Complete Poetic Works, Volume 7

...is anything in secular history equally memorable before the fall of Troy original: "Ilium"? Or what is more famous than the smoking ruins of that same city original: "Pergamis"? This is especially true since the empty display of Nobility refers back to the Trojan Horse, a lineage born from a wooden belly. If the ancestor of these people, Enipeus The text likely intends Epeius, the mythological engineer of the Trojan Horse himself, the very maker of the trickery, were still alive, he would surely confirm such a haughty madness with a laugh.

From this starting point, I have surrounded VANITY. After it had occupied all the glades of the world, I trapped it as if by an ambush with an unexpected and unhoped-for Poem. Perhaps I should call it a snare. I have driven it into the nets and gathered it as a target. I have pierced it with meters as if with javelins. Now, having been run through, it offers an extensive view of its own evisceration.

If you ask about the nature original: "Genium" of these verses: they shrink from being called Epigrams. Yet they still give off sharp strokes. They are shaped according to the style of the earlier Anacreon A Greek lyric poet famous for short, witty, and rhythmic verses. Those nearby are necessarily rubbed by his wit original: "salibus," literally "salts". Just as a magnetic needle seeks the North, these verses turn toward the West and Bilbilis, the homeland of Martial A Roman poet known for his biting epigrams. However, they never actually reach that place.

THE TWO-FACED ANACREON leads the choir of contestants. With the fragrant power of a tiny song, he invites them to the prey he has scouted.

The ELEGIES follow. They are indeed the daughters of that tearful and great Mother of sorrows and spirits. However, they are now not paid mourners, but Amazons equipped with quivers. There is a time for weeping, and a time for laughing and competing. Let them mourn at home; let them bring dry eyes into the field and the woods.

Nevertheless, their gender reveals itself everywhere. They harass the boldness of joking with forced tears. Suddenly they rise up with spears. Just as suddenly, they lower them with wailing. They distribute wounds again through weeping. The first strikes more often with the edge of the blade; the second strikes with the point. The first is more modest. She brings a tolerable ferocity to the arena. She more cautiously preserves the twists and turns of Anacreon. She more surely follows the tracks of one departing. She yields more skillfully to one returning. And what Aruns, destined by fate, attempted against Camilla in the work of the Greatest Poet A reference to Virgil's Aeneid, where the warrior maiden Camilla is stalked by the soldier Aruns; that our Camilla has dared in pursuing Anacreon. For