| IPSE CAVA SOLANS ... | ORPHEUS DESCENDS TO THE UNDERWORLD |
| Virgil - Georgics IV | tr. Arthur McHugh |
Ipse cava solans aegrum testudine amorem te, dulcis coniunx, te solo in litore secum, te veniente die, te decedente canebat. Taenarias etiam fauces, alta ostia Ditis, et caligantem nigra formidine lucum ingressus manesque adiit regemque tremendum nesciaque humanis precibus mansuescere corda. At cantu commotae Erebi de sedibus imis umbrae ibant tenues simulacraque luce carentum, quam multa in foliis avium se milia condunt vesper ubi aut hibernus agit de montibus imber, matres atque viri defunctaque corpora vita magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptaeque puellae, impositique rogis iuvenes ante ora parentum, quos circum limus niger et deformis harundo Cocyti tardaque palus inamabilis unda alligat et noviens Styx interfusa coercet. Quin ipsae stupuere domus atque intima Leti tartara caeruleosque implexae crinibus angues Eumenides, tenuitque inhians tria Cerberus ora atque Ixionii vento rota constitit orbis. |
Love-sick, he would comfort himself, alone with his echoing lyre, singing of you, his dear wife, singing on the lonely strand, singing of you as dawn was drawing near, singing of you at the approach of night. He entered the very jaws of Hades, the lofty portals of Dis, that dark grove haunted by terror; he approached the shades and their fearsome king, though he did not know how to soften their hearts with human prayer. Stirred by his song, shadows without substance began to emerge from the deep dwellings of Erebus, together with phantoms deprived of daylight, multitudinous as birds that hide themselves among the leaves at twilight, or when winter rain drives them from the mountains: husbands, wives, great heroes now finished with life, boys, unmarried girls, young men who were laid on funeral pyres in the presence of their parents, all those encircled by the black mud and foul reeds of Cocytus, and by the ghastly swamp of Styx with its sluggish water winding nine times round. ...................................Indeed, the very abode of the dead was silenced, Death's lowest region; even the Furies, with blue snakes entwined in their hair, were stunned; and Cerberus held his three mouths agape, and the circling wheel of Ixion came to rest in the wind. |
Trans. Copyright © Arthur McHugh 2008