Prophecy (Vaticinium)

any longer human, but to approach the tables of the gods. And neither riches nor diadems are my concern. But come now (wondrous belief!), the earth seems to sink away, and the wave-wandering sea, and I seem already to have entered the houses of Fame, there in the very air, to catch the murmurs of rumor. In another part, various inconveniences of life occur; for narrow patrimonies press upon me, and we poets are forced to practice new arts or to beg. Shame, O customs, O iron times! The rich man, admiring talent and divine poems, indulges only in praise; and you are called an imitator of great Homer, or the glory of the Andinian quill is granted to you, yet the rich man, unmindful of study, of the wakeful lamp, and of the mind troubled for so long, is moved not at all, nor does he help you, although he knows well that you are in need, and he often addresses you by the name of the old Codrus. If you ask for anything, being rather submissive, and as if compelled and driven by hunger, he looks at you with a grim gaze and gives nothing, and he becomes deafer than the raging ocean. Hence I regret having drunk so often of the sacred waters, and having crowned my hair with laurel, then my temples with fillets, and having adorned my locks with a berry-bearing garland. Hence arise anger, hence hatred of the Muses, hence the weariness of the Nysaean and Cyrrhaean ridge, and Phoebus and Euan become hateful. Pens are broken, poems perish in the flames, and the cruel inclemency of the angry poet suddenly overwhelms the monuments of such divine labor; he is so weary of such a name that he