Toulouse
Tolosa
Non umquam altricem nostri reticebo Tolosam,
octilibus muris quam circuit ambitus ingens
perque latus pulchro praelabitur amne Garumna,
innumeris cultam populis, confinia propter
inguida Pyrenes et pinea Cebennarum,
inter Aquitanas gentes et nomen Hiberum.
quae modo quadruplices ex se cum effuderit urbes,
non ulla exhaustae sentit dispendia plebis,
quos genuit cunctos gremio complexa colonos.
Ausonius, Ordo Urbium Nobilium, a poem honouring 20 cities in the world, five of them in Gallia: Trier, Arles, Narbonne, Toulouse en Bordeaux.
Decimus Magnus Ausonius (c. 310 – c. 395) was a Latin poet and rhetorician. More about Ausonius you can find here. More about his most famous poem ‘De rosis nascentibus’ (on budding roses) you can find here.
English Translation (Hugh G. Evelyn-White, (Loeb CL 96))
Never will I leave unmentioned Toulouse, my nursing-mother,
ho 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 Aquitaine 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.
Footnote: Toulouse had thrown out four new suburbs, and thus, while founding new “cities,” did not lose her “emigrants.” In Epistola. xxx. 83 Ausonius speaks of Toulouse as quinqueplicem in allusion to the same extension.
Traduction en français
Toulouse
Je ne laisserai jamais dans l’oubli Toulouse, ma nourrice, un rempart de briques l’enveloppe de ses vastes contours :à ses côtés coule le beau fleuve de la Garonne.
Des peuples sans nombre répandent la vie dans cette cité, voisine des Pyrénées chargées de neige, et des Cévennes couvertes de pins, assise entre les villes de l’Aquitaine et les nations de l’Ibérie.
Elle a donné naissance à quatre villes, sans s’épuiser ou perdre un seul de ses habitants; les colonies qu’elle a créées, elle les embrasse toutes en son sein.
E.-F. Corpet, 1843
Nederlands vertaling
Toulouse
Nooit zal ik over u zwijgen, Toulouse, stad die mij heeft gevoed; die met rode baksteen muren een immens gebied rond omgeeft; langs uw zijde stroomt de Garonne, die schone machtige rivier; van overal komen de mensen, ontelbaar zijn ze, en geven leven* aan uw stad; begrensd wordt u enkel door de besneeuwde toppen der Pyreneeën en de naaldboomrijke heuvels der Cevennen; centraal gelegen tussen de steden van Aquitanië en de volkeren van Iberia.
Een viervoud van steden is uit u uitgestroomd, toch hebt gij geen inwoner verloren: omarmd hebt gij ze, aan uw hart gedrukt, al uw ondernemende* kinderen.
vertaling Dick Wursten.
* Remark: ‘cultam’ and ‘colonos’ are both derivations from ‘colĕre’. In my humble opinion this wordplay is essential, but cannot be translated into Dutch. So I decided to translate associatively (to create dynamic equivalence). The final phrase refers to the four new quarters/suburbs, colonies.