But I am now forced to confess that, for the sake of keeping the end in view, I am passing over a great many of the evils that surrounded the world on every side, and abridging them all. For I could never get past so dense a forest unless I sometimes flew over it in frequent leaps.
1 At ego nunc cogor fateri, me prospiciendi finis commodo de tanta malorum saeculi circumstantia praeterire plurima, cuncta breuiare. nequaquam enim tam densam aliquando siluam praetergredi possem, nisi etiam crebris interdum saltibus subuolarem.
For since the kingdom of the Assyrians lasted 1,160 years, down to Sardanapalus, under almost fifty kings, and until that time almost never rested from waging wars or suffering them, what end will be found if we try to recount these things merely by listing them, not to say by describing them?
2 nam cum regnum Assyriorum per MCLX annos usque ad Sardanapallum per quinquaginta propemodum reges actum sit et numquam paene uel inferendis uel excipiendis usque ad id tempus quieuerit, quis finis reperietur, si ea commemorare numerando, ut non dicam describendo, conemur?
Especially since the affairs of the Greeks must not be passed over, and those of the Romans must above all be reviewed. Nor need I now list the shameful deeds of Tantalus and Pelops and the more shameful fables about them. Of these, Tantalus, king of the Phrygians, having most outrageously carried off Ganymede,
3 praesertim cum et Graecorum praetereunda non sunt et Romanorum uel maxime recensenda sint. nec mihi nunc enumerare opus est Tantali et Pelopis facta turpia, fabulas turpiores. quorum Tantalus rex Frygiorum Ganymedem,
son of Tros, king of the Dardanians, kept hold of him with the still greater foulness of the struggle that ensued, as the poet Phanocles affirms, who records that a very great war was stirred up on this account;
4 Troi Dardaniorum regis filium, cum flagitiosissime rapuisset, maiore conserti certaminis foeditate detinuit, sicut Fanocles poeta confirmat, qui maximum bellum excitatum ob hoc fuisse commemorat;
or else he would have it seem that this same Tantalus, as a hanger-on of the gods, had procured the stolen boy for Jupiter’s lust as a pander among friends — a man who did not hesitate to serve up even his own son Pelops at Jupiter’s feasts.
5 siue quia hunc ipsum Tantalum utpote adseculam deorum uideri uult raptum puerum ad libidinem Iouis familiari lenocinio praeparasse, qui ipsum quoque filium Pelopem epulis eius non dubitaret inpendere.
It is wearisome, too, to relate the struggles of Pelops himself against Dardanus and the Trojans, however great, which, because they are commonly celebrated in fables, are listened to with little attention.
6 taedet etiam ipsius Pelopis contra Dardanum atque Troianos quamlibet magna referre certamina, quae quia in fabulis celebrari solita sunt, neglegentius audiuntur.
I pass over, too, the tales told, as Palaephatus writes, of Perseus, Cadmus, the Thebans and the Spartans, through inextricable recurrences of evils following one upon another.
7 illa quoque praetereo, quae de Perseo Cadmo Thebanis Spartanisque per inextricabiles alternantium malorum recursus Palefato scribente referuntur.
I say nothing of the crimes of the Lemnian women; I pass over the lamentable flight of Pandion, king of the Athenians; I leave untold the hatreds, debaucheries and parricides of Atreus and Thyestes, hateful even to heaven.
8 taceo flagitia Lemniadum, praetermitto Pandionis Atheniensium regis flebilem fugam, Atrei et Thyestis odia stupra et parricidia caelo quoque inuisa dissimulo.
I omit Oedipus, killer of his father, husband of his mother, brother of his sons, his own stepfather. I prefer to keep silent about how Eteocles and Polynices strove in mutual assaults so that neither of them should fail to be a parricide.
9 omitto Oedipum interfectorem patris, matris maritum, filiorum fratrem, vitricum suum. sileri malo Eteoclen atque Polynicen mutuis laborasse concursibus, ne quis eorum parricida non esset.
I do not wish to remember Medea, “wounded by savage love” and rejoicing in the slaughter of her little children, nor whatever else was perpetrated in those times. One may guess how men endured things from which even the stars are said to have fled.1
10 nolo meminisse Medeae, 'amore saeuo sauciae' et pignorum paruulorum caede gaudentis, et quidquid illis temporibus perpetratum. conici datur, qualiter homines sustinuerint, quod etiam astra fugisse dicuntur.
1A phrase from Ennius’s tragedy Medea.