SECVNDA

The wedding feast is set. The new bride lies in the bosom of her husband.
O noblemen, do we need a censor or a soothsayer?
Would you not shudder, and think it a greater monster,
if a woman gave birth to a calf, or if an ox gave birth to a lamb?
He takes up the robes, the long garments, and the bridal veils,
he who, bearing the sacred objects with a trembling cord,
sweated for the ancilia the sacred shields of Mars. O father of the city,
whence came such impiety to the Latin shepherds? Whence,
Gradivus Mars, did this nettle sting your descendants?
Behold, a man, famous in lineage and wealth, is being given to a husband.
You do not shake your helmet, you do not strike the earth with your spear,
you do not complain to your father. Go, therefore, and yield the
acres of the severe field the Campus Martius, which you neglect. Tomorrow at
first light, a duty must be performed by me in the valley of Quirinus the Quirinal Hill.
What is the cause of the duty? You ask? A friend is marrying,
and he does not invite many, but if he is allowed to live, it will happen;
these things will be done openly, and they will even desire to be entered into the public records.
Meanwhile, a huge torment clings to the married pair:
that they cannot give birth, and by childbearing hold their husbands.
But it is better that nature grants nothing of power to their minds
in their bodies; they die barren, and the swollen Lyde a seller of potions
in her hidden jar does not help them,
nor does it help to offer one's palms to the nimble Lupercus a priest in the Lupercalia festival.
Let the spear of the tunicked Gracchus also see this monster;
he, a gladiator, has purified the middle of the arena with his flight,
and he is nobler than the Capitoline families, and the Marcelli,
and the Catuli, and the lesser Pauli, and the Fabii, and
all those looking from the podium, even if you were to bring
the very man whose prize he was when he threw the nets.
That there are some spirits, and subterranean realms,