Epode 2

"The fellow's worth a fortune who, far

    from commerce, cultivates his fathers'

farm with his own oxen & is free

    of usury -- like the folk of yore.

"No soldier, summoned to battle by the bugle

    or fearful of a fuming sea,

no plaintiff or haunter of the haughty portals

    of especially-powerful citizens

is the man who marries mature growths

    of grape to poplars he's pampered

OR watches over his wandering herd

    bellowing in lonely bottomlands

while he saws away worthless scions

    & engrafts the gainful

                        OR hoards

honey from the comb into clean containers

    OR shears his compliant sheep.

"As Autumn hoists its head, adorned with

    fleshy fruits, through fields,

he gloats, gathering prize pears

    & grapes purpler than the pigment

to pay you, Priapus, & you sir,

    Silvanus, protector of property.

The bliss of napping beneath an old oak

    OR on a luxuriant lawn

while water wends between wide banks

    & birds whine in the woods

& fountains fret with splashing spray --

    a summons to soft slumbers!

"When wintry weather threatens with thunder,

    storms & snow, he speeds

into snares (from all sides) boars

    battling a horde of hounds

OR suspends from slender staves the webbing

    widened to fool feeding

figpeckers and ropes the frightened rabbit

    & drifting crane (a delicacy!).

"Living that life, who wouldn't ignore

    the ills latent in love?

"Should a faithful wife do her fair share

    helping with the home & cherished

children (a Sabine, say, or the sunburned

    bride of an assiduous Apulian)

AND stack seasoned timber on the hearth

    for her tired husband's return

AND pen yielding ewes within pleachwork

    to drain their distended udders

AND, ladling a lively vintage from the vat,

    prepare an unpurchased repast --

"I'd freely forego the finest oyster

    OR flounder OR scaurfish forced

to these waters when winter blasts

    bolts on Eastern breakers.

African fowl & Greek game-hens hardly

    would settle into my stomach

happier than the odd olive, harvested

    from the orchard's oiliest offshoot

OR meadow-dwelling sourdock & mallows

    (medicine for a body's burdens)

OR a lamb slain for a farmers' festival

    OR a friskling whisked from a wolf.

"How felicitous at such feasts to see fattened

    flocks hurrying homeward,

bone-weary bulls with nodding necks

    pulling an upended plough,

& the worker-bees of a wealthy abode: slaves

    stationed near smiling cult-statues!"

So spoke Alfius, a financier,

    bent on becoming a bumpkin.

Midway through the month, he cashed his capital --

    to float it again on the first.

This translation was first published on the web at Diotima: Materials for the study of women and gender in the ancient world (http://www.uky.edu/AS/Classics/gender.html) and is reprinted here by permission.