Laudator Temporis Acti

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 8.27764 = Carmina Latina Epigraphica 2151 (tr. E. Courtney):

Vegetation of all kinds which rises from the multi-planted earth, and the plants (?) which the ground, exhausted by the hot sun, has produced, all gladden, animate, give greenery to the grove; on all sides is foliage, anxious about the new flowers and about spring, its spouse. So, come along, let us give to the god Silvanus his ancestral honour; he has leafy bowers rustling from the spring, a grove growing from rock, and buds on the trees.

According to custom we give you this intractable [     ], according to your sickle-bearing father's utterance we give you this (goat); according to custom you have this garland of pine.

The aged priest says this to me: 'Disport yourselves, Fauns, and, Dryad maidens, disport yourselves; Naiad dwellers, sing now from my temple out of my grove'.

Let [    ] make music from his usual pipe, and according to custom let Pan (?) attend the sport, and let [    ], rosy from playing the pipe, make music, and let divine Apollo halt his chariot. Let the god (Mars) cease from wild war, and you, father, come...

Latin text (from Courtney):

Omnisata omnigena e terra [quae gramina surgunt
quaeque effeta tulit tellus cata sol[e calente,
cunta iubant, animant, uiridant nem[us; undique frondes
sollicitae de flore nouo, de uere mari[to.
quare cette deo patrium dedam[us honorem        5
Siluano, de fonte bouant cui frond[ea tecta,
gignitur e saxo lucus inque arb[ore gemmae.

hunc tibi de more damus difficil[em ˘¯x
hunc tibi de uoce patris falciten[entis haedum,
haec tibi de more tuo pinifera es[t corona.        10

sic mihi senior memorat sa[cerdos:
ludite Fauni Dryades puell[ae]
ludite, canite iam meo sacel[lo]
Naides e nemore meo colon[ae.]

cantet adsueta de fistul[a        15
adsit et ludo more pa.[
cantet et rosea de tibia [
et] premat biíuges deus A[pollo
desi]nat bello deus ho[rrido
tuque] uenias pater [        20

Courtney tentatively translates his conjecture sata instead of the stonecutter's cata in line 2.

Carmina Latina Epigraphica, III: Supplementum, ed. Ernest Lommatzsch (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1926), pp. 110-112:


Bibliography:

• Louis Châtelain, "Le culte de Silvain en Afrique et l'inscription de la plaine du Sers (Tunisie)," Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire 30 (1910) 77-97
• G.B. Pighi, "Sul metro e sul significato di CIL VIII 27764 CE 2151," Epigraphica 5/6 (1943/1944) 40-44, rpt. in his Studi di Ritmica e Metrica (Torino: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1970), pp. 380-393 (non vidi)
• E. Courtney, Musa Lapidaria (Atlanta: Scholar's Press, 1995), pp. 144-147 (text and translation), 353-354 (commentary)
• Rocío Carande Herrero, "Huellas del estilo métrico" Habis 33 (2002) 599-614 (at 612-614)