1You say that you have read my hendecasyllables; 1you also ask how I came to start writing them, a serious man, as I seem to you, and, as I myself admit, not a frivolous one. 2I have never — for I shall go back further — been a stranger to poetry; 2indeed, at fourteen years old I wrote a Greek tragedy. 2'What sort?' 2you say. 2I do not know; 2it was called a tragedy. 3Later, when on my way back from military service I was held up by the winds on the island of Icaria, I composed Latin elegiacs on that very sea and that very island. 3I have occasionally tried my hand at heroic verse too, and now for the first time at hendecasyllables, of which this is the birth and this the cause.
3At my Laurentine villa the books of Asinius Gallus on the comparison between his father and Cicero were being read to me. 3There came up an epigram of Cicero's on his Tiro. 4Then, when I had retired at midday — for it was summer — to sleep, and sleep would not steal over me, I began to reflect that the greatest orators had both counted this kind of pursuit among their amusements and held it to their credit. 5I set my mind to it, and contrary to my own expectation, after long disuse, in a very brief moment of time, I set down in these verses the very thing that had prompted me to write: As I was reading the books of Gallus, in which he dared to give his father the palm and the glory over Cicero, I came upon a playful jest of Cicero's, worth admiring for that same genius with which he composed his serious works, and with which he showed that the minds of great men delight in humane wit and in much and varied charm.
6For he complains that Tiro, by wicked deceit, cheated his lover and withheld, in the night-time, the few kisses owed to him after dinner. 5bHaving read these lines I said: 'Why after this do we hide our loves, and timidly bring none into the open, and why do we not confess that we too know Tiro's wiles, Tiro's fleeting caresses and the stolen favours that add new flames?' 7I moved on to elegiacs; 7these too I dashed off no less quickly, and, seduced by the ease of it, I added others. 7Then, back in the city, I read them to my friends; 7they approved. 8After that I tried more metres whenever I had any leisure, and especially on journeys.
8Finally I decided, following the example of many, to complete a separate volume of hendecasyllables on its own, and I do not regret it. 9It is read, copied, even sung, and it is performed, now on the cithara, now on the lyre, by Greeks as well, whom love of this little book has taught Latin. 10But why do I talk so boastfully? 10Still, poets are allowed to rave. 10And yet I am speaking not of my own judgement but of other people's; 10and whether they judge rightly or are mistaken, it delights me. 10One thing I pray: that posterity too may either be mistaken or judge in the same way.
10Farewell.