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SILVAE, I. iii. 71–94

his grotto and his spring, in night’s mysterious hour puts off his grey-green raiment and leans his breast against the soft moss hereabouts, or plunges in all his bulk into the pools and swimming splashes among the glassy waters. In that shade Tiburnus reclines, there Albula would fain dip her sulphurous tresses;[1] this bower could steal woodland Phoebe from Egeria[2] and empty cold Taygetus of Dryad choirs and summon Pan from the Lycean glades. Ay, did not the Tirynthian shrine as well give oracles, even the Sisters of Praeneste might change their abode.[3] Why should I belaud the twice-bearing apple-orchards of Alcinous and the boughs that never stretched unladen to the air?[4] Let the domain of Telegonus give place and Turnus’ Laurentian fields, and the Lucrine dwellings and the shore of cruel Antiphates; let the perfidious height of glassy Circe yield, where the Dulichian wolves once howled, and Anxur’s haughty towers and the home that the kind old nurse owes to her Phrygian foster-child; let the shores of Antium give place, which when the suns are narrowed in their path and winter’s storms are come will call thee to them.[5]

Ay, here that serious mind broods on weighty themes; here silence shrouds a fruitful quiet and grave virtue tranquil-browed, sane elegance and comfort that is not luxury, such as the Gargettian sage[6] had himself preferred and left his own Athens and his garden behind him; these were

  1. ↑ Tiburnus, usually Tiburtus, was the founder of Tibur; Albula, a sulphurous lake from which a stream flowed into the Anio at Tibur.
  2. ↑ A nymph of Aricia, and servant of Phoebe, who had a shrine there.
  3. ↑ The temple of Fortune at Praeneste was famous for telling the future by the casting of lots; the reference to Sisters is not clear, but Martial refers to the “veridicae sorores” of Antium in the same way (v. 1. 3). “Tirynthia templa” is a temple of Hercules.
  4. ↑ Cf. Hom. Od. vii. 117.
  5. ↑ The places are Tusculum, Ardea, Baiae, Formiae, Circeii (Dulichian, because they were Odysseus’ men), Anxur, Caieta (nurse of Aeneas), Antium.
  6. ↑ Epicurus.

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