Pervigilium Veneris
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Pervigilium Veneris, the Vigil of Venus, is a short Latin poem. The author, date, and place of composition are unknown.
The poem was probably written in the 2nd or 3rd century AD. An article signed "L. Raquettius" in the May 1905 issue of Classical Review assigns it to Sidonius Apollinaris (5th century). It was written professedly in early spring on the eve of a three-nights' festival of Venus (probably April 1-3). It describes in poetical language the annual awakening of the vegetable and animal world through the goddess. It consists of ninety-three verses in trochaic septenarii, and is divided into strophes of unequal length by the refrain:
"Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet."
["Let him love tomorrow who has never loved, and let him who has loved love tomorrow."]
[edit] References
Modern editions by
- Franz Bücheler (1859)
- Alexander Riese, in Anthologia latino (1869)
- E. Bahrens in Umdierte lateinische Gedichte (1877)
- S. G. Owen (with Catullus, 1893).
There are translations into English verse by Thomas Stanley (1651) and Thomas Parnell, author of The Hermit; on the text see John William Mackail in Journal of Philology (1888), vol. xvii.
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
[edit] External links
- The Pervigilium Veneris
- An offered translation (Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, June 1843)
- Translation by David Camden
