Prayer to Janus

The end of January in the Fasti: the temple of Janus is shut, the wars are over, and Ovid prays that it stay so.

Fac aeternos pacem pacisque ministros — make everlasting both the peace and the servants of peace. The request is double, and its second half concerns people: the "servants of peace" are the princeps and his house. Ovid is asking immortality for the rulers, and calling it a prayer for peace.

The second line completes the thought: neve suum praesta deserat auctor opus, and grant that the maker not abandon his work. Auctor is Augustus, opus the peace he established. To abandon the work here means to die; the prayer for the emperor's life is phrased so that, literally, it says only that a job must not be left unfinished.

This is a model of Augustan tact: not one direct word about the princeps' mortality, and the whole poem is about it.

The card cites line 287; that is the first line of the couplet, and the second is given with it.