My ancestry bequeathed no brighter glory
Than to be a fit wife for you that day
In whose light we were joined, but now I find
All light and grace lie in my husband's name:
Agorius! Born of illustrious seed,
A beacon to your land, your wife, your senate,
Aglow with your integrity of mind,
Your actions and your scholarship together,
By which you stand at virtue's pinnacle.
All that has been set down in Greek or Latin
By sages to whom heaven's gate stands open,
Be it in rhythmed song of well-versed men
Or prose in looser speech, you have transmitted,
Leaving it better than you found in reading.
But these are trifling things. Loyal to holy
Mysteries, you sealed their insights in your thought;
The manifold divine you knew to worship,
And generously made your faithful wife
Into a comrade of the mind, a colleague
Sharing with you the rites of gods and men.
Why speak of earthly power, of public honor,
Such joys as men pray for with every breath?
Such things you always reckoned short-lived, small
Beside the holy splendor of the priesthood.
Dear Husband, by the great gift of your learning,
You have redeemed me from the bonds of d**h,
Led me into temples, dedicated me
In service to the Sacred Ones, stood by me
In love as I partook of mystery.
Devoted consort, with the blood of bulls
You honored me, anointed me a priestess
To fertile Cybele and fruitful Attis,
Prepared me for Demeter's liturgy
And taught me moon-dark Hekaté's three secrets,
And you have made of me a woman famed
Across the lands as blessed and devoted.
What wife of yours could fail to win acclaim?
Rome's matrons find their paragon in me,
And count their sons handsome who look like you.
Now men and women yearn to earn the honors
That you my teacher have bequeathed to me.
Robbed of all that, I'm now a wife in mourning
Wasting away. Had the gods but given me
A husband who'd outlive me, I'd have died
Happy. But I am happy. For yours I am
As I have been, as I in d**h shall be.