Carmen LXVII (Cornish)

Hail, house-door, once dear to a well-beloved husband and dear to his father; hail, and may Jupiter bless you with kindly help; you door, who once, they say, did kindly service to Balbus, when the old man himself held the house, and who since then, as they tell us, are doing grudging service to his son, now that the old man is dead and laid out, and you are become the door of a wedded house.

Come tell us why you are said to be changed, and to have deserted your old faithfulness to your master.

It is not—so may I please Caecilius, whose property I am now become—it is not my fault, though it is said to be mine, nor can any one speak of any wrong done by me. But of course people will have it that the door does it all; all of them, whenever any ill deed is discovered, cry out to me; " House-door, the fault is yours."

It is not enough for you to say that with a single word, but so to do that any one may feel it and see it.

How can I? No one asks or cares to know. Catullus I wish to know—do not scruple to tell me. House-door First then, that she came to us a virgin is untrue. She gave her maidenhead, not to her husband, but to his father.

What? A father in love with his own daughter-in-law? An affectionate father indeed I And yet this not only does Brixia say she well knows, Brixia that lies close under the citadel of Chinea the town through which runs the soft stream of golden Melo, Brixia dear mother of my own Verona; but she tells stories about Postumius, and the amours of Cornelius, with whom she enjoyed unlawful love.

Here some one will say: " What, house-door, do you know all this, you who never may be away from your master's threshold, nor hear the people talk, but fixed under this lintel have nothing to do but to shut or open the house? I have often heard her telling these crimes of hers with hushed voice alone with her maids, speaking of those by name of whom I spoke; she thought, no doubt, that I had neither tongue nor ear. She added besides one whom I do not choose to mention by name, lest he should arch his red brows. He is a tall man, and was once troubled with a great law-suit, from a falsely imputed child-birth.