PERVIGILIUMI VENERIS  , the

Vigil of Venus, a short Latin poem . The author, date, and place of composition are unknown . The poem probably belongs to the 2nd or 3rd century A.D . An article signed L . Raquettius in the Classical Review (May 1905) assigns it to Sidonius Apollinaris (5th cent.) It was written professedly in early spring on the eve of a three-nights' festival of Venus (probably April 1-3) . It describes in poetical language the annual awakening of the vegetable and animal world through the goddess . It consists of ninety-three verses in trochaic septenarii, and is divided into strophes of unequal length by the refrain: Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit eras amet." Pervigilium was the term for a nocturnal festival in honour of some divinity, especially Bona Dea . Editio princeps (1577) ; modern editions by F . Bucheler (1859), A . Riese, in Anthologia latina (1869), E . Behrens in Unedierte lateinische Gedichte (1877); S . G .

Owen (with Catullus, 1893) . There are translations into English verse by Thomas Stanley (1651) and Thomas Parnell, author of The Hermit; on the text see J . W . Mackail in Journal of Philology (1888), vol. xvii .