Ovid Lines 12-25 - Translation

ergo ubi caelicolae parvos tetigere penates

summissoque humiles intrarunt vertice postes

membra senex posito iussit relevare sedili,

cui superiniecit textum rude sedula Baucis.

Therefore, when the heaven-dwellers arrived at the small household

And entered the lowly doorposts with lowered heads,

the old man ordered them to relax their limbs on a couch placed there for them,

over which the busy Baucis placed a rough, woven cloth.

inde foco tepidum cinerem dimovit et ignes

suscitat hesternos foliisque et cortice sicco

nutrit et ad flammas anima producit anili,

Then she separated the warm ash from the hearth and rouses

the fires of yesterday, and feeds them with leaves and dry bark

and brings forth flames with the breath of an old woman,

multifidasque faces ramaliaque arida tecto

detulit et minuit parvoque admovit aëno,

quodque suus coniunx riguo collegerat horto

truncat holus foliis; ||

and brought down torches split into many pieces and dry sticks from the roof

and made them smaller and applied them to a small bronze pot,

and she strips a cabbage of its leaves which her husband had gathered

from the well watered garden; ||

|| furca levat ille bicorni

sordida terga suis nigro pendentia tigno

servatoque diu resecat de tergore partem

exiguam sectamque domat ferventibus undis.

|| with a two-pronged fork, he lifts

the sooty back of a pig which was hanging on a black beam

And he cuts off a thin slice from the long-preserved back

And having cut it up softens it in the boiling waters.