Virgil
Known in English as Virgil or Vergil, was a Latin poet, the author of the Eclogues, the Georgics and the Aeneid, the last being an epic poem of twelve books that became the Roman Empire's national epic.
A woman is an ever fickle and changeable thing.
Heu nihil invitis fas quemquam fidere divis!
Procul, O procul este, profani!
Sum pius Aeneas, raptos qui ex hoste Penates
classe veho mecum, fama super aethera notus.
Italiam quaero patriam et genus ab Iove summo.
All the best days of life slip away from us poor mortals first; illnesses and dreary old age and pain sneak up, and the fierceness of harsh death snatches away.
Dixit et avertens rosea cervice refulsit,
Ambrosiaeque comae divinum vertice odorem
Spiravere; pedes vestis defluxit ad imos,
Et vera incessu patuit dea.
At nos hinc alii sitientes ibimus Afros,
Pars Scythiam et rapidum cretae veniemus Oaxen,
Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos.
Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?
Pedibus timor addidit alas.
Dante Alighieri, in The Divine Comedy (c. 1308-1321), Inferno, Canto I, lines 79-87 (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow).
Stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum
Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore.
Insanam uatem aspicies, quae rupe sub ima
fata canit foliisque notas et nomina mandat.
quaecumque in foliis descripsit carmina uirgo
digerit in numerum atque antro seclusa relinquit:
illa manent immota locis neque ab ordine cedunt.
uerum eadem, uerso tenuis cum cardine uentus
impulit et teneras turbauit ianua frondes,
numquam deinde cauo uolitantia prendere saxo
nec reuocare situs aut iungere carmina curat:
inconsulti abeunt sedemque odere Sibyllae.
Dulcis et alta quies, placidaeque simillima morti.
Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.
Major rerum mihi nascitur ordo;
Majus opus moveo.
Animasque in volnere ponunt.
Advance, boy, to new virtue; so one mounts to the stars.