Tandem venit amor, qualem texisse pudori
sit mihi? Cur celem quod Venus ipsa probat?
Scribo quod sentio, nec me taedet amare
nec titulos generis ponere ante meos.

Dicite, matronae, num Lesbia docta taceret
si Catullus eam carmine haberet suo?
Cur ego, patricia Servii clara propago,
non canam versus quos mihi dictat Amor?

Cerinthum amo – quid tum? Si stirpis honore
inferior, superat pectore, mente, fide.
Non mihi lanificae placuit descriptio vitae,
sed calamus doctus, sed tabula apta meis.

Iudicet posteritas num sit mea culpa, quod ausim
femina Romanos scribere amore modos.
Forsitan et dicent: “Felix audacia! Tandem
virgo loqui proprium non timet ipsa suum.”

Nam quid si pereant haec carmina? Vixit amantis
vox mea, testis erit littera scripta mei.
Nec pudet aut pigeat: melius periisse canendo
quam numquam ausam dicere “amo” fuisse.

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English Translation

The Voice of Sulpicia – A Song of Sulpicia

At last love has come – should I be ashamed
to weave it? Why hide what Venus herself approves?
I write what I feel, nor does it weary me to love
nor to place my passions before family titles.

Tell me, matrons, would learned Lesbia be silent
if Catullus held her in his song?
Why should I, bright offspring of patrician Servius,
not sing verses that Love dictates to me?

I love Cerinthus – what of it? If inferior
in family honor, he surpasses in heart, mind, faith.
The description of a wool-working life did not please me,
but the learned pen, but the tablet suited to my words.

Let posterity judge if it’s my fault that I dare
as a woman to write in Roman meters of love.
Perhaps they’ll even say: “Happy boldness! At last
a maiden doesn’t fear to speak her own truth.”

For what if these poems perish? My voice lived
as a lover, the written letter will be witness to me.
Nor am I ashamed or sorry: better to have perished singing
than never to have dared to say “I love.”

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