Horace Odes 1:6
The poet Varius can celebrate
your victories in high-flown verse.
Your bravery. The deeds done
by daring forces under your command.
By sea. On horseback.
I never write about that kind of thing, Agrippa;
grand themes like the black anger
of Achilles who refused to back down,
the homicidal family of Pelops
or the voyages of shifty Ulysses.
Poetic honor and my muse,
whose only weapon is the peaceful lyre,
won’t let me blunt the praise
of either Caesar or yourself
with my ineptitude.
Who, in any case, could find the words
for Mars dressed in his steel tunic,
Meriones black with Trojan dust,
or Diomedes who teamed up with Athena
and became an equal of the gods?
Unscarred by love myself,
I write of banquets, and of wars
where girls stab young men
with their fingernails. Or if a little scarred,
then no more than the average fool.