Addressed to Bassus, possibly the poet of iambics mentioned by Ovid
1 Why, Bassus, are you praising all these girls,tempting me to change and leave my mistress?
Why don't you let me serve my usual bondage
for whatever is left to me of life?
Go ahead and swoon over Antiope's beauty,
praise Spartan Hermione and all the other
beauties generations have borne.
Cynthia won't allow their names to be spoken.
And if you compare her to anything less, she is
superior, even to the most demanding arbiter.
But this “beauty” is the least cause of my passion.
There are stronger attractions, Bassus, for which it is a joy to perish:
a natural color and skill in many arts,
the pleasures she carries under a normal dress.
And the more you struggle to dissolve our love,
the more our happy bond deceives you.
You won't go unpunished: the girl will know your ravings
and she will be quite a vocal enemy.
Cynthia won't entrust me to you after this, and she
won't see you; she'll remember your great crime,
she'll publicize you furiously to all the other girls:
god, you'll be wanted on no doorstep!
Every altar will know her tears, and every
sacred stone, what and wherever it may be.
Cynthia is tried by no curse more gravely
than when grace abandons her, when love has been ravaged.
Especially our love. I pray she may stay that way always
and I never find in her any reason to complain!