O
thou, who canst immediately bestow, if thou please, the notes of the
swan upon the mute fish!
thou, who canst immediately bestow, if thou please, the notes of the
swan upon the mute fish!
Horace - Works
Thou also
shalt become one of the famous fountains, through my celebrating the oak
that covers the hollow rock, whence thy prattling rills descend with a
bound.
* * * * *
ODE XIV.
TO THE ROMANS.
Augustus Caesar, O ye people, who was lately said, like another
Hercules, to have sought for the laurel to be purchased only by death,
revisits his domestic gods, victorious from the Spanish shore. Let the
matron (_Livia_), to whom her husband alone is dear, come forth in
public procession, having first performed her duty to the just gods; and
(_Octavia_), the sister of our glorious general; the mothers also of the
maidens and of the youths just preserved from danger, becomingly adorned
with supplicatory fillets. Ye, O young men, and young women lately
married, abstain from ill-omened words. This day, to me a real festival,
shall expel gloomy cares: I will neither dread commotions, nor violent
death, while Caesar is in possession of the earth. Go, slave, and seek
for perfume and chaplets, and a cask that remembers the Marsian war, if
any vessel could elude the vagabond Spartacus. And bid the tuneful
Neaera make haste to collect into a knot her auburn hair; _but_ if any
delay should happen from the surly porter, come away. Hoary hair
mollifies minds that are fond of strife and petulant wrangling. I would
not have endured this treatment, warm with youth in the consulship of
Plancus.
* * * * *
ODE XV.
TO CHLORIS.
You wife of the indigent Ibycus, at length put an end to your
wickedness, and your infamous practices. Cease to sport among the
damsels, and to diffuse a cloud among bright constellations, now on the
verge of a timely death. If any thing will become Pholoe, it does not
you Chloris, likewise. Your daughter with more propriety attacks the
young men's apartments, like a Bacchanalian roused up by the rattling
timbrel. The love of Nothus makes her frisk about like a wanton
she-goat. The wool shorn near the famous Luceria becomes you now
antiquated: not musical instruments, or the damask flower of the rose,
or hogsheads drunk down to the lees.
* * * * *
ODE XVI.
TO MAECENAS.
A brazen tower, and doors of oak, and the melancholy watch of wakeful
dogs, had sufficiently defended the imprisoned Danae from midnight
gallants, had not Jupiter and Venus laughed at Acrisius, the anxious
keeper of the immured maiden: [for they well knew] that the way would be
safe and open, after the god had transformed himself into a bribe. Gold
delights to penetrate through the midst of guards, and to break through
stone-walls, more potent than the thunderbolt. The family of the Grecian
augur perished, immersed in destruction on account of lucre. The man of
Macedon cleft the gates of the cities and subverted rival monarchs by
bribery. Bribes enthrall fierce captains of ships. Care, and a thirst
for greater things, is the consequence of increasing wealth. Therefore,
Maecenas, thou glory of the [Roman] knights, I have justly dreaded to
raise the far-conspicuous head. As much more as any man shall deny
himself, so much more shall he receive from the gods. Naked as I am, I
seek the camps of those who covet nothing; and as a deserter, rejoice to
quit the side of the wealthy: a more illustrious possessor of a
contemptible fortune, than if I could be said to treasure up in my
granaries all that the industrious Apulian cultivates, poor amid
abundance of wealth. A rivulet of clear water, and a wood of a few
acres, and a certain prospect of my good crop, are blessings unknown to
him who glitters in the proconsulship of fertile Africa: I am more
happily circumstanced. Though neither the Calabrian bees produce honey,
nor wine ripens to age for me in a Formian cask, nor rich fleeces
increase in Gallic pastures; yet distressful poverty is remote; nor, if
I desired more, would you refuse to grant it me. I shall be better able
to extend my small revenues, by contracting my desires, than if I could
join the kingdom of Alyattes to the Phrygian plains. Much is wanting to
those who covet much. 'Tis well with him to whom God has given what is
necessary with a sparing hand.
* * * * *
ODE XVII.
TO AELIUS LAMIA.
O Aelius, who art nobly descended from the ancient Lamus (forasmuch as
they report, that both the first of the Lamian family had their name
hence, and all the race of the descendants through faithful records
derives its origin from that founder, who is said to have possessed, as
prince, the Formian walls, and Liris gliding on the shores of Marica--an
extensive potentate). To-morrow a tempest sent from the east shall strew
the grove with many leaves, and the shore with useless sea-weed, unless
that old prophetess of rain, the raven, deceives me. Pile up the dry
wood, while you may; to-morrow you shall indulge your genius with wine,
and with a pig of two months old, with your slaves dismissed from their
labors.
* * * * *
ODE XVIII.
TO FAUNUS.
A HYMN.
O Faunus, thou lover of the flying nymphs, benignly traverse my borders
and sunny fields, and depart propitious to the young offspring of my
flocks; if a tender kid fall [a victim] to thee at the completion of the
year, and plenty of wines be not wanting to the goblet, the companion of
Venus, and the ancient altar smoke with liberal perfume. All the cattle
sport in the grassy plain, when the nones of December return to thee;
the village keeping holiday enjoys leisure in the fields, together with
the oxen free from toil. The wolf wanders among the fearless lambs; the
wood scatters its rural leaves for thee, and the laborer rejoices to
have beaten the hated ground in triple dance.
* * * * *
ODE XIX.
TO TELEPHUS.
How far Codrus, who was not afraid to die for his country, is removed
from Inachus, and the race of Aeacus, and the battles also that were
fought at sacred Troy--[these subjects] you descant upon; but at what
price we may purchase a hogshead of Chian; who shall warm the water [for
bathing]; who finds a house: and at what hour I am to get rid of these
Pelignian colds, you are silent. Give me, boy, [a bumper] for the new
moon in an instant, give me one for midnight, and one for Murena the
augur. Let our goblets be mixed up with three or nine cups, according to
every one's disposition. The enraptured bard, who delights in the
odd-numbered muses, shall call for brimmers thrice three. Each of the
Graces, in conjunction with the naked sisters, fearful of broils,
prohibits upward of three. It is my pleasure to rave; why cease the
breathings of the Phrygian flute? Why is the pipe hung up with the
silent lyre? I hate your niggardly handfuls: strew roses freely. Let the
envious Lycus hear the jovial noise; and let our fair neighbor,
ill-suited to the old Lycus, [hear it. ] The ripe Rhode aims at thee,
Telephus, smart with thy bushy locks; at thee, bright as the clear
evening star; the love of my Glycera slowly consumes me.
* * * * *
ODE XX.
TO PYRRHUS.
Do you not perceive, O Pyrrhus, at what hazard yon are taking away the
whelps from a Gutulian lioness? In a little while you, a timorous
ravisher, shall fly from the severe engagement, when she shall march
through the opposing band of youths, re-demanding her beauteous
Nearchus; a grand contest, whether a greater share of booty shall fall
to thee or to her! In the mean time, while you produce your swift
arrows, she whets her terrific teeth; while the umpire of the combat is
reported to have placed the palm under his naked foot, and refreshed his
shoulder, overspread with his perfumed locks, with the gentle breeze:
just such another was Nireus, or he that was ravished from the watery
Ida.
* * * * *
ODE XXI.
TO HIS JAR.
O thou goodly cask, that wast brought to light at the same time with me
in the consulship of Manlius, whether thou containest the occasion of
complaint, or jest, or broils and maddening amours, or gentle sleep;
under whatever title thou preservest the choice Massic, worthy to be
removed on an auspicious day; descend, Corvinus bids me draw the
mellowest wine. He, though he is imbued in the Socratic lectures, will
not morosely reject thee. The virtue even of old Cato is recorded to
have been frequently warmed with wine. Thou appliest a gentle violence
to that disposition, which is in general of the rougher cast: Thou
revealest the cares and secret designs of the wise, by the assistance of
merry Bacchus. You restore hope and spirit to anxious minds, and give
horns to the poor man, who after [tasting] you neither dreads the
diadems of enraged monarchs, nor the weapons of the soldiers. Thee
Bacchus, and Venus, if she comes in good-humor, and the Graces loth to
dissolve the knot [of their union], and living lights shall prolong,
till returning Phoebus puts the stars to flight.
* * * * *
ODE XXII.
TO DIANA.
O virgin, protectress of the mountains and the groves, thou three-formed
goddess, who thrice invoked, hearest young women in labor, and savest
them from death; sacred to thee be this pine that overshadows my villa,
which I, at the completion of every year, joyful will present with the
blood of a boar-pig, just meditating his oblique attack.
* * * * *
ODE XXIII.
TO PHIDYLE.
My rustic Phidyle, if you raise your suppliant hands to heaven at the
new moon, and appease the household gods with frankincense, and this
year's fruits, and a ravening swine; the fertile vine shall neither
feel the pestilential south-west, nor the corn the barren blight, or
your dear brood the sickly season in the fruit-bearing autumn. For the
destined victim, which is pastured in the snowy Algidus among the oaks
and holm trees, or thrives in the Albanian meadows, with its throat
shall stain the axes of the priests. It is not required of you, who are
crowning our little gods with rosemary and the brittle myrtle, to
propitiate them with a great slaughter of sheep. If an innocent hand
touches a clear, a magnificent victim does not pacify the offended
Penates more acceptably, than a consecrated cake and crackling salt.
* * * * *
ODE XXIV.
TO THE COVETOUS.
Though, more wealthy than the unrifled treasures of the Arabians and
rich India, you should possess yourself by your edifices of the whole
Tyrrhenian and Apulian seas; yet, if cruel fate fixes its adamantine
grapples upon the topmost roofs, you shall not disengage your mind from
dread, nor your life from the snares of death. The Scythians that dwell
in the plains, whose carts, according to their custom, draw their
vagrant habitations, live in a better manner; and [so do] the rough
Getae, whose uncircumscribed acres produce fruits and corn free to all,
nor is a longer than annual tillage agreeable, and a successor leaves
him who has accomplished his labor by an equal right. There the
guiltless wife spares her motherless step-children, nor does the
portioned spouse govern her husband, nor put any confidence in a sleek
adulterer. Their dower is the high virtue of their parents, and a
chastity reserved from any other man by a steadfast security; and it, is
forbidden to sin, or the reward is death. O if there be any one willing
to remove our impious slaughters, and civil rage; if he be desirous to
be written FATHER OF THE STATE, on statues [erected to him], let him
dare to curb insuperable licentiousness, and be eminent to posterity;
since we (O injustice! ) detest virtue while living, but invidiously seek
for her after she is taken out of our view. To what purpose are our
woeful complaints, if sin is not cut off with punishment? Of what
efficacy are empty laws, without morals; if neither that part of the
world which is shut in by fervent heats, nor that side which borders
upon Boreas, and snows hardened upon the ground, keep off the merchant;
[and] the expert sailors get the better of the horrible seas? Poverty, a
great reproach, impels us both to do and to suffer any thing, and
deserts the path of difficult virtue. Let us, then, cast our gems and
precious stones and useless gold, the cause of extreme evil, either into
the Capitol, whither the acclamations and crowd of applauding [citizens]
call us, or into the adjoining ocean. If we are truly penitent for our
enormities, the very elements of depraved lust are to be erased, and the
minds of too soft a mold should be formed by severer studies. The noble
youth knows not how to keep his seat on horseback and is afraid to go a
hunting, more skilled to play (if you choose it) with the Grecian
trochus, or dice, prohibited by law; while the father's perjured faith
can deceive his partner and friend, and he hastens to get money for an
unworthy heir. In a word, iniquitous wealth increases, yet something is
ever wanting to the incomplete fortune.
* * * * *
ODE XXV.
TO BACCHUS.
A DITHYRAMBIC.
Whither, O Bacchus, art thou hurrying me, replete with your influence?
Into what groves, into what recesses am I driven, actuated with uncommon
spirit? In what caverns, meditating the immortal honor of illustrious
Caesar, shall I be heard enrolling him among the stars and the council
of Jove? I will utter something extraordinary, new, hitherto unsung by
any other voice. Thus the sleepless Bacchanal is struck with enthusiasm,
casting her eyes upon Hebrus, and Thrace bleached with snow, and Rhodope
traversed by the feet of barbarians. How am I delighted in my rambles,
to admire the rocks and the desert grove! O lord of the Naiads and the
Bacchanalian women, who are able with their hands to overthrow lofty
ash-trees; nothing little, nothing low, nothing mortal will I sing.
Charming is the hazard, O Bacchus, to accompany the god, who binds his
temples with the verdant vine-leaf.
* * * * *
ODE XXVI.
TO VENUS.
I lately lived a proper person for girls, and campaigned it not without
honor; but now this wall, which guards the left side of [the statue] of
sea-born Venus, shall have my arms and my lyre discharged from warfare.
Here, here, deposit the shining flambeaux, and the wrenching irons, and
the bows, that threatened the resisting doors. O thou goddess, who
possessest the blissful Cyprus, and Memphis free from Sithonian snow, O
queen, give the haughty Chloe one cut with your high-raised lash.
* * * * *
ODE XXVII.
TO GALATEA, UPON HER GOING TO SEA.
Let the omen of the noisy screech-owl and a pregnant bitch, or a tawny
wolf running down from the Lanuvian fields, or a fox with whelp conduct
the impious [on their way]; may the serpent also break their undertaken
journey, if, like an arrow athwart the road, it has frightened the
horses. What shall I, a provident augur, fear? I will invoke from the
east, with my prayers, the raven forboding by his croaking, before the
bird which presages impending showers, revisits the stagnant pools.
Mayest thou be happy, O Galatea, wheresoever thou choosest to reside,
and live mindful of me and neither the unlucky pye nor the vagrant crow
forbids your going on. But you see, with what an uproar the prone Orion
hastens on: I know what the dark bay of the Adriatic is, and in what
manner Iapyx, [seemingly] serene, is guilty. Let the wives and children
of our enemies feel the blind tumults of the rising south, and the
roaring of the blackened sea, and the shores trembling with its lash.
Thus too Europa trusted her fair side to the deceitful bull, and bold as
she was, turned pale at the sea abounding with monsters, and the cheat
now become manifest. She, who lately in the meadows was busied about
flowers, and a composer of the chaplet meet for nymphs, saw nothing in
the dusky night put stars and water. Who as soon as she arrived at
Crete, powerful with its hundred cities, cried out, overcome with rage,
"O father, name abandoned by thy daughter! O my duty! Whence, whither am
I come? One death is too little for virgins' crime. Am I awake, while I
deplore my base offense; or does some vain phantom, which, escaping from
the ivory gate, brings on a dream, impose upon me, still free from
guilt. Was it better to travel over the tedious waves, or to gather the
fresh flowers? If any one now would deliver up to me in my anger this
infamous bull, I would do my utmost to tear him to pieces with steel,
and break off the horns of the monster, lately so much beloved.
Abandoned I have left my father's house, abandoned I procrastinate my
doom. O if any of the gods hear this, I wish I may wander naked among
lions: before foul decay seizes my comely cheeks, and moisture leaves
this tender prey, I desire, in all my beauty, to be the food of tigers. "
"Base Europa," thy absent father urges, "why do you hesitate to die? you
may strangle your neck suspended from this ash, with your girdle that
has commodiously attended you. Or if a precipice, and the rocks that are
edged with death, please you, come on, commit yourself to the rapid
storm; unless you, that are of blood-royal, had rather card your
mistress's wool, and be given up as a concubine to some barbarian dame. "
As she complained, the treacherously-smiling Venus, and her son, with
his bow relaxed, drew near. Presently, when she had sufficiently rallied
her, "Refrain (she cried) from your rage and passionate chidings, since
this detested bull shall surrender his horns to be torn in pieces by
you. Are you ignorant, that you are the wife of the invincible Jove?
Cease your sobbing; learn duly to support your distinguished good
fortune. A division of the world shall bear your name. "
* * * * *
ODE XXVIII.
TO LYDE.
What can I do better on the festal day of Neptune? Quickly produce,
Lyde, the hoarded Caecuban, and make an attack upon wisdom, ever on her
guard. You perceive the noontide is on its decline; and yet, as if the
fleeting day stood still, you delay to bring out of the store-house the
loitering cask, [that bears its date] from the consul Bibulus. We will
sing by turns, Neptune, and the green locks of the Nereids; you, shall
chant, on your wreathed lyre, Latona and the darts of the nimble
Cynthia; at the conclusion of your song, she also [shall be celebrated],
who with her yoked swans visits Gnidos, and the shining Cyclades, and
Paphos: the night also shall be celebrated in a suitable lay.
* * * * *
ODE XXIX.
TO MAECENAS.
O Maecenas, thou progeny of Tuscan kings, there has been a long while
for you in my house some mellow wine in an unbroached hogshead, with
rose-flowers and expressed essence for your hair. Disengage yourself
from anything that may retard you, nor contemplate the ever marshy
Tibur, and the sloping fields of Aesula, and the hills of Telegonus the
parricide. Leave abundance, which is the source of daintiness, and yon
pile of buildings approaching near the lofty clouds: cease to admire the
smoke, and opulence, and noise of flourishing Rome. A change is
frequently agreeable to the rich, and a cleanly meal in the little
cottage of the poor has smoothed an anxious brow without carpets or
purple. Now the bright father of Andromeda displays his hidden fire; now
Procyon rages, and the constellation of the ravening Lion, as the sun
brings round the thirsty season. Now the weary shepherd with his languid
flock seeks the shade, and the river, and the thickets of rough
Sylvanus; and the silent bank is free from the wandering winds. You
regard what constitution may suit the state, and are in an anxious dread
for Rome, what preparations the Seres and the Bactrians subject to
Cyrus, and the factious Tanais are making. A wise deity shrouds in
obscure darkness the events of the time to come, and smiles if a mortal
is solicitous beyond the law of nature. Be mindful to manage duly that
which is present. What remains goes on in the manner of the river, at
one time calmly gliding in the middle of its channel to the Tuscan Sea,
at another, rolling along corroded stones, and stumps of trees, forced
away, and cattle, and houses, not without the noise of mountains and
neighboring woods, when the merciless deluge enrages the peaceful
waters. That man is master of himself and shall live happy, who has it
in his power to say, "I have lived to-day: to-morrow let the Sire invest
the heaven, either with a black cloud, or with clear sunshine;
nevertheless, he shall not render ineffectual what is past, nor undo or
annihilate what the fleeting hour has once carried off. Fortune, happy
in the execution of her cruel office, and persisting to play her
insolent game, changes uncertain honors, indulgent now to me, by and by
to another. I praise her, while she abides by me. If she moves her fleet
wings, I resign what she has bestowed, and wrap myself up in my virtue,
and court honest poverty without a portion. It is no business of mine,
if the mast groan with the African storms, to have recourse to piteous
prayers, and to make a bargain with my vows, that my Cyprian and Syrian
merchandize may not add to the wealth of the insatiable sea. Then the
gale and the twin Pollux will carry me safe in the protection of a skiff
with two oars, through the tumultuous Aegean Sea. "
* * * * *
ODE XXX.
ON HIS OWN WORKS.
I have completed a monument more lasting than brass, and more sublime
than the regal elevation of pyramids, which neither the wasting shower,
the unavailing north wind, nor an innumerable succession of years, and
the flight of seasons, shall be able to demolish. I shall not wholly
die; but a great part of me shall escape Libitina. I shall continualy be
renewed in the praises of posterity, as long as the priest shall ascend
the Capitol with the silent [vestal] virgin. Where the rapid Aufidus
shall murmur, and where Daunus, poorly supplied with water, ruled over a
rustic people, I, exalted from a low degree, shall be acknowledged as
having originally adapted the Aeolic verse to Italian measures.
Melpomene, assume that pride which your merits have acquired, and
willingly crown my hair with the Delphic laurel.
* * * * *
THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE ODES OF HORACE.
ODE I.
TO VENUS.
After a long cessation, O Venus, again are you stirring up tumults?
Spare me, I beseech you, I beseech you. I am not the man I was under the
dominion of good-natured Cynara. Forbear, O cruel mother of soft
desires, to bend one bordering upon fifty, now too hardened for soft
commands: go, whither the soothing prayers of youths, invoke you. More
seasonably may you revel in the house of Paulus Maximus, flying thither
with your splendid swans, if you seek to inflame a suitable breast. For
he is both noble and comely, and by no means silent in the cause of
distressed defendants, and a youth of a hundred accomplishments; he
shall bear the ensigns of your warfare far and wide; and whenever, more
prevailing than the ample presents of a rival, he shall laugh [at his
expense], he shall erect thee in marble under a citron dome near the
Alban lake. There you shall smell abundant frankincense, and shall be
charmed with the mixed music of the lyre and Berecynthian pipe, not
without the flageolet. There the youths, together with the tender
maidens, twice a day celebrating your divinity, shall, Salian-like, with
white foot thrice shake the ground. As for me, neither woman, nor youth,
nor the fond hopes of mutual inclination, nor to contend in wine, nor to
bind my temples with fresh flowers, delight me [any longer]. But why;
ah! why, Ligurinus, does the tear every now and then trickle down my
cheeks? Why does my fluent tongue falter between my words with an
unseemly silence? Thee in my dreams by night I clasp, caught [in my
arms]; thee flying across the turf of the Campus Martius; thee I pursue,
O cruel one, through the rolling waters.
* * * * *
ODE II.
TO ANTONIUS IULUS.
Whoever endeavors, O Iulus, to rival Pindar, makes an effort on wings
fastened with wax by art Daedalean, about to communicate his name to the
glassy sea. Like a river pouring down from a mountain, which sudden
rains have increased beyond its accustomed banks, such the deep-mouthed
Pindar rages and rushes on immeasurable, sure to merit Apollo's laurel,
whether he rolls down new-formed phrases through the daring dithyrambic,
and is borne on in numbers exempt from rule: whether he sings the gods,
and kings, the offspring of the gods, by whom the Centaurs perished with
a just destruction, [by whom] was quenched the flame of the dreadful
Chimaera; or celebrates those whom the palm, [in the Olympic games] at
Elis, brings home exalted to the skies, wrestler or steed, and presents
them with a gift preferable to a hundred statues: or deplores some
youth, snatched [by death] from his mournful bride--he elevates both his
strength, and courage, and golden morals to the stars, and rescues him
from the murky grave. A copious gale elevates the Dircean swan, O
Antonius, as often as he soars into the lofty regions of the clouds: but
I, after the custom and manner of the Macinian bee, that laboriously
gathers the grateful thyme, I, a diminutive creature, compose elaborate
verses about the grove and the banks of the watery Tiber. You, a poet of
sublimer style, shall sing of Caesar, whenever, graceful in his
well-earned laurel, he shall drag the fierce Sygambri along the sacred
hill; Caesar, than whom nothing greater or better the fates and
indulgent gods ever bestowed on the earth, nor will bestow, though the
times should return to their primitive gold. You shall sing both the
festal days, and the public rejoicings on account of the prayed-for
return of the brave Augustus, and the forum free from law-suits. Then
(if I can offer any thing worth hearing) a considerable portion of my
voice shall join [the general acclamation], and I will sing, happy at
the reception of Caesar, "O glorious day, O worthy thou to be
celebrated. " And while [the procession] moves along, shouts of triumph
we will repeat, shouts of triumph the whole city [will raise], and we
will offer frankincense to the indulgent gods. Thee ten bulls and as
many heifers shall absolve; me, a tender steerling, that, having left
his dam, thrives in spacious pastures for the discharge of my vows,
resembling [by the horns on] his forehead the curved light of the moon,
when she appears of three days old, in which part he has a mark of a
snowy aspect, being of a dun color over the rest of his body.
* * * * *
ODE III.
TO MELPOMENE.
Him, O Melpomene, upon whom at his birth thou hast once looked with
favoring eye, the Isthmian contest shall not render eminent as a
wrestler; the swift horse shall not draw him triumphant in a Grecian
car; nor shall warlike achievement show him in the Capitol, a general
adorned with the Delian laurel, on account of his having quashed the
proud threats of kings: but such waters as flow through the fertile
Tiber, and the dense leaves of the groves, shall make him distinguished
by the Aeolian verse. The sons of Rome, the queen of cities, deign to
rank me among the amiable band of poets; and now I am less carped at by
the tooth of envy. O muse, regulating the harmony of the gilded shell!
O
thou, who canst immediately bestow, if thou please, the notes of the
swan upon the mute fish! It is entirely by thy gift that I am marked
out, as the stringer of the Roman lyre, by the fingers of passengers;
that I breathe, and give pleasure (if I give pleasure), is yours.
* * * * *
ODE IV
THE PRAISE OF DRUSUS.
Like as the winged minister of thunder (to whom Jupiter, the sovereign
of the gods, has assigned the dominion over the fleeting birds, having
experienced his fidelity in the affair of the beauteous Ganymede), early
youth and hereditary vigor save impelled from his nest unknowing of
toil; and the vernal winds, the showers being now dispelled, taught him,
still timorous, unwonted enterprises: in a little while a violent
impulse dispatched him, as an enemy against the sheepfolds, now an
appetite for food and fight has impelled him upon the reluctant
serpents;--or as a she-goat, intent on rich pastures, has beheld a young
lion but just weaned from the udder of his tawny dam, ready to be
devoured by his newly-grown tooth: such did the Rhaeti and the Vindelici
behold Drusus carrying on the war under the Alps; whence this people
derived the custom, which has always prevailed among them, of arming
their right hands with the Amazonian ax, I have purposely omitted to
inquire: (neither is it possible to discover everything. ) But those
troops, which had been for a long while and extensively victorious,
being subdued by the conduct of a youth, perceived what a disposition,
what a genius rightly educated under an auspicious roof, what the
fatherly affection of Augustus toward the young Neros, could effect. The
brave are generated by the brave and good; there is in steers, there is
in horses, the virtue of their sires; nor do the courageous eagles
procreate the unwarlike dove. But learning improves the innate force,
and good discipline confirms the mind: whenever morals are deficient,
vices disgrace what is naturally good. What thou owest, O Rome, to the
Neros, the river Metaurus is a witness, and the defeated Asdrubal, and
that day illustrious by the dispelling of darkness from Italy, and which
first smiled with benignant victory; when the terrible African rode
through the Latian cities, like a fire through the pitchy pines, or the
east wind through the Sicilian waves. After this the Roman youth
increased continually in successful exploits, and temples, laid waste by
the impious outrage of the Carthaginians, had the [statues of] their
gods set up again. And at length the perfidious Hannibal said; "We, like
stags, the prey of rapacious wolves, follow of our own accord those,
whom to deceive and escape is a signal triumph. That nation, which,
tossed in the Etrurian waves, bravely transported their gods, and sons,
and aged fathers, from the burned Troy to the Italian cities, like an
oak lopped by sturdy axes in Algidum abounding in dusky leaves, through
losses and through wounds derives strength and spirit from the very
steel. The Hydra did not with more vigor grow upon Hercules grieving to
be overcome, nor did the Colchians, or the Echionian Thebes, produce a
greater prodigy. Should you sink it in the depth, it will come out more
beautiful: should you contend with it, with great glory will it
overthrow the conqueror unhurt before, and will fight battles to be the
talk of wives. No longer can I send boasting messengers to Carthage: all
the hope and success of my name is fallen, is fallen by the death of
Asdrubal. There is nothing, but what the Claudian hands will perform;
which both Jupiter defends with his propitious divinity, and sagacious
precaution conducts through the sharp trials of war. "
* * * * *
ODE V.
TO AUGUSTUS.
O best guardian of the Roman people, born under propitious gods, already
art thou too long absent; after having promised a mature arrival to the
sacred council of the senators, return. Restore, O excellent chieftain,
the light to thy country; for, like the spring, wherever thy countenance
has shone, the day passes more agreeably for the people, and the sun has
a superior lustre. As a mother, with vows, omens, and prayers, calls for
her son (whom the south wind with adverse gales detains from his sweet
home, staying more than a year beyond the Carpathian Sea), nor turns
aside her looks from the curved shore; in like manner, inspired with
loyal wishes, his country seeks for Caesar. For, [under your auspices,]
the ox in safety traverses the meadows: Ceres nourishes the ground; and
abundant Prosperity: the sailors skim through the calm ocean: and Faith
is in dread of being censured. The chaste family is polluted by no
adulteries: morality and the law have got the better of that foul crime;
the child-bearing women are commended for an offspring resembling [the
father; and] punishment presses as a companion upon guilt. Who can fear
the Parthian? Who, the frozen Scythian? Who, the progeny that rough
Germany produces, while Caesar is in safety? Who cares for the war of
fierce Spain? Every man puts a period to the day amid his own hills, and
weds the vine to the widowed elm-trees; hence he returns joyful to his
wine, and invites you, as a deity, to his second course; thee, with many
a prayer, thee he pursues with wine poured out [in libation] from the
cups; and joins your divinity to that of his household gods, in the same
manner as Greece was mindful of Castor and the great Hercules. May you,
excellent chieftain, bestow a lasting festivity upon Italy! This is our
language, when we are sober at the early day; this is our language, when
we have well drunk, at the time the sun is beneath the ocean.
* * * * *
ODE VI.
HYMN TO APOLLO.
Thou god, whom the offspring of Niobe experienced as avenger of a
presumptuous tongue, and the ravisher Tityus, and also the Thessalian
Achilles, almost the conqueror of lofty Troy, a warrior superior to all
others, but unequal to thee; though, son of the sea-goddess, Thetis, he
shook the Dardanian towers, warring with his dreadful spear. He, as it
were a pine smitten with the burning ax, or a cypress prostrated by the
east wind, fell extended far, and reclined his neck in the Trojan dust.
He would not, by being shut up in a [wooden] horse, that belied the
sacred rights of Minerva, have surprised the Trojans reveling in an evil
hour, and the court of Priam making merry in the dance; but openly
inexorable to his captives, (oh impious! oh! ) would have burned
speechless babes with Grecian fires, even him concealed in his mother's
womb: had not the father of the gods, prevailed upon by thy entreaties
and those of the beauteous Venus, granted to the affairs of Aeneas walls
founded under happier auspices. Thou lyrist Phoebus, tutor of the
harmonious Thalia, who bathest thy locks in the river Xanthus, O
delicate Agyieus, support the dignity of the Latian muse. Phoebus gave
me genius, Phoebus the art of composing verse, and the title of poet. Ye
virgins of the first distinction, and ye youths born of illustrious
parents, ye wards of the Delian goddess, who stops with her bow the
flying lynxes, and the stags, observe the Lesbian measure, and the
motion of my thumb; duly celebrating the son of Latona, duly
[celebrating] the goddess that enlightens the night with her shining
crescent, propitious to the fruits, and expeditious in rolling on the
precipitate months. Shortly a bride you will say: "I, skilled in the
measures of the poet Horace, recited an ode which was acceptable to the
gods, when the secular period brought back the festal days. "
* * * * *
ODE VII.
TO TORQUATUS.
The snows are fled, the herbage now returns to the fields, and the
leaves to the trees. The earth changes its appearance, and the
decreasing rivers glide along their banks: the elder Grace, together
with the Nymphs, and her two sisters, ventures naked to lead off the
dance. That you are not to expect things permanent, the year, and the
hour that hurries away the agreeable day, admonish us. The colds are
mitigated by the zephyrs: the summer follows close upon the spring,
shortly to die itself, as soon as fruitful autumn shall have shed its
fruits: and anon sluggish winter returns again. Nevertheless the
quick-revolving moons repair their wanings in the skies; but when we
descend [to those regions] where pious Aeneas, where Tullus and the
wealthy Ancus [have gone before us], we become dust and a mere shade.
Who knows whether the gods above will add to this day's reckoning the
space of to-morrow? Every thing, which you shall indulge to your beloved
soul, will escape the greedy hands of your heir. When once, Torquatus,
you shall be dead, and Minos shall have made his awful decisions
concerning you; not your family, not you eloquence, not your piety shall
restore you. For neither can Diana free the chaste Hippolytus from
infernal darkness; nor is Theseus able to break off the Lethaean fetters
from his dear Piri thous.
* * * * *
ODE VIII.
TO MARCIUS CENSORINUS.
O Censorinus, liberally would I present my acquaintance with goblets and
beautiful vases of brass; I would present them with tripods, the rewards
of the brave Grecians: nor would you bear off the meanest of my
donations, if I were rich in those pieces of art, which either
Parrhasius or Scopas produced; the latter in statuary, the former in
liquid colors, eminent to portray at one time a man, at another a god.
But I have no store of this sort, nor do your circumstances or
inclination require any such curiosities as these. You delight in
verses: verses I can give, and set a value on the donation. Not marbles
engraved with public inscriptions, by means of which breath and life
returns to illustrious generals after their decease; not the precipitate
flight of Hannibal, and his menaces retorted upon his own head: not the
flames of impious Carthage * * * * more eminently set forth his praises,
who returned, having gained a name from conquered Africa, than the
Calabrlan muses; neither, should writings be silent, would you have any
reward for having done well. What would the son of Mars and Ilia be, if
invidious silence had stifled the merits of Romulus? The force, and
favor, and voice of powerful poets consecrate Aecus, snatched from the
Stygian floods, to the Fortunate Islands. The muse forbids a
praiseworthy man to die: the muse, confers the happiness of heaven. Thus
laborious Hercules has a place at the longed-for banquets of Jove:
[thus] the sons of Tyndarus, that bright constellation, rescue shattered
vessels from the bosom of the deep: [and thus] Bacchus, his temples
adorned with the verdant vine-branch, brings the prayers of his votaries
to successful issues.
* * * * *
ODE IX.
TO MARCUS LOLLIUS.
Lest you for a moment imagine that those words will be lost, which I,
born on the far-resounding Aufidus, utter to be accompanied with the
lyre, by arts hitherto undivulged--If Maeonian Homer possesses the first
rank, the Pindaric and Cean muses, and the menacing strains of Alcaeus,
and the majestic ones of Stesichorus, are by no means obscure: neither,
if Anacreon long ago sportfully sung any thing, has time destroyed it:
even now breathes the love and live the ardors of the Aeolian maid,
committed to her lyre. The Lacedaemonian Helen is not the only fair, who
has been inflamed by admiring the delicate ringlets of a gallant, and
garments embroidered with gold, and courtly accomplishments, and
retinue: nor was Teucer the first that leveled arrows from the Cydonian
bow: Troy was more than once harassed: the great Idomeneus and Sthenelus
were not the only heroes that fought battles worthy to be recorded by
the muses: the fierce Hector, or the strenuous Deiphobus were not the
first that received heavy blows in defense of virtuous wives and
children. Many brave men lived before Agamemnon: but all of them,
unlamented and unknown, are overwhelmed with endless obscurity, because
they were destitute of a sacred bard. Valor, uncelebrated, differs but
little from cowardice when in the grave. I will not [therefore], O
Lollius, pass you over in silence, uncelebrated in my writings, or
suffer envious forgetfulness with impunity to seize so many toils of
thine. You have a mind ever prudent in the conduct of affairs, and
steady alike amid success and trouble: you are an avenger of avaricious
fraud, and proof against money, that attracts every thing; and a consul
not of one year only, but as often as the good and upright magistrate
has preferred the honorable to the profitable, and has rejected with a
disdainful brow the bribes of wicked men, and triumphant through
opposing bands has displayed his arms. You can not with propriety call
him happy, that possesses much; he more justly claims the title of
happy, who understands how to make a wise use of the gifts of the gods,
and how to bear severe poverty; and dreads a reproachful deed worse than
death; such a man as this is not afraid to perish in the defense of his
dear friends, or of his country.
* * * * *
ODE X.
TO LIGURINUS.
O cruel still, and potent in the endowments of beauty, when an
unexpected plume shall come upon your vanity, and those locks, which now
wanton on your shoulders, shall fall off, and that color, which is now
preferable to the blossom of the damask rose, changed, O Ligurinus,
shall turn into a wrinkled face; [then] will you say (as often as you
see yourself, [quite] another person in the looking glass), Alas! why
was not my present inclination the same, when I was young? Or why do not
my cheeks return, unimpaired, to these my present sentiments?
* * * * *
ODE XI.
TO PHYLLIS.
Phyllis, I have a cask full of Abanian wine, upward of nine years old; I
have parsley in my garden, for the weaving of chaplets, I have a store
of ivy, with which, when you have bound your hair, you look so gay: the
house shines cheerfully With plate: the altar, bound with chaste
vervain, longs to be sprinkled [with the blood] of a sacrificed lamb:
all hands are busy: girls mingled with boys fly about from place to
place: the flames quiver, rolling on their summit the sooty smoke. But
yet, that you may know to what joys you are invited, the Ides are to be
celebrated by you, the day which divides April, the month of sea-born
Venus; [a day,] with reason to be solemnized by me, and almost more
sacred to me than that of my own birth; since from this day my dear
Maecenas reckons his flowing years. A rich and buxom girl hath possessed
herself of Telephus, a youth above your rank; and she holds him fast by
an agreeable fetter. Consumed Phaeton strikes terror into ambitious
hopes, and the winged Pegasus, not stomaching the earth-born rider
Bellerophon, affords a terrible example, that you ought always to pursue
things that are suitable to you, and that you should avoid a
disproportioned match, by thinking it a crime to entertain a hope beyond
what is allowable. Come then, thou last of my loves (for hereafter I
shall burn for no other woman), learn with me such measures, as thou
mayest recite with thy lovely voice: our gloomy cares shall be mitigated
with an ode.
* * * * *
ODE XII.
TO VIRGIL.
The Thracian breezes, attendants on the spring, which moderate the deep,
now fill the sails; now neither are the meadows stiff [with frost], nor
roar the rivers swollen with winter's snow. The unhappy bird, that
piteotisly bemoans Itys, and is the eternal disgrace of the house of
Cecrops (because she wickedly revenged the brutal lusts of kings), now
builds her nest. The keepers of the sheep play tunes upon the pipe amid
the tendar herbage, and delight that god, whom flocks and the shady
hills of Arcadia delight. The time of year, O Virgil, has brought on a
drought: but if you desire to quaff wine from the Calenian press, you,
that are a constant companion of young noblemen, must earn your liquor
by [bringing some] spikenard: a small box of spikenard shall draw out a
cask, which now lies in the Sulpician store-house, bounteous in the
indulgence of fresh hopes and efficacious in washing away the
bitterness of cares. To which joys if you hasten, come instantly with
your merchandize: I do not intend to dip you in my cups scot-free, like
a man of wealth, in a house abounding with plenty. But lay aside delay,
and the desire of gain; and, mindful of the gloomy [funeral] flames,
intermix, while you may, your grave studies with a little light gayety:
it is delightful to give a loose on a proper occasion.
* * * * *
ODE XIII.
TO LYCE.
The gods have heard my prayers, O Lyce; Lyce, the gods have heard my
prayers, you are become an old woman, and yet you would fain seem a
beauty; and you wanton and drink in an audacious manner; and when drunk,
solicit tardy Cupid, with a quivering voice. He basks in the charming
cheeks of the blooming Chia, who is a proficient on the lyre. The
teasing urchin flies over blasted oaks, and starts back at the sight of
you, because foul teeth, because wrinkles and snowy hair render you
odious. Now neither Coan purples nor sparkling jewels restore those
years, which winged time has inserted in the public annals. Whither is
your beauty gone? Alas! or whither your bloom? Whither your graceful
deportment? What have you [remaining] of her, of her, who breathed
loves, and ravished me from myself? Happy next to Cynara, and
distinguished for an aspect of graceful ways: but the fates granted a
few years only to Cynara, intending to preserve for a long time Lyce, to
rival in years the aged raven: that the fervid young fellows might see,
not without excessive laughter, that torch, [which once so brightly
scorched,] reduced to ashes.
* * * * *
ODE XIV.
TO AUGUSTUS.
What zeal of the senators, or what of the Roman people, by decreeing the
most ample honors, can eternize your virtues, O Augustus, by monumental
inscriptions and lasting records? O thou, wherever the sun illuminates
the habitable regions, greatest of princes, whom the Vindelici, that
never experienced the Roman sway, have lately learned how powerful thou
art in war! For Drusus, by means of your soldiery, has more than once
bravely overthrown the Genauni, an implacable race, and the rapid
Brenci, and the citadels situated on the tremendous Alps. The elder of
the Neros soon after fought a terrible battle, and, under your
propitious auspices, smote the ferocious Rhoeti: how worthy of
admiration in the field of battle, [to see] with what destruction he
oppressed the brave, hearts devoted to voluntary death: just as the
south wind harasses the untameable waves, when the dance of the Pleiades
cleaves the clouds; [so is he] strenuous to annoy the troops of the
enemy, and to drive his eager steed through the midst of flames. Thus
the bull-formed Aufidus, who washes the dominions of the Apulian Daunus,
rolls along, when he rages and meditates an horrible deluge to the
cultivated lands; when Claudius overthrew with impetuous might, the iron
ranks of the barbarians, and by mowing down both front and rear strewed
the ground, victorious without any loss; through you supplying them with
troops, you with councils, and your own guardian powers. For on that
day, when the suppliant Alexandria opened her ports, and deserted court,
fortune, propitious to you in the third lustrum, has put a happy period
to the war, and has ascribed praise and wished-for honor to the
victories already obtained. O thou dread guardian of Italy and imperial
Rome, thee the Spaniard, till now unconquered, and the Mede, and the
Indian, thee the vagrant Scythian admires; thee both the Nile, who
conceals his fountain heads, and the Danube; thee the rapid Tigris; thee
the monster-bearing ocean, that roars against the remote Britons; thee
the region of Gaul fearless of death, and that of hardy Iberia obeys;
thee the Sicambrians, who delight in slaughter, laying aside their arms,
revere.
* * * * *
ODE XV.
TO AUGUSTUS, ON THE RESTORATION OF PEACE.
Phoebus chid me, when I was meditating to sing of battles And conquered
cities on the lyre: that I might not set my little sails along the
Tyrrhenian Sea. Your age, O Caesar, has both restored plenteous crops
to the fields, and has brought back to our Jupiter the standards torn
from the proud pillars of the Parthians; and has shut up [the temple] of
Janus [founded by] Romulus, now free from war; and has imposed a due
discipline upon headstrong licentiousness, and has extirpated crimes,
and recalled the ancient arts; by which the Latin name and strength of
Italy have increased, and the fame and majesty of the empire is extended
from the sun's western bed to the east. While Caesar is guardian of
affairs, neither civil rage nor violence shall disturb tranquillity; nor
hatred which forges swords, and sets at variance unhappy states. Not
those, who drink of the deep Danube, shall now break the Julian edicts:
not the Getae, not the Seres, nor the perfidious Persians, nor those
born upon the river Tanais. And let us, both on common and festal days,
amid the gifts of joyous Bacchus, together with our wives and families,
having first duly invoked the gods, celebrate, after the manner of our
ancestors, with songs accompanied with Lydian pipes, our late valiant
commanders: and Troy, and Anchises, and the offspring of benign Venus.
* * * * *
THE BOOK OF THE EPODES OF HORACE.
ODE I.
TO MAECENAS.
Thou wilt go, my friend Maecenas, with Liburian galleys among the
towering forts of ships, ready at thine own [hazard] to undergo any of
Caesar's dangers. What shall I do? To whom life may be agreeable, if you
survive; but, if otherwise, burdensome. Whether shall I, at your
command, pursue my ease, which can not be pleasing unless in your
company? Or shall I endure this toil with such a courage, as becomes
effeminate men to bear? I will bear it? and with an intrepid soul follow
you, either through the summits of the Alps, and the inhospitable
Caucus, or to the furthest western bay. You may ask how I, unwarlike and
infirm, can assist your labors by mine? While I am your companion, I
shall be in less anxiety, which takes possession of the absent in a
greater measure. As the bird, that has unfledged young, is in a greater
dread of serpents' approaches, when they are left;--not that, if she
should be present when they came, she could render more help. Not only
this, but every other war, shall be cheerfully embraced by me for the
hope of your favor; [and this,] not that my plows should labor, yoked to
a greater number of mine own oxen; or that my cattle before the
scorching dog-star should change the Calabrian for the Lucanian
pastures: neither that my white country-box should equal the Circaean
walls of lofty Tusculum. Your generosity has enriched me enough, and
more than enough: I shall never wish to amass, what either, like the
miser Chremes, I may bury in the earth, or luxuriously squander, like a
prodigal.
* * * * *
ODE II.
THE PRAISES OF A COUNTRY LIFE.
Happy the man, who, remote from business, after the manner of the
ancient race of mortals, cultivates his paternal lands with his own
oxen, disengaged from every kind of usury; he is neither alarmed by the
horrible trump, as a soldier, nor dreads he the angry sea; he shuns both
the bar and the proud portals of citizens in power. Wherefore he either
weds the lofty poplars to the mature branches of the vine; and, lopping
off the useless boughs with his pruning-knife, he ingrafts more fruitful
ones: or he takes a prospect of the herds of his lowing cattle,
wandering about in a lonely vale; or stores his honey, pressed [from the
combs], in clean vessels; or shears his tender sheep. Or, when autumn
has lifted up in the fields his head adorned with mellow fruits, how
does he rejoice, while he gathers the grafted pears, and the grape that
vies with the purple, with which he may recompense thee, O Priapus, and
thee, father Sylvanus, guardian of his boundaries! Sometimes he delights
to lie under an aged holm, sometimes on the matted grass: meanwhile the
waters glide along in their deep channels; the birds warble in the
woods; and the fountains murmur with their purling streams, which
invites gentle slumbers. But when the wintery season of the tempestuous
air prepares rains and snows, he either drives the fierce boars, with
many a dog, into the intercepting toils; or spreads his thin nets with
the smooth pole, as a snare for the voracious thrushes; or catches in
his gin the timorous hare, or that stranger the crane, pleasing rewards
[for his labor]. Among such joys as these, who does not forget those
mischievous anxieties, which are the property of love. But if a chaste
wife, assisting on her part [in the management] of the house, and
beloved children (such as is the Sabine, or the sun-burned spouse of the
industrious Apulian), piles up the sacred hearth with old wood, just at
the approach of her weary husband; and, shutting up the fruitful cattle
in the woven hurdles, milks dry their distended udders: and, drawing
this year's wine out of a well-seasoned cask, prepares the unbought
collation: not the Lucrine oysters could delight me more, nor the
turbot, nor the scar, should the tempestuous winter drive any from the
eastern floods to this sea: not the turkey, nor the Asiatic wild-fowl,
can come into my stomach more agreeably, than the olive gathered from
the richest branches from the trees, or the sorrel that loves the
meadows, or mallows salubrious for a sickly body, or a lamb slain at the
feast of Terminus, or a kid rescued from the wolf. Amid these dainties,
how it pleases one to see the well-fed sheep hastening home! to see the
weary oxen, with drooping neck, dragging the inverted ploughshare! and
slaves, the test of a rich family, ranged about the smiling household
gods! When Alfius, the usurer, now on the point of turning countryman,
had said this, he collected in all his money on the Ides; and endeavors
to put it out again at the Calends.
* * * * *
ODE III.
TO MAECENAS.
If any person at any time with an impious hand has broken his aged
father's neck, let him eat garlic, more baneful than hemlock. Oh! the
hardy bowels of the mowers! What poison is this that rages in my
entrails? Has viper's blood, infused in these herbs, deceived me? Or has
Canidia dressed this baleful food? When Medea, beyond all the [other]
argonauts, admired their handsome leader, she anointed Jason with this,
as he was going to tie the untried yoke on the bulls: and having
revenged herself on [Jason's] mistress, by making her presents besmeared
with this, she flew away on her winged dragon. Never did the steaming
influence of any constellation so raging as this rest upon the thirsty
Appulia: neither did the gift [_of Dejanira_] burn hotter upon the
shoulders of laborious Hercules. But if ever, facetious Maecenas, you
should have a desire for any such stuff again, I wish that your girl may
oppose her hand to your kiss, and lie at the furthest part of the bed.
* * * * *
ODE IV.
TO MENAS.
As great an enmity as is allotted by nature to wolves and lambs, [so
great a one] have I to you, you that are galled at your back with
Spanish cords, and on your legs with the hard fetter. Though,
purse-proud with your riches, you strut along, yet fortune does not
alter your birth. Do you not observe while you are stalking along the
sacred way with a robe twice three ells long, how the most open
indignation of those that pass and repass turns their looks on thee?
This fellow, [say they,] cut with the triumvir's whips, even till the
beadle was sick of his office, plows a thousand acres of Falernian land,
and wears out the Appian road with his nags; and, in despite of Otho,
sits in the first rows [of the circus] as a knight of distinction. To
what purpose is it, that so many brazen-beaked ships of immense bulk
should be led out against pirates and a band of slaves, while this
fellow, this is a military tribune?
* * * * *
ODE V.
THE WITCHES MANGLING A BOY.
But oh, by all the gods in heaven, who rule the earth and human race,
what means this tumult? And what the hideous looks of all these [hags,
fixed] upon me alone? I conjure thee by thy children (if invoked Lucina
was ever present at any real birth of thine), I [conjure] thee by this
empty honor of my purple, by Jupiter, who must disapprove these
proceedings, why dost thou look at me as a step-mother, or as a wild
beast stricken with a dart? While the boy made these complaints with a
faltering voice, he stood with his bandages of distinction taken from
him, a tender frame, such as might soften the impious breasts of the
cruel Thracians; Canidia, having interwoven her hair and uncombed head
with little vipers, orders wild fig-trees torn up from graves, orders
funeral cypresses and eggs besmeared with the gore of a loathsome toad,
and feathers of the nocturnal screech-owl, and those herbs, which
lolchos, and Spain, fruitful in poisons, transmits, and bones snatched
from the mouth of a hungry bitch, to be burned in Colchian flames. But
Sagana, tucked up for expedition, sprinkling the waters of Avernus all
over the house, bristles up with her rough hair like a sea-urchin, or a
boar in the chase. Veia, deterred by no remorse of conscience, groaning
with the toil, dug up the ground with the sharp spade; where the boy,
fixed in, might long be tormented to death at the sight of food varied
two or three times in a day: while he stood out with his face, just as
much at bodies suspended by the chin [in swimming] project from the
water, that his parched marrow and dried liver might be a charm for
love; when once the pupils of his eyes had wasted away, fixed on the
forbidden food. Both the idle Naples, and every neighboring town
believed, that Folia of Ariminum, [a witch] of masculine lust, was not
absent: she, who with her Thessalian incantations forces the charmed
stars and the moon from heaven. Here the fell Canidia, gnawing her
unpaired thumb with her livid teeth, what said she? or what did she not
say? O ye faithful witnesses to my proceedings, Night and Diana, who
presidest over silence, when the secret rites are celebrated: now, now
be present, now turn your anger and power against the houses of our
enemies, while the savage wild beasts lie hid in the woods, dissolved in
sweet repose; let the dogs of Suburra (which may be matter of ridicule
for every body) bark at the aged profligate, bedaubed with ointment,
such as my hands never made any more exquisite. What is the matter? Why
are these compositions less efficacious than those of the barbarian
Medea? by means of which she made her escape, after having revenged
herself on [Jason's] haughty mistress, the daughter of the mighty Creon;
when the garment, a gift that was injected with venom, took off his new
bride by its inflammatory power. And yet no herb, nor root hidden in
inaccessible places, ever escaped my notice. [Nevertheless,] he sleeps
in the perfumed bed of every harlot, from his forgetfulness [of me]. Ah!
ah! he walks free [from my power] by the charms of some more knowing
witch. Varus, (oh you that will shortly have much to lament! ) you shall
come back to me by means of unusual spells; nor shall you return to
yourself by all the power of Marsian enchantments, I will prepare a
stronger philter: I will pour in a stronger philter for you, disdainful
as you are; and the heaven shall subside below the sea, with the earth
extended over it, sooner than you shall not burn with love for me, in
the same manner as this pitch [burns] in the sooty flames. At these
words, the boy no longer [attempted], as before, to move the impious
hags by soothing expressions; but, doubtful in what manner he should
break silence, uttered Thyestean imprecations. Potions [said he] have a
great efficacy in confounding right and wrong, but are not able to
invert the condition of human nature; I will persecute you with curses;
and execrating detestation is not to be expiated by any victim.
Moreover, when doomed to death I shall have expired, I will attend you
as a nocturnal fury; and, a ghost, I will attack your faces with my
hooked talons (for such is the power of those divinities, the Manes),
and, brooding upon your restless breasts, I will deprive you of repose
by terror. The mob, from village to village, assaulting you on every
side with stones, shall demolish you filthy hags. Finally, the wolves
and Esquiline vultures shall scatter abroad your unburied limbs. Nor
shall this spectacle escape the observation of my parents, who, alas!
must survive me.
ODE. VI.
AGAINST CASSIUS SEVERUS.
O cur, thou coward against wolves, why dost thou persecute innocent
strangers? Why do you not, if you can, turn your empty yelpings hither,
and attack me, who will bite again? For, like a Molossian, or tawny
Laconian dog, that is a friendly assistant to shepherds, I will drive
with erected ears through the deep snows every brute that shall go
before me. You, when you have filled the grove with your fearful
barking, you smell at the food that is thrown to you. Have a care, have
a care; for, very bitter against bad men, I exert my ready horns uplift;
like him that was rejected as a son-in-law by the perfidious Lycambes,
or the sharp enemy of Bupalus.
shalt become one of the famous fountains, through my celebrating the oak
that covers the hollow rock, whence thy prattling rills descend with a
bound.
* * * * *
ODE XIV.
TO THE ROMANS.
Augustus Caesar, O ye people, who was lately said, like another
Hercules, to have sought for the laurel to be purchased only by death,
revisits his domestic gods, victorious from the Spanish shore. Let the
matron (_Livia_), to whom her husband alone is dear, come forth in
public procession, having first performed her duty to the just gods; and
(_Octavia_), the sister of our glorious general; the mothers also of the
maidens and of the youths just preserved from danger, becomingly adorned
with supplicatory fillets. Ye, O young men, and young women lately
married, abstain from ill-omened words. This day, to me a real festival,
shall expel gloomy cares: I will neither dread commotions, nor violent
death, while Caesar is in possession of the earth. Go, slave, and seek
for perfume and chaplets, and a cask that remembers the Marsian war, if
any vessel could elude the vagabond Spartacus. And bid the tuneful
Neaera make haste to collect into a knot her auburn hair; _but_ if any
delay should happen from the surly porter, come away. Hoary hair
mollifies minds that are fond of strife and petulant wrangling. I would
not have endured this treatment, warm with youth in the consulship of
Plancus.
* * * * *
ODE XV.
TO CHLORIS.
You wife of the indigent Ibycus, at length put an end to your
wickedness, and your infamous practices. Cease to sport among the
damsels, and to diffuse a cloud among bright constellations, now on the
verge of a timely death. If any thing will become Pholoe, it does not
you Chloris, likewise. Your daughter with more propriety attacks the
young men's apartments, like a Bacchanalian roused up by the rattling
timbrel. The love of Nothus makes her frisk about like a wanton
she-goat. The wool shorn near the famous Luceria becomes you now
antiquated: not musical instruments, or the damask flower of the rose,
or hogsheads drunk down to the lees.
* * * * *
ODE XVI.
TO MAECENAS.
A brazen tower, and doors of oak, and the melancholy watch of wakeful
dogs, had sufficiently defended the imprisoned Danae from midnight
gallants, had not Jupiter and Venus laughed at Acrisius, the anxious
keeper of the immured maiden: [for they well knew] that the way would be
safe and open, after the god had transformed himself into a bribe. Gold
delights to penetrate through the midst of guards, and to break through
stone-walls, more potent than the thunderbolt. The family of the Grecian
augur perished, immersed in destruction on account of lucre. The man of
Macedon cleft the gates of the cities and subverted rival monarchs by
bribery. Bribes enthrall fierce captains of ships. Care, and a thirst
for greater things, is the consequence of increasing wealth. Therefore,
Maecenas, thou glory of the [Roman] knights, I have justly dreaded to
raise the far-conspicuous head. As much more as any man shall deny
himself, so much more shall he receive from the gods. Naked as I am, I
seek the camps of those who covet nothing; and as a deserter, rejoice to
quit the side of the wealthy: a more illustrious possessor of a
contemptible fortune, than if I could be said to treasure up in my
granaries all that the industrious Apulian cultivates, poor amid
abundance of wealth. A rivulet of clear water, and a wood of a few
acres, and a certain prospect of my good crop, are blessings unknown to
him who glitters in the proconsulship of fertile Africa: I am more
happily circumstanced. Though neither the Calabrian bees produce honey,
nor wine ripens to age for me in a Formian cask, nor rich fleeces
increase in Gallic pastures; yet distressful poverty is remote; nor, if
I desired more, would you refuse to grant it me. I shall be better able
to extend my small revenues, by contracting my desires, than if I could
join the kingdom of Alyattes to the Phrygian plains. Much is wanting to
those who covet much. 'Tis well with him to whom God has given what is
necessary with a sparing hand.
* * * * *
ODE XVII.
TO AELIUS LAMIA.
O Aelius, who art nobly descended from the ancient Lamus (forasmuch as
they report, that both the first of the Lamian family had their name
hence, and all the race of the descendants through faithful records
derives its origin from that founder, who is said to have possessed, as
prince, the Formian walls, and Liris gliding on the shores of Marica--an
extensive potentate). To-morrow a tempest sent from the east shall strew
the grove with many leaves, and the shore with useless sea-weed, unless
that old prophetess of rain, the raven, deceives me. Pile up the dry
wood, while you may; to-morrow you shall indulge your genius with wine,
and with a pig of two months old, with your slaves dismissed from their
labors.
* * * * *
ODE XVIII.
TO FAUNUS.
A HYMN.
O Faunus, thou lover of the flying nymphs, benignly traverse my borders
and sunny fields, and depart propitious to the young offspring of my
flocks; if a tender kid fall [a victim] to thee at the completion of the
year, and plenty of wines be not wanting to the goblet, the companion of
Venus, and the ancient altar smoke with liberal perfume. All the cattle
sport in the grassy plain, when the nones of December return to thee;
the village keeping holiday enjoys leisure in the fields, together with
the oxen free from toil. The wolf wanders among the fearless lambs; the
wood scatters its rural leaves for thee, and the laborer rejoices to
have beaten the hated ground in triple dance.
* * * * *
ODE XIX.
TO TELEPHUS.
How far Codrus, who was not afraid to die for his country, is removed
from Inachus, and the race of Aeacus, and the battles also that were
fought at sacred Troy--[these subjects] you descant upon; but at what
price we may purchase a hogshead of Chian; who shall warm the water [for
bathing]; who finds a house: and at what hour I am to get rid of these
Pelignian colds, you are silent. Give me, boy, [a bumper] for the new
moon in an instant, give me one for midnight, and one for Murena the
augur. Let our goblets be mixed up with three or nine cups, according to
every one's disposition. The enraptured bard, who delights in the
odd-numbered muses, shall call for brimmers thrice three. Each of the
Graces, in conjunction with the naked sisters, fearful of broils,
prohibits upward of three. It is my pleasure to rave; why cease the
breathings of the Phrygian flute? Why is the pipe hung up with the
silent lyre? I hate your niggardly handfuls: strew roses freely. Let the
envious Lycus hear the jovial noise; and let our fair neighbor,
ill-suited to the old Lycus, [hear it. ] The ripe Rhode aims at thee,
Telephus, smart with thy bushy locks; at thee, bright as the clear
evening star; the love of my Glycera slowly consumes me.
* * * * *
ODE XX.
TO PYRRHUS.
Do you not perceive, O Pyrrhus, at what hazard yon are taking away the
whelps from a Gutulian lioness? In a little while you, a timorous
ravisher, shall fly from the severe engagement, when she shall march
through the opposing band of youths, re-demanding her beauteous
Nearchus; a grand contest, whether a greater share of booty shall fall
to thee or to her! In the mean time, while you produce your swift
arrows, she whets her terrific teeth; while the umpire of the combat is
reported to have placed the palm under his naked foot, and refreshed his
shoulder, overspread with his perfumed locks, with the gentle breeze:
just such another was Nireus, or he that was ravished from the watery
Ida.
* * * * *
ODE XXI.
TO HIS JAR.
O thou goodly cask, that wast brought to light at the same time with me
in the consulship of Manlius, whether thou containest the occasion of
complaint, or jest, or broils and maddening amours, or gentle sleep;
under whatever title thou preservest the choice Massic, worthy to be
removed on an auspicious day; descend, Corvinus bids me draw the
mellowest wine. He, though he is imbued in the Socratic lectures, will
not morosely reject thee. The virtue even of old Cato is recorded to
have been frequently warmed with wine. Thou appliest a gentle violence
to that disposition, which is in general of the rougher cast: Thou
revealest the cares and secret designs of the wise, by the assistance of
merry Bacchus. You restore hope and spirit to anxious minds, and give
horns to the poor man, who after [tasting] you neither dreads the
diadems of enraged monarchs, nor the weapons of the soldiers. Thee
Bacchus, and Venus, if she comes in good-humor, and the Graces loth to
dissolve the knot [of their union], and living lights shall prolong,
till returning Phoebus puts the stars to flight.
* * * * *
ODE XXII.
TO DIANA.
O virgin, protectress of the mountains and the groves, thou three-formed
goddess, who thrice invoked, hearest young women in labor, and savest
them from death; sacred to thee be this pine that overshadows my villa,
which I, at the completion of every year, joyful will present with the
blood of a boar-pig, just meditating his oblique attack.
* * * * *
ODE XXIII.
TO PHIDYLE.
My rustic Phidyle, if you raise your suppliant hands to heaven at the
new moon, and appease the household gods with frankincense, and this
year's fruits, and a ravening swine; the fertile vine shall neither
feel the pestilential south-west, nor the corn the barren blight, or
your dear brood the sickly season in the fruit-bearing autumn. For the
destined victim, which is pastured in the snowy Algidus among the oaks
and holm trees, or thrives in the Albanian meadows, with its throat
shall stain the axes of the priests. It is not required of you, who are
crowning our little gods with rosemary and the brittle myrtle, to
propitiate them with a great slaughter of sheep. If an innocent hand
touches a clear, a magnificent victim does not pacify the offended
Penates more acceptably, than a consecrated cake and crackling salt.
* * * * *
ODE XXIV.
TO THE COVETOUS.
Though, more wealthy than the unrifled treasures of the Arabians and
rich India, you should possess yourself by your edifices of the whole
Tyrrhenian and Apulian seas; yet, if cruel fate fixes its adamantine
grapples upon the topmost roofs, you shall not disengage your mind from
dread, nor your life from the snares of death. The Scythians that dwell
in the plains, whose carts, according to their custom, draw their
vagrant habitations, live in a better manner; and [so do] the rough
Getae, whose uncircumscribed acres produce fruits and corn free to all,
nor is a longer than annual tillage agreeable, and a successor leaves
him who has accomplished his labor by an equal right. There the
guiltless wife spares her motherless step-children, nor does the
portioned spouse govern her husband, nor put any confidence in a sleek
adulterer. Their dower is the high virtue of their parents, and a
chastity reserved from any other man by a steadfast security; and it, is
forbidden to sin, or the reward is death. O if there be any one willing
to remove our impious slaughters, and civil rage; if he be desirous to
be written FATHER OF THE STATE, on statues [erected to him], let him
dare to curb insuperable licentiousness, and be eminent to posterity;
since we (O injustice! ) detest virtue while living, but invidiously seek
for her after she is taken out of our view. To what purpose are our
woeful complaints, if sin is not cut off with punishment? Of what
efficacy are empty laws, without morals; if neither that part of the
world which is shut in by fervent heats, nor that side which borders
upon Boreas, and snows hardened upon the ground, keep off the merchant;
[and] the expert sailors get the better of the horrible seas? Poverty, a
great reproach, impels us both to do and to suffer any thing, and
deserts the path of difficult virtue. Let us, then, cast our gems and
precious stones and useless gold, the cause of extreme evil, either into
the Capitol, whither the acclamations and crowd of applauding [citizens]
call us, or into the adjoining ocean. If we are truly penitent for our
enormities, the very elements of depraved lust are to be erased, and the
minds of too soft a mold should be formed by severer studies. The noble
youth knows not how to keep his seat on horseback and is afraid to go a
hunting, more skilled to play (if you choose it) with the Grecian
trochus, or dice, prohibited by law; while the father's perjured faith
can deceive his partner and friend, and he hastens to get money for an
unworthy heir. In a word, iniquitous wealth increases, yet something is
ever wanting to the incomplete fortune.
* * * * *
ODE XXV.
TO BACCHUS.
A DITHYRAMBIC.
Whither, O Bacchus, art thou hurrying me, replete with your influence?
Into what groves, into what recesses am I driven, actuated with uncommon
spirit? In what caverns, meditating the immortal honor of illustrious
Caesar, shall I be heard enrolling him among the stars and the council
of Jove? I will utter something extraordinary, new, hitherto unsung by
any other voice. Thus the sleepless Bacchanal is struck with enthusiasm,
casting her eyes upon Hebrus, and Thrace bleached with snow, and Rhodope
traversed by the feet of barbarians. How am I delighted in my rambles,
to admire the rocks and the desert grove! O lord of the Naiads and the
Bacchanalian women, who are able with their hands to overthrow lofty
ash-trees; nothing little, nothing low, nothing mortal will I sing.
Charming is the hazard, O Bacchus, to accompany the god, who binds his
temples with the verdant vine-leaf.
* * * * *
ODE XXVI.
TO VENUS.
I lately lived a proper person for girls, and campaigned it not without
honor; but now this wall, which guards the left side of [the statue] of
sea-born Venus, shall have my arms and my lyre discharged from warfare.
Here, here, deposit the shining flambeaux, and the wrenching irons, and
the bows, that threatened the resisting doors. O thou goddess, who
possessest the blissful Cyprus, and Memphis free from Sithonian snow, O
queen, give the haughty Chloe one cut with your high-raised lash.
* * * * *
ODE XXVII.
TO GALATEA, UPON HER GOING TO SEA.
Let the omen of the noisy screech-owl and a pregnant bitch, or a tawny
wolf running down from the Lanuvian fields, or a fox with whelp conduct
the impious [on their way]; may the serpent also break their undertaken
journey, if, like an arrow athwart the road, it has frightened the
horses. What shall I, a provident augur, fear? I will invoke from the
east, with my prayers, the raven forboding by his croaking, before the
bird which presages impending showers, revisits the stagnant pools.
Mayest thou be happy, O Galatea, wheresoever thou choosest to reside,
and live mindful of me and neither the unlucky pye nor the vagrant crow
forbids your going on. But you see, with what an uproar the prone Orion
hastens on: I know what the dark bay of the Adriatic is, and in what
manner Iapyx, [seemingly] serene, is guilty. Let the wives and children
of our enemies feel the blind tumults of the rising south, and the
roaring of the blackened sea, and the shores trembling with its lash.
Thus too Europa trusted her fair side to the deceitful bull, and bold as
she was, turned pale at the sea abounding with monsters, and the cheat
now become manifest. She, who lately in the meadows was busied about
flowers, and a composer of the chaplet meet for nymphs, saw nothing in
the dusky night put stars and water. Who as soon as she arrived at
Crete, powerful with its hundred cities, cried out, overcome with rage,
"O father, name abandoned by thy daughter! O my duty! Whence, whither am
I come? One death is too little for virgins' crime. Am I awake, while I
deplore my base offense; or does some vain phantom, which, escaping from
the ivory gate, brings on a dream, impose upon me, still free from
guilt. Was it better to travel over the tedious waves, or to gather the
fresh flowers? If any one now would deliver up to me in my anger this
infamous bull, I would do my utmost to tear him to pieces with steel,
and break off the horns of the monster, lately so much beloved.
Abandoned I have left my father's house, abandoned I procrastinate my
doom. O if any of the gods hear this, I wish I may wander naked among
lions: before foul decay seizes my comely cheeks, and moisture leaves
this tender prey, I desire, in all my beauty, to be the food of tigers. "
"Base Europa," thy absent father urges, "why do you hesitate to die? you
may strangle your neck suspended from this ash, with your girdle that
has commodiously attended you. Or if a precipice, and the rocks that are
edged with death, please you, come on, commit yourself to the rapid
storm; unless you, that are of blood-royal, had rather card your
mistress's wool, and be given up as a concubine to some barbarian dame. "
As she complained, the treacherously-smiling Venus, and her son, with
his bow relaxed, drew near. Presently, when she had sufficiently rallied
her, "Refrain (she cried) from your rage and passionate chidings, since
this detested bull shall surrender his horns to be torn in pieces by
you. Are you ignorant, that you are the wife of the invincible Jove?
Cease your sobbing; learn duly to support your distinguished good
fortune. A division of the world shall bear your name. "
* * * * *
ODE XXVIII.
TO LYDE.
What can I do better on the festal day of Neptune? Quickly produce,
Lyde, the hoarded Caecuban, and make an attack upon wisdom, ever on her
guard. You perceive the noontide is on its decline; and yet, as if the
fleeting day stood still, you delay to bring out of the store-house the
loitering cask, [that bears its date] from the consul Bibulus. We will
sing by turns, Neptune, and the green locks of the Nereids; you, shall
chant, on your wreathed lyre, Latona and the darts of the nimble
Cynthia; at the conclusion of your song, she also [shall be celebrated],
who with her yoked swans visits Gnidos, and the shining Cyclades, and
Paphos: the night also shall be celebrated in a suitable lay.
* * * * *
ODE XXIX.
TO MAECENAS.
O Maecenas, thou progeny of Tuscan kings, there has been a long while
for you in my house some mellow wine in an unbroached hogshead, with
rose-flowers and expressed essence for your hair. Disengage yourself
from anything that may retard you, nor contemplate the ever marshy
Tibur, and the sloping fields of Aesula, and the hills of Telegonus the
parricide. Leave abundance, which is the source of daintiness, and yon
pile of buildings approaching near the lofty clouds: cease to admire the
smoke, and opulence, and noise of flourishing Rome. A change is
frequently agreeable to the rich, and a cleanly meal in the little
cottage of the poor has smoothed an anxious brow without carpets or
purple. Now the bright father of Andromeda displays his hidden fire; now
Procyon rages, and the constellation of the ravening Lion, as the sun
brings round the thirsty season. Now the weary shepherd with his languid
flock seeks the shade, and the river, and the thickets of rough
Sylvanus; and the silent bank is free from the wandering winds. You
regard what constitution may suit the state, and are in an anxious dread
for Rome, what preparations the Seres and the Bactrians subject to
Cyrus, and the factious Tanais are making. A wise deity shrouds in
obscure darkness the events of the time to come, and smiles if a mortal
is solicitous beyond the law of nature. Be mindful to manage duly that
which is present. What remains goes on in the manner of the river, at
one time calmly gliding in the middle of its channel to the Tuscan Sea,
at another, rolling along corroded stones, and stumps of trees, forced
away, and cattle, and houses, not without the noise of mountains and
neighboring woods, when the merciless deluge enrages the peaceful
waters. That man is master of himself and shall live happy, who has it
in his power to say, "I have lived to-day: to-morrow let the Sire invest
the heaven, either with a black cloud, or with clear sunshine;
nevertheless, he shall not render ineffectual what is past, nor undo or
annihilate what the fleeting hour has once carried off. Fortune, happy
in the execution of her cruel office, and persisting to play her
insolent game, changes uncertain honors, indulgent now to me, by and by
to another. I praise her, while she abides by me. If she moves her fleet
wings, I resign what she has bestowed, and wrap myself up in my virtue,
and court honest poverty without a portion. It is no business of mine,
if the mast groan with the African storms, to have recourse to piteous
prayers, and to make a bargain with my vows, that my Cyprian and Syrian
merchandize may not add to the wealth of the insatiable sea. Then the
gale and the twin Pollux will carry me safe in the protection of a skiff
with two oars, through the tumultuous Aegean Sea. "
* * * * *
ODE XXX.
ON HIS OWN WORKS.
I have completed a monument more lasting than brass, and more sublime
than the regal elevation of pyramids, which neither the wasting shower,
the unavailing north wind, nor an innumerable succession of years, and
the flight of seasons, shall be able to demolish. I shall not wholly
die; but a great part of me shall escape Libitina. I shall continualy be
renewed in the praises of posterity, as long as the priest shall ascend
the Capitol with the silent [vestal] virgin. Where the rapid Aufidus
shall murmur, and where Daunus, poorly supplied with water, ruled over a
rustic people, I, exalted from a low degree, shall be acknowledged as
having originally adapted the Aeolic verse to Italian measures.
Melpomene, assume that pride which your merits have acquired, and
willingly crown my hair with the Delphic laurel.
* * * * *
THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE ODES OF HORACE.
ODE I.
TO VENUS.
After a long cessation, O Venus, again are you stirring up tumults?
Spare me, I beseech you, I beseech you. I am not the man I was under the
dominion of good-natured Cynara. Forbear, O cruel mother of soft
desires, to bend one bordering upon fifty, now too hardened for soft
commands: go, whither the soothing prayers of youths, invoke you. More
seasonably may you revel in the house of Paulus Maximus, flying thither
with your splendid swans, if you seek to inflame a suitable breast. For
he is both noble and comely, and by no means silent in the cause of
distressed defendants, and a youth of a hundred accomplishments; he
shall bear the ensigns of your warfare far and wide; and whenever, more
prevailing than the ample presents of a rival, he shall laugh [at his
expense], he shall erect thee in marble under a citron dome near the
Alban lake. There you shall smell abundant frankincense, and shall be
charmed with the mixed music of the lyre and Berecynthian pipe, not
without the flageolet. There the youths, together with the tender
maidens, twice a day celebrating your divinity, shall, Salian-like, with
white foot thrice shake the ground. As for me, neither woman, nor youth,
nor the fond hopes of mutual inclination, nor to contend in wine, nor to
bind my temples with fresh flowers, delight me [any longer]. But why;
ah! why, Ligurinus, does the tear every now and then trickle down my
cheeks? Why does my fluent tongue falter between my words with an
unseemly silence? Thee in my dreams by night I clasp, caught [in my
arms]; thee flying across the turf of the Campus Martius; thee I pursue,
O cruel one, through the rolling waters.
* * * * *
ODE II.
TO ANTONIUS IULUS.
Whoever endeavors, O Iulus, to rival Pindar, makes an effort on wings
fastened with wax by art Daedalean, about to communicate his name to the
glassy sea. Like a river pouring down from a mountain, which sudden
rains have increased beyond its accustomed banks, such the deep-mouthed
Pindar rages and rushes on immeasurable, sure to merit Apollo's laurel,
whether he rolls down new-formed phrases through the daring dithyrambic,
and is borne on in numbers exempt from rule: whether he sings the gods,
and kings, the offspring of the gods, by whom the Centaurs perished with
a just destruction, [by whom] was quenched the flame of the dreadful
Chimaera; or celebrates those whom the palm, [in the Olympic games] at
Elis, brings home exalted to the skies, wrestler or steed, and presents
them with a gift preferable to a hundred statues: or deplores some
youth, snatched [by death] from his mournful bride--he elevates both his
strength, and courage, and golden morals to the stars, and rescues him
from the murky grave. A copious gale elevates the Dircean swan, O
Antonius, as often as he soars into the lofty regions of the clouds: but
I, after the custom and manner of the Macinian bee, that laboriously
gathers the grateful thyme, I, a diminutive creature, compose elaborate
verses about the grove and the banks of the watery Tiber. You, a poet of
sublimer style, shall sing of Caesar, whenever, graceful in his
well-earned laurel, he shall drag the fierce Sygambri along the sacred
hill; Caesar, than whom nothing greater or better the fates and
indulgent gods ever bestowed on the earth, nor will bestow, though the
times should return to their primitive gold. You shall sing both the
festal days, and the public rejoicings on account of the prayed-for
return of the brave Augustus, and the forum free from law-suits. Then
(if I can offer any thing worth hearing) a considerable portion of my
voice shall join [the general acclamation], and I will sing, happy at
the reception of Caesar, "O glorious day, O worthy thou to be
celebrated. " And while [the procession] moves along, shouts of triumph
we will repeat, shouts of triumph the whole city [will raise], and we
will offer frankincense to the indulgent gods. Thee ten bulls and as
many heifers shall absolve; me, a tender steerling, that, having left
his dam, thrives in spacious pastures for the discharge of my vows,
resembling [by the horns on] his forehead the curved light of the moon,
when she appears of three days old, in which part he has a mark of a
snowy aspect, being of a dun color over the rest of his body.
* * * * *
ODE III.
TO MELPOMENE.
Him, O Melpomene, upon whom at his birth thou hast once looked with
favoring eye, the Isthmian contest shall not render eminent as a
wrestler; the swift horse shall not draw him triumphant in a Grecian
car; nor shall warlike achievement show him in the Capitol, a general
adorned with the Delian laurel, on account of his having quashed the
proud threats of kings: but such waters as flow through the fertile
Tiber, and the dense leaves of the groves, shall make him distinguished
by the Aeolian verse. The sons of Rome, the queen of cities, deign to
rank me among the amiable band of poets; and now I am less carped at by
the tooth of envy. O muse, regulating the harmony of the gilded shell!
O
thou, who canst immediately bestow, if thou please, the notes of the
swan upon the mute fish! It is entirely by thy gift that I am marked
out, as the stringer of the Roman lyre, by the fingers of passengers;
that I breathe, and give pleasure (if I give pleasure), is yours.
* * * * *
ODE IV
THE PRAISE OF DRUSUS.
Like as the winged minister of thunder (to whom Jupiter, the sovereign
of the gods, has assigned the dominion over the fleeting birds, having
experienced his fidelity in the affair of the beauteous Ganymede), early
youth and hereditary vigor save impelled from his nest unknowing of
toil; and the vernal winds, the showers being now dispelled, taught him,
still timorous, unwonted enterprises: in a little while a violent
impulse dispatched him, as an enemy against the sheepfolds, now an
appetite for food and fight has impelled him upon the reluctant
serpents;--or as a she-goat, intent on rich pastures, has beheld a young
lion but just weaned from the udder of his tawny dam, ready to be
devoured by his newly-grown tooth: such did the Rhaeti and the Vindelici
behold Drusus carrying on the war under the Alps; whence this people
derived the custom, which has always prevailed among them, of arming
their right hands with the Amazonian ax, I have purposely omitted to
inquire: (neither is it possible to discover everything. ) But those
troops, which had been for a long while and extensively victorious,
being subdued by the conduct of a youth, perceived what a disposition,
what a genius rightly educated under an auspicious roof, what the
fatherly affection of Augustus toward the young Neros, could effect. The
brave are generated by the brave and good; there is in steers, there is
in horses, the virtue of their sires; nor do the courageous eagles
procreate the unwarlike dove. But learning improves the innate force,
and good discipline confirms the mind: whenever morals are deficient,
vices disgrace what is naturally good. What thou owest, O Rome, to the
Neros, the river Metaurus is a witness, and the defeated Asdrubal, and
that day illustrious by the dispelling of darkness from Italy, and which
first smiled with benignant victory; when the terrible African rode
through the Latian cities, like a fire through the pitchy pines, or the
east wind through the Sicilian waves. After this the Roman youth
increased continually in successful exploits, and temples, laid waste by
the impious outrage of the Carthaginians, had the [statues of] their
gods set up again. And at length the perfidious Hannibal said; "We, like
stags, the prey of rapacious wolves, follow of our own accord those,
whom to deceive and escape is a signal triumph. That nation, which,
tossed in the Etrurian waves, bravely transported their gods, and sons,
and aged fathers, from the burned Troy to the Italian cities, like an
oak lopped by sturdy axes in Algidum abounding in dusky leaves, through
losses and through wounds derives strength and spirit from the very
steel. The Hydra did not with more vigor grow upon Hercules grieving to
be overcome, nor did the Colchians, or the Echionian Thebes, produce a
greater prodigy. Should you sink it in the depth, it will come out more
beautiful: should you contend with it, with great glory will it
overthrow the conqueror unhurt before, and will fight battles to be the
talk of wives. No longer can I send boasting messengers to Carthage: all
the hope and success of my name is fallen, is fallen by the death of
Asdrubal. There is nothing, but what the Claudian hands will perform;
which both Jupiter defends with his propitious divinity, and sagacious
precaution conducts through the sharp trials of war. "
* * * * *
ODE V.
TO AUGUSTUS.
O best guardian of the Roman people, born under propitious gods, already
art thou too long absent; after having promised a mature arrival to the
sacred council of the senators, return. Restore, O excellent chieftain,
the light to thy country; for, like the spring, wherever thy countenance
has shone, the day passes more agreeably for the people, and the sun has
a superior lustre. As a mother, with vows, omens, and prayers, calls for
her son (whom the south wind with adverse gales detains from his sweet
home, staying more than a year beyond the Carpathian Sea), nor turns
aside her looks from the curved shore; in like manner, inspired with
loyal wishes, his country seeks for Caesar. For, [under your auspices,]
the ox in safety traverses the meadows: Ceres nourishes the ground; and
abundant Prosperity: the sailors skim through the calm ocean: and Faith
is in dread of being censured. The chaste family is polluted by no
adulteries: morality and the law have got the better of that foul crime;
the child-bearing women are commended for an offspring resembling [the
father; and] punishment presses as a companion upon guilt. Who can fear
the Parthian? Who, the frozen Scythian? Who, the progeny that rough
Germany produces, while Caesar is in safety? Who cares for the war of
fierce Spain? Every man puts a period to the day amid his own hills, and
weds the vine to the widowed elm-trees; hence he returns joyful to his
wine, and invites you, as a deity, to his second course; thee, with many
a prayer, thee he pursues with wine poured out [in libation] from the
cups; and joins your divinity to that of his household gods, in the same
manner as Greece was mindful of Castor and the great Hercules. May you,
excellent chieftain, bestow a lasting festivity upon Italy! This is our
language, when we are sober at the early day; this is our language, when
we have well drunk, at the time the sun is beneath the ocean.
* * * * *
ODE VI.
HYMN TO APOLLO.
Thou god, whom the offspring of Niobe experienced as avenger of a
presumptuous tongue, and the ravisher Tityus, and also the Thessalian
Achilles, almost the conqueror of lofty Troy, a warrior superior to all
others, but unequal to thee; though, son of the sea-goddess, Thetis, he
shook the Dardanian towers, warring with his dreadful spear. He, as it
were a pine smitten with the burning ax, or a cypress prostrated by the
east wind, fell extended far, and reclined his neck in the Trojan dust.
He would not, by being shut up in a [wooden] horse, that belied the
sacred rights of Minerva, have surprised the Trojans reveling in an evil
hour, and the court of Priam making merry in the dance; but openly
inexorable to his captives, (oh impious! oh! ) would have burned
speechless babes with Grecian fires, even him concealed in his mother's
womb: had not the father of the gods, prevailed upon by thy entreaties
and those of the beauteous Venus, granted to the affairs of Aeneas walls
founded under happier auspices. Thou lyrist Phoebus, tutor of the
harmonious Thalia, who bathest thy locks in the river Xanthus, O
delicate Agyieus, support the dignity of the Latian muse. Phoebus gave
me genius, Phoebus the art of composing verse, and the title of poet. Ye
virgins of the first distinction, and ye youths born of illustrious
parents, ye wards of the Delian goddess, who stops with her bow the
flying lynxes, and the stags, observe the Lesbian measure, and the
motion of my thumb; duly celebrating the son of Latona, duly
[celebrating] the goddess that enlightens the night with her shining
crescent, propitious to the fruits, and expeditious in rolling on the
precipitate months. Shortly a bride you will say: "I, skilled in the
measures of the poet Horace, recited an ode which was acceptable to the
gods, when the secular period brought back the festal days. "
* * * * *
ODE VII.
TO TORQUATUS.
The snows are fled, the herbage now returns to the fields, and the
leaves to the trees. The earth changes its appearance, and the
decreasing rivers glide along their banks: the elder Grace, together
with the Nymphs, and her two sisters, ventures naked to lead off the
dance. That you are not to expect things permanent, the year, and the
hour that hurries away the agreeable day, admonish us. The colds are
mitigated by the zephyrs: the summer follows close upon the spring,
shortly to die itself, as soon as fruitful autumn shall have shed its
fruits: and anon sluggish winter returns again. Nevertheless the
quick-revolving moons repair their wanings in the skies; but when we
descend [to those regions] where pious Aeneas, where Tullus and the
wealthy Ancus [have gone before us], we become dust and a mere shade.
Who knows whether the gods above will add to this day's reckoning the
space of to-morrow? Every thing, which you shall indulge to your beloved
soul, will escape the greedy hands of your heir. When once, Torquatus,
you shall be dead, and Minos shall have made his awful decisions
concerning you; not your family, not you eloquence, not your piety shall
restore you. For neither can Diana free the chaste Hippolytus from
infernal darkness; nor is Theseus able to break off the Lethaean fetters
from his dear Piri thous.
* * * * *
ODE VIII.
TO MARCIUS CENSORINUS.
O Censorinus, liberally would I present my acquaintance with goblets and
beautiful vases of brass; I would present them with tripods, the rewards
of the brave Grecians: nor would you bear off the meanest of my
donations, if I were rich in those pieces of art, which either
Parrhasius or Scopas produced; the latter in statuary, the former in
liquid colors, eminent to portray at one time a man, at another a god.
But I have no store of this sort, nor do your circumstances or
inclination require any such curiosities as these. You delight in
verses: verses I can give, and set a value on the donation. Not marbles
engraved with public inscriptions, by means of which breath and life
returns to illustrious generals after their decease; not the precipitate
flight of Hannibal, and his menaces retorted upon his own head: not the
flames of impious Carthage * * * * more eminently set forth his praises,
who returned, having gained a name from conquered Africa, than the
Calabrlan muses; neither, should writings be silent, would you have any
reward for having done well. What would the son of Mars and Ilia be, if
invidious silence had stifled the merits of Romulus? The force, and
favor, and voice of powerful poets consecrate Aecus, snatched from the
Stygian floods, to the Fortunate Islands. The muse forbids a
praiseworthy man to die: the muse, confers the happiness of heaven. Thus
laborious Hercules has a place at the longed-for banquets of Jove:
[thus] the sons of Tyndarus, that bright constellation, rescue shattered
vessels from the bosom of the deep: [and thus] Bacchus, his temples
adorned with the verdant vine-branch, brings the prayers of his votaries
to successful issues.
* * * * *
ODE IX.
TO MARCUS LOLLIUS.
Lest you for a moment imagine that those words will be lost, which I,
born on the far-resounding Aufidus, utter to be accompanied with the
lyre, by arts hitherto undivulged--If Maeonian Homer possesses the first
rank, the Pindaric and Cean muses, and the menacing strains of Alcaeus,
and the majestic ones of Stesichorus, are by no means obscure: neither,
if Anacreon long ago sportfully sung any thing, has time destroyed it:
even now breathes the love and live the ardors of the Aeolian maid,
committed to her lyre. The Lacedaemonian Helen is not the only fair, who
has been inflamed by admiring the delicate ringlets of a gallant, and
garments embroidered with gold, and courtly accomplishments, and
retinue: nor was Teucer the first that leveled arrows from the Cydonian
bow: Troy was more than once harassed: the great Idomeneus and Sthenelus
were not the only heroes that fought battles worthy to be recorded by
the muses: the fierce Hector, or the strenuous Deiphobus were not the
first that received heavy blows in defense of virtuous wives and
children. Many brave men lived before Agamemnon: but all of them,
unlamented and unknown, are overwhelmed with endless obscurity, because
they were destitute of a sacred bard. Valor, uncelebrated, differs but
little from cowardice when in the grave. I will not [therefore], O
Lollius, pass you over in silence, uncelebrated in my writings, or
suffer envious forgetfulness with impunity to seize so many toils of
thine. You have a mind ever prudent in the conduct of affairs, and
steady alike amid success and trouble: you are an avenger of avaricious
fraud, and proof against money, that attracts every thing; and a consul
not of one year only, but as often as the good and upright magistrate
has preferred the honorable to the profitable, and has rejected with a
disdainful brow the bribes of wicked men, and triumphant through
opposing bands has displayed his arms. You can not with propriety call
him happy, that possesses much; he more justly claims the title of
happy, who understands how to make a wise use of the gifts of the gods,
and how to bear severe poverty; and dreads a reproachful deed worse than
death; such a man as this is not afraid to perish in the defense of his
dear friends, or of his country.
* * * * *
ODE X.
TO LIGURINUS.
O cruel still, and potent in the endowments of beauty, when an
unexpected plume shall come upon your vanity, and those locks, which now
wanton on your shoulders, shall fall off, and that color, which is now
preferable to the blossom of the damask rose, changed, O Ligurinus,
shall turn into a wrinkled face; [then] will you say (as often as you
see yourself, [quite] another person in the looking glass), Alas! why
was not my present inclination the same, when I was young? Or why do not
my cheeks return, unimpaired, to these my present sentiments?
* * * * *
ODE XI.
TO PHYLLIS.
Phyllis, I have a cask full of Abanian wine, upward of nine years old; I
have parsley in my garden, for the weaving of chaplets, I have a store
of ivy, with which, when you have bound your hair, you look so gay: the
house shines cheerfully With plate: the altar, bound with chaste
vervain, longs to be sprinkled [with the blood] of a sacrificed lamb:
all hands are busy: girls mingled with boys fly about from place to
place: the flames quiver, rolling on their summit the sooty smoke. But
yet, that you may know to what joys you are invited, the Ides are to be
celebrated by you, the day which divides April, the month of sea-born
Venus; [a day,] with reason to be solemnized by me, and almost more
sacred to me than that of my own birth; since from this day my dear
Maecenas reckons his flowing years. A rich and buxom girl hath possessed
herself of Telephus, a youth above your rank; and she holds him fast by
an agreeable fetter. Consumed Phaeton strikes terror into ambitious
hopes, and the winged Pegasus, not stomaching the earth-born rider
Bellerophon, affords a terrible example, that you ought always to pursue
things that are suitable to you, and that you should avoid a
disproportioned match, by thinking it a crime to entertain a hope beyond
what is allowable. Come then, thou last of my loves (for hereafter I
shall burn for no other woman), learn with me such measures, as thou
mayest recite with thy lovely voice: our gloomy cares shall be mitigated
with an ode.
* * * * *
ODE XII.
TO VIRGIL.
The Thracian breezes, attendants on the spring, which moderate the deep,
now fill the sails; now neither are the meadows stiff [with frost], nor
roar the rivers swollen with winter's snow. The unhappy bird, that
piteotisly bemoans Itys, and is the eternal disgrace of the house of
Cecrops (because she wickedly revenged the brutal lusts of kings), now
builds her nest. The keepers of the sheep play tunes upon the pipe amid
the tendar herbage, and delight that god, whom flocks and the shady
hills of Arcadia delight. The time of year, O Virgil, has brought on a
drought: but if you desire to quaff wine from the Calenian press, you,
that are a constant companion of young noblemen, must earn your liquor
by [bringing some] spikenard: a small box of spikenard shall draw out a
cask, which now lies in the Sulpician store-house, bounteous in the
indulgence of fresh hopes and efficacious in washing away the
bitterness of cares. To which joys if you hasten, come instantly with
your merchandize: I do not intend to dip you in my cups scot-free, like
a man of wealth, in a house abounding with plenty. But lay aside delay,
and the desire of gain; and, mindful of the gloomy [funeral] flames,
intermix, while you may, your grave studies with a little light gayety:
it is delightful to give a loose on a proper occasion.
* * * * *
ODE XIII.
TO LYCE.
The gods have heard my prayers, O Lyce; Lyce, the gods have heard my
prayers, you are become an old woman, and yet you would fain seem a
beauty; and you wanton and drink in an audacious manner; and when drunk,
solicit tardy Cupid, with a quivering voice. He basks in the charming
cheeks of the blooming Chia, who is a proficient on the lyre. The
teasing urchin flies over blasted oaks, and starts back at the sight of
you, because foul teeth, because wrinkles and snowy hair render you
odious. Now neither Coan purples nor sparkling jewels restore those
years, which winged time has inserted in the public annals. Whither is
your beauty gone? Alas! or whither your bloom? Whither your graceful
deportment? What have you [remaining] of her, of her, who breathed
loves, and ravished me from myself? Happy next to Cynara, and
distinguished for an aspect of graceful ways: but the fates granted a
few years only to Cynara, intending to preserve for a long time Lyce, to
rival in years the aged raven: that the fervid young fellows might see,
not without excessive laughter, that torch, [which once so brightly
scorched,] reduced to ashes.
* * * * *
ODE XIV.
TO AUGUSTUS.
What zeal of the senators, or what of the Roman people, by decreeing the
most ample honors, can eternize your virtues, O Augustus, by monumental
inscriptions and lasting records? O thou, wherever the sun illuminates
the habitable regions, greatest of princes, whom the Vindelici, that
never experienced the Roman sway, have lately learned how powerful thou
art in war! For Drusus, by means of your soldiery, has more than once
bravely overthrown the Genauni, an implacable race, and the rapid
Brenci, and the citadels situated on the tremendous Alps. The elder of
the Neros soon after fought a terrible battle, and, under your
propitious auspices, smote the ferocious Rhoeti: how worthy of
admiration in the field of battle, [to see] with what destruction he
oppressed the brave, hearts devoted to voluntary death: just as the
south wind harasses the untameable waves, when the dance of the Pleiades
cleaves the clouds; [so is he] strenuous to annoy the troops of the
enemy, and to drive his eager steed through the midst of flames. Thus
the bull-formed Aufidus, who washes the dominions of the Apulian Daunus,
rolls along, when he rages and meditates an horrible deluge to the
cultivated lands; when Claudius overthrew with impetuous might, the iron
ranks of the barbarians, and by mowing down both front and rear strewed
the ground, victorious without any loss; through you supplying them with
troops, you with councils, and your own guardian powers. For on that
day, when the suppliant Alexandria opened her ports, and deserted court,
fortune, propitious to you in the third lustrum, has put a happy period
to the war, and has ascribed praise and wished-for honor to the
victories already obtained. O thou dread guardian of Italy and imperial
Rome, thee the Spaniard, till now unconquered, and the Mede, and the
Indian, thee the vagrant Scythian admires; thee both the Nile, who
conceals his fountain heads, and the Danube; thee the rapid Tigris; thee
the monster-bearing ocean, that roars against the remote Britons; thee
the region of Gaul fearless of death, and that of hardy Iberia obeys;
thee the Sicambrians, who delight in slaughter, laying aside their arms,
revere.
* * * * *
ODE XV.
TO AUGUSTUS, ON THE RESTORATION OF PEACE.
Phoebus chid me, when I was meditating to sing of battles And conquered
cities on the lyre: that I might not set my little sails along the
Tyrrhenian Sea. Your age, O Caesar, has both restored plenteous crops
to the fields, and has brought back to our Jupiter the standards torn
from the proud pillars of the Parthians; and has shut up [the temple] of
Janus [founded by] Romulus, now free from war; and has imposed a due
discipline upon headstrong licentiousness, and has extirpated crimes,
and recalled the ancient arts; by which the Latin name and strength of
Italy have increased, and the fame and majesty of the empire is extended
from the sun's western bed to the east. While Caesar is guardian of
affairs, neither civil rage nor violence shall disturb tranquillity; nor
hatred which forges swords, and sets at variance unhappy states. Not
those, who drink of the deep Danube, shall now break the Julian edicts:
not the Getae, not the Seres, nor the perfidious Persians, nor those
born upon the river Tanais. And let us, both on common and festal days,
amid the gifts of joyous Bacchus, together with our wives and families,
having first duly invoked the gods, celebrate, after the manner of our
ancestors, with songs accompanied with Lydian pipes, our late valiant
commanders: and Troy, and Anchises, and the offspring of benign Venus.
* * * * *
THE BOOK OF THE EPODES OF HORACE.
ODE I.
TO MAECENAS.
Thou wilt go, my friend Maecenas, with Liburian galleys among the
towering forts of ships, ready at thine own [hazard] to undergo any of
Caesar's dangers. What shall I do? To whom life may be agreeable, if you
survive; but, if otherwise, burdensome. Whether shall I, at your
command, pursue my ease, which can not be pleasing unless in your
company? Or shall I endure this toil with such a courage, as becomes
effeminate men to bear? I will bear it? and with an intrepid soul follow
you, either through the summits of the Alps, and the inhospitable
Caucus, or to the furthest western bay. You may ask how I, unwarlike and
infirm, can assist your labors by mine? While I am your companion, I
shall be in less anxiety, which takes possession of the absent in a
greater measure. As the bird, that has unfledged young, is in a greater
dread of serpents' approaches, when they are left;--not that, if she
should be present when they came, she could render more help. Not only
this, but every other war, shall be cheerfully embraced by me for the
hope of your favor; [and this,] not that my plows should labor, yoked to
a greater number of mine own oxen; or that my cattle before the
scorching dog-star should change the Calabrian for the Lucanian
pastures: neither that my white country-box should equal the Circaean
walls of lofty Tusculum. Your generosity has enriched me enough, and
more than enough: I shall never wish to amass, what either, like the
miser Chremes, I may bury in the earth, or luxuriously squander, like a
prodigal.
* * * * *
ODE II.
THE PRAISES OF A COUNTRY LIFE.
Happy the man, who, remote from business, after the manner of the
ancient race of mortals, cultivates his paternal lands with his own
oxen, disengaged from every kind of usury; he is neither alarmed by the
horrible trump, as a soldier, nor dreads he the angry sea; he shuns both
the bar and the proud portals of citizens in power. Wherefore he either
weds the lofty poplars to the mature branches of the vine; and, lopping
off the useless boughs with his pruning-knife, he ingrafts more fruitful
ones: or he takes a prospect of the herds of his lowing cattle,
wandering about in a lonely vale; or stores his honey, pressed [from the
combs], in clean vessels; or shears his tender sheep. Or, when autumn
has lifted up in the fields his head adorned with mellow fruits, how
does he rejoice, while he gathers the grafted pears, and the grape that
vies with the purple, with which he may recompense thee, O Priapus, and
thee, father Sylvanus, guardian of his boundaries! Sometimes he delights
to lie under an aged holm, sometimes on the matted grass: meanwhile the
waters glide along in their deep channels; the birds warble in the
woods; and the fountains murmur with their purling streams, which
invites gentle slumbers. But when the wintery season of the tempestuous
air prepares rains and snows, he either drives the fierce boars, with
many a dog, into the intercepting toils; or spreads his thin nets with
the smooth pole, as a snare for the voracious thrushes; or catches in
his gin the timorous hare, or that stranger the crane, pleasing rewards
[for his labor]. Among such joys as these, who does not forget those
mischievous anxieties, which are the property of love. But if a chaste
wife, assisting on her part [in the management] of the house, and
beloved children (such as is the Sabine, or the sun-burned spouse of the
industrious Apulian), piles up the sacred hearth with old wood, just at
the approach of her weary husband; and, shutting up the fruitful cattle
in the woven hurdles, milks dry their distended udders: and, drawing
this year's wine out of a well-seasoned cask, prepares the unbought
collation: not the Lucrine oysters could delight me more, nor the
turbot, nor the scar, should the tempestuous winter drive any from the
eastern floods to this sea: not the turkey, nor the Asiatic wild-fowl,
can come into my stomach more agreeably, than the olive gathered from
the richest branches from the trees, or the sorrel that loves the
meadows, or mallows salubrious for a sickly body, or a lamb slain at the
feast of Terminus, or a kid rescued from the wolf. Amid these dainties,
how it pleases one to see the well-fed sheep hastening home! to see the
weary oxen, with drooping neck, dragging the inverted ploughshare! and
slaves, the test of a rich family, ranged about the smiling household
gods! When Alfius, the usurer, now on the point of turning countryman,
had said this, he collected in all his money on the Ides; and endeavors
to put it out again at the Calends.
* * * * *
ODE III.
TO MAECENAS.
If any person at any time with an impious hand has broken his aged
father's neck, let him eat garlic, more baneful than hemlock. Oh! the
hardy bowels of the mowers! What poison is this that rages in my
entrails? Has viper's blood, infused in these herbs, deceived me? Or has
Canidia dressed this baleful food? When Medea, beyond all the [other]
argonauts, admired their handsome leader, she anointed Jason with this,
as he was going to tie the untried yoke on the bulls: and having
revenged herself on [Jason's] mistress, by making her presents besmeared
with this, she flew away on her winged dragon. Never did the steaming
influence of any constellation so raging as this rest upon the thirsty
Appulia: neither did the gift [_of Dejanira_] burn hotter upon the
shoulders of laborious Hercules. But if ever, facetious Maecenas, you
should have a desire for any such stuff again, I wish that your girl may
oppose her hand to your kiss, and lie at the furthest part of the bed.
* * * * *
ODE IV.
TO MENAS.
As great an enmity as is allotted by nature to wolves and lambs, [so
great a one] have I to you, you that are galled at your back with
Spanish cords, and on your legs with the hard fetter. Though,
purse-proud with your riches, you strut along, yet fortune does not
alter your birth. Do you not observe while you are stalking along the
sacred way with a robe twice three ells long, how the most open
indignation of those that pass and repass turns their looks on thee?
This fellow, [say they,] cut with the triumvir's whips, even till the
beadle was sick of his office, plows a thousand acres of Falernian land,
and wears out the Appian road with his nags; and, in despite of Otho,
sits in the first rows [of the circus] as a knight of distinction. To
what purpose is it, that so many brazen-beaked ships of immense bulk
should be led out against pirates and a band of slaves, while this
fellow, this is a military tribune?
* * * * *
ODE V.
THE WITCHES MANGLING A BOY.
But oh, by all the gods in heaven, who rule the earth and human race,
what means this tumult? And what the hideous looks of all these [hags,
fixed] upon me alone? I conjure thee by thy children (if invoked Lucina
was ever present at any real birth of thine), I [conjure] thee by this
empty honor of my purple, by Jupiter, who must disapprove these
proceedings, why dost thou look at me as a step-mother, or as a wild
beast stricken with a dart? While the boy made these complaints with a
faltering voice, he stood with his bandages of distinction taken from
him, a tender frame, such as might soften the impious breasts of the
cruel Thracians; Canidia, having interwoven her hair and uncombed head
with little vipers, orders wild fig-trees torn up from graves, orders
funeral cypresses and eggs besmeared with the gore of a loathsome toad,
and feathers of the nocturnal screech-owl, and those herbs, which
lolchos, and Spain, fruitful in poisons, transmits, and bones snatched
from the mouth of a hungry bitch, to be burned in Colchian flames. But
Sagana, tucked up for expedition, sprinkling the waters of Avernus all
over the house, bristles up with her rough hair like a sea-urchin, or a
boar in the chase. Veia, deterred by no remorse of conscience, groaning
with the toil, dug up the ground with the sharp spade; where the boy,
fixed in, might long be tormented to death at the sight of food varied
two or three times in a day: while he stood out with his face, just as
much at bodies suspended by the chin [in swimming] project from the
water, that his parched marrow and dried liver might be a charm for
love; when once the pupils of his eyes had wasted away, fixed on the
forbidden food. Both the idle Naples, and every neighboring town
believed, that Folia of Ariminum, [a witch] of masculine lust, was not
absent: she, who with her Thessalian incantations forces the charmed
stars and the moon from heaven. Here the fell Canidia, gnawing her
unpaired thumb with her livid teeth, what said she? or what did she not
say? O ye faithful witnesses to my proceedings, Night and Diana, who
presidest over silence, when the secret rites are celebrated: now, now
be present, now turn your anger and power against the houses of our
enemies, while the savage wild beasts lie hid in the woods, dissolved in
sweet repose; let the dogs of Suburra (which may be matter of ridicule
for every body) bark at the aged profligate, bedaubed with ointment,
such as my hands never made any more exquisite. What is the matter? Why
are these compositions less efficacious than those of the barbarian
Medea? by means of which she made her escape, after having revenged
herself on [Jason's] haughty mistress, the daughter of the mighty Creon;
when the garment, a gift that was injected with venom, took off his new
bride by its inflammatory power. And yet no herb, nor root hidden in
inaccessible places, ever escaped my notice. [Nevertheless,] he sleeps
in the perfumed bed of every harlot, from his forgetfulness [of me]. Ah!
ah! he walks free [from my power] by the charms of some more knowing
witch. Varus, (oh you that will shortly have much to lament! ) you shall
come back to me by means of unusual spells; nor shall you return to
yourself by all the power of Marsian enchantments, I will prepare a
stronger philter: I will pour in a stronger philter for you, disdainful
as you are; and the heaven shall subside below the sea, with the earth
extended over it, sooner than you shall not burn with love for me, in
the same manner as this pitch [burns] in the sooty flames. At these
words, the boy no longer [attempted], as before, to move the impious
hags by soothing expressions; but, doubtful in what manner he should
break silence, uttered Thyestean imprecations. Potions [said he] have a
great efficacy in confounding right and wrong, but are not able to
invert the condition of human nature; I will persecute you with curses;
and execrating detestation is not to be expiated by any victim.
Moreover, when doomed to death I shall have expired, I will attend you
as a nocturnal fury; and, a ghost, I will attack your faces with my
hooked talons (for such is the power of those divinities, the Manes),
and, brooding upon your restless breasts, I will deprive you of repose
by terror. The mob, from village to village, assaulting you on every
side with stones, shall demolish you filthy hags. Finally, the wolves
and Esquiline vultures shall scatter abroad your unburied limbs. Nor
shall this spectacle escape the observation of my parents, who, alas!
must survive me.
ODE. VI.
AGAINST CASSIUS SEVERUS.
O cur, thou coward against wolves, why dost thou persecute innocent
strangers? Why do you not, if you can, turn your empty yelpings hither,
and attack me, who will bite again? For, like a Molossian, or tawny
Laconian dog, that is a friendly assistant to shepherds, I will drive
with erected ears through the deep snows every brute that shall go
before me. You, when you have filled the grove with your fearful
barking, you smell at the food that is thrown to you. Have a care, have
a care; for, very bitter against bad men, I exert my ready horns uplift;
like him that was rejected as a son-in-law by the perfidious Lycambes,
or the sharp enemy of Bupalus.
