Poetry in ancient Rome was not only a man’s craft. We know of several female poets, but in most cases we have been deprived of the chance to read their work because it was not preserved. Fortunately, a handful of poems by Sulpicia, a poetess of the late first century BC, survived by accident, bundled together with those of a male poet called Tibullus. Although Sulpicia was well-born and well-connected, her poems reach beyond the confines of her status – and indeed her time – to speak clearly to us today. In this poem she writes of her misery at being parted from her beloved Cerinthus for her birthday.

Sulpicia’s Birthday

My dreaded birthday is looming, and I’ve got to spend it

There in the odious country without Cerinthus.

What is more agreeable than the city? Is a country estate

A fit place for a girl or the fields

By the cold river Arno? Stop fussing about me

Messala, my kinsman, you’re much too ready

To take me on an unnecessary journey.

Carried hence—I leave my soul and my senses behind

As I cannot exercise my own free will.

She Can Be At Rome, After All

Don’t you know that the burden of an unnecessary journey

Is lifted from your poor girl’s heart?

I can be at Rome, it now seems, for my birthday—

This comes to you by an unexpected stroke of luck.

THE TROJAN HORSE

Aeneid, Book II

Virgil

Translated by John Dryden, 1697

The Aeneid, a Latin epic by the Augustan poet Virgil (70 BC–19 BC), tells of the fall of Troy and escape of Aeneas, son of Venus, and a group of survivors, and of their coming to Italy to found a new home. Modelled on the epics of Homer, the poem provided Romans with the opportunity to view themselves as descendants of the families of Troy. The final moments of the Trojan War had been recounted only briefly in flashback in the Odyssey, allowing Virgil to develop the story in full. In this excerpt from his poem, translated in the seventeenth century by the great John Dryden, England’s first official Poet Laureate, the Trojans receive the gift of a wooden horse from the Greeks.

By destiny compell’d, and in despair,

The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war,

And, by Minerva’s aid, a fabric rear’d,

Which like a steed of monstrous height appear’d:

The sides were plank’d with pine: they feign’d it made

For their return, and this the vow they paid.

Thus they pretend, but in the hollow side,

Selected numbers of their soldiers hide:

With inward arms the dire machine they load;

And iron bowels stuff the dark abode.

In sight of Troy lies Tenedos, an isle

(While Fortune did on Priam’s empire smile)

Renown’d for wealth; but, since, a faithless bay,

Where ships expos’d to wind and weather lay,

There was their fleet conceal’d. We thought, for Greece