Latin Text
The portrait includes the Latin legend Principum amicitias! ("The Friendships of Princes!") painted above the sitter's head. This is speculated to be quoted from Horace's Odes, book 2, ode 1 (below), where the words are addressed to Asinius Pollio, who, among other things, was a poet and playwright. In Horace's context they form part of a sentence meaning "beware the alliances of princes." The word for "beware" (or danger) is not, however present in the inscription, so it literally translates as "friendships of Princes". The fact that the word "friendships" appears in the accusative case in the inscription (rather than in the nominative, as one would expect if it were to stand alone), underscores the fact that the inscription was meant to allude to the passage in Horace 2.1.
| Latin | English translation |
|---|---|
| Motum ex Metello consule ciuicum bellique causas et uitia et modos |
You are writing on the civil disturbances during the consulship of Metellus, the causes of war, and the mistakes, and the methods, and the play of Fortune, and the destructive friendships of rulers, and weapons stained with blood still unatoned for. It is a work filled with dangerous chance, and you are walking over fires that smoulder with deceitful ashes. |
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