You’re a thrill to a husband and father, sweet
Door, may Jupiter raise your fortunes!
They say you were an obedient servant to Balbus
Once, when the old man held sway in this house,
But a bad servant to his son, they say, after
The marriage and the old man lay on his bier.
Tell us, come, why you’re said to have changed,
To have dropped the faith you kept with your old master.
‘It’s not my fault (I hope to impress Caecilius, I am now in
His charge), although they say it is my fault –
No one can honestly say I’ve done anything wrong.
It’s true what people tell you – blame the door [line partly corrupt]
Whenever some crime is discovered
Everyone shouts at me: “Door, it’s your fault!”
It’s not enough for you to say it with a single word,
No, you must do it so someone believes you and
Sees it for himself.
‘How can I? No one even asks or tries to find out.’
We want to know. Don’t hesitate to tell us.
‘Very well, first of all, as for the fact that a virgin was entrusted to me –
It’s false. Her previous husband did not touch her;
His little sword dangling more flaccid than a delicate beet
Never raised itself to the centre of his tunic;
But his father is said to have dishonoured his own son’s bed
And polluted the wretched household,
Either because his sullied thoughts blazed in blind lust
Or because his son was impotent, had sterile seed,
So someone more vigorous had to be sought
Who could loosen her virginal belt.’
You tell of a superlative father, his devotion quite wondrous,
A man who came in his own son’s lap.
‘And settled beneath the watch-tower of Cycnus, Brixia,
Which the delicate stream of golden Mella permeates,
Brixia beloved mother of my Verona,
Says he is not the only one to have known her either,
But speaks of the love of Postumius and Cornelius,
With whom she committed the evil that is adultery.
Suppose someone responds: How do you know? You, door,
Are never allowed to leave your master’s threshold
Or to listen to people, but attached here to a little beam
You merely open and close the house.
Well, often I have heard her talking alone in a whisper
With her slave girls about these shameful liaisons
Of hers, naming those men I mentioned, seeing as she would
Not expect me to have a tongue or ears.
What’s more, she added to the list someone else, whom I am
Unwilling to name in case he raises his red eyebrows.
The man is tall and once carried a big lawsuit
About a false pregnancy in a lying womb.’