Epistle XXI. — A Birthday Letter to his Grandson

While thy persistent master with coaxing pains was committing to thee, still of boyish years, thy earliest poems, and was training thy prentice ear and the faculties it guides, so that thy tongue, corrected of the unskilled palate's faults, might produce the words to be repeated with an obedient murmur, I, an old man, added naught severe lest anxious admonition might gall, or mar the sweet first-taste with bitterness. But now, when thou dost feel the stir and pulse of youth, and canst distinguish between the manly and the feeble and show thyself thine own councillor in behaviour as in speech, accept, not indeed precepts, but prayers of thy grandfather who entreats while rejoicing at the high festival of his grandson's birthday . . .

(I thank Heaven which) has consented that, recovered, I may spend my old age brought back from the Fates' borderland, and behold this happy day and the stars I scarce hoped to see, I who was well-nigh mourned as one dead. This, my sweet grandson, is a gift doubly profitable, in that thy birthday now occurs, and the prize of my own safety is by this the richer that the glory of thy ripening age now waxes, and that I, now old, behold my grandson attain to youth.

Now comes round for thee the sixth period of three years since thou wert born, bringing back the Ides of September. The Ides is an auspicious day, observed too by the genii of gods. In Sextilis Hecate, Leto's daughter, claims the Ides; in May, Mercury, who was raised to the ranks of the gods. October's Ides are hallowed by the birth of Maro long ago.

Oft mayest thou observe each Ides of all the twice six months, whoso shalt celebrate the Ides of my Ausonius.