745Yet he came to our shrines as a stranger: Caesar is a god in his own city; 746him, outstanding in war and in the toga, it was not so much the wars ended in triumphs, his achievements at home, and the swiftly won glory of his deeds that turned into a new star and a comet, as his own offspring; 750for of all Caesar's deeds there is no greater work than that he became the father of this man: is it indeed a greater thing to have subdued the sea-girt Britons, and to have led victorious fleets through the seven streams of papyrus-bearing Nile, and to have added the rebel Numidians and Cinyphian Juba and Pontus, swelling with the names of Mithridates, to the people of Quirinus, and to have earned many triumphs and celebrated some, than to have fathered so great a man?
758With him as ruler of the world, gods above, you have abundantly favoured the human race! 760So that this one, then, should not be sprung from mortal seed, that one had to be made a god. 761When the golden mother of Aeneas saw this, and saw too that grim death was being prepared for the high priest and conspirators' arms were being moved, she grew pale and kept saying to all the gods, as each met her: 'See with what a mass of treachery a plot is being prepared against me, and with what deceit that head is being sought which alone remains to me from Dardanian Iulus. 768Shall I alone always be harassed by just cares, I whom now the Calydonian spear of Tydeus' son wounds, now the walls of ill-defended Troy confound, I who see my son driven by long wanderings, tossed on the sea, entering the abodes of the silent dead, and waging war with Turnus, or, if we confess the truth, rather with Juno?
774Why do I now recall the old losses of my race? 775This fear does not allow me to remember earlier ones: look, do you see the wicked swords being sharpened? 777Prevent them, I beg, and repel the crime, and do not extinguish Vesta's flames with the slaughter of her priest!' 779Such words anxious Venus throws out in vain all over heaven, and moves the gods above, who, although they cannot break the iron decrees of the ancient sisters, yet give not uncertain signs of the grief to come. 783They say that arms clashing among black clouds and terrible trumpets and horns heard in the sky forewarned of the crime; 785the sun's sad image too offered lurid light to the anxious earth.
787Often torches were seen to burn in the midst of the stars, often drops of blood fell amid the rain-clouds. 789Lucifer was dark, his face sprinkled with black rust, and the Moon's chariot was sprinkled with blood. 791In a thousand places the Stygian owl gave sad omens, in a thousand places ivory wept, and songs and threatening words are said to have been heard in the sacred groves. 794No victim gives favourable omens, the entrails warn that great tumults are at hand, and the head is found cut off among the vitals. 796And in the forum and around houses and the temples of the gods, they say, dogs howled by night, and shades of the silent dead wandered, and the city was shaken by tremors.
799Yet the warnings of the gods could not overcome the plot and the coming fates, and drawn swords are carried into a sacred place; 801for no place in the city pleases for the crime and the dire slaughter except the senate-house. 803Then indeed Cytherea struck her breast with both hands and strives to hide the descendant of Aeneas in a cloud, in which Paris was once snatched away from hostile Atrides and Aeneas had escaped the sword of Diomedes. 807Her father addresses her thus: 'Are you preparing, alone, my daughter, to move unconquerable fate? 808You may yourself enter the house of the three sisters: you will see there the records of events, a vast structure of bronze and solid iron, which, safe and eternal, fear neither the clash of heaven nor the wrath of lightning nor any ruin.
813You will find there the fates of your race carved in everlasting adamant: I have read them myself and noted them in my mind, and I shall tell them, so that you may no longer be ignorant of the future. 816This man for whom you labour, Cytherea, has completed his time, the years he owed to earth fulfilled. 818That he may enter heaven as a god and be worshipped in temples, you will bring about, you and his son, who as heir to his name will bear alone the burden laid on him, and as most valiant avenger of his murdered father will have us as allies in his wars.
822Under his auspices the walls of besieged Mutina, conquered, will sue for peace, Pharsalia will feel him. 824Emathian Philippi will be drenched again with slaughter, and a great name will be overcome in Sicilian waters, and the Egyptian wife of a Roman general, who trusted ill in that marriage, will fall, and in vain will she have threatened that our Capitol would be slave to her Canopus. 829Why should I recount to you the barbarian lands, and the nations lying by either ocean? 830Whatever habitable land the earth supports will be his: the sea too will serve him! 832When peace has been given to the lands he will turn his mind to civil law, and as a most just lawgiver will pass laws, and govern morals by his example, and looking forward to the age of future time and of grandsons to come, he will bid the son born of his chaste wife bear both his name and his cares, nor until he, grown old, has equalled the years of the Pylian, will he reach the heavenly seats and his kindred stars.
840Meanwhile, snatch this soul from the murdered body and make it a star, so that the deified Julius may always look out upon our Capitol and Forum from his lofty temple.' 843He had scarcely spoken these words when kindly Venus stood in the middle of the senate-house, seen by no one, and snatched the soul of her Caesar from his limbs and, not allowing it to dissolve into the air, carried it, fresh, to the stars of heaven. 847And as she carried it, she felt it catch light and burst into flame, and released it from her bosom: it flies higher than the moon, and trailing its fiery hair over a wide course, it gleams as a star, and seeing the good deeds of his son, confesses that they are greater than his own, and rejoices to be surpassed by him.
852Although the son forbids his own deeds to be ranked above his father's, yet fame, free and subject to no commands, ranks him first against his will and in this one respect disobeys: so Atreus yields to the titles of great Agamemnon, so Theseus surpassed Aegeus, so Achilles Peleus; 857finally, to use examples equal to themselves, so too Saturn is less than Jupiter: Jupiter governs the heights of heaven and the realms of the threefold world, the earth is under Augustus; 860each is father and ruler. 861Gods, I pray, companions of Aeneas, before whom sword and fire gave way, and you native gods, and you, Quirinus, father of the city, and you, Gradivus, father of unconquered Quirinus, and Vesta, hallowed among Caesar's household gods, and you, Phoebus of the household, together with Caesar's Vesta, and you, Jupiter, who on high hold the Tarpeian citadel, and all others whom it is right and holy for a poet to invoke: slow may that day be, and later than my own lifetime, on which the august head, leaving the world he governs, shall approach heaven and, absent, show favour to those who pray!
871And now I have completed a work which neither Jupiter's wrath nor fire nor sword nor devouring age will be able to destroy. 873When it wishes, let that day, which has power over nothing but this body, end the span of my uncertain life: yet in my better part I shall be borne, everlasting, above the lofty stars, and my name will be indelible, and wherever Roman power extends over conquered lands, I shall be read on the lips of the people, and through all the ages, in fame, if the prophecies of poets have any truth, I shall live.