§ 1  I. ROME
First among cities, the home of gods, is golden Rome.

§ 2  II./III. CONSTANTINOPLE AND CARTHAGE
Carthage yields precedence in rank to Constantinople, but will not stand a full step lower; for she scorns to be counted third, yet dares not hope for the second place, which both have held. One has the advantage in her ancient wealth, the other in her new-born prosperity: the one has seen her day, the other is now rising and by the loftiness of new achievements eclipses old-time renown, forcing Elissa to give place to Constantine. Carthage reproaches Heaven, now fully shamed if this time also she must give place who scarcely brooked the pre-eminence of Rome. Let your earlier conditions reconcile your jealousies. Go forward equal, mindful at length that 'twas through Heaven's power ye changed your narrow fortunes and your names; thou, when thou wast Byzantine Lygos; and thou, Punic Byrsa.

§ 3  IV./V. ANTIOCH AND ALEXANDRIA
Third would be Antioch, the home of Phoebus' laurel, if Alexander's settlement were willing to be placed fourth: both hold the same rank. These also doth frenzied ambition drive into rivalry of vices: each is disordered with her mob, and half-crazed with the riots of her frantic populace. This, fertile and secure, vaunts herself because she has the Nile for bulwark and is deep-embayed in her sheltered site; that, because her rival power confronts the faithless Persians. Ye, too, go forward equal and uphold the Macedonian name. Great Alexander founded thee; while she claims that Seleucus whose birthmark was an anchor, whereof the branded likeness is wont to be the sure token of his race; for through his whole succeeding line this natal sign has run.

§ 6  VI. TREVERIS:
Long has Gaul, mighty in arms, yearned to be praised, and that royal city of the Treveri, which, though full near the Rhine, reposes unalarmed as if in the bosom of deep profound peace, because she feeds, because she clothes and arms the forces of the Empire. Widely her walls stretch forward over a spreading hill; beside her bounteous Moselle glides past with peaceful stream, carrying the far-brought merchandise of all races of the earth.

§ 7  VII. MEDIOLANUM:
At Milan also are all things wonderful, abundant wealth, countless stately houses, men able, eloquent, and cheerfully disposed; besides, there is the grandeur of the site enlarged by a double wall, the Circus, her people's joy, the massy enclosed Theatre with wedge-like blocks of seats, the temples, the imperial citadels, the wealthy Mint, and the quarter renowned under the title of the Baths of Herculeus; her colonnades all adorned with marble statuary, her walls piled like an earthen rampart round the city's edge: all these, as it were rivals in the vast masses of their workmanship, are passing grand; nor does the near neighbourhood of Rome abase them.

§ 8  VIII. CAPUA:
Nor, certes, shall I leave unsung Capua, mighty in tillage of fields and in fruits, in luxury, in wealth, and in earlier renown, who, despite Fortune's changing haps, relied on her prosperity and knew not how to keep the mean. Now she, once rival, is subject to Rome; now she keeps faith, once faithless when, at a stand whether to flout or court the Senate, she dared to hope for magistrates chosen under Campanian auspices, and that with one consul from among her sons she might take up the empire over half the globe. Nay, and she attacked the mistress of the world, the mother of Latium, trusting not in leaders who wore the toga. Sworn to Hannibal's allegiance, she, the beguiled, the seeming mistress, passed in her folly into slavery to a foe. Thereafter when they were driven to their fall by the failings of them both, and came to ruin, the Carthaginians through luxury, the Campanians through pride (ah, never does arrogance find a firm-fixed throne!) that city with her power and might of wealth, a second Rome once, who could rear her crest as high, is thrust backwards and scarce can manage to keep the eighth place.

§ 9  IX. AQUILEIA:
This was not thy place; yet, raised by late deserts, thou shalt be named ninth among famous cities, O Aquileia, colony of Italy, facing toward the mountains of Illyria and highly famed for walls and harbour. But herein is greater praise, that in these last days Maximus, the whilom sutler posing as a captain, chose thee to receive his late expiation after five full years were spent. Happy thou who, as the glad witness of so great a triumph, didst punish with western arms the brigand of Rutupiae.

§ 10  X. ARELATE
Open thy havens with a gracious welcome, two-fold: Arelate Arelas, the little Rome of Gaul, to whom Martian Narbonne, to whom Vienne, rich in Alpine peasantry, is neighbour divided by the streams of headlong Rhone in suchwise that thou mak'st a bridge of boats thy central street, whereby thou gatherest the merchandize of the Roman world and scatterest it, enriching other peoples and the towns which Gaul and Aquitania treasure in their wide bosoms.

§ 11  XI. HISPALIS; XII. CORDUBA; XIII. TARRACO; XIV. BRACARA:
After these thou shalt be told, beloved Hispalis, name Iberian, by whom glides a river like the sea, to whom all Spain subjects her magistrates. Not Corduba, not Tarragona with its strong citadel contends with you, nor wealthy Bracara, lying proudly in her bay beside the sea.

§ 15  XV. ATHENS:
Now also let us tell of Athens with her earth-born fathers, the stronghold for which Pallas and Census once contended of her to whom the peace-bearing olive tree first belonged, whose is the unmixed glory of the fluent Attic tongue, from whom went abroad a Grecian band and throughout the peoples of Ionia and the Achaean race poured into a hundred cities.

§ 16  XVI. CATANA; XVII. SYRACUSE:
Who would not tell of Catana? Who not, of fourfold Syracuse? the one renowned for the devotion of the fire-scathed brethren, the other enfolding the marvellous fount and river, where, flowing beneath the salt waves of the Ionian Sea, they join in fellowship their sweet waters in the abode which pleases them exchanging there the kisses of their waters untainted by the brine.

§ 18  XVIII TOLOSA
Never will I leave unmentioned Tolosa, my nursing-mother, who is girt about with a vast circuit of brick-built walls, along whose side the lovely stream of the Garonne glides past, home of uncounted people, lying hard by the barriers of the snowy Pyrenees and the pine-clad Cevennes between the tribes of Aquitania and the Iberian folk. Though lately she has poured forth from her womb four several cities, she feels no loss of her drained populace, enfolding in her bosom all whom she has brought forth, though emigrants.

§ 19  XIX. NARBO
Nor shalt thou be unsung, Martian Narbonne, who gav'st thy name to that Province (Provence) which once spread over a vast realm and held sovereign sway over its numerous inhabitants. Where the Allobroges encroach upon the Graian borders and Alpine peaks shut out Italy, where the Iberians are parted from thee by Pyrenaean snows, where Rhone sweeps headlong from his sire Leman, and the Cevennes thrust deep into the plains of Aquitania, right on to the Teutosagi and Belcae, rustic folk, all was Narbonne: thou in all Gaul wast first to display the insignia of the Roman race under an Italian proconsul. What shall I say of thy harbours, mountains, lakes? What of thy peoples with their varied differences of garb and speech? Or of the temple of Parian marble., once thine, so vast in bulk that old Tarquin, the first builder, would not scorn it, nor Catulus the second, nor he who last raised the golden roofs of the Capitol, Caesar himself? Thee the merchandise of the eastern sea and Spanish main enrich, thee the fleets of the Libyan and Sicilian deeps, and all freights which pass by many different routes o'er rivers and o'er seas: the whole world over no argosy is afloat but for thy sake.

§ 20  XX. BURDIGALA
Long have I censured my unduteous silence in that of thee, my country famed for thy wine, thy rivers, thy famous men, the virtue and the wit of thy inhabitants and for the Senate of thy nobles, I did not tell among the foremost; as though, well knowing thee a little town, I shrank from touching praises undeserved. For this no shame is mine; for mine is neither a barbarous land upon the banks of Rhine, nor icy home on frozen Haemus. Burdigala is my native soil, where are skies temperate and mild, and well-watered land generously lavish; where is long spring, and winters growing warm with the new-born sun, and tidal rivers whose flood foams beneath vine-clad hills, mimicking the sea's ebb and flow. Her goodly walls four-square raise lofty towers so high that their tops pierce the soaring clouds. Within her, thou mayest marvel at streets clearly laid out, at houses regularly plotted out, at spacious boulevards which uphold their name, as also gates facing in direct line the crossways opposite; and, where the channel of thy spring-fed stream divides the town, soon as old Ocean has filled it with his flowing tide, thou shalt behold "a whole sea gliding onward with its fleets." What shall I say of that fountain, o'erlaid with Parian marble., which foams in the strait of its Euripus? How deep the water! How swelling the stream! How great the volume as it plunges in its headlong course through the twice six sluices in its long-drawn brink, and never fails to meet the people's countless purposes? This would'st thou long to reach with thy hosts, King of the Medes, when streams were consumed and rivers failed; * from this fount to carry waters through strange cities, thou who through them all wast wont to drink Choaspes alone! Hail, fountain of source unknown, holy, gracious, unfailing, crystal-clear, azure, deep, murmurous, shady, and unsullied! Hail, guardian deity of our city, of whom we may drink health-giving draughts, named by the Celts Divona, a fountain added to the roll divine! Not Aponus in taste, not Nemausus in azure sheen is more clear, nor Timavus' sea-like flood more brimming-full. Let this last task conclude the muster of famous cities. And as illustrious Rome leads at one end of the rank, so at this end let Burdigala establish her place, leaving the precedence unsettled. This is my own country; but Rome stands above all countries. I love Burdigala, Rome I venerate; in this I am a citizen, in both a consul; here was my cradle, there my curule chair.