609Then Alba of the double name and the Latin state came under the rule of Ascanius. 610Silvius succeeds him. 611Born of him, Latinus held, along with the sceptre, an ancient name renewed. 612Illustrious Alba succeeds Latinus. 613Epytus came from him; 613after him Capetus and Capys, but Capys was first. 614Tiberinus took the kingdom from them and, drowned in the waters of the Tuscan river, gave his name to the water; 616from him Remulus and fierce Acrota were born. 617Remulus, the elder in years, an imitator of the thunderbolt, perished by the thunderbolt's blow. 619Acrota, more moderate than his brother, hands the sceptre to brave Aventinus, who lies buried on the same hill on which he had reigned, and gave his name to the hill.
622And now Proca held sway over the Palatine race. 623Under this king lived Pomona, than whom none among the Latin hamadryads tended gardens more skilfully, nor was any other more devoted to the fruit of trees. 626Hence she has her name: she loves not woods nor rivers, but the countryside and boughs bearing fruitful apples. 628Nor is her right hand weighed down with a javelin, but with a curved pruning-knife, with which now she checks luxuriant growth and restrains branches straying everywhere, now, splitting the bark, she grafts in a twig and supplies sap to a foreign nursling; 632nor does she allow them to feel thirst, and she waters the curling fibres of the thirsty root with flowing streams: this is her love, this her passion; 634she has no desire for love, either.
635Yet, fearing the violence of country folk, she shuts her orchards up within and forbids access and shuns men. 637What did the satyrs not do, a youthful band suited to dancing, and the Pans, their horns wreathed with pine, and Silenus, always more youthful than his years, and the god who frightens thieves with his sickle or his groin, to win her? 641But Vertumnus surpassed even these in loving, and was no luckier than they. 643Oh, how often, in the dress of a hardy reaper, he carried ears of grain in a basket and was the very image of a real reaper! 645Often, wearing his temples bound with fresh hay, he could seem to have been turning the cut grass; 647often he carried goads in his rough hand, so that you would have sworn he had just unyoked weary bullocks.
649Given a pruning-hook, he was a leaf-stripper and vine-pruner; 650he had put on a ladder: you would think he was going to pick apples; 651he was a soldier with a sword, a fisherman when he took up a rod. 652In short, through many shapes he often found himself access, to win the joy of looking at her beauty. 654He even bound his temples with a painted headdress and, leaning on a stick, grey hair set about his temples, imitated an old woman and entered the well-tended gardens, and she admired the fruit and, 'So much more powerful are you!' 657she said, and gave the one she praised a few kisses, such as no real old woman would ever have given, and sat down, bent, on the turf, looking up at the boughs bowed with the weight of autumn.
661Opposite was an elm, handsome with gleaming grapes: after praising it together with its companion vine, she said, 'But if the trunk stood unwed, without the vine, it would have nothing but leaves for which it might be sought; 665this vine too, which is joined to it, rests on it: if it were not wed, it would lie sprawling on the ground. 667Yet you are not moved by the example of this tree, and you flee union and do not care to be joined to anyone. 669And I wish you would! 669Helen would not have been wooed by more suitors, nor she who stirred the Lapiths' battles, nor the wife of too-long-delaying Ulysses.
672Even now, though you flee and turn away from suitors, a thousand men desire you, and demigods and gods, and all the deities who dwell in the Alban hills. 675But you, if you are wise, if you are willing to make a good match and to listen to this old woman, who love you more than all of them, more than you believe, reject common marriages and choose Vertumnus as the partner of your bed! 678for whom you have me also as a pledge (for he is not better known to himself than to me); 680nor does he wander at random over the whole world: he dwells in these broad places; 681nor, like a great part of suitors, does he love whomever he has just seen: you will be his first and last flame, and to you alone he devotes his years.
684Add that he is young, that he has the natural gift of beauty, and he will fit himself aptly into every form, and what he is bidden, though you bid all things, will be done. 687What of the fact that you love the same things? 687that he is the first to have the fruit you cultivate, and holds your gifts in his glad right hand? 689But now he does not long for fruits plucked from the tree, nor for the herbs with their mild juices that the garden nurtures, nor for anything except you; 691pity his burning, and believe that he himself is here in person pleading through my mouth for what he seeks, and fear the avenging gods, and the Idalian goddess who hates hard hearts, and the unforgetting wrath of Rhamnusia!
695And so that you may fear the more (for long life has given me knowledge of many things), I shall tell you of deeds very famous all over Cyprus, by which you may easily be bent and softened.