Book TI.V:1-44 Loyalty in Friendship

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O you who’ll always be named the first among my friends,
you above all who thought it right to make my fate your own
who were the first, carissime, the most dear, I remember
to dare to sustain me with words when the bolt struck,
who gave me the calm advice to go on living
when my wretched heart was filled with desire for death,
truly you know whom I mean, by these tokens of your name,
nor are you unaware, friend, of the service you rendered.
These things will always be fixed in my very marrow,
and I’ll be an eternal debtor for the life that’s mine,
and my spirit will melt away in the empty air,
leaving my ashes on the cooling pyre,
before the memory of your merit leaves my mind.
and loyalty fades away through the long years.
May the gods favour you, grant you good fortune
never to be in need, a fate dissimilar to mine.
Still, if this ship were borne on a favourable breeze,
perhaps your faithfulness would go unacknowledged.
Pirithous would not have felt Theseus’s friendship
as deeply, if he’d not gone down to the infernal waters.
That Phocean Pylades was an instance of true love
was due to the Furies, sad Orestes.
If Euryalus had not fallen among the Rutulian host,
Hyrtacian Nisus would have found no fame.
Just as red gold is assessed in the flames,
faithfulness is tested by hard times.
While Fortune helps us, a smile on her calm face,
all things follow our undiminished powers:
But they flee with the thunder, and no one knows him,
who a moment ago was circled by crowds of friends.
And this, which I once knew from old examples,
I know now to be true from my own troubles.
You, barely two or three of so many friends, are left me:
the rest were Fortune’s crew, not mine.
So, O few, aid my wounded state all the more,
and grant a safe strand for my wreckage.
And don’t be anxious with false fears, trembling,
lest this faithfulness offends the god!
Often Caesar praises loyalty among enemy troops:
he loves it in his own, approves it in opponents.
My case is better, since I was no armed opponent
of his, but earned this exile through naivety.
So keep watch on my affairs, I pray you,
in case the wrath of the god can be lessened.

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Untuk tiga temanku. Err maksud saya saudaraku.

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