A mind that is
cheerful
in its
present state, will disdain to be solicitous any further, and can
correct the bitters of life with a placid smile.
present state, will disdain to be solicitous any further, and can
correct the bitters of life with a placid smile.
Horace - Works
What
barbarian virgin shall be your slave, after you have killed her
betrothed husband? What boy from the court shall be made your
cup-bearer, with his perfumed locks, skilled to direct the Seric arrows
with his father's bow? Who will now deny that it is probable for
precipitate rivers to flow back again to the high mountains, and for
Tiber to change his course, since you are about to exchange the noble
works of Panaetius, collected from all parts, together with the whole
Socratic family, for Iberian armor, after you had promised better
things?
* * * * *
ODE XXX.
TO VENUS.
O Venus, queen of Gnidus and Paphos, neglect your favorite Cyprus, and
transport yourself into the beautiful temple of Glycera, who is invoking
you with abundance of frankincense. Let your glowing son hasten along
with you, and the Graces with their zones loosed, and the Nymphs, and
Youth possessed of little charm without you and Mercury.
* * * * *
ODE XXXI.
TO APOLLO.
What does the poet beg from Phoebus on the dedication of his temple?
What does he pray for, while he pours from the flagon the first
libation? Not the rich crops of fertile Sardinia: not the goodly flocks
of scorched Calabria: not gold, or Indian ivory: not those countries,
which the still river Liris eats away with its silent streams. Let those
to whom fortune has given the Calenian vineyards, prune them with a
hooked knife; and let the wealthy merchant drink out of golden cups the
wines procured by his Syrian merchandize, favored by the gods
themselves, inasmuch as without loss he visits three or four times a
year the Atlantic Sea. Me olives support, me succories and soft mallows.
O thou son of Latona, grant me to enjoy my acquisitions, and to possess
my health, together with an unimpaired understanding, I beseech thee;
and that I may not lead a dishonorable old age, nor one bereft of the
lyre.
* * * * *
ODE XXXII.
TO HIS LYRE.
We are called upon. If ever, O lyre, in idle amusement in the shade with
thee, we have played anything that may live for this year and many, come
on, be responsive to a Latin ode, my dear lyre--first tuned by a Lesbian
citizen, who, fierce in war, yet amid arms, or if he had made fast to
the watery shore his tossed vessel, sung Bacchus, and the Muses, and
Venus, and the boy, her ever-close attendant, and Lycus, lovely for his
black eyes and jetty locks. O thou ornament of Apollo, charming shell,
agreeable even at the banquets of supreme Jove! O thou sweet alleviator
of anxious toils, be propitious to me, whenever duly invoking thee!
* * * * *
ODE XXXIII.
TO ALBIUS TIBULLUS.
Grieve not too much, my Albius, thoughtful of cruel Glycera; nor chant
your mournful elegies, because, as her faith being broken, a younger man
is more agreeable, than you in her eyes. A love for Cyrus inflames
Lycoris, distinguished for her little forehead: Cyrus follows the rough
Pholoe; but she-goats shall sooner be united to the Apulian wolves, than
Pholoe shall commit a crime with a base adulterer. Such is the will of
Venus, who delights in cruel sport, to subject to her brazen yokes
persons and tempers ill suited to each other. As for myself, the
slave-born Myrtale, more untractable than the Adriatic Sea that forms
the Calabrian gulfs, entangled me in a pleasing chain, at the very time
that a more eligible love courted my embraces.
* * * * *
ODE XXXIV.
AGAINST THE EPICURIANS.
A remiss and irregular worshiper of the gods, while I professed the
errors of a senseless philosophy, I am now obliged to set sail back
again, and to renew the course that I had deserted. For Jupiter, who
usually cleaves the clouds with his gleaming lightning, lately drove
his thundering horses and rapid chariot through the clear serene; which
the sluggish earth, and wandering rivers; at which Styx, and the horrid
seat of detested Taenarus, and the utmost boundary of Atlas were shaken.
The Deity is able to make exchange between the highest and the lowest,
and diminishes the exalted, bringing to light the obscure; rapacious
fortune, with a shrill whizzing, has borne off the plume from one head,
and delights in having placed it on another.
* * * * *
ODE XXXV.
TO FORTUNE.
O Goddess, who presidest over beautiful Antium; thou, that art ready to
exalt mortal man from the most abject state, or to convert superb
triumphs into funerals! Thee the poor countryman solicits with his
anxious vows; whosoever plows the Carpathian Sea with the Bithynian
vessel, importunes thee as mistress of the ocean. Thee the rough Dacian,
thee the wandering Scythians, and cities, and nations, and warlike
Latium also, and the mothers of barbarian kings, and tyrants clad in
purple, fear. Spurn not with destructive foot that column which now
stands firm, nor let popular tummult rouse those, who now rest quiet, to
arms--to arms--and break the empire. Necessity, thy minister, alway
marches before thee, holding in her brazen hand huge spikes and wedges,
nor is the unyielding clamp absent, nor the melted lead. Thee Hope
reverences, and rare Fidelity robed in a white garment; nor does she
refuse to bear thee company, howsoever in wrath thou change thy robe,
and abandon the houses of the powerful. But the faithless crowd [of
companions], and the perjured harlot draw back. Friends, too faithless
to bear equally the yoke of adversity, when casks are exhausted, very
dregs and all, fly off. Preserve thou Caesar, who is meditating an
expedition against the Britons, the furthest people in the world, and
also the new levy of youths to be dreaded by the Eastern regions, and
the Red Sea. Alas! I am ashamed of our scars, and our wickedness, and of
brethren. What have we, a hardened age, avoided? What have we in our
impiety left unviolated! From what have our youth restrained their
hands, out of reverence to the gods? What altars have they spared? O
mayest thou forge anew our blunted swords on a different anvil against
the Massagetae and Arabians.
* * * * *
ODE XXXVI.
This is a joyful occasion to sacrifice both with incense and music of
the lyre, and the votive blood of a heifer to the gods, the guardians of
Numida; who, now returning in safety from the extremest part of Spain,
imparts many embraces to his beloved companions, but to none more than
his dear Lamia, mindful of his childhood spent under one and the same
governor, and of the gown, which they changed at the same time. Let not
this joyful day be without a Cretan mark of distinction; let us not
spare the jar brought forth [from the cellar]; nor, Salian-like, let
there be any cessation of feet; nor let the toping Damalis conquer
Bassus in the Thracian Amystis; nor let there be roses wanting to the
banquet, nor the ever-green parsley, nor the short-lived lily. All the
company will fix their dissolving eyes on Damalis; but she, more
luxuriant than the wanton ivy, will not be separated from her new lover.
* * * * *
ODE XXXVII.
TO HIS COMPANIONS.
Now, my companions, is the time to carouse, now to beat the ground with
a light foot: now is the time that was to deck the couch of the gods
with Salian dainties. Before this, it was impious to produce the old
Caecuban stored up by your ancestors; while the queen, with a
contaminated gang of creatures, noisome through distemper, was preparing
giddy destruction for the Capitol and the subversion of the empire,
being weak enough to hope for any thing, and intoxicated with her
prospering fortune. But scarcely a single ship preserved from the flames
bated her fury; and Caesar brought down her mind, inflamed with Egyptian
wine, to real fears, close pursuing her in her flight from Italy with
his galleys (as the hawk pursues the tender doves, or the nimble hunter
the hare in the plains of snowy Aemon), that he might throw into chains
this destructive monster [of a woman]; who, seeking a more generous
death, neither had an effeminate dread of the sword, nor repaired with
her swift ship to hidden shores. She was able also to look upon her
palace, lying in ruins, with a countenance unmoved, and courageous
enough to handle exasperated asps, that she might imbibe in her body the
deadly poison, being more resolved by having pre-meditated her death:
for she was a woman of such greatness of soul, as to scorn to be carried
off in haughty triumph, like a private person, by rough Liburnians.
* * * * *
ODE XXXVIII.
TO HIS SERVANT.
Boy, I detest the pomp of the Persians; chaplets, which are woven with
the rind of the linden, displease me; give up the search for the place
where the latter rose abides. It is my particular desire that you make
no laborious addition to the plain myrtle; for myrtle is neither
unbecoming you a servant, nor me, while I quaff under this mantling
vine.
* * * * *
THE SECOND BOOK OF THE ODES OF HORACE.
ODE I.
TO ASINIUS POLLIO.
You are treating of the civil commotion, which began from the consulship
of Metelius, and the causes, and the errors, and the operations of the
war, and the game that fortune played, and the pernicious confederacy of
the chiefs, and arms stained with blood not yet expiated--a work full of
danger and hazard: and you are treading upon fires, hidden under
deceitful ashes: let therefore the muse that presides over severe
tragedy, be for a while absent from the theaters; shortly, when thou
hast completed the narrative of the public affairs, you shall resume
your great work in the tragic style of Athens, O Pollio, thou excellent
succor to sorrowing defendants and a consulting senate; [Pollio,] to
whom the laurel produced immortal honors in the Dalmatian triumph. Even
now you stun our ears with the threatening murmur of horns: now the
clarions sound; now the glitter of arms affrights the flying steeds, and
dazzles the sight of the riders. Now I seem to hear of great commanders
besmeared with, glorious dust, and the whole earth subdued, except the
stubborn soul of Cato. Juno, and every other god propitious to the
Africans, impotently went off, leaving that land unrevenged; but soon
offered the descendants of the conquerors, as sacrifices to the manes of
Jugurtha. What plain, enriched by Latin blood, bears not record, by its
numerous sepulchres, of our impious battles, and of the sound of the
downfall of Italy, heard even by the Medes? What pool, what rivers, are
unconscious of our deplorable war? What sea have not the Daunian
slaughters discolored? What shore is unstained by our blood? Do not,
however, rash muse, neglecting your jocose strains, resume the task of
Caean plaintive song, but rather with me seek measures of a lighter
style beneath some love-sequestered grotto.
* * * * *
ODE II.
TO CRISPUS SALLUSTIUS.
O Crispus Sallustius, thou foe to bullion, unless it derives splendor
from a moderate enjoyment, there is no luster in money concealed in the
niggard earth. Proculeius shall live an extended age, conspicuous for
fatherly affection to brothers; surviving fame shall bear him on an
untiring wing. You may possess a more extensive dominion by controlling
a craving disposition, than if you could unite Libya to the distant
Gades, and the natives of both the Carthages were subject to you alone.
The direful dropsy increases by self-indulgence, nor extinguishes its
thirst, unless the cause of the disorder has departed from the veins,
and the watery languor from the pallid body. Virtue, differing from the
vulgar, excepts Phraates though restored to the throne of Cyrus, from
the number of the happy; and teaches the populace to disuse false names
for things, by conferring the kingdom and a safe diadem and the
perpetual laurel upon him alone, who can view large heaps of treasure
with undazzled eye.
* * * * *
ODE III.
TO QUINTUS DELLIUS.
O Dellius, since thou art born to die, be mindful to preserve a temper
of mind even in times of difficulty, as well an restrained from insolent
exultation in prosperity: whether thou shalt lead a life of continual
sadness, or through happy days regale thyself with Falernian wine of the
oldest date, at case reclined in some grassy retreat, where the lofty
pine and hoary poplar delight to interweave their boughs into a
hospitable shade, and the clear current with trembling surface purls
along the meandering rivulet. Hither order [your slaves] to bring the
wine, and the perfumes, and the too short-lived flowers of the grateful
rose, while fortune, and age; and the sable threads of the three sisters
permit thee. You must depart from your numerous purchased groves; from
your house also, and that villa, which the yellow Tiber washes, you must
depart: and an heir shall possess these high-piled riches. It is of no
consequence whether you are the wealthy descendant of ancient Inachus,
or whether, poor and of the most ignoble race, you live without a
covering from the open air, since you are the victim of merciless Pluto.
We are all driven toward the same quarter: the lot of all is shaken in
the urn; destined sooner or later to come forth, and embark us in
[Charon's] boat for eternal exile.
* * * * *
ODE IV.
TO XANTHIAS PHOCEUS.
Let not, O Xanthias Phoceus, your passion for your maid put you out of
countenance; before your time, the slave Briseis moved the haughty
Achilles by her snowy complexion. The beauty of the captive Tecmessa
smote her master, the Telamonian Ajax; Agamemnon, in the midst of
victory, burned for a ravished virgin: when the barbarian troops fell by
the hands of their Thessalian conqueror, and Hector, vanquished, left
Troy more easily to be destroyed by the Grecians. You do not know that
perchance the beautiful Phyllis has parents of condition happy enough to
do honor to you their son-in-law. Certainly she must be of royal race,
and laments the unpropitiousness of her family gods. Be confident, that
your beloved is not of the worthless crowd; nor that one so true, so
unmercenary, could possibly be born of a mother to be ashamed of. I can
commend arms, and face, and well-made legs, quite chastely: avoid being
jealous of one, whose age is hastening onward to bring its eighth
mastrum to a close.
* * * * *
ODE V.
Not yet is she fit to be broken to the yoke; not yet is she equal to the
duties of a partner, nor can she support the weight of the bull
impetuously rushing to enjoyment. Your heifer's sole inclination is
about verdant fields, one while in running streams soothing the grievous
heat; at another, highly delighted to frisk with the steerlings in the
moist willow ground. Suppress your appetite for the immature grape;
shortly variegated autumn will tinge for thee the lirid clusters with a
purple hue. Shortly she shall follow you; for her impetuous time runs
on, and shall place to her account those years of which it abridges you;
shortly Lalage with a wanton assurance will seek a husband, beloved in a
higher degree than the coy Pholoe, or even Chloris; shining as brightly
with her fair shoulder, as the spotless moon upon the midnight sea, or
even the Gnidian Gyges, whom if you should intermix in a company of
girls, the undiscernible difference occasioned by his flowing locks and
doubtful countenance would wonderfully impose even on sagacious
strangers.
* * * * *
ODE VI.
TO SEPTIMUS.
Septimus, who art ready to go with me, even to Gades, and to the
Cantabrian, still untaught to bear our yoke, and the inhospitable
Syrtes, where the Mauritanian wave perpetually boils. O may Tibur,
founded by a Grecian colony, be the habitation of my old age! There let
there be an end to my fatigues by sea, and land, and war; whence if the
cruel fates debar me, I will seek the river of Galesus, delightful for
sheep covered with skins, and the countries reigned over by
Lacedaemonian Phalantus. That corner of the world smiles in my eye
beyond all others; where the honey yields not to the Hymettian, and the
olive rivals the verdant Venafrian: where the temperature of the air
produces a long spring and mild winters, and Aulon friendly to the
fruitful vine, envies not the Falernian grapes. That place, and those
blest heights, solicit you and me; there you shall bedew the glowing
ashes of your poet friend with a tear due [to his memory].
* * * * *
ODE VII.
TO POMPEIUS VARUS.
O thou, often reduced with me to the last extremity in the war which
Brutus carried on, who has restored thee as a Roman citizen, to the gods
of thy country and the Italian air, Pompey, thou first of my companions;
with whom I have frequently broken the tedious day in drinking, having
my hair, shining with the Syrian maiobathrum, crowned [with flowers]!
Together with thee did I experience the [battle of] Phillippi and a
precipitate flight, having shamefully enough left my shield; when valor
was broken, and the most daring smote the squalid earth with their
faces. But Mercury swift conveyed me away, terrified as I was, in a
thick cloud through the midst of the enemy. Thee the reciprocating sea,
with his tempestuous waves, bore back again to war. Wherefore render to
Jupiter the offering that is due, and deposit your limbs, wearied with a
tedious war, under my laurel, and spare not the casks reserved for you.
Fill up the polished bowls with care-dispelling Massic: pour out the
perfumed ointments from the capacious shells. Who takes care to quickly
weave the chaplets of fresh parsely or myrtle? Whom shall the Venus
pronounce to be master of the revel? In wild carouse I will become
frantic as the Bacchanalians. 'Tis delightful to me to play the madman,
on the reception of my friends.
* * * * *
ODE VIII.
TO BARINE.
If any punishment, Barine, for your violated oath had ever been of
prejudice to you: if you had become less agreeable by the blackness of a
single tooth or nail, I might believe you. But you no sooner have bound
your perfidious head with vows, but you shine out more charming by far,
and come forth the public care of our youth. It is of advantage to you
to deceive the buried ashes of your mother, and the silent
constellations of the night, together with all heaven, and the gods free
from chill death. Venus herself, I profess, laughs at this; the
good-natured nymphs laugh, and cruel Cupid, who is perpetually
sharpening his burning darts on a bloody whetstone. Add to this, that
all our boys are growing up for you; a new herd of slaves is growing up;
nor do the former ones quit the house of their impious mistress,
notwithstanding they often have threatened it. The matrons are in dread
of you on account of their young ones; the thrifty old men are in dread
of you; and the girls but just married are in distress, lest your beauty
should slacken [the affections of] their husbands.
* * * * *
ODE IX.
TO TITUS VALGIUS.
Showers do not perpetually pour down upon the rough fields, nor do
varying hurricanes forever harass the Caspian Sea; nor, my friend
Valgius, does the motionless ice remain fixed throughout all the months,
in the regions of Armenia; nor do the Garganian oaks [always] labor
under the northerly winds, nor are the ash-trees widowed of their
leaves. But thou art continually pursuing Mystes, who is taken from
thee, with mournful measures: nor do the effects of thy love for him
cease at the rising of Vesper, or when he flies the rapid approach of
the sun. But the aged man who lived three generations, did not lament
the amiable Antilochus all the years of his life: nor did his parents or
his Trojan sisters perpetually bewail the blooming Troilus. At length
then desist from thy tender complaints; and rather let us sing the fresh
trophies of Augustus Caesar, and the Frozen Niphates, and the river
Medus, added to the vanquished nations, rolls more humble tides, and the
Gelonians riding within a prescribed boundary in a narrow tract of land.
* * * * *
ODE X.
TO LICINIUS MURENA.
O Licinius, you will lead a more correct course of life, by neither
always pursuing the main ocean, nor, while you cautiously are in dread
of storms, by pressing too much upon the hazardous shore. Whosoever
loves the golden mean, is secure from the sordidness of an antiquated
cell, and is too prudent to have a palace that might expose him to
envy, if the lofty pine is more frequently agitated with winds, and high
towers fall down with a heavier ruin, and lightnings strike the summits
of the mountains. A well-provided breast hopes in adversity, and fears
in prosperity. 'Tis the same Jupiter, that brings the hideous winters
back, and that takes them away. If it is ill with us now, it will not be
so hereafter. Apollo sometimes rouses the silent lyric muse, neither
does he always bend his bow. In narrow circumstances appear in high
spirits, and undaunted. In the same manner you will prudently contract
your sails, which are apt to be too much swollen in a prosperous gale.
* * * * *
ODE XI.
TO QUINTIUS HIRPINUS.
O Quintius Hirpinus, forbear to be inquisitive what the Cantabrian, and
the Scythian, divided from us by the interposed Adriatic, is meditating;
neither be fearfully solicitous for the necessaries of a life, which
requires but a few things. Youth and beauty fly swift away, while
sapless old age expels the wanton loves and gentle sleep. The same glory
does not always remain to the vernal flowers, nor does the ruddy moon
shine with one continued aspect; why, therefore, do you fatigue you
mind, unequal to eternal projects? Why do we not rather (while it is in
our power) thus carelessly reclining under a lofty plane-tree, or this
pine, with our hoary locks made fragrant by roses, and anointed with
Syrian perfume, indulge ourselves with generous wine? Bacchus dissipates
preying cares. What slave is here, instantly to cool some cups of ardent
Falernian in the passing stream? Who will tempt the vagrant wanton Lyde
from her house? See that you bid her hasten with her ivory lyre,
collecting her hair into a graceful knot, after the fashion of a Spartan
maid.
* * * * *
ODE XII.
TO MAECENAS.
Do not insist that the long wars of fierce Numantia, or the formidable
Annibal, or the Sicilian Sea impurpled with Carthaginian blood, should
be adapted to the tender lays of the lyre: nor the cruel Lapithae, nor
Hylaeus excessive in wine and the earth born youths, subdued by
Herculean force, from whom the splendid habitation of old Saturn dreaded
danger. And you yourself, Maecenas, with more propriety shall recount
the battles of Caesar, and the necks of haughty kings led in triumph
through the streets in historical prose. It was the muse's will that I
should celebrate the sweet strains of my mistress Lycimnia, that I
should celebrate her bright darting eyes, and her breast laudably
faithful to mutual love: who can with a grace introduce her foot into
the dance, or, sporting, contend in raillery, or join arms with the
bright virgins on the celebrated Diana's festival. Would you,
[Maecenas,] change one of Lycimnia's tresses for all the rich Achaemenes
possessed, or the Mygdonian wealth of fertile Phrygia, or all the
dwellings of the Arabians replete with treasures? Especially when she
turns her neck to meet your burning kisses, or with a gentle cruelty
denies, what she would more delight to have ravished than the
petitioner--or sometimes eagerly anticipates to snatch them her self.
* * * * *
ODE XIII.
TO A TREE.
O tree, he planted thee on an unlucky day whoever did it first, and with
an impious hand raised thee for the destruction of posterity, and the
scandal of the village. I could believe that he had broken his own
father's neck, and stained his most secret apartments with the midnight
blood of his guest. He was wont to handle Colchian poisons, and whatever
wickedness is anywhere conceived, who planted in my field thee, a sorry
log; thee, ready to fall on the head of thy inoffensive master. What we
ought to be aware of, no man is sufficiently cautious at all hours. The
Carthaginian sailor thoroughly dreads the Bosphorus; nor, beyond that,
does he fear a hidden fate from any other quarter. The soldier dreads
the arrows and the fleet retreat of the Parthian; the Parthian, chains
and an Italian prison; but the unexpected assault of death has carried
off, and will carry off, the world in general. How near was I seeing the
dominions of black Proserpine, and Aeacus sitting in judgment; the
separate abodes also of the pious, and Sappho complaining in her Aeohan
lyre of her own country damsels; and thee, O Alcaeus, sounding in fuller
strains on thy golden harp the distresses of exile, and the distresses
of war. The ghosts admire them both, while they utter strains worthy of
a sacred silence; but the crowded multitude, pressing with their
shoulders, imbibes, with a more greedy ear, battles and banished
tyrants. What wonder? Since the many headed monster, astonished at those
lays, hangs down his sable ears; and the snakes, entwined in the hair of
the furies, are soothed. Moreover, Prometheus and the sire of Pelops are
deluded into an insensibility of their torments, by the melodious sound:
nor is Orion any longer solicitous to harass the lions, or the fearful
lynxes.
* * * * *
ODE XIV.
TO POSTUMUS.
Alas! my Postumus, my Postumus, the fleeting years gilde on; nor will
piety cause any delay to wrinkles, and advancing old age, and
insuperable death. You could not, if you were to sacrifice every passing
day three hundred bulls, render propitious pitiless Pluto, who confines
the thrice-monstrous Geryon and Tityus with the dismal Stygian stream,
namely, that stream which is to be passed over by all who are fed by the
bounty of the earth, whether we be kings or poor ninds. In vain shall we
be free from sanguinary Mars, and the broken billows of the hoarse
Adriatic; in vain shall we be apprehensive for ourselves of the noxious
South, in the time of autumn. The black Cocytus wandering with languid
current, and the infamous race of Danaus, and Sisyphus, the son of the
Aeolus, doomed to eternal toil, must be visited; your land and house and
pleasing wife must be left, nor shall any of those trees, which you are
nursing, follow you, their master for a brief space, except the hated
cypresses; a worthier heir shall consume your Caecuban wines now guarded
with a hundred keys, and shall wet the pavement with the haughty wine,
more exquisite than what graces pontifical entertainment.
* * * * *
ODE XV.
AGAINST THE LUXURY OF THE ROMANS.
The palace-like edifices will in a short time leave but a few acres for
the plough; ponds of wider extent than the Lucrine lake will be every
where to be seen; and the barren plane-tree will supplant the elms. Then
banks of violets, and myrtle groves, and all the tribe of nosegays shall
diffuse their odors in the olive plantations, which were fruitful to
their preceding master. Then the laurel with dense boughs shall exclude
the burning beams. It was not so prescribed by the institutes of
Romulus, and the unshaven Cato, and ancient custom. Their private income
was contracted, while that of the community was great. No private men
were then possessed of galleries measured by ten-feet rules, which
collected the shady northern breezes; nor did the laws permit them to
reject the casual turf [for their own huts], though at the same time
they obliged them to ornament in the most sumptuous manner, with new
stone, the buildings of the public, and the temples of the gods, at a
common expense.
* * * * *
ODE XVI.
TO GROSPHUS.
O Grosphus, he that is caught in the wide Aegean Sea; when a black
tempest has obscured the moon, and not a star appears with steady light
for the mariners, supplicates the gods for repose: for repose, Thrace
furious in war; the quiver-graced Medes, for repose neither purchasable
by jewels, nor by purple, nor by gold. For neither regal treasures nor
the consul's officer can remove the wretched tumults of the mind, nor
the cares that hover about splendid ceilings. That man lives happily on
a little, who can view with pleasure the old-fashioned family
salt-cellar on his frugal board; neither anxiety nor sordid avarice robs
him of gentle sleep. Why do we, brave for a short season, aim at many
things? Why do we change our own for climates heated by another sun?
Whoever, by becoming an exile from his country, escaped likewise from
himself? Consuming care boards even brazen-beaked ships: nor does it
quit the troops of horsemen, for it is more fleet than the stags, more
fleet than the storm-driving east wind.
A mind that is cheerful in its
present state, will disdain to be solicitous any further, and can
correct the bitters of life with a placid smile. Nothing is on all hands
completely blessed. A premature death carried off the celebrated
Achilles; a protracted old age wore down Tithonus; and time perhaps may
extend to me, what it shall deny to you. Around you a hundred flocks
bleat, and Sicilian heifers low; for your use the mare, fit for the
harness, neighs; wool doubly dipped in the African purple-dye, clothes
you: on me undeceitful fate has bestowed a small country estate, and the
slight inspiration of the Grecian muse, and a contempt for the malignity
of the vulgar.
* * * * *
ODE XVII.
TO MAECENAS.
Why dost thoti kill me with thy complaints? 'Tis neither agreeable to
the gods, nor to me, that thou shouldest depart first, O Maecenas, thou
grand ornament and pillar of my affairs. Alas! if an untimely blow hurry
away thee, a part of my soul, why do I the other moiety remain, my value
lost, nor any longer whole? That [fatal] day shall bring destruction
upon us both. I have by no means taken a false oath: we will go, we will
go, whenever thou shalt lead the way, prepared to be fellow-travelers in
the last journey. Me nor the breath of the fiery Chimaera, nor
hundred-handed Gyges, were he to rise again, shall ever tear from thee:
such is the will of powerful Justice, and of the Fates. Whether Libra or
malignant Scorpio had the ascendant at my natal hour, or Capricon the
ruler of the western wave, our horoscopes agree in a wonderful manner.
Thee the benign protection of Jupiter, shining with friendly aspect,
rescued from the baleful influence of impious Saturn, and retarded the
wings of precipitate destiny, at the time the crowded people with
resounding applauses thrice hailed you in the theatre: me the trunk of a
tree, falling upon my skull, would have dispatched, had not Faunus, the
protector of men of genius, with his right hand warded off the blow. Be
thou mindful to pay the victims and the votive temple; I will sacrifice
an humble lamb.
* * * * *
ODE XVIII.
AGAINST AVARICE AND LUXURY.
Nor ivory, nor a fretted ceiling adorned with gold, glitters in my
house: no Hymettian beams rest upon pillars cut out of the extreme parts
of Africa; nor, a pretended heir, have I possessed myself of the palace
of Attalus, nor do ladies, my dependants, spin Laconian purple for my
use. But integrity, and a liberal vein of genius, are mine: and the man
of fortune makes his court to me, who am but poor. I importune the gods
no further, nor do I require of my friend in power any larger
enjoyments, sufficiently happy with my Sabine farm alone. Day is driven
on by day, and the new moons hasten to their wane. You put out marble to
be hewn, though with one foot in the grave; and, unmindful of a
sepulcher, are building houses; and are busy to extend the shore of the
sea, that beats with violence at Baiae, not rich enough with the shore
of the mainland. Why is it, that through avarice you even pluck up the
landmarks of your neighbor's ground, and trespass beyond the bounds of
your clients; and wife and husband are turned out, bearing in their
bosom their household gods and their destitute children? Nevertheless,
no court more certainly awaits its wealthy lord, than the destined limit
of rapacious Pluto. Why do you go on? The impartial earth is opened
equally to the poor and to the sons of kings; nor has the life-guard
ferryman of hell, bribed with gold, re-conducted the artful Prometheus.
He confines proud Tantalus; and the race of Tantalus, he condescends,
whether invoked or not, to relieve the poor freed from their labors.
* * * * *
ODE XIX.
ON BACCHUS.
A DITHYRAMBIC, OR DRINKING SONG.
I saw Bacchus (believe it, posterity) dictating strains among the remote
rocks, and the nymphs learning them, and the ears of the goat-footed
satyrs all attentive. Evoe! my mind trembles with recent dread, and my
soul, replete with Bacchus, has a tumultuous joy, Evoe! spare me,
Bacchus; spare me, thou who art formidable for thy dreadful thyrsus. It
is granted me to sing the wanton Bacchanalian priestess, and the
fountain of wine, and rivulets flowing with milk, and to tell again of
the honeys distilling from the hollow trunks. It is granted me likewise
to celebrate the honor added to the constellations by your happy spouse,
and the palace of Pentheus demolished with no light ruin, and the
perdition of Thracian. Lycurgus. You command the rivers, you the
barbarian sea. You, moist with wine, on lonely mountain-tops bind the
hair of your Thracian priestesses with a knot of vipers without hurt.
You, when the impious band of giants scaled the realms of father Jupiter
through the sky, repelled Rhoetus, with the paws and horrible jaw of the
lion-shape [you had assumed]. Thou, reported to be better fitted for
dances, and jokes and play, you were accounted insufficient for fight;
yet it then appeared, you, the same deity, was the mediator of peace and
war. Upon you, ornamented with your golden horn, Orberus innocently
gazed, gently wagging his tail; and with his triple tongue licked your
feet and legs, as you returned.
* * * * *
ODE XX.
TO MAECENAS.
I, a two-formed poet, will be conveyed through the liquid air with no
vulgar or humble wing; nor will I loiter upon earth any longer; and
superior to envy, I will quit cities. Not I, even I, the blood of low
parents, my dear Maecenas, shall die; nor shall I be restrained by the
Stygian wave. At this instant a rough skin settles upon my ankles, and
all upwards I am transformed into a white bird, and the downy plumage
arises over my fingers and shoulders. Now, a melodious bird, more
expeditious than the Daepalean Icarus, I will visit the shores of the
murmuring Bosphorus, and the Gzetulean Syrtes, and the Hyperborean
plains. Me the Colchian and the Dacian, who hides his fear of the
Marsian cohort, land the remotest Gelonians, shall know: me the learned
Spaniard shall study, and he that drinks of the Rhone. Let there be no
dirges, nor unmanly lamentations, nor bewailings at my imaginary
funeral; suppress your crying, and forbear the superfluous honors of a
sepulcher.
* * * * *
THE THIRD BOOK OF THE ODES OF HORACE.
ODE I.
ON CONTENTMENT.
I abominate the uninitiated vulgar, and keep them at a distance.
Preserve a religious silence: I, the priest of the Muses, sing to
virgins and boys verses not heard before. The dominion of dread
sovereigns is over their own subjects; that of Jupiter, glorious for his
conquest over the giants, who shakes all nature with his nod, is over
sovereigns themselves. It happens that one man, arranges trees, in
regular rows, to a greater extent than another; this man comes down into
the Campus [Martius] as a candidate of a better family; another vies
with him for morals and a better reputation; a third has a superior
number of dependants; but Fate, by the impartial law of nature, is
allotted both to the conspicuous and the obscure; the capacious urn
keeps every name in motion. Sicilian dainties will not force a delicious
relish to that man, over whose impious neck the naked sword hangs: the
songs of birds and the lyre will not restore his sleep. Sleep disdains
not the humble cottages and shady bank of peasants; he disdains not
Tempe, fanned by zephyrs. Him, who desires but a competency, neither the
tempestuous sea renders anxious, nor the malign violence of Arcturus
setting, or of the rising Kid; not his vineyards beaten down with hail,
and a deceitful farm; his plantations at one season blaming the rains,
at another, the influence of the constellations parching the grounds, at
another, the severe winters. The fishes perceive the seas contracted, by
the vast foundations that have been laid in the deep: hither numerous
undertakers with their men, and lords, disdainful of the land, send down
mortar: but anxiety and the threats of conscience ascend by the same way
as the possessor; nor does gloomy care depart from the brazen-beaked
galley, and she mounts behind the horseman. Since then nor Phrygian
marble, nor the use of purple more dazzling than the sun, nor the
Falernian vine, nor the Persian nard, composes a troubled mind, why
should I set about a lofty edifice with columns that excite envy, and in
the modern taste? Why should I exchange my Sabine vale for wealth, which
is attended with more trouble?
* * * * *
ODE II.
AGAINST THE DEGENERACY OF THE ROMAN YOUTH.
Let the robust youth learn patiently to endure pinching want in the
active exercise of arms; and as an expert horseman, dreadful for his
spear, let him harass the fierce Parthians; and let him lead a life
exposed to the open air, and familiar with dangers. Him, the consort and
marriageable virgin-daughter of some warring tyrant, viewing from the
hostile walls, may sigh--- Alas! let not the affianced prince,
inexperienced as he is in arms, provoke by a touch this terrible lion,
whom bloody rage hurries through the midst of slaughter. It is sweet and
glorious to die for one's country; death even pursues the man that flies
from him; nor does he spare the trembling knees of effeminate youth, nor
the coward back. Virtue, unknowing of base repulse, shines with
immaculate honors; nor does she assume nor lay aside the ensigns of her
dignity, at the veering of the popular air. Virtue, throwing open heaven
to those who deserve not to die, directs her progress through paths of
difficulty, and spurns with a rapid wing grovelling cowards and the
slippery earth. There is likewise a sure reward for faithful silence. I
will prohibit that man, who shall divulge the sacred rites of mysterious
Ceres, from being under the same roof with me, or from setting sail with
me in the same fragile bark: for Jupiter, when slighted, often joins a
good man in the same fate with a bad one. Seldom hath punishment, though
lame, of foot, failed to overtake the wicked.
* * * * *
ODE III.
ON STEADINESS AND INTEGRITY.
Not the rage of the people pressing to hurtful measures, not the aspect
of a threatening tyrant can shake from his settled purpose the man who
is just and determined in his resolution; nor can the south wind, that
tumultuous ruler of the restless Adriatic, nor the mighty hand of
thundering Jove; if a crushed world should fall in upon him, the ruins
would strike him undismayed. By this character Pollux, by this the
wandering Hercules, arrived at the starry citadels; among whom Augustus
has now taken his place, and quaffs nectar with empurpled lips. Thee, O
Father Bacchus, meritorious for this virtue, thy tigers carried, drawing
the yoke with intractable neck; by this Romulus escaped Acheron on the
horses of Mars--Juno having spoken what the gods in full conclave
approve: "Troy, Troy, a fatal and lewd judge, and a foreign woman, have
reduced to ashes, condemned, with its inhabitants and fraudulent prince,
to me and the chaste Minerva, ever since Laomedon disappointed the gods
of the stipulated reward. Now neither the infamous guest of the
Lacedaemonian adulteress shines; nor does Priam's perjured family repel
the warlike Grecians by the aid of Hector, and that war, spun out to
such a length by our factions, has sunk to peace. Henceforth, therefore,
I will give up to Mars both my bitter resentment, and the detested
grandson, whom the Trojan princes bore. Him will I suffer to enter the
bright regions, to drink the juice of nectar, and to be enrolled among
the peaceful order of gods. As long as the extensive sea rages between
Troy and Rome, let them, exiles, reign happy in any other part of the
world: as long as cattle trample upon the tomb of Priam and Paris, and
wild beasts conceal their young ones there with impunity, may the
Capitol remain in splendor, and may brave Rome be able to give laws to
the conquered Medes. Tremendous let her extend her name abroad to the
extremest boundaries of the earth, where the middle ocean separates
Europe from Africa, where the swollen Nile waters the plains; more brave
in despising gold as yet undiscovered, and so best situated while hidden
in the earth, than in forcing it out for the uses of mankind, with a
hand ready to make depredations on everything that is sacred. Whatever
end of the world has made resistance, that let her reach with her arms,
joyfully alert to visit, even that part where fiery heats rage madding;
that where clouds and rains storm with unmoderated fury. But I pronounce
this fate to the warlike Romans, upon this condition; that neither
through an excess of piety, nor of confidence in their power, they
become inclined to rebuild the houses of their ancestors' Troy. The
fortune of Troy, reviving under unlucky auspices, shall be repeated with
lamentable destruction, I, the wife and sister of Jupiter, leading on
the victorious bands. Thrice, if a brazen wall should arise by means of
its founder Phoebus, thrice should it fall, demolished by my Grecians;
thrice should the captive wife bewail her husband and her children. "
These themes ill suit the merry lyre. Whither, muse, are you
going? --Cease, impertinent, to relate the language of the gods, and to
debase great things by your trifling measures.
* * * * *
ODE IV.
TO CALLIOPE.
Descend from heaven, queen Calliope, and come sing with your pipe a
lengthened strain; or, if you had now rather, with your clear voice, or
on the harp or lute of Phoebus. Do ye hear? or does a pleasing frenzy
delude me? I seem to hear [her], and to wander [with her] along the
hallowed groves, through which pleasant rivulets and gales make their
way. Me, when a child, and fatigued with play, in sleep the woodland
doves, famous in story, covered with green leaves in the Apulian Vultur,
just without the limits of my native Apulia; so that it was matter of
wonder to all that inhabit the nest of lofty Acherontia, the Bantine
Forests, and the rich soil of low Ferentum, how I could sleep with my
body safe from deadly vipers and ravenous bears; how I could be covered
with sacred laurel and myrtle heaped together, though a child, not
animated without the [inspiration of the] gods. Yours, O ye muses, I am
yours, whether I am elevated to the Sabine heights; or whether the cool
Praeneste, or the sloping Tibur, or the watery Baiae have delighted me.
Me, who am attached to your fountains and dances, not the army put to
flight at Philippi, not the execrable tree, nor a Palinurus in the
Sicilian Sea has destroyed. While you shall be with me with pleasure
will I, a sailor, dare the raging Bosphorus; or, a traveler, the burning
sands of the Assyrian shore: I will visit the Britons inhuman to
strangers, and the Concanian delighted [with drinking] the blood of
horses; I will visit the quivered Geloni, and the Scythian river without
hurt. You entertained lofty Caesar, seeking to put an end to his toils,
in the Pierian grotto, as soon as he had distributed in towns his
troops, wearied by campaigning: you administer [to him] moderate
counsel, and graciously rejoice at it when administered. We are aware
how he, who rules the inactive earth and the stormy main, the cities
also, and the dreary realms [of hell], and alone governs with a
righteous sway both gods and the human multitude, how he took off the
impious Titans and the gigantic troop by his falling thunderbolts. That
horrid youth, trusting to the strength of their arms, and the brethren
proceeding to place Pelion upon shady Olympus, had brought great dread
[even] upon Jove. But what could Typhoeus, and the strong Mimas, or what
Porphyrion with his menacing statue; what Rhoetus, and Enceladus, a
fierce darter with trees uptorn, avail, though rushing violently against
the sounding shield of Pallas? At one part stood the eager Vulcan, at
another the matron Juno, and he, who is never desirous to lay aside his
bow from his shoulders, Apollo, the god of Delos and Patara, who bathes
his flowing hair in the pure dew of Castalia, and possesses the groves
of Lycia and his native wood. Force, void of conduct, falls by its own
weight; moreover, the gods promote discreet force to further advantage;
but the same beings detest forces, that meditate every kind of impiety.
The hundred-handed Gyges is an evidence of the sentiments I allege: and
Orion, the tempter of the spotless Diana, destroyed by a virgin dart.
The earth, heaped over her own monsters, grieves and laments her
offspring, sent to murky Hades by a thunderbolt; nor does the active
fire consume Aetna that is placed over it, nor does the vulture desert
the liver of incontinent Tityus, being stationed there as an avenger of
his baseness; and three hundred chains confine the amorous Pirithous.
* * * * *
ODE V.
ON THE RECOVERY OF THE STANDARDS FROM PHRAATES.
We believe from his thundering that Jupiter has dominion in the heavens:
Augustus shall be esteemed a present deity the Britons and terrible
Parthians being added to the empire. What! has any soldier of Crassus
lived, a degraded husband with a barbarian wife? And has (O [corrupted]
senate, and degenerate morals! ) the Marsian and Apulian, unmindful of
the sacred bucklers, of the [Roman] name and gown, and of eternal Vesta,
grown old in the lands of hostile fathers-in-law, Jupiter and the city
being in safety? The prudent mind of Regulus had provided against this,
dissenting from ignominious terms, and inferring from such a precedent
destruction to the succeeding age, if the captive youth were not to
perish unpitied. I have beheld, said he, the Roman standards affixed to
the Carthaginian temples, and their arms taken away from our soldiers
without bloodshed. I have beheld the arms of our citizens bound behind
their free-born backs, and the gates [of the enemy] unshut, and the
fields, which were depopulated by our battles, cultivated anew. The
soldier, to be sure, ransomed by gold, will return a braver
fellow! --No--you add loss to infamy; [for] neither does the wool once
stained by the dye of the sea-weed ever resume its lost color; nor does
genuine valor, when once it has failed, care to resume its place in
those who have degenerated through cowardice. If the hind, disentangled
from the thickset toils, ever fights, then indeed shall he be valorous,
who has intrusted himself to faithless foes; and he shall trample upon
the Carthaginians in a second war, who dastardly has felt the thongs
with his arms tied behind him, and has been afraid of death. He, knowing
no other way to preserve his life, has confounded peace with war. O
scandal! O mighty Carthage, elevated to a higher pitch by Italy's
disgraceful downfall! He _(Regulus)_ is reported to have rejected the
embrace of his virtuous wife and his little sons like one degraded; and
to have sternly fixed his manly countenance on the ground, until, as an
adviser, by his counsel he confirmed the wavering senators, and amid his
weeping friends hastened away, a glorious exile. Notwithstanding he knew
what the barbarian executioner was providing for him, yet he pushed from
his opposing kindred and the populace retarding his return, in no other
manner, than if (after he had quitted the tedious business of his
clients, by determining their suit) he was only going to the Venafrian
plains, or the Lacedaemonian Tarentum.
* * * * *
ODE VI.
TO THE ROMANS.
Thou shalt atone, O Roman, for the sins of your ancestors, though
innocent, till you shall have repaired the temples and tottering shrines
of the gods, and their statues, defiled with sooty smoke. Thou boldest
sway, because thou bearest thyself subordinate to the gods; to this
source refer every undertaking; to this, every event. The gods, because
neglected, have inflicted many evils on calamitous Italy. Already has
Monaeses, and the band of Pacorus, twice repelled our inauspicious
attacks, and exults in having added the Roman spoils to their trivial
collars. The Dacian and Ethiopian have almost demolished the city
engaged in civil broils, the one formidable for his fleet, the other
more expert for missile arrows. The times, fertile in wickedness, have
in the first place polluted the marriage state, and [thence] the issue
and families. From this fountain perdition being derived, has
overwhelmed the nation and people. The marriageable virgin delights to
be taught the Ionic dances, and even at this time is trained up in
[seductive] arts, and cherishes unchaste desires from her very infancy.
Soon after she courts younger debauchees when her husband is in his
cups, nor has she any choice, to whom she shall privately grant her
forbidden pleasures when the lights are removed, but at the word of
command, openly, not without the knowledge of her husband, she will come
forth, whether it be a factor that calls for her, or the captain of a
Spanish ship, the extravagant purchaser of her disgrace. It was not a
youth born from parents like these, that stained the sea with
Carthaginian gore, and slew Pyrrhus, and mighty Antiochus, and terrific
Annibal; but a manly progeny of rustic soldiers, instructed to turn the
glebe with Sabine spades, and to carry clubs cut [out of the woods] at
the pleasure of a rigid mother, what time the sun shifted the shadows of
the mountains, and took the yokes from the wearied oxen, bringing on the
pleasant hour with his retreating chariot. What does not wasting time
destroy? The age of our fathers, worse than our grandsires, produced us
still more flagitious, us, who are about to product am offspring more
vicious [even than ourselves].
* * * * *
ODE VII.
TO ASTERIE.
Why, O Asterie, do you weep for Gyges, a youth of inviolable constancy,
whom the kindly zephyrs will restore to you in the beginning of the
Spring, enriched with a Bithynian cargo? Driven as far as Oricum by the
southern winds, after [the rising] of the Goat's tempestuous
constellation, he sleepless passes the cold nights in abundant weeping
[for you]; but the agent of his anxious landlady slyly tempts him by a
thousand methods, informing him that [his mistress], Chloe, is sighing
for him, and burns with the same love that thou hast for him. He
remonstrates with him how a perfidious woman urged the credulous
Proetus, by false accusations, to hasten the death of the over-chaste
Bellerophon. He tells how Peleus was like to have been given up to the
infernal regions, while out of temperance he avoided the Magnesian
Hippolyte: and the deceiver quotes histories to him, that are lessons
for sinning. In vain; for, heart-whole as yet, he receives his words
deafer than the Icarian rocks. But with regard to you, have a care lest
your neighbor Enipeus prove too pleasing. Though no other person equally
skillful to guide the steed, is conspicuous in the course, nor does any
one with equal swiftness swim down the Etrurian stream, yet secure your
house at the very approach of night, nor look down into the streets at
the sound of the doleful pipe; and remain inflexible toward him, though
he often upbraid thee with cruelty.
* * * * *
ODE VIII.
TO MAECENAS.
O Maecenas, learned in both languages, you wonder what I, a single man,
have to do on the calends of March; what these flowers mean, and the
censer replete with frankincense, and the coals laid upon the live turf.
I made a vow of a joyous banquet, and a white goat to Bacchus, after
having been at the point of death by a blow from a tree. This day,
sacred in the revolving year, shall remove the cork fastened with pitch
from that jar, which was set to inhale the smoke in the consulship of
Tullus. Take, my Maecenas, a hundred cups on account of the safety of
your friend, and continue the wakeful lamps even to day-light: all
clamor and passion be far away. Postpone your political cares with
regard to the state: the army of the Dacian Cotison is defeated; the
troublesome Mede is quarreling with himself in a horrible [civil] war:
the Cantabrian, our old enemy on the Spanish coast, is subject to us,
though conquered by a long-disputed victory: now, too, the Scythians are
preparing to quit the field with their imbent bows. Neglectful, as a
private person, forbear to be too solicitous lest the community in any
wise suffer, and joyfully seize the boons of the present hour, and quit
serious affairs.
* * * * *
ODE IX.
TO LYDIA.
HORACE. As long as I was agreeable to thee, and no other youth more
favored was wont to fold his arms around thy snowy neck, I lived happier
than the Persian monarch.
LYDIA. As long as thou hadst not a greater flame for any other, nor was
Lydia below Chloe [in thine affections], I Lydia, of distinguished fame,
flourished more eminent than the Roman Ilia.
HOR. The Thracian Chloe now commands me, skillful in sweet modulations,
and a mistress of the lyre; for whom I would not dread to die, if the
fates would spare her, my surviving soul.
LYD. Calais, the son of the Thurian Ornitus, inflames me with a mutual
fire; for whom I would twice endure to die, if the fates would spare my
surviving youth.
HOR. What! if our former love returns, and unites by a brazen yoke us
once parted? What if Chloe with her golden locks be shaken off, and the
door again open to slighted Lydia.
LYD. Though he is fairer than a star, thou of more levity than a cork,
and more passionate than the blustering Adriatic; with thee I should
love to live, with thee I would cheerfully die.
* * * * *
ODE X.
TO LYCE.
O Lyce, had you drunk from the remote Tanais, in a state of marriage
with tome barbarian, yet you might be sorry to expose me, prostrate
before your obdurate doors, to the north winds that have made those
places their abode. Do you hear with what a noise your gate, with what
[a noise] the grove, planted about your elegant buildings, rebellows to
the winds? And how Jupiter glazes the settled snow with his bright
influence? Lay aside disdain, offensive to Venus, lest your rope should
run backward, while the wheel is revolving. Your Tyrrhenian father did
not beget you to be as inaccessible as Penelope to your wooers. O though
neither presents, nor prayers, nor the violet-tinctured paleness of your
lovers, nor your husband smitten with a musical courtezan, bend you to
pity; yet [at length] spare your suppliants, you that are not softer
than the sturdy oak, nor of a gentler disposition than the African
serpents. This side [of mine] will not always be able to endure your
threshold, and the rain.
* * * * *
ODE XI.
TO MERCURY.
O Mercury, for under thy instruction the ingenious Amphion moved rocks
by his voice, you being his tutor; and though my harp, skilled in
sounding, with seven strings, formerly neither vocal nor pleasing, but
now agreeable both to the tables of the wealthy and the temples [of the
gods]; dictate measures to which Lyde may incline her obstinate ears,
who, like a filly of three years old, plays and frisks about in the
spacious fields, inexperienced in nuptial loves, and hitherto unripe for
a brisk husband. You are able to draw after your tigers and attendant
woods, and to retard rapid rivers. To your blandishments the enormous
porter of the [infernal] palace yielded, though a hundred serpents
fortify his head, and a pestilential steam and an infectious poison
issue from his triple-tongued mouth. Moreover, Ixion and Tityus smiled
with a reluctant aspect: while you soothe the daughters of Danaus with
your delightful harmony, their vessel for some time remained dry. Let
Lyde hear of the crime, and the well-known punishment of the virgins,
and the cask emptied by the water streaming through the bottom, and what
lasting fates await their misdeeds even beyond the grave. Impious! (for
what greater impiety could they have committed? ) Impious! who could
destroy their bridegrooms with the cruel sword! One out of the many,
worthy of the nuptial torch, was nobly false to her perjured parent, and
a maiden illustrious to all posterity; she, who said to her youthful
husband, "Arise! arise! lest an eternal sleep be given to you from a
hand you have no suspicion of; disappoint your father-in-law and my
wicked sisters, who, like lionesses having possessed themselves of
calves (alas)! tear each of them to pieces; I, of softer mold than they,
will neither strike thee, nor detain thee in my custody. Let my father
load me with cruel chains, because out of mercy I spared my unhappy
spouse; let him transport me even to the extreme Numidian plains.
Depart, whither your feet and the winds carry you, while the night and
Venus are favorable: depart with happy omen; yet, not forgetful of me,
engrave my mournful story on my tomb.
barbarian virgin shall be your slave, after you have killed her
betrothed husband? What boy from the court shall be made your
cup-bearer, with his perfumed locks, skilled to direct the Seric arrows
with his father's bow? Who will now deny that it is probable for
precipitate rivers to flow back again to the high mountains, and for
Tiber to change his course, since you are about to exchange the noble
works of Panaetius, collected from all parts, together with the whole
Socratic family, for Iberian armor, after you had promised better
things?
* * * * *
ODE XXX.
TO VENUS.
O Venus, queen of Gnidus and Paphos, neglect your favorite Cyprus, and
transport yourself into the beautiful temple of Glycera, who is invoking
you with abundance of frankincense. Let your glowing son hasten along
with you, and the Graces with their zones loosed, and the Nymphs, and
Youth possessed of little charm without you and Mercury.
* * * * *
ODE XXXI.
TO APOLLO.
What does the poet beg from Phoebus on the dedication of his temple?
What does he pray for, while he pours from the flagon the first
libation? Not the rich crops of fertile Sardinia: not the goodly flocks
of scorched Calabria: not gold, or Indian ivory: not those countries,
which the still river Liris eats away with its silent streams. Let those
to whom fortune has given the Calenian vineyards, prune them with a
hooked knife; and let the wealthy merchant drink out of golden cups the
wines procured by his Syrian merchandize, favored by the gods
themselves, inasmuch as without loss he visits three or four times a
year the Atlantic Sea. Me olives support, me succories and soft mallows.
O thou son of Latona, grant me to enjoy my acquisitions, and to possess
my health, together with an unimpaired understanding, I beseech thee;
and that I may not lead a dishonorable old age, nor one bereft of the
lyre.
* * * * *
ODE XXXII.
TO HIS LYRE.
We are called upon. If ever, O lyre, in idle amusement in the shade with
thee, we have played anything that may live for this year and many, come
on, be responsive to a Latin ode, my dear lyre--first tuned by a Lesbian
citizen, who, fierce in war, yet amid arms, or if he had made fast to
the watery shore his tossed vessel, sung Bacchus, and the Muses, and
Venus, and the boy, her ever-close attendant, and Lycus, lovely for his
black eyes and jetty locks. O thou ornament of Apollo, charming shell,
agreeable even at the banquets of supreme Jove! O thou sweet alleviator
of anxious toils, be propitious to me, whenever duly invoking thee!
* * * * *
ODE XXXIII.
TO ALBIUS TIBULLUS.
Grieve not too much, my Albius, thoughtful of cruel Glycera; nor chant
your mournful elegies, because, as her faith being broken, a younger man
is more agreeable, than you in her eyes. A love for Cyrus inflames
Lycoris, distinguished for her little forehead: Cyrus follows the rough
Pholoe; but she-goats shall sooner be united to the Apulian wolves, than
Pholoe shall commit a crime with a base adulterer. Such is the will of
Venus, who delights in cruel sport, to subject to her brazen yokes
persons and tempers ill suited to each other. As for myself, the
slave-born Myrtale, more untractable than the Adriatic Sea that forms
the Calabrian gulfs, entangled me in a pleasing chain, at the very time
that a more eligible love courted my embraces.
* * * * *
ODE XXXIV.
AGAINST THE EPICURIANS.
A remiss and irregular worshiper of the gods, while I professed the
errors of a senseless philosophy, I am now obliged to set sail back
again, and to renew the course that I had deserted. For Jupiter, who
usually cleaves the clouds with his gleaming lightning, lately drove
his thundering horses and rapid chariot through the clear serene; which
the sluggish earth, and wandering rivers; at which Styx, and the horrid
seat of detested Taenarus, and the utmost boundary of Atlas were shaken.
The Deity is able to make exchange between the highest and the lowest,
and diminishes the exalted, bringing to light the obscure; rapacious
fortune, with a shrill whizzing, has borne off the plume from one head,
and delights in having placed it on another.
* * * * *
ODE XXXV.
TO FORTUNE.
O Goddess, who presidest over beautiful Antium; thou, that art ready to
exalt mortal man from the most abject state, or to convert superb
triumphs into funerals! Thee the poor countryman solicits with his
anxious vows; whosoever plows the Carpathian Sea with the Bithynian
vessel, importunes thee as mistress of the ocean. Thee the rough Dacian,
thee the wandering Scythians, and cities, and nations, and warlike
Latium also, and the mothers of barbarian kings, and tyrants clad in
purple, fear. Spurn not with destructive foot that column which now
stands firm, nor let popular tummult rouse those, who now rest quiet, to
arms--to arms--and break the empire. Necessity, thy minister, alway
marches before thee, holding in her brazen hand huge spikes and wedges,
nor is the unyielding clamp absent, nor the melted lead. Thee Hope
reverences, and rare Fidelity robed in a white garment; nor does she
refuse to bear thee company, howsoever in wrath thou change thy robe,
and abandon the houses of the powerful. But the faithless crowd [of
companions], and the perjured harlot draw back. Friends, too faithless
to bear equally the yoke of adversity, when casks are exhausted, very
dregs and all, fly off. Preserve thou Caesar, who is meditating an
expedition against the Britons, the furthest people in the world, and
also the new levy of youths to be dreaded by the Eastern regions, and
the Red Sea. Alas! I am ashamed of our scars, and our wickedness, and of
brethren. What have we, a hardened age, avoided? What have we in our
impiety left unviolated! From what have our youth restrained their
hands, out of reverence to the gods? What altars have they spared? O
mayest thou forge anew our blunted swords on a different anvil against
the Massagetae and Arabians.
* * * * *
ODE XXXVI.
This is a joyful occasion to sacrifice both with incense and music of
the lyre, and the votive blood of a heifer to the gods, the guardians of
Numida; who, now returning in safety from the extremest part of Spain,
imparts many embraces to his beloved companions, but to none more than
his dear Lamia, mindful of his childhood spent under one and the same
governor, and of the gown, which they changed at the same time. Let not
this joyful day be without a Cretan mark of distinction; let us not
spare the jar brought forth [from the cellar]; nor, Salian-like, let
there be any cessation of feet; nor let the toping Damalis conquer
Bassus in the Thracian Amystis; nor let there be roses wanting to the
banquet, nor the ever-green parsley, nor the short-lived lily. All the
company will fix their dissolving eyes on Damalis; but she, more
luxuriant than the wanton ivy, will not be separated from her new lover.
* * * * *
ODE XXXVII.
TO HIS COMPANIONS.
Now, my companions, is the time to carouse, now to beat the ground with
a light foot: now is the time that was to deck the couch of the gods
with Salian dainties. Before this, it was impious to produce the old
Caecuban stored up by your ancestors; while the queen, with a
contaminated gang of creatures, noisome through distemper, was preparing
giddy destruction for the Capitol and the subversion of the empire,
being weak enough to hope for any thing, and intoxicated with her
prospering fortune. But scarcely a single ship preserved from the flames
bated her fury; and Caesar brought down her mind, inflamed with Egyptian
wine, to real fears, close pursuing her in her flight from Italy with
his galleys (as the hawk pursues the tender doves, or the nimble hunter
the hare in the plains of snowy Aemon), that he might throw into chains
this destructive monster [of a woman]; who, seeking a more generous
death, neither had an effeminate dread of the sword, nor repaired with
her swift ship to hidden shores. She was able also to look upon her
palace, lying in ruins, with a countenance unmoved, and courageous
enough to handle exasperated asps, that she might imbibe in her body the
deadly poison, being more resolved by having pre-meditated her death:
for she was a woman of such greatness of soul, as to scorn to be carried
off in haughty triumph, like a private person, by rough Liburnians.
* * * * *
ODE XXXVIII.
TO HIS SERVANT.
Boy, I detest the pomp of the Persians; chaplets, which are woven with
the rind of the linden, displease me; give up the search for the place
where the latter rose abides. It is my particular desire that you make
no laborious addition to the plain myrtle; for myrtle is neither
unbecoming you a servant, nor me, while I quaff under this mantling
vine.
* * * * *
THE SECOND BOOK OF THE ODES OF HORACE.
ODE I.
TO ASINIUS POLLIO.
You are treating of the civil commotion, which began from the consulship
of Metelius, and the causes, and the errors, and the operations of the
war, and the game that fortune played, and the pernicious confederacy of
the chiefs, and arms stained with blood not yet expiated--a work full of
danger and hazard: and you are treading upon fires, hidden under
deceitful ashes: let therefore the muse that presides over severe
tragedy, be for a while absent from the theaters; shortly, when thou
hast completed the narrative of the public affairs, you shall resume
your great work in the tragic style of Athens, O Pollio, thou excellent
succor to sorrowing defendants and a consulting senate; [Pollio,] to
whom the laurel produced immortal honors in the Dalmatian triumph. Even
now you stun our ears with the threatening murmur of horns: now the
clarions sound; now the glitter of arms affrights the flying steeds, and
dazzles the sight of the riders. Now I seem to hear of great commanders
besmeared with, glorious dust, and the whole earth subdued, except the
stubborn soul of Cato. Juno, and every other god propitious to the
Africans, impotently went off, leaving that land unrevenged; but soon
offered the descendants of the conquerors, as sacrifices to the manes of
Jugurtha. What plain, enriched by Latin blood, bears not record, by its
numerous sepulchres, of our impious battles, and of the sound of the
downfall of Italy, heard even by the Medes? What pool, what rivers, are
unconscious of our deplorable war? What sea have not the Daunian
slaughters discolored? What shore is unstained by our blood? Do not,
however, rash muse, neglecting your jocose strains, resume the task of
Caean plaintive song, but rather with me seek measures of a lighter
style beneath some love-sequestered grotto.
* * * * *
ODE II.
TO CRISPUS SALLUSTIUS.
O Crispus Sallustius, thou foe to bullion, unless it derives splendor
from a moderate enjoyment, there is no luster in money concealed in the
niggard earth. Proculeius shall live an extended age, conspicuous for
fatherly affection to brothers; surviving fame shall bear him on an
untiring wing. You may possess a more extensive dominion by controlling
a craving disposition, than if you could unite Libya to the distant
Gades, and the natives of both the Carthages were subject to you alone.
The direful dropsy increases by self-indulgence, nor extinguishes its
thirst, unless the cause of the disorder has departed from the veins,
and the watery languor from the pallid body. Virtue, differing from the
vulgar, excepts Phraates though restored to the throne of Cyrus, from
the number of the happy; and teaches the populace to disuse false names
for things, by conferring the kingdom and a safe diadem and the
perpetual laurel upon him alone, who can view large heaps of treasure
with undazzled eye.
* * * * *
ODE III.
TO QUINTUS DELLIUS.
O Dellius, since thou art born to die, be mindful to preserve a temper
of mind even in times of difficulty, as well an restrained from insolent
exultation in prosperity: whether thou shalt lead a life of continual
sadness, or through happy days regale thyself with Falernian wine of the
oldest date, at case reclined in some grassy retreat, where the lofty
pine and hoary poplar delight to interweave their boughs into a
hospitable shade, and the clear current with trembling surface purls
along the meandering rivulet. Hither order [your slaves] to bring the
wine, and the perfumes, and the too short-lived flowers of the grateful
rose, while fortune, and age; and the sable threads of the three sisters
permit thee. You must depart from your numerous purchased groves; from
your house also, and that villa, which the yellow Tiber washes, you must
depart: and an heir shall possess these high-piled riches. It is of no
consequence whether you are the wealthy descendant of ancient Inachus,
or whether, poor and of the most ignoble race, you live without a
covering from the open air, since you are the victim of merciless Pluto.
We are all driven toward the same quarter: the lot of all is shaken in
the urn; destined sooner or later to come forth, and embark us in
[Charon's] boat for eternal exile.
* * * * *
ODE IV.
TO XANTHIAS PHOCEUS.
Let not, O Xanthias Phoceus, your passion for your maid put you out of
countenance; before your time, the slave Briseis moved the haughty
Achilles by her snowy complexion. The beauty of the captive Tecmessa
smote her master, the Telamonian Ajax; Agamemnon, in the midst of
victory, burned for a ravished virgin: when the barbarian troops fell by
the hands of their Thessalian conqueror, and Hector, vanquished, left
Troy more easily to be destroyed by the Grecians. You do not know that
perchance the beautiful Phyllis has parents of condition happy enough to
do honor to you their son-in-law. Certainly she must be of royal race,
and laments the unpropitiousness of her family gods. Be confident, that
your beloved is not of the worthless crowd; nor that one so true, so
unmercenary, could possibly be born of a mother to be ashamed of. I can
commend arms, and face, and well-made legs, quite chastely: avoid being
jealous of one, whose age is hastening onward to bring its eighth
mastrum to a close.
* * * * *
ODE V.
Not yet is she fit to be broken to the yoke; not yet is she equal to the
duties of a partner, nor can she support the weight of the bull
impetuously rushing to enjoyment. Your heifer's sole inclination is
about verdant fields, one while in running streams soothing the grievous
heat; at another, highly delighted to frisk with the steerlings in the
moist willow ground. Suppress your appetite for the immature grape;
shortly variegated autumn will tinge for thee the lirid clusters with a
purple hue. Shortly she shall follow you; for her impetuous time runs
on, and shall place to her account those years of which it abridges you;
shortly Lalage with a wanton assurance will seek a husband, beloved in a
higher degree than the coy Pholoe, or even Chloris; shining as brightly
with her fair shoulder, as the spotless moon upon the midnight sea, or
even the Gnidian Gyges, whom if you should intermix in a company of
girls, the undiscernible difference occasioned by his flowing locks and
doubtful countenance would wonderfully impose even on sagacious
strangers.
* * * * *
ODE VI.
TO SEPTIMUS.
Septimus, who art ready to go with me, even to Gades, and to the
Cantabrian, still untaught to bear our yoke, and the inhospitable
Syrtes, where the Mauritanian wave perpetually boils. O may Tibur,
founded by a Grecian colony, be the habitation of my old age! There let
there be an end to my fatigues by sea, and land, and war; whence if the
cruel fates debar me, I will seek the river of Galesus, delightful for
sheep covered with skins, and the countries reigned over by
Lacedaemonian Phalantus. That corner of the world smiles in my eye
beyond all others; where the honey yields not to the Hymettian, and the
olive rivals the verdant Venafrian: where the temperature of the air
produces a long spring and mild winters, and Aulon friendly to the
fruitful vine, envies not the Falernian grapes. That place, and those
blest heights, solicit you and me; there you shall bedew the glowing
ashes of your poet friend with a tear due [to his memory].
* * * * *
ODE VII.
TO POMPEIUS VARUS.
O thou, often reduced with me to the last extremity in the war which
Brutus carried on, who has restored thee as a Roman citizen, to the gods
of thy country and the Italian air, Pompey, thou first of my companions;
with whom I have frequently broken the tedious day in drinking, having
my hair, shining with the Syrian maiobathrum, crowned [with flowers]!
Together with thee did I experience the [battle of] Phillippi and a
precipitate flight, having shamefully enough left my shield; when valor
was broken, and the most daring smote the squalid earth with their
faces. But Mercury swift conveyed me away, terrified as I was, in a
thick cloud through the midst of the enemy. Thee the reciprocating sea,
with his tempestuous waves, bore back again to war. Wherefore render to
Jupiter the offering that is due, and deposit your limbs, wearied with a
tedious war, under my laurel, and spare not the casks reserved for you.
Fill up the polished bowls with care-dispelling Massic: pour out the
perfumed ointments from the capacious shells. Who takes care to quickly
weave the chaplets of fresh parsely or myrtle? Whom shall the Venus
pronounce to be master of the revel? In wild carouse I will become
frantic as the Bacchanalians. 'Tis delightful to me to play the madman,
on the reception of my friends.
* * * * *
ODE VIII.
TO BARINE.
If any punishment, Barine, for your violated oath had ever been of
prejudice to you: if you had become less agreeable by the blackness of a
single tooth or nail, I might believe you. But you no sooner have bound
your perfidious head with vows, but you shine out more charming by far,
and come forth the public care of our youth. It is of advantage to you
to deceive the buried ashes of your mother, and the silent
constellations of the night, together with all heaven, and the gods free
from chill death. Venus herself, I profess, laughs at this; the
good-natured nymphs laugh, and cruel Cupid, who is perpetually
sharpening his burning darts on a bloody whetstone. Add to this, that
all our boys are growing up for you; a new herd of slaves is growing up;
nor do the former ones quit the house of their impious mistress,
notwithstanding they often have threatened it. The matrons are in dread
of you on account of their young ones; the thrifty old men are in dread
of you; and the girls but just married are in distress, lest your beauty
should slacken [the affections of] their husbands.
* * * * *
ODE IX.
TO TITUS VALGIUS.
Showers do not perpetually pour down upon the rough fields, nor do
varying hurricanes forever harass the Caspian Sea; nor, my friend
Valgius, does the motionless ice remain fixed throughout all the months,
in the regions of Armenia; nor do the Garganian oaks [always] labor
under the northerly winds, nor are the ash-trees widowed of their
leaves. But thou art continually pursuing Mystes, who is taken from
thee, with mournful measures: nor do the effects of thy love for him
cease at the rising of Vesper, or when he flies the rapid approach of
the sun. But the aged man who lived three generations, did not lament
the amiable Antilochus all the years of his life: nor did his parents or
his Trojan sisters perpetually bewail the blooming Troilus. At length
then desist from thy tender complaints; and rather let us sing the fresh
trophies of Augustus Caesar, and the Frozen Niphates, and the river
Medus, added to the vanquished nations, rolls more humble tides, and the
Gelonians riding within a prescribed boundary in a narrow tract of land.
* * * * *
ODE X.
TO LICINIUS MURENA.
O Licinius, you will lead a more correct course of life, by neither
always pursuing the main ocean, nor, while you cautiously are in dread
of storms, by pressing too much upon the hazardous shore. Whosoever
loves the golden mean, is secure from the sordidness of an antiquated
cell, and is too prudent to have a palace that might expose him to
envy, if the lofty pine is more frequently agitated with winds, and high
towers fall down with a heavier ruin, and lightnings strike the summits
of the mountains. A well-provided breast hopes in adversity, and fears
in prosperity. 'Tis the same Jupiter, that brings the hideous winters
back, and that takes them away. If it is ill with us now, it will not be
so hereafter. Apollo sometimes rouses the silent lyric muse, neither
does he always bend his bow. In narrow circumstances appear in high
spirits, and undaunted. In the same manner you will prudently contract
your sails, which are apt to be too much swollen in a prosperous gale.
* * * * *
ODE XI.
TO QUINTIUS HIRPINUS.
O Quintius Hirpinus, forbear to be inquisitive what the Cantabrian, and
the Scythian, divided from us by the interposed Adriatic, is meditating;
neither be fearfully solicitous for the necessaries of a life, which
requires but a few things. Youth and beauty fly swift away, while
sapless old age expels the wanton loves and gentle sleep. The same glory
does not always remain to the vernal flowers, nor does the ruddy moon
shine with one continued aspect; why, therefore, do you fatigue you
mind, unequal to eternal projects? Why do we not rather (while it is in
our power) thus carelessly reclining under a lofty plane-tree, or this
pine, with our hoary locks made fragrant by roses, and anointed with
Syrian perfume, indulge ourselves with generous wine? Bacchus dissipates
preying cares. What slave is here, instantly to cool some cups of ardent
Falernian in the passing stream? Who will tempt the vagrant wanton Lyde
from her house? See that you bid her hasten with her ivory lyre,
collecting her hair into a graceful knot, after the fashion of a Spartan
maid.
* * * * *
ODE XII.
TO MAECENAS.
Do not insist that the long wars of fierce Numantia, or the formidable
Annibal, or the Sicilian Sea impurpled with Carthaginian blood, should
be adapted to the tender lays of the lyre: nor the cruel Lapithae, nor
Hylaeus excessive in wine and the earth born youths, subdued by
Herculean force, from whom the splendid habitation of old Saturn dreaded
danger. And you yourself, Maecenas, with more propriety shall recount
the battles of Caesar, and the necks of haughty kings led in triumph
through the streets in historical prose. It was the muse's will that I
should celebrate the sweet strains of my mistress Lycimnia, that I
should celebrate her bright darting eyes, and her breast laudably
faithful to mutual love: who can with a grace introduce her foot into
the dance, or, sporting, contend in raillery, or join arms with the
bright virgins on the celebrated Diana's festival. Would you,
[Maecenas,] change one of Lycimnia's tresses for all the rich Achaemenes
possessed, or the Mygdonian wealth of fertile Phrygia, or all the
dwellings of the Arabians replete with treasures? Especially when she
turns her neck to meet your burning kisses, or with a gentle cruelty
denies, what she would more delight to have ravished than the
petitioner--or sometimes eagerly anticipates to snatch them her self.
* * * * *
ODE XIII.
TO A TREE.
O tree, he planted thee on an unlucky day whoever did it first, and with
an impious hand raised thee for the destruction of posterity, and the
scandal of the village. I could believe that he had broken his own
father's neck, and stained his most secret apartments with the midnight
blood of his guest. He was wont to handle Colchian poisons, and whatever
wickedness is anywhere conceived, who planted in my field thee, a sorry
log; thee, ready to fall on the head of thy inoffensive master. What we
ought to be aware of, no man is sufficiently cautious at all hours. The
Carthaginian sailor thoroughly dreads the Bosphorus; nor, beyond that,
does he fear a hidden fate from any other quarter. The soldier dreads
the arrows and the fleet retreat of the Parthian; the Parthian, chains
and an Italian prison; but the unexpected assault of death has carried
off, and will carry off, the world in general. How near was I seeing the
dominions of black Proserpine, and Aeacus sitting in judgment; the
separate abodes also of the pious, and Sappho complaining in her Aeohan
lyre of her own country damsels; and thee, O Alcaeus, sounding in fuller
strains on thy golden harp the distresses of exile, and the distresses
of war. The ghosts admire them both, while they utter strains worthy of
a sacred silence; but the crowded multitude, pressing with their
shoulders, imbibes, with a more greedy ear, battles and banished
tyrants. What wonder? Since the many headed monster, astonished at those
lays, hangs down his sable ears; and the snakes, entwined in the hair of
the furies, are soothed. Moreover, Prometheus and the sire of Pelops are
deluded into an insensibility of their torments, by the melodious sound:
nor is Orion any longer solicitous to harass the lions, or the fearful
lynxes.
* * * * *
ODE XIV.
TO POSTUMUS.
Alas! my Postumus, my Postumus, the fleeting years gilde on; nor will
piety cause any delay to wrinkles, and advancing old age, and
insuperable death. You could not, if you were to sacrifice every passing
day three hundred bulls, render propitious pitiless Pluto, who confines
the thrice-monstrous Geryon and Tityus with the dismal Stygian stream,
namely, that stream which is to be passed over by all who are fed by the
bounty of the earth, whether we be kings or poor ninds. In vain shall we
be free from sanguinary Mars, and the broken billows of the hoarse
Adriatic; in vain shall we be apprehensive for ourselves of the noxious
South, in the time of autumn. The black Cocytus wandering with languid
current, and the infamous race of Danaus, and Sisyphus, the son of the
Aeolus, doomed to eternal toil, must be visited; your land and house and
pleasing wife must be left, nor shall any of those trees, which you are
nursing, follow you, their master for a brief space, except the hated
cypresses; a worthier heir shall consume your Caecuban wines now guarded
with a hundred keys, and shall wet the pavement with the haughty wine,
more exquisite than what graces pontifical entertainment.
* * * * *
ODE XV.
AGAINST THE LUXURY OF THE ROMANS.
The palace-like edifices will in a short time leave but a few acres for
the plough; ponds of wider extent than the Lucrine lake will be every
where to be seen; and the barren plane-tree will supplant the elms. Then
banks of violets, and myrtle groves, and all the tribe of nosegays shall
diffuse their odors in the olive plantations, which were fruitful to
their preceding master. Then the laurel with dense boughs shall exclude
the burning beams. It was not so prescribed by the institutes of
Romulus, and the unshaven Cato, and ancient custom. Their private income
was contracted, while that of the community was great. No private men
were then possessed of galleries measured by ten-feet rules, which
collected the shady northern breezes; nor did the laws permit them to
reject the casual turf [for their own huts], though at the same time
they obliged them to ornament in the most sumptuous manner, with new
stone, the buildings of the public, and the temples of the gods, at a
common expense.
* * * * *
ODE XVI.
TO GROSPHUS.
O Grosphus, he that is caught in the wide Aegean Sea; when a black
tempest has obscured the moon, and not a star appears with steady light
for the mariners, supplicates the gods for repose: for repose, Thrace
furious in war; the quiver-graced Medes, for repose neither purchasable
by jewels, nor by purple, nor by gold. For neither regal treasures nor
the consul's officer can remove the wretched tumults of the mind, nor
the cares that hover about splendid ceilings. That man lives happily on
a little, who can view with pleasure the old-fashioned family
salt-cellar on his frugal board; neither anxiety nor sordid avarice robs
him of gentle sleep. Why do we, brave for a short season, aim at many
things? Why do we change our own for climates heated by another sun?
Whoever, by becoming an exile from his country, escaped likewise from
himself? Consuming care boards even brazen-beaked ships: nor does it
quit the troops of horsemen, for it is more fleet than the stags, more
fleet than the storm-driving east wind.
A mind that is cheerful in its
present state, will disdain to be solicitous any further, and can
correct the bitters of life with a placid smile. Nothing is on all hands
completely blessed. A premature death carried off the celebrated
Achilles; a protracted old age wore down Tithonus; and time perhaps may
extend to me, what it shall deny to you. Around you a hundred flocks
bleat, and Sicilian heifers low; for your use the mare, fit for the
harness, neighs; wool doubly dipped in the African purple-dye, clothes
you: on me undeceitful fate has bestowed a small country estate, and the
slight inspiration of the Grecian muse, and a contempt for the malignity
of the vulgar.
* * * * *
ODE XVII.
TO MAECENAS.
Why dost thoti kill me with thy complaints? 'Tis neither agreeable to
the gods, nor to me, that thou shouldest depart first, O Maecenas, thou
grand ornament and pillar of my affairs. Alas! if an untimely blow hurry
away thee, a part of my soul, why do I the other moiety remain, my value
lost, nor any longer whole? That [fatal] day shall bring destruction
upon us both. I have by no means taken a false oath: we will go, we will
go, whenever thou shalt lead the way, prepared to be fellow-travelers in
the last journey. Me nor the breath of the fiery Chimaera, nor
hundred-handed Gyges, were he to rise again, shall ever tear from thee:
such is the will of powerful Justice, and of the Fates. Whether Libra or
malignant Scorpio had the ascendant at my natal hour, or Capricon the
ruler of the western wave, our horoscopes agree in a wonderful manner.
Thee the benign protection of Jupiter, shining with friendly aspect,
rescued from the baleful influence of impious Saturn, and retarded the
wings of precipitate destiny, at the time the crowded people with
resounding applauses thrice hailed you in the theatre: me the trunk of a
tree, falling upon my skull, would have dispatched, had not Faunus, the
protector of men of genius, with his right hand warded off the blow. Be
thou mindful to pay the victims and the votive temple; I will sacrifice
an humble lamb.
* * * * *
ODE XVIII.
AGAINST AVARICE AND LUXURY.
Nor ivory, nor a fretted ceiling adorned with gold, glitters in my
house: no Hymettian beams rest upon pillars cut out of the extreme parts
of Africa; nor, a pretended heir, have I possessed myself of the palace
of Attalus, nor do ladies, my dependants, spin Laconian purple for my
use. But integrity, and a liberal vein of genius, are mine: and the man
of fortune makes his court to me, who am but poor. I importune the gods
no further, nor do I require of my friend in power any larger
enjoyments, sufficiently happy with my Sabine farm alone. Day is driven
on by day, and the new moons hasten to their wane. You put out marble to
be hewn, though with one foot in the grave; and, unmindful of a
sepulcher, are building houses; and are busy to extend the shore of the
sea, that beats with violence at Baiae, not rich enough with the shore
of the mainland. Why is it, that through avarice you even pluck up the
landmarks of your neighbor's ground, and trespass beyond the bounds of
your clients; and wife and husband are turned out, bearing in their
bosom their household gods and their destitute children? Nevertheless,
no court more certainly awaits its wealthy lord, than the destined limit
of rapacious Pluto. Why do you go on? The impartial earth is opened
equally to the poor and to the sons of kings; nor has the life-guard
ferryman of hell, bribed with gold, re-conducted the artful Prometheus.
He confines proud Tantalus; and the race of Tantalus, he condescends,
whether invoked or not, to relieve the poor freed from their labors.
* * * * *
ODE XIX.
ON BACCHUS.
A DITHYRAMBIC, OR DRINKING SONG.
I saw Bacchus (believe it, posterity) dictating strains among the remote
rocks, and the nymphs learning them, and the ears of the goat-footed
satyrs all attentive. Evoe! my mind trembles with recent dread, and my
soul, replete with Bacchus, has a tumultuous joy, Evoe! spare me,
Bacchus; spare me, thou who art formidable for thy dreadful thyrsus. It
is granted me to sing the wanton Bacchanalian priestess, and the
fountain of wine, and rivulets flowing with milk, and to tell again of
the honeys distilling from the hollow trunks. It is granted me likewise
to celebrate the honor added to the constellations by your happy spouse,
and the palace of Pentheus demolished with no light ruin, and the
perdition of Thracian. Lycurgus. You command the rivers, you the
barbarian sea. You, moist with wine, on lonely mountain-tops bind the
hair of your Thracian priestesses with a knot of vipers without hurt.
You, when the impious band of giants scaled the realms of father Jupiter
through the sky, repelled Rhoetus, with the paws and horrible jaw of the
lion-shape [you had assumed]. Thou, reported to be better fitted for
dances, and jokes and play, you were accounted insufficient for fight;
yet it then appeared, you, the same deity, was the mediator of peace and
war. Upon you, ornamented with your golden horn, Orberus innocently
gazed, gently wagging his tail; and with his triple tongue licked your
feet and legs, as you returned.
* * * * *
ODE XX.
TO MAECENAS.
I, a two-formed poet, will be conveyed through the liquid air with no
vulgar or humble wing; nor will I loiter upon earth any longer; and
superior to envy, I will quit cities. Not I, even I, the blood of low
parents, my dear Maecenas, shall die; nor shall I be restrained by the
Stygian wave. At this instant a rough skin settles upon my ankles, and
all upwards I am transformed into a white bird, and the downy plumage
arises over my fingers and shoulders. Now, a melodious bird, more
expeditious than the Daepalean Icarus, I will visit the shores of the
murmuring Bosphorus, and the Gzetulean Syrtes, and the Hyperborean
plains. Me the Colchian and the Dacian, who hides his fear of the
Marsian cohort, land the remotest Gelonians, shall know: me the learned
Spaniard shall study, and he that drinks of the Rhone. Let there be no
dirges, nor unmanly lamentations, nor bewailings at my imaginary
funeral; suppress your crying, and forbear the superfluous honors of a
sepulcher.
* * * * *
THE THIRD BOOK OF THE ODES OF HORACE.
ODE I.
ON CONTENTMENT.
I abominate the uninitiated vulgar, and keep them at a distance.
Preserve a religious silence: I, the priest of the Muses, sing to
virgins and boys verses not heard before. The dominion of dread
sovereigns is over their own subjects; that of Jupiter, glorious for his
conquest over the giants, who shakes all nature with his nod, is over
sovereigns themselves. It happens that one man, arranges trees, in
regular rows, to a greater extent than another; this man comes down into
the Campus [Martius] as a candidate of a better family; another vies
with him for morals and a better reputation; a third has a superior
number of dependants; but Fate, by the impartial law of nature, is
allotted both to the conspicuous and the obscure; the capacious urn
keeps every name in motion. Sicilian dainties will not force a delicious
relish to that man, over whose impious neck the naked sword hangs: the
songs of birds and the lyre will not restore his sleep. Sleep disdains
not the humble cottages and shady bank of peasants; he disdains not
Tempe, fanned by zephyrs. Him, who desires but a competency, neither the
tempestuous sea renders anxious, nor the malign violence of Arcturus
setting, or of the rising Kid; not his vineyards beaten down with hail,
and a deceitful farm; his plantations at one season blaming the rains,
at another, the influence of the constellations parching the grounds, at
another, the severe winters. The fishes perceive the seas contracted, by
the vast foundations that have been laid in the deep: hither numerous
undertakers with their men, and lords, disdainful of the land, send down
mortar: but anxiety and the threats of conscience ascend by the same way
as the possessor; nor does gloomy care depart from the brazen-beaked
galley, and she mounts behind the horseman. Since then nor Phrygian
marble, nor the use of purple more dazzling than the sun, nor the
Falernian vine, nor the Persian nard, composes a troubled mind, why
should I set about a lofty edifice with columns that excite envy, and in
the modern taste? Why should I exchange my Sabine vale for wealth, which
is attended with more trouble?
* * * * *
ODE II.
AGAINST THE DEGENERACY OF THE ROMAN YOUTH.
Let the robust youth learn patiently to endure pinching want in the
active exercise of arms; and as an expert horseman, dreadful for his
spear, let him harass the fierce Parthians; and let him lead a life
exposed to the open air, and familiar with dangers. Him, the consort and
marriageable virgin-daughter of some warring tyrant, viewing from the
hostile walls, may sigh--- Alas! let not the affianced prince,
inexperienced as he is in arms, provoke by a touch this terrible lion,
whom bloody rage hurries through the midst of slaughter. It is sweet and
glorious to die for one's country; death even pursues the man that flies
from him; nor does he spare the trembling knees of effeminate youth, nor
the coward back. Virtue, unknowing of base repulse, shines with
immaculate honors; nor does she assume nor lay aside the ensigns of her
dignity, at the veering of the popular air. Virtue, throwing open heaven
to those who deserve not to die, directs her progress through paths of
difficulty, and spurns with a rapid wing grovelling cowards and the
slippery earth. There is likewise a sure reward for faithful silence. I
will prohibit that man, who shall divulge the sacred rites of mysterious
Ceres, from being under the same roof with me, or from setting sail with
me in the same fragile bark: for Jupiter, when slighted, often joins a
good man in the same fate with a bad one. Seldom hath punishment, though
lame, of foot, failed to overtake the wicked.
* * * * *
ODE III.
ON STEADINESS AND INTEGRITY.
Not the rage of the people pressing to hurtful measures, not the aspect
of a threatening tyrant can shake from his settled purpose the man who
is just and determined in his resolution; nor can the south wind, that
tumultuous ruler of the restless Adriatic, nor the mighty hand of
thundering Jove; if a crushed world should fall in upon him, the ruins
would strike him undismayed. By this character Pollux, by this the
wandering Hercules, arrived at the starry citadels; among whom Augustus
has now taken his place, and quaffs nectar with empurpled lips. Thee, O
Father Bacchus, meritorious for this virtue, thy tigers carried, drawing
the yoke with intractable neck; by this Romulus escaped Acheron on the
horses of Mars--Juno having spoken what the gods in full conclave
approve: "Troy, Troy, a fatal and lewd judge, and a foreign woman, have
reduced to ashes, condemned, with its inhabitants and fraudulent prince,
to me and the chaste Minerva, ever since Laomedon disappointed the gods
of the stipulated reward. Now neither the infamous guest of the
Lacedaemonian adulteress shines; nor does Priam's perjured family repel
the warlike Grecians by the aid of Hector, and that war, spun out to
such a length by our factions, has sunk to peace. Henceforth, therefore,
I will give up to Mars both my bitter resentment, and the detested
grandson, whom the Trojan princes bore. Him will I suffer to enter the
bright regions, to drink the juice of nectar, and to be enrolled among
the peaceful order of gods. As long as the extensive sea rages between
Troy and Rome, let them, exiles, reign happy in any other part of the
world: as long as cattle trample upon the tomb of Priam and Paris, and
wild beasts conceal their young ones there with impunity, may the
Capitol remain in splendor, and may brave Rome be able to give laws to
the conquered Medes. Tremendous let her extend her name abroad to the
extremest boundaries of the earth, where the middle ocean separates
Europe from Africa, where the swollen Nile waters the plains; more brave
in despising gold as yet undiscovered, and so best situated while hidden
in the earth, than in forcing it out for the uses of mankind, with a
hand ready to make depredations on everything that is sacred. Whatever
end of the world has made resistance, that let her reach with her arms,
joyfully alert to visit, even that part where fiery heats rage madding;
that where clouds and rains storm with unmoderated fury. But I pronounce
this fate to the warlike Romans, upon this condition; that neither
through an excess of piety, nor of confidence in their power, they
become inclined to rebuild the houses of their ancestors' Troy. The
fortune of Troy, reviving under unlucky auspices, shall be repeated with
lamentable destruction, I, the wife and sister of Jupiter, leading on
the victorious bands. Thrice, if a brazen wall should arise by means of
its founder Phoebus, thrice should it fall, demolished by my Grecians;
thrice should the captive wife bewail her husband and her children. "
These themes ill suit the merry lyre. Whither, muse, are you
going? --Cease, impertinent, to relate the language of the gods, and to
debase great things by your trifling measures.
* * * * *
ODE IV.
TO CALLIOPE.
Descend from heaven, queen Calliope, and come sing with your pipe a
lengthened strain; or, if you had now rather, with your clear voice, or
on the harp or lute of Phoebus. Do ye hear? or does a pleasing frenzy
delude me? I seem to hear [her], and to wander [with her] along the
hallowed groves, through which pleasant rivulets and gales make their
way. Me, when a child, and fatigued with play, in sleep the woodland
doves, famous in story, covered with green leaves in the Apulian Vultur,
just without the limits of my native Apulia; so that it was matter of
wonder to all that inhabit the nest of lofty Acherontia, the Bantine
Forests, and the rich soil of low Ferentum, how I could sleep with my
body safe from deadly vipers and ravenous bears; how I could be covered
with sacred laurel and myrtle heaped together, though a child, not
animated without the [inspiration of the] gods. Yours, O ye muses, I am
yours, whether I am elevated to the Sabine heights; or whether the cool
Praeneste, or the sloping Tibur, or the watery Baiae have delighted me.
Me, who am attached to your fountains and dances, not the army put to
flight at Philippi, not the execrable tree, nor a Palinurus in the
Sicilian Sea has destroyed. While you shall be with me with pleasure
will I, a sailor, dare the raging Bosphorus; or, a traveler, the burning
sands of the Assyrian shore: I will visit the Britons inhuman to
strangers, and the Concanian delighted [with drinking] the blood of
horses; I will visit the quivered Geloni, and the Scythian river without
hurt. You entertained lofty Caesar, seeking to put an end to his toils,
in the Pierian grotto, as soon as he had distributed in towns his
troops, wearied by campaigning: you administer [to him] moderate
counsel, and graciously rejoice at it when administered. We are aware
how he, who rules the inactive earth and the stormy main, the cities
also, and the dreary realms [of hell], and alone governs with a
righteous sway both gods and the human multitude, how he took off the
impious Titans and the gigantic troop by his falling thunderbolts. That
horrid youth, trusting to the strength of their arms, and the brethren
proceeding to place Pelion upon shady Olympus, had brought great dread
[even] upon Jove. But what could Typhoeus, and the strong Mimas, or what
Porphyrion with his menacing statue; what Rhoetus, and Enceladus, a
fierce darter with trees uptorn, avail, though rushing violently against
the sounding shield of Pallas? At one part stood the eager Vulcan, at
another the matron Juno, and he, who is never desirous to lay aside his
bow from his shoulders, Apollo, the god of Delos and Patara, who bathes
his flowing hair in the pure dew of Castalia, and possesses the groves
of Lycia and his native wood. Force, void of conduct, falls by its own
weight; moreover, the gods promote discreet force to further advantage;
but the same beings detest forces, that meditate every kind of impiety.
The hundred-handed Gyges is an evidence of the sentiments I allege: and
Orion, the tempter of the spotless Diana, destroyed by a virgin dart.
The earth, heaped over her own monsters, grieves and laments her
offspring, sent to murky Hades by a thunderbolt; nor does the active
fire consume Aetna that is placed over it, nor does the vulture desert
the liver of incontinent Tityus, being stationed there as an avenger of
his baseness; and three hundred chains confine the amorous Pirithous.
* * * * *
ODE V.
ON THE RECOVERY OF THE STANDARDS FROM PHRAATES.
We believe from his thundering that Jupiter has dominion in the heavens:
Augustus shall be esteemed a present deity the Britons and terrible
Parthians being added to the empire. What! has any soldier of Crassus
lived, a degraded husband with a barbarian wife? And has (O [corrupted]
senate, and degenerate morals! ) the Marsian and Apulian, unmindful of
the sacred bucklers, of the [Roman] name and gown, and of eternal Vesta,
grown old in the lands of hostile fathers-in-law, Jupiter and the city
being in safety? The prudent mind of Regulus had provided against this,
dissenting from ignominious terms, and inferring from such a precedent
destruction to the succeeding age, if the captive youth were not to
perish unpitied. I have beheld, said he, the Roman standards affixed to
the Carthaginian temples, and their arms taken away from our soldiers
without bloodshed. I have beheld the arms of our citizens bound behind
their free-born backs, and the gates [of the enemy] unshut, and the
fields, which were depopulated by our battles, cultivated anew. The
soldier, to be sure, ransomed by gold, will return a braver
fellow! --No--you add loss to infamy; [for] neither does the wool once
stained by the dye of the sea-weed ever resume its lost color; nor does
genuine valor, when once it has failed, care to resume its place in
those who have degenerated through cowardice. If the hind, disentangled
from the thickset toils, ever fights, then indeed shall he be valorous,
who has intrusted himself to faithless foes; and he shall trample upon
the Carthaginians in a second war, who dastardly has felt the thongs
with his arms tied behind him, and has been afraid of death. He, knowing
no other way to preserve his life, has confounded peace with war. O
scandal! O mighty Carthage, elevated to a higher pitch by Italy's
disgraceful downfall! He _(Regulus)_ is reported to have rejected the
embrace of his virtuous wife and his little sons like one degraded; and
to have sternly fixed his manly countenance on the ground, until, as an
adviser, by his counsel he confirmed the wavering senators, and amid his
weeping friends hastened away, a glorious exile. Notwithstanding he knew
what the barbarian executioner was providing for him, yet he pushed from
his opposing kindred and the populace retarding his return, in no other
manner, than if (after he had quitted the tedious business of his
clients, by determining their suit) he was only going to the Venafrian
plains, or the Lacedaemonian Tarentum.
* * * * *
ODE VI.
TO THE ROMANS.
Thou shalt atone, O Roman, for the sins of your ancestors, though
innocent, till you shall have repaired the temples and tottering shrines
of the gods, and their statues, defiled with sooty smoke. Thou boldest
sway, because thou bearest thyself subordinate to the gods; to this
source refer every undertaking; to this, every event. The gods, because
neglected, have inflicted many evils on calamitous Italy. Already has
Monaeses, and the band of Pacorus, twice repelled our inauspicious
attacks, and exults in having added the Roman spoils to their trivial
collars. The Dacian and Ethiopian have almost demolished the city
engaged in civil broils, the one formidable for his fleet, the other
more expert for missile arrows. The times, fertile in wickedness, have
in the first place polluted the marriage state, and [thence] the issue
and families. From this fountain perdition being derived, has
overwhelmed the nation and people. The marriageable virgin delights to
be taught the Ionic dances, and even at this time is trained up in
[seductive] arts, and cherishes unchaste desires from her very infancy.
Soon after she courts younger debauchees when her husband is in his
cups, nor has she any choice, to whom she shall privately grant her
forbidden pleasures when the lights are removed, but at the word of
command, openly, not without the knowledge of her husband, she will come
forth, whether it be a factor that calls for her, or the captain of a
Spanish ship, the extravagant purchaser of her disgrace. It was not a
youth born from parents like these, that stained the sea with
Carthaginian gore, and slew Pyrrhus, and mighty Antiochus, and terrific
Annibal; but a manly progeny of rustic soldiers, instructed to turn the
glebe with Sabine spades, and to carry clubs cut [out of the woods] at
the pleasure of a rigid mother, what time the sun shifted the shadows of
the mountains, and took the yokes from the wearied oxen, bringing on the
pleasant hour with his retreating chariot. What does not wasting time
destroy? The age of our fathers, worse than our grandsires, produced us
still more flagitious, us, who are about to product am offspring more
vicious [even than ourselves].
* * * * *
ODE VII.
TO ASTERIE.
Why, O Asterie, do you weep for Gyges, a youth of inviolable constancy,
whom the kindly zephyrs will restore to you in the beginning of the
Spring, enriched with a Bithynian cargo? Driven as far as Oricum by the
southern winds, after [the rising] of the Goat's tempestuous
constellation, he sleepless passes the cold nights in abundant weeping
[for you]; but the agent of his anxious landlady slyly tempts him by a
thousand methods, informing him that [his mistress], Chloe, is sighing
for him, and burns with the same love that thou hast for him. He
remonstrates with him how a perfidious woman urged the credulous
Proetus, by false accusations, to hasten the death of the over-chaste
Bellerophon. He tells how Peleus was like to have been given up to the
infernal regions, while out of temperance he avoided the Magnesian
Hippolyte: and the deceiver quotes histories to him, that are lessons
for sinning. In vain; for, heart-whole as yet, he receives his words
deafer than the Icarian rocks. But with regard to you, have a care lest
your neighbor Enipeus prove too pleasing. Though no other person equally
skillful to guide the steed, is conspicuous in the course, nor does any
one with equal swiftness swim down the Etrurian stream, yet secure your
house at the very approach of night, nor look down into the streets at
the sound of the doleful pipe; and remain inflexible toward him, though
he often upbraid thee with cruelty.
* * * * *
ODE VIII.
TO MAECENAS.
O Maecenas, learned in both languages, you wonder what I, a single man,
have to do on the calends of March; what these flowers mean, and the
censer replete with frankincense, and the coals laid upon the live turf.
I made a vow of a joyous banquet, and a white goat to Bacchus, after
having been at the point of death by a blow from a tree. This day,
sacred in the revolving year, shall remove the cork fastened with pitch
from that jar, which was set to inhale the smoke in the consulship of
Tullus. Take, my Maecenas, a hundred cups on account of the safety of
your friend, and continue the wakeful lamps even to day-light: all
clamor and passion be far away. Postpone your political cares with
regard to the state: the army of the Dacian Cotison is defeated; the
troublesome Mede is quarreling with himself in a horrible [civil] war:
the Cantabrian, our old enemy on the Spanish coast, is subject to us,
though conquered by a long-disputed victory: now, too, the Scythians are
preparing to quit the field with their imbent bows. Neglectful, as a
private person, forbear to be too solicitous lest the community in any
wise suffer, and joyfully seize the boons of the present hour, and quit
serious affairs.
* * * * *
ODE IX.
TO LYDIA.
HORACE. As long as I was agreeable to thee, and no other youth more
favored was wont to fold his arms around thy snowy neck, I lived happier
than the Persian monarch.
LYDIA. As long as thou hadst not a greater flame for any other, nor was
Lydia below Chloe [in thine affections], I Lydia, of distinguished fame,
flourished more eminent than the Roman Ilia.
HOR. The Thracian Chloe now commands me, skillful in sweet modulations,
and a mistress of the lyre; for whom I would not dread to die, if the
fates would spare her, my surviving soul.
LYD. Calais, the son of the Thurian Ornitus, inflames me with a mutual
fire; for whom I would twice endure to die, if the fates would spare my
surviving youth.
HOR. What! if our former love returns, and unites by a brazen yoke us
once parted? What if Chloe with her golden locks be shaken off, and the
door again open to slighted Lydia.
LYD. Though he is fairer than a star, thou of more levity than a cork,
and more passionate than the blustering Adriatic; with thee I should
love to live, with thee I would cheerfully die.
* * * * *
ODE X.
TO LYCE.
O Lyce, had you drunk from the remote Tanais, in a state of marriage
with tome barbarian, yet you might be sorry to expose me, prostrate
before your obdurate doors, to the north winds that have made those
places their abode. Do you hear with what a noise your gate, with what
[a noise] the grove, planted about your elegant buildings, rebellows to
the winds? And how Jupiter glazes the settled snow with his bright
influence? Lay aside disdain, offensive to Venus, lest your rope should
run backward, while the wheel is revolving. Your Tyrrhenian father did
not beget you to be as inaccessible as Penelope to your wooers. O though
neither presents, nor prayers, nor the violet-tinctured paleness of your
lovers, nor your husband smitten with a musical courtezan, bend you to
pity; yet [at length] spare your suppliants, you that are not softer
than the sturdy oak, nor of a gentler disposition than the African
serpents. This side [of mine] will not always be able to endure your
threshold, and the rain.
* * * * *
ODE XI.
TO MERCURY.
O Mercury, for under thy instruction the ingenious Amphion moved rocks
by his voice, you being his tutor; and though my harp, skilled in
sounding, with seven strings, formerly neither vocal nor pleasing, but
now agreeable both to the tables of the wealthy and the temples [of the
gods]; dictate measures to which Lyde may incline her obstinate ears,
who, like a filly of three years old, plays and frisks about in the
spacious fields, inexperienced in nuptial loves, and hitherto unripe for
a brisk husband. You are able to draw after your tigers and attendant
woods, and to retard rapid rivers. To your blandishments the enormous
porter of the [infernal] palace yielded, though a hundred serpents
fortify his head, and a pestilential steam and an infectious poison
issue from his triple-tongued mouth. Moreover, Ixion and Tityus smiled
with a reluctant aspect: while you soothe the daughters of Danaus with
your delightful harmony, their vessel for some time remained dry. Let
Lyde hear of the crime, and the well-known punishment of the virgins,
and the cask emptied by the water streaming through the bottom, and what
lasting fates await their misdeeds even beyond the grave. Impious! (for
what greater impiety could they have committed? ) Impious! who could
destroy their bridegrooms with the cruel sword! One out of the many,
worthy of the nuptial torch, was nobly false to her perjured parent, and
a maiden illustrious to all posterity; she, who said to her youthful
husband, "Arise! arise! lest an eternal sleep be given to you from a
hand you have no suspicion of; disappoint your father-in-law and my
wicked sisters, who, like lionesses having possessed themselves of
calves (alas)! tear each of them to pieces; I, of softer mold than they,
will neither strike thee, nor detain thee in my custody. Let my father
load me with cruel chains, because out of mercy I spared my unhappy
spouse; let him transport me even to the extreme Numidian plains.
Depart, whither your feet and the winds carry you, while the night and
Venus are favorable: depart with happy omen; yet, not forgetful of me,
engrave my mournful story on my tomb.
