Prayer to Apollo
ApolloDraw near, Apollo, and expel the illness from this tender girl, come, draw near. Phoebus of flowing hair unshorn, hear me and hasten. If, Phoebus, You apply Your healing hand to her, You will not regret saving her. Allow not that she should waste away emaciated, or that her color should wane to pallor, or that her limbs should lose their strength, and do not wait until her white limbs turn to a hideous color. Whatsoever this illness may be, whatever sorrow we may fear it will bring, carry it off with the waters of a swift running stream to the seas. Holy one, come! And bring with You all Your delicacies, all Your songs, and all else that will soothe the sick.
From the Corpus Tibullianum, the Sulpicia cycle: a prayer for the recovery of a sick girl.
The argument put to the god is aesthetic. Do not let wasting seize her pallid limbs, do not let an ugly colour mark her white body. The ground for healing her is that she is beautiful and it would be a pity to spoil her.
And the inducement matches: "you will not regret, Phoebus, having laid healing hands on a beautiful girl". The god of medicine is addressed as a connoisseur being offered a worthy case.
The first line of this poem — Huc ades et tenerae morbos expelle puellae — was taken by the Nova Roma reconstructors and, with Carmentis substituted for Phoebus, passed off as an ancient prayer; see carmenta-004.
Fons · Source
AuthorTibullus
WorkElegiae
Section3.10.1-10; 25-26
Period1st c. BC
Classificatio · Taxonomy