CUPID CRUCIFIED Ausonius (Translated by K McGuigan)

Love on trial, and on the cross: a late Roman dream-poem in a new translation, with an essay on Ausonius and his vanishing world.

In the dining room of one Zoilus at Trier, Ausonius saw a painting of Cupid nailed to a cross by heartsick women. He turned it into a poem, then sent it to a friend with an apology: nothing in it pleased him but the title. It is one of the darkest things he wrote.

The scene is Virgil's Fields of Mourning, where the heroines whom love destroyed still wander. Semele, Phaedra, Sappho, Ariadne and Dido catch the god as he blunders into their gloom, hang him from a myrtle and prosecute him for everything they suffered. One brings a noose, one a blade, one a torch that gives no heat. Then his own mother arrives, not to plead for him but to whip him with roses.

This translation reaches for the poem's lacquered surfaces and sudden cruelty rather than a schoolroom crib. His prefatory essay follows Ausonius from the schools of Bordeaux to the consulship, and through the silence of his favourite pupil, Paulinus, who left the Muses for Christ.

A pocket edition in Dark Branch's Libelli series, sized for an overcoat, with Olivia Petrini's cover borrowing Caravaggio's victorious Cupid: wings dark, arrows ready, and no idea what is coming.

Love escapes in the end, through the gate of ivory. Catch him before he flies.

Translation · Libelli series · A6 pocket edition · Set in Bodoni · Cover by Olivia Petrini · Printed and bound in England