Minor Latin poets; with introductions and English translations

GRATTIUSin damp e(jiiipment there is no use, no dependence.Therefore, whether streams in a narrow valley andsluggish swamps have Avrought harm amid thehunter's task, or unforeseen rain from heaven shallhave drenched the nets, either unfold them to facethe northern breezes of serene Helice" or set themin murky smoke to slacken. For such reasons tooit is forbidden to touch the first crops of flax beforethe Pleiad '' has kindled the year with ripening firesand appeared in its brilliant rising. If nets drinkin breeze or smoke,'' their longer service answersaccordingly.The chase is a mighty task, unfit to be handled,save it is mastered by pains.'^ Do you not seethe demigods whom old mythic lore records (theydared on proud-piled mountains to essay the wayto heaven ^ and assault the mothers of the gods)—at what mighty cost they hunted the woodlandswithout the boon of my teaching ? Venus,baffled, still weeps and long wiW weep AdonisAncaeus/ fell, arms in hand (yet was he right skilfuland imposing with the double axe). The god himself,he of Tiryns, who civilised a barbarous world," Ursa Major.* Summer began with the rising of the constellation of theSeven Pleiades (Lat. Vergiliae), and winter with their setting.' i.e. si Una imbiberint flatus velfumum :cf. 55-56.'^Lines 61-74 are by some editors transposed to followeither 23 or 24.Unsatisfying attempts have been made to read irefreta and'explain it as applicable either to the giants traversing theocean of the sky in their attack on heaven or even to theArgonauts crossing the sea, which is Curcio's strange suggestion.^ A son of Neptune and an Argonaut, who, like Adonis,was killed by a boar.