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Let the boy toughened by military service learn how to make bitterest hardship his friend,
and as a horseman, with fearful lance, go to vex the insolent Parthians,
spending his life in the open, in the heart of dangerous action. And seeing him, from
the enemy's walls, let the warring tyrant's wife, and her grown-up daughter,
sigh: 'Ah, don't let the inexperienced lover provoke the lion that's dangerous to touch,
whom a desire for blood sends raging so swiftly through the core of destruction.'
It's sweet and fitting to die for one's country. Yet death chases after the soldier who runs,
and it won't spare the cowardly back or the limbs, of peace-loving young men.
Virtue, that's ignorant of sordid defeat, shines out with its honour unstained, and never
takes up the axes or puts them down at the request of a changeable mob.
Virtue, that opens the heavens for those who did not deserve to die, takes a road denied
to others, and scorns the vulgar crowd and the bloodied earth, on ascending wings.
And there's a true reward for loyal silence: I forbid the man who divulged those secret
rites of Ceres, to exist beneath the same roof as I, or untie with me
the fragile boat: often careless Jupiter included the innocent with the guilty,
but lame-footed Punishment rarely forgets the wicked man, despite his start.