Minor Latin poets; with introductions and English translations

RUTILIUS NAMATIANUSills ? Whether they are like ])risoiiers " who deinaTidthe appropriate penalties for their deeds, or whethertheir melancholy hearts are swollen with black bile,it was even so that Homer assigned the ailment ofexcessive bile as cause of Bellerophon's troubledsoul ; * for it was after the wounds of a cruel sorrowthat men say the stricken youth conceived his loathingfor human kind.Enterinij on the reijion of \'olaterra, appropriatelycalled " The Shallows," '^ I thread my way throuohthe deep part of the treacherous channel. At thebow the look-out watches the water beneath andjrives directions to the helm behind, ifuiding the sternwith warning shouts. A boundary on each sidemarks the puzzling narrows by a pair of trees, andpresents a line of piles hammered in there : tothese it is the custom to fix tall laurels easy to seebecause of their branches and bushy foliage, sothat, although the shifting bank '^ of thick mud showsits mass of sea -weed, a clear passage may keep theguiding-signs unstruck. There I was driven tomake a halt by a tearing North-wester of the sortthat is wont to shatter the depths of the woods.Scarce safe beneath a roof did wc endure thepitiless rains : the neighbouring country-seat of myown Albinus was placed at my disposal. Tor my* Homer in reality does not explain Bellerophon's misanthropyas clue to black bile {u(\ayxo?^ia), though hedescribes him as " eating out his heart " (ov dv/xbv KardScov11. VI. 202). The true reason for his grief was the loss ofhis three children.' The name is preserved in Torre di Vada.^ The shifting mud-bank is compared with the fabledSyraplegades of the Euxine, the floating rocks which usedto clash together and rebound.805