Guiltless, you will pay for your ancestors' failure,
Roman, until you rebuild the temples
and fallen shrines of the gods and
the statues filthy with black smoke.

Because you consider yourself lesser than the gods, you hold power:
Derive every beginning from this, and to this each ending:
Negelcted gods gave many misfortunes
to mournful Hesperia.

Now twice Monaeses and the band of Pacorus
has crushed our unblessed attacks
and smiles to have added plunder
to their tiny neckbands.

The Dacian and Ethiopian have almost destroyed
our city, taken up with civil war,
this one dreaded with (her) fleet, that one
better with his shot arrows.

Generations fertile in sin first defiled
marriage,, their families, and homes;
derived from this origin, disaster
flowed upon our homeland and people.

A grown up girl delights to be taught Ionian dancing,
and is moulded in its techniques,
now already she also dreams of illicit love
from her tender fingernail.^[1]

Soon she seeks younger lovers
among her husband's wines, and does not choose
to whom she hastily gifts forbidden
joys when the lights are taken away,

but, commanded, she rises openly, not without her husband
aware, if a salesman calls her
or a master of a Spanish ship,
a lavish spender on disgraces.

The youth who did not arise from these parents
stained the sea with Carthaginian blood,
and felled Pyrrhus and huge
Antiochus and dread Hannibal;

but the male offspring of rustic
soldiers, taught with Sabellian mattocks
to turn the clods and, at the command of a strict
mother, to carry the logs which were

cut down, when the sun changed the mountains'
shadows and removed the yoke from the tired
cows, bringing the friendly time
with departing chariot.

What has accursed daytime not diminished?
Our parents' era, worse than their ancestors, bore
us still worse, and soon we will give
more wicked offspring.

delicta maiorum inmeritus lues,
Romane, donec templa refeceris
  aedesque labentes deorum et
  foeda nigro simulacra fumo.

dis te minorem quod geris, imperas:
hinc omne principium, huc refer exitum.
  di multa neglecti dederunt
  Hesperiae mala luctuosae.

iam bis Monaeses et Pacori manus
non auspicatos contudit impetus
  nostros et adiecisse praedam
  torquibus exiguis renidet.

paene occupatam seditionibus
delevit urbem Dacus et Aethiops,
  hic classe formidatus, ille
  missilibus melior sagittis.

fecunda culpae saecula nuptias
primum inquinavere et genus et domos:
  hoc fonte derivata clades
  in patriam populumque fluxit.

Motus doceri gaudet Ionicos
matura virgo et fingitur artibus,
  iam nunc et incestos amores
  de tenero meditatur ungui.

mox iuniores quaerit adulteros
inter mariti vina, neque eligit
  cui donet inpermissa raptim
  gaudia luminibus remotis,

sed iussa coram non sine conscio
surgit marito, seu vocat institor
  seu navis Hispanae magister,
  dedecorum pretiosus emptor.

non his iuventus orta parentibus
infecit aequor sanguine Punico
  Pyrrhumque et ingentem cecidit
  Antiochum Hannibalemque dirum;

sed rusticorum mascula militum
proles, Sabellis docta ligonibus
  versare glaebas et severae
  matris ad arbitrium recisos

portare fustis, sol ubi montium
mutaret umbras et iuga demeret
  bobus fatigatis, amicum
  tempus agens abeunte curru.

damnosa quid non inminuit dies?
aetas parentum, peior avis, tulit
  nos nequiores, mox daturos
  progeniem vitiosiorem.

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