thickets: thou too, O Pan, guardian of the sheep, O Tegeæan[1] god, if thy own Mænalus be thy care, draw nigh propitious, leaving thy native grove, and the dells of Lycæus: and thou Minerva, inventress of the olive; and thou, O boy, teacher of the crooked plow; and thou, Sylvanus, bearing a tender cypress plucked up by the root: both gods and goddesses all, whose province it is to guard the fields; both ye who nourish the infant fruits from no seed, and ye who on the sown fruits send down the abundant shower from heaven.
And thou too, Cæsar, whom it is yet uncertain what councils of the gods are soon to have; whether thou wilt vouchsafe to visit cities, and [undertake] the care of countries, and the widely extended globe receive thee, giver of the fruits, and ruler of the seasons, binding thy temples with thy mother's myrtle: or whether thou comest, god of the unmeasured ocean, and mariners worship thy divinity alone; whether remotest Thule[2] is to be subject to thee, and Tethys[3] to purchase thee for her son-in-law with all her waves; or whether thou wilt join thyself to the slow months, a new constellation, where space lies open between Erigone and the [Scorpion's] pursuing claws: the fiery Scorpion himself already contracts his arms and leaves for thee more than an equal proportion of the sky. Whatever thou wilt be (for let not Tartarus[4] expect thee for its king, nor let such dire lust of sway once be thine; though Greece admires her Elysian fields, and Proserpine,[5] redemanded, is not inclined to follow her mother), grant me an easy course, and favor my adventurous enterprise; and pitying me with the swains who are strangers to their way, commence [the god], and accustom thyself even now to be invoked by prayers.
In early spring when melted snow glides down from the
- ↑ Tegeæan god. Pan is so called, from Tegea, a town of Arcadia, in Greece, which was sacred to him.
- ↑ Thule, an island in the most northern parts of the German Ocean, to which the ancients gave the epithet of Ultima. Some suppose that it is the island of Iceland, or part of Greenland, while others imagine it to be the Shetland Isles.
- ↑ Tethys, the chief of the sea-deities, was the wife of Oceanus. The word is often used by the poets to express the sea.
- ↑ Tartarus, the infernal regions, where, according to the ancients, the most impious and guilty among mankind were punished.
- ↑ Proserpine, the daughter of Ceres, and wife of Pluto, who stole her away as she was gathering flowers in the plains of Enna in Sicily.
