Silvae I.5 (Mozley): The Baths of Claudius Etruscus

Not at Helicon’s gates doth my harp resound in fierce, ecstatic melody, nor call I on the heavenly Muses, so often wearied by my prayer; thou Phoebus, and thou, Euhan, art released from my choral song, and do thou, swift Tegean, keep in mute silence thy tuneful tortoise-shell: other choirs doth my song demand. ’Tis enough to lure the Naiads hither, queens of the wave, and the lord of the flashing fire, weary still and glowing with the Sicilian anvil’s heat. Thebes, lay down thy sinful arms awhile: I would fain make revel for a friend I love. Cup after cup, lad!—nay, trouble not to count them! Tune the tardy lyre! Toil and Care, avaunt! while I sing of the baths that sparkle with bright marbles, and while my Clio, wantoning in ivy chaplets and free from the sober laurel, makes sport for Etruscus. Come then, ye Nymphs of the waters, turn hither your clear countenances and bind up your glass-green tresses with tender vine-shoots, your bodies all unclothed as when ye emerge from the deep springs and torture your Satyr-lovers with the sight. You, who with guilt have defamed the honour of the streams, I care not to solicit: far hence remove thou, O Salmacis, with thy deceiving fount, and the river of Cebrenis left forlorn, that grief made dry, and the ravisher of Hercules’ young ward! But ye Nymphs who dwell in Latium and on the Seven Heights and make Thybris swell with your fresh waters, ye whom headlong Anio delights and the Maiden destined to welcome the swimmer, and Marcia that brings down the Marsian snow and cold, ye whose travelling waves flood through the lofty masonry and are carried high in air over countless arches—yours is the work I fain would sing, yours the home whereof my gentle verse doth tell. Never in other grottos dwelt ye more sumptuously. Cytherea herself guided her lord’s hand, and taught him skill; and that no baser flame might scorch the furnace, herself she kindled the brands of her winged Loves thereunder. Neither Thasos nor wave-lashed Carystos are suffered here; far off the onyx mourns, and the serpent-stone rejected makes complaint; only the porphyry gleams, hewn from the Nomads’ tawny rocks, only that which in the hollow caves of Phrygian Synnas Attis bedewed with the bright drops of his own blood, and the snow-white cliffs that Tyre and Sidon quarry. Scarce is there space for stone from the Eurotas, where the long line of green picks out the marble of Synnas. The doorways yield not in splendour, the ceilings are radiant, the gables glitter with mosaics of pictured life. The very fire is astounded at the riches he encompasses, and tempers the fierceness of his sway. Everywhere is flooding light, where the sun pierces the roof with all his rays, and, spite of all his fierceness, is scorched by a heat that is not his own. Nought is common there, nowhere will you mark bronze of Temese, but from silver is the glad wave poured and into silver it falls, and marvelling at its own beauty stands poised upon the gleaming brim and refuses to go its way. But the dark-blue stream without, running gaily between snow-white banks, all clear to see from lowest depth to surface—whom would it not tempt to throw off his lazy robe and plunge into the water? From these deeps had Cytherea chosen to be born; here, Narcissus, hadst thou seen thyself more clearly; here would swift Hecate fain bathe, e’en though discovered. Why now should I tell of the floors laid upon the earth, destined to hear the noise of balls, where languidly creeps the warmth about the house and a scant haze rolls upward from the furnaces below? Such beauty would no guest despise, though fresh from the shore of Baiae, nor, if I may compare great things with small, would one who had bathed of late in Nero’s baths refuse to sweat here once more. A blessing, Claudius, on thy brilliant cleverness and careful thought! may this work grow old with thee, and thy fortune learn to rise to a new and more glorious birth.