Propertius (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 10 at my pleadings, and to the door which my hand never broke despite my anger. But as for you, let the burden of age press heavy on you with the weight of dissembled years, and come the wrinkle which bodes disaster to your good looks Ah, when the mirror upbraids you with your wrinkles, then may you long to pull out the white hairs by the root 15 May it be your turn to be denied the door and suffer the slights of pride; and may you repine when you are an old woman, and done by as you did These are the curses of destiny given to my page to preach: learn to dread their fulfilment for your beauty Book IV I Hoc quodcumque vides Dialogue between Propertius and a Babylonian soothsayer, -who corrects his poetical am- bitions. Propertius. All that you here behold, stranger, all this vast range of Rome, was hillside and grass before Phrygian Aeneas; and Evander's exiled cattle lay down together in the place where stands the Palace consecrated to Phoebus of the Ships. These golden 5 temples grew up for gods of clay, who took it for no reproach that their hovels were rudely fashioned. The Tarpeian Father thundered from a bare crag; and Tiber came like a strange intruder upon our herds. Whereyonder House of Remus has arisen above the steps, a single hearth was once the hugest realmof thebrothers. 10 The Curia which is now tall and splendid with its hem- frocked Senate, was tenanted by a Signiory of fathers clad in skins, simple souls; a horn served to summon these old-world Quirites to a parley; those hundred elders often made a Senate in a meadow. No undulating canvas hung over the spaces of the theatre; the 15 boards did not reek of ceremonial saffron. None studied to go after outlandish gods in those days when the multitude quaked on tiptoe of emotion at the ri...