Ovid, Fasti 149-165
“Come on! Tell me why the new year begins in the cold
When it would be better to begin in the springtime.
That’s when everything blooms, when time renews,
And new life stretches out from the vine’s bud,
When the trees are clothed again in new leaves
And grain just starts to sprout from its seed in the ground.
Then birds warm the air’s chill with their songs
While flocks play and made life in the fields.
Then the suns rise kind and the traveling swallow
Alights to build her nest under the barn’s high beam.
Then the field gives way to the plow and finds life again–
This should have rightly been called the New Year.”
I pressed him much about this. And he did not delay
But answered with two verses in his own way:
“In winter the newest sun rises into the oldest one’s wane
And so Apollo and the year make their start the same.”
“dic, age, frigoribus quare novus incipit annus,
qui melius per ver incipiendus erat?
omnia tunc florent, tunc est nova temporis aetas,
et nova de gravido palmite gemma tumet,
et modo formatis operitur frondibus arbor,
prodit et in summum seminis herba solum,
et tepidum volucres concentibus aera mulcent,
ludit et in pratis luxuriatque pecus.
tum blandi soles, ignotaque prodit hirundo
et luteum celsa sub trabe figit opus:
tum patitur cultus ager et renovatur aratro.
haec anni novitas iure vocanda fuit.”
quaesieram multis: non multis ille moratus
contulit in versus sic sua verba duos:
“bruma novi prima est veterisque novissima solis:
principium capiunt Phoebus et annus idem.”
