Ovid
Translated by ‘Mr. Dryden and Others’, 1700
In 44 BC, four months after Julius Caesar was assassinated, a comet appeared in the skies above Rome and shone for seven days. It was taken to represent the soul of Caesar received into the heavens. Two years later Caesar was officially deified. The description of Caesar’s apotheosis by the poet Ovid (43 BC–AD 17/18), a contemporary of Virgil and Horace, is wonderfully overblown. Although Caesar twice invaded Britain, he could hardly have been said to have conquered it. The Roman victory over Mithridates of Pontus, a kingdom in what is now Turkey, was secured rather by Pompey the Great and a general named Lucullus. In his lifetime Caesar, who served as Pontifex Maximus (chief priest), claimed descent from Venus via Aeneas. Ovid emphasises the fact that Caesar’s death does not mark the end of his line. He pays tribute to Caesar’s great-nephew and successor, Octavian, the future emperor Augustus. Hailed as divi filius – son of a god – Octavian secured the help of Mark Antony in defeating Caesar’s assassins, Brutus and Cassius, at Philippi, six years after Caesar had defeated Pompey at Pharsalus. In 1717 the English poet Sir Samuel Garth edited a collection of translations of the books of Ovid’s Metamorphoses by some of the leading writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including Joseph Addison and John Dryden, who is the principal translator of this portion of the text.
In his own city, Caesar we adore:
Him arms and arts alike renown’d beheld,
In peace conspicuous, dreadful in the field;
His rapid conquests, and swift-finish’d wars,
The hero justly fix’d among the stars;
Yet is his progeny his greatest fame:
The son immortal makes the father’s name.
The sea-girt Britons, by his courage tam’d,
For their high rocky cliffs, and fierceness fam’d;
His dreadful navies, which victorious rode
O’er Nile’s affrighted waves and seven-sourc’d flood;
Numidia, and the spacious realms regain’d;
Where Cinyphis or flows, or Juba reign’d;
The pow’rs of titled Mithridatès broke,
And Pontus added to the Roman yoke;
Triumphal shows decreed, for conquests won,
For conquests, which the triumphs still outshone;
These are great deeds; yet less than to have giv’n
The world a lord, in whom, propitious heav’n,
When you decreed the sov’reign rule to place,
You blessed with lavish bounty human race.
Now, lest so great a prince might seem to rise
Of mortal stem, his sire must reach the skies;
The beauteous goddess that Aeneas bore;
Foresaw it, and, foreseeing, did deplore;
For well she knew her hero’s fate was nigh,
Devoted by conspiring arms to die.
Trembling, and pale, to ev’ry god she cry’d,
Behold, what deep and subtle arts are tried,
To end the last, the only branch that springs
From my Iülus, and the Dardan kings!
How bent they are! how desp’rate to destroy
All that is left me of unhappy Troy!
Am I alone by Fate ordain’d to know
Uninterrupted care, and endless woe?
Now from Tydidès’ spear I feel the wound:
Now Ilium’s tow’rs the hostile flames surround:
Troy laid in dust, my exil’d son I mourn,
Through angry seas, and raging billows borne;
O’er the wide deep his wand’ring course he bends;
Now to the sullen shades of Styx descends.
With Turnus driv’n at last fierce wars to wage,
Or rather with unpitying Juno’s rage.
But why record I now my ancient woes?
Sense of past ills in present fears I lose;
On me their points the impious daggers throw;
Forbid it, gods, repel the direful blow:
If by curst weapons Numa’s priest expires,
No longer shall ye burn, ye vestal fires.
While such complainings Cypria’s grief disclose;
In each celestial breast compassion rose:
Nor gods can alter fate’s resistless will;
Yet they foretold, by signs, th’ approaching ill.
Dreadful were heard, among the clouds, alarms
Of echoing trumpets, and of clashing arms;
The sun’s pale image gave so faint a light.
That the sad earth was almost veil’d in night;
The Aether’s face with fiery meteors glow’d;
With storms of hail were mingled drops of blood!
A dusky hue the morning star o’erspread,
And the moon’s orb was stain’d with spots of red;
In ev’ry place portentous shrieks were heard,
The fatal warnings of th’ infernal bird:
In ev’ry place the marble melts to tears;
While in the groves, rever’d through length of years,
Boding, and awful sounds, the ear invade;
And solemn music warbles through the shade;
No victim can atone the impious age,
No sacrifice the wrathful gods assuage;
Dire wars and civil fury threat the state:
And ev’ry omen points out Caesar’s fate:
Around each hallow’d shrine and sacred dome,
Night-howling dogs disturb the peaceful gloom;
Their silent seats the wand’ring shades forsake,
And fearful tremblings the rock’d city shake.
Yet could not, by these prodigies, be broke
The plotted charm, or staid the fatal stroke;
Their swords th’ assassins in the temple draw;
Their murd’ring hands nor gods nor temples awe;
This sacred place their bloody weapons stain,
And virtue falls before the altar slain.
’Twas now fair Cypria, with her woes opprest,
In raging anguish smote her heav’nly breast;
While with distracting tears the goddess try’d
Her hero in th’ ethereal cloud to hide,
The cloud which youthful Paris did conceal,
When Meneläus urg’d the threat’ning steel!
The cloud, which once deceiv’d Tydidès sight,
And sav’d Aeneas in th’ unequal fight.
When Jove:—‘In vain, fair daughter, you essay
To o’er-rule destiny’s unconquer’d sway:
Your doubts to banish, enter Fate’s abode:
A privilege to heav’nly pow’rs allow’d;
There shall you see the records grav’d in length,
On ir’n and solid brass, with mighty strength;
Which heav’n’s and earth’s concussions shall endure,
Maugre all shocks, eternal, and secure:
There, on perennial adamant design’d,
The various fortunes of your race you’ll find:
Well I have mark’d ’em, and will now relate
To thee the settled laws of future fate.
‘He, goddess, for whose death the fates you blame,
Has finish’d his determin’d course with fame:
To thee ’tis giv’n, at length that he shall shine
Among the gods, and grace the worshipp’d shrine:
His son to all his greatness shall be heir,
And worthily succeed to empire’s care:
Our self will lead his wars, resolv’d to aid
The brave avenger of his father’s shade:
To him its freedom Mutina shall owe,
And Decius his auspicious conduct know:
His dreadful pow’rs shall shake Pharsalia’s plain,
And drench in gore Philippi’s fields again:
A mighty leader in Sicilia’s flood,
Great Pompey’s warlike son shall be subdu’d.
Aegypt’s soft queen, adorn’d with fatal charms,
Shall mourn her soldier’s unsuccessful arms:
Too late shall find, her swelling hopes were vain,
And know, that Rome o’er Memphis still must reign:
Why name I Afric or Nile’s hidden head?
Far as both oceans roll, his pow’r shall spread:
All the known earth to him shall homage pay,
And the seas own his universal sway:
When cruel war no more disturbs mankind;
To civil studies shall he bend his mind,
With equal justice guardian laws ordain,
And, by his great example, vice restrain:
Where will his bounty or his goodness end?
To times unborn his gen’rous views extend;
The virtues of his heir our praise engage,
And promise blessings to the coming age:
Late shall he in his kindred orbs be plac’d,
With Pylian years, and crouded honours grac’d.
Meantime, your hero’s fleeting spirit bear,
Fresh from his wounds, and change it to a star:
So shall great Julius rites divine assume,
And from the skies eternal smile on Rome.’
This spoke; the goddess to the senate flew:
Where, her fair form conceal’d from mortal view,
Her Caesar’s heav’nly part she made her care,
Nor left the recent soul to waste to air,
But bore it upwards to its native skies:
Glowing with new-born fires she saw it rise;
Forth springing from her bosom up it flew,
And, kindling, as it soar’d, a comet grew;
Above the lunar sphere it took its flight,
And shot behind it a long trail of light.
Thus rais’d, his glorious offspring Julius view’d.
Beneficently great, and scatt’ring good,
Deeds, that his own surpass’d, with joy beheld,
And his large heart dilates to be excell’d.
What, though this prince refuses to receive
The preference, which his juster subjects give;
Fame uncontroll’d, that no restraint obeys,
The homage, shunn’d by modest virtue, pays,
And proves disloyal only in his praise.
Though great his sire, him greater we proclaim:
So Atreus yields to Agamemnon’s fame;
Achilles so superior honours won,
And Peleus must submit to Peleus’ son;
Examples yet more noble to disclose,
So Saturn was eclips’d, when Jove to empire rose:
Jove rules the heav’ns; the earth Augustus sways;
Each claims a monarch’s and a father’s praise.
Celestials, who for Rome your cares employ;
Ye gods, who guarded the remains of Troy;
Ye native gods, here born and fix’d by fate;
Quirinus, founder of the Roman state;
O parent Mars, from whom Quirinus sprung;
Chaste Vesta, Caesar’s household gods among
Most sacred held; domestic Phoebus, thou,
To whom with Vesta chaste alike we bow;
Great guardian of the high Tarpeïan rock;
And all ye pow’rs whom poets may invoke;
O, grant that day may claim our sorrows late,
When lov’d Augustus shall submit to fate;
Visit those seats where gods and heroes dwell;
And leave, in tears, the world he rul’d so well.