Prophecy (Vaticinium)

Whom Mnemosyne conceived in a night mixed with Jove, and after nine months poured forth into the thin breezes. And golden-haired Apollo joined himself to them, so that he might soothe the gods and the viscera of the world with alternating songs, and stir up various dances along the ridges of Parnassus and the ever-green groves. And so that he might cultivate free studies, and raise up poetry, and carry the race of demigods—the bards—to Olympus, and insert them into the spheres of the stars, and make them equal to the souls of powerful heroes, whom renowned deeds, pacified cities, and prostrated monsters carried to heaven. What do the words of Aristotle, what do the words of Plato, whom you follow, profit you? Do you fear hunger, if you look back at Nature herself? Which seeks little, and is content with little. Blind and destitute, among the crags (but with Phoebus as your guide), Homer sang the Iliad and the wanderings of the Ithacan, and Plautus played his songs in the mill. If you seek praises, your conscious virtue is enough for you; the good man, by Hercules, rejoices in himself, looking at his own goods, and mocks the turns of fortune, and keeps to the middle path. Formerly, also, a few honored a few poets; for the famous is rare, and the crowd of bards was not held in value. They hated the chattering magpies, and those who dared to show the plays of others as their own—who, deservedly mocked, underwent the reproaches of the crow, whom the birds of Juno, when they saw him adorned, strutting with the proud feathers of the hundred-eyed one, attacked with fierce beak and hooked claws.