Book III, Elegy 18

Where the sea, shut out from dark-shadowed Avernus, beats with its laughing wave on Baiae's warm and steaming pools, where Misenus, trumpeter of Troy, lies in his sandy tomb, and the way built by the toil of Hercules is loud with the sea-billow; where the cymbals clashed in honour of the Theban god, when with kindly intent he visited the cities of men — now, ah, hateful Baiae, dark with deep guilt, what baleful god stands by your waters? — here he sank smitten down to the Stygian wave, and that noble spirit wanders o'er your mere.

What availed him birth or virtue or his mother's piety? What availed him his union with the house of Caesar, or the waving awnings of the theatre so thronged but yesterday, or all that his mother's hands had wrought for him? He is dead, cut short unhappy in his twentieth year. Such glory compassed in such narrow room!

Go to now, exalt thy soul with pride and dream of triumphs, rejoice when whole theatres spring to their feet to cheer, outdo the cloth-of-gold of Attalus, at the great games let all be bright with gems! All these glories thou shalt yield up to the fires of death. And yet hither at last come all, come noble and come base; bitter is the way, but all must tread it; all must assuage the triple throat of the baying hound, and climb the boat of that grim greybeard that waits for all. Though a man seek to save himself by walls of iron and of brass, yet death shall drag forth his head from its sheltering place. Beauty saved not Nireus, nor might Achilles; nor was Croesus succoured by wealth born of Pactolus stream.

[Such grief once wasted the perplexed Achilles, when Atrides' new passion cost them dear.]

But to thee, O ferryman of pious souls, let them bear this body void of its spirit; his soul hath soared starward far from the paths of men by the road that Claudius and Caesar trod.