Valerius Flaccus Quotes
Gaius Valerius Flaccus (Setinus Balbus) (died c. AD 90) was a Roman poet of the Silver Age.
Also known as: Gaius Valerius Flaccus
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Not by hazard are ye come; divine fate, I ween, hath brought you to my shores.
Polyxo, the priestess beloved of Phoebus.
The other, his brow heavy with threats, had long been muttering and smouldering with hidden fire.
Their words were spoken to the breezes nor swayed appointed fate.
Meantime her sire was shuddering at the cruel news that reached his ear: the doom of his house, the mourning, his daughter's crafty flight.
One who mocked Jove's ardent wooing, unmoved by heavenly suitors; not Halys only or Apollo were deceived by the trickery of the nymph they loved.
Quid me autem sic ille movet, superetne labores
an cadat?
Where still the branches guarded the skin of ruddy hue, like to illumined cloud or to Iris when she ungirds her robe and glides to meet glowing Phoebus.
Fruitlessly doth he groan, beholding the face of the Colchian maid; then over all the mountain pain contracts his limbs, and all his fetters shake beneath her sickle.
Just as at first the South wind makes gentle sport as it softly stirs the leaves and topmost branches of the woodland, but soon the unlucky ships are feeling all its terrible strength.
But lo! the girl, like a frightened dove, that caught in the vast shadow of a hawk falls trembling on some man, no matter who he be, so doth she fling herself into his arms driven by strong fear.
Thus much, Samothrace, has the poet proclaimed thee to the nations and the light of day; there stay, and let us keep our reverence for holy mysteries.
He spoke, and unaware that fate was driving him on the path of tardy expiation, gives his arms for this last time to his attendants to bind with harness.
Rebus semper pudor absit in artis.
Never, alas! can I elude them.
Often again she is resolved to promise her skill to the unhappy man, then again refuses, and is determined rather to perish with him; and she cries that never will she yield to so base a passion...
[A cave] that trembled with the roaring of the deep.
She can find in her bewilderment no words wherewith to begin, how to order or where to end her speech; fain would she pour out all in her first utterance, but not even the first words doth fear-stricken shame allow her.
But on her side the Colchian ceases not to foam with hellish poisons and to sprinkle all the silences of Lethe's bough: exerting her spells she constrains his reluctant eyes, exhausting all her Stygian power of hand and tongue.
And now the high crest sinks, now the head is nodding overpowered and the huge neck has slipped from around the fleece it guarded, like refluent Po or Nile that sprawls in seven streams or Alpheus when his waters enter the Hesperian world.