girls, the rarest set:
and another set who aren’t, but would like to be.
Praise either in song: and they’ll commend
the reader whatever his voice’s sweetness:
So sing your midnight song to one and the other,
perhaps it will figure as a trifling gift.
Translated by A. S. Kline © 2001 All Rights Reserved
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