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Thy fathers' guilt thou still must pay, Roman, till thou restore each temple,
and the tumbling shrines of all the gods, and their images, soiled with black smoke.
'Tis by holding thyself the servant of the gods that thou dost rule; with them all things begin;
to them ascribe the outcome! Neglected gods have visited unnumbered woes on sad Italy.
Twice now Monaeses and the band of Pacorus, have crushed our inauspicious
assaults, and laugh now to have added our spoils to their meagre treasures.
Beset with civil strife, the City has narrowly escaped destruction at the hands of Dacian and of Aethiop,
the one sore dreaded for his fleet, the other better with the flying arrow.
Teeming with sin, our times have sullied first the marriage-bed, our offspring, and our homes;
disaster's stream has flowed from this source through the people and the fatherland.
The young girl early takes delight in learning Greek dances, in being dressed with all the arts,
and now plans unholy amours, with every fibre of her new being:
Soon midst her husband's revels she seeks younger paramours, nor stops to choose
on whom she swiftly shall bestow illicit joys when lights are banished;
but openly, when bidden, and not without her husband's knowledge, she rises, be it some peddler summons her,
or the captain of some Spanish ship, lavish purchaser of shame.
Not such the sires of whom were sprung the youth that dyed the sea with Punic blood,
and struck down Pyrrhus and great Antiochus and Hannibal, the dire;
but a manly brood of peasant soldiers, taught to turn the clods with Sabine hoe,
and at a strict mother's bidding to bring cut firewood,
when the sun shifted the shadows of the mountain sides and lifted the yoke from
weary steers, bringing the welcome time of rest with his departing chariot.
What do the ravages of time not injure! Our parents' age, worse than our grandsires',
has brought forth us less worthy and destined soon to yield an offspring still more wicked.