Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/177

To you at least, my dearest Pollius, than whom none is more worthy of that tranquillity to which you cling so faithfully, to you at least I need not justify at great length the boldness of my verses, for you know that many of them came suddenly to birth under your protecting care, and often have you been alarmed at the audacity of my pen, when in the intimacy of your genius I have ventured deep into the secluded realm of letters, and have been led by you through all the winding ways of poesy.

And so it is without fear that I send you this third volume of my Impromptu verses. For while you lent your witness to the second, to this you have given the authority of your name. For its gates are unbarred by the Surrentine Hercules, to which, when I had seen it after its dedication on your shore, I at once paid my tribute in these lines. Then comes a poem, which, when my charming and distinguished friend, Maecius Celer, was ordered by our sacred Emperor to the Syrian front, since I could not follow him, I sent to attend him on his way. The devotion of my dear Claudius Etruscus also deserved some solace from my pen when in real grief—and how rare that is!—he was mourning