Anonymous (Latin)

The anonymous Latin poems preserved in the Anthologia Latina include the Pervigilium Veneris, the "Vigil of Venus", a lyric of some ninety lines in which a refrain bids those who have never loved, and those who have, love to-morrow. It celebrates a spring festival of Venus, with the goddess presiding over the woods and over the marriage of earth and sky.

Its date, authorship and place of origin are unknown. It survives in two manuscripts of the Anthologia Latina, both now in Paris, and was first printed in 1577. Scholars have placed it in the second century or between the late third and mid-fourth century, and it has sometimes been attributed to Tiberianus. This archive offers the prose translation of J. W. Mackail, printed in the Loeb Classical Library in 1913.