Amores I.11

Nape, O adept in gathering and setting in order scattered locks, and not to be numbered among handmaids, O Nape known for useful ministry in the stealthy night and skilled in the giving of the signal, oft urging Corinna when in doubt to come to me, often found tried and true to me in times of trouble — receive and take early to your mistress these tablets I have inscribed, and care that nothing hinder or delay! Your breast has in it no vein of flint or unyielding iron, nor are you simpler than befits your station. One could believe you, too, had felt the darts of Cupid — in aiding me defend the standards of your own campaigns! Should she ask how I fare, you will say 'tis my hope of her favour that lets me live; as for the rest, 'tis charactered in the wax by my fond hand. While I speak, the hour is flying. Give her the tablets while she is happily free, but none the less see that she reads them straight. Regard her eyes and brow, I enjoin you, as she reads; though she speak not, you may know from her face what is to come. And do not wait, but bid her write much in answer when she has read; I hate when a fine, fair page is widely blank. See she pack the lines together, and long detain my eyes with letters traced on the outermost marge.

What need to tire her fingers by holding of the pen? Let the whole tablet have writ on it only this : "Come!" Then straight would I take the conquering tablets, and bind them round with laurel, and hang them in the mid of Venus' shrine. I would write beneath : " to VENUS naso DEDICATES his FAITHFUL AIDS; VET BUT NOW YOU WERE ONLY MEAN MAPLE."