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EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY

515 CLASSICAL

Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide, In thy most need to go by thy side

QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS, born 8th December 65 B.C. at Venusia, on the borders of Apulia and Lucania. Studied at Rome and Athens. Fought at the battle of Philippi, 42 B.C. Became the protege of Maecenas, who gave him a small property in the Sabine Hills. Died in November,

8 B.C.

HORACE'S

COMPLETE WORKS

INTRODUCTION BY

DR JOHN MARSHALL

LONDON J. M. DENT & SONS LTD NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & CO INC

All rights reserved

by

J. M. DENT & SONS LTD

Aldine House • Bedford Street • London

Made in Great Britain

at

The Aldine Press • Letchworth • Herts

First published in this edition 1911

Last reprinted 1953

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INTRODUCTION

IT is not proposed here to attempt an exhaustive life of Horace; there are many details which are of no special interest to an English reader. Rather it is desired to give something of a picture of the man, and for that purpose to draw almost exclusively on Horace himself. He has given us various details of his own life in the Odes, but he gives a much fuller picture of himself in his less elaborate and ambitious works, his Satires (or Conversations, as he some- times calls them) and his Letters, or Epistles as they are officially called. These are written in a sort of verse, but he does not pretend to rise much above conversational prose in them; their merits are their perfect candour, their shrewd common sense, their humour, their truth of view concerning men and literature. Little more then will be done here than to give, in the spirit rather than in the letter, some extracts from these familiar works of Horace, which will enable the reader to understand and, it is hoped, to feel a kindly regard for Horace the man. It was part of his design in these writings to let the world know all about himself: in this, as he says (Sat. II. i. 27) he followed the example of an older poet, whose works have not come down to us, Lucilius. " There are many men in the world," he says, " ami just as many varieties of taste and ambition. My own personal pleasure is to string words together in verse, as Lucilius, a better man than you or I, did before me. It was his way to tell all his secrets to his poems, which he regarded as his trusty and faithful friends. Whether things went well or ill with him, he always flew to his own lines for sympathy. Thus it comes about that the whole life of the old bard is there set down for all the world to look at as in a picture."

We know from the Odes (III. xxi. i) that Horace was born B.C. 65. From one of his Epistles, to be quoted later, we know that the month was December, and an old bio-

vii

viii Horace

grapher states the day as the 8th. We know from various references in his Satires and Epistles that his birthplace was Venusia, an old Roman colony among the Apennine Hills, which, standing as it did on the Appian Way, the Great High Road from Rome to Brundisium and so to Greece and the East, was regarded as a very important stronghold ; and down to Horace's time it was a busy and prosperous place. Through a gorge a few miles off, the river Aufidus comes plunging down from the hills into a broad plain, across which it slowly winds to the Adriatic Sea, some fifteen miles distant. Horace frequently alludes to the noisy rush of this river. Towering high a few miles from the town is Mount Voltur, 4500 feet high, conical in shape, and with an extinct crater, indicating its volcanic origin. The hills behind the town are and were wild and bare, save here and there where forests cover them; and boars and other wild animals are still abundant.

His father, as we shall read further on, was a freedman, i.e. he had been a slave, and therefore a foreigner, possibly a Greek. Slaves were not infrequently manumitted by their masters for good service; and what Horace tells of his father makes such a reason for his liberation probable enough. He must have been a man of some little educa- tion, as he was a tax-collector by profession; he had at least enough of education to make him wish for more, at any rate for his son. He must have been a thrifty man, for he managed to acquire a small farm, and to make such savings as enabled him to do for his son what we shall hear presently. Horace nowhere alludes specially to his mother ; she probably died while he was an infant. We read of his residing with a nurse, Pullia (if the reading is correct), in a country place near Mount Voltur (Ode III. iv. 10), and of his wandering off and falling asleep in the woods, where, to the wonder of the country folks, he was found covered over with laurel leaves, which the doves had dropped upon him.

If his father could not help young Horace in technical learning, he early sought to train him by example and precept to ways of prudence and virtue. As Horace says (Sat. I. iv. 104): "If you find me rather free in my criti- cisms of this one or that, if I am a little over-ready with my

Introduction ix

joke, you will have to thank my father for this. For it was his way, if he wanted me to avoid any particular fault or vice, to pick out this man or that whom, he knew to be addicted to it, and show how it fared with them in conse- quence. Or if he wanted to preach thrift or prudence to me, or contentment with the little fortune he had managed to put by for me, he would say: ' Look at Albius' son, what a wretched life he leads: Just see Barrus, how poor he is now. Let them be warnings to you not to throw away your patrimony.' And so with other vices. ' The philosopher,' he would say, ' will give you all sorts of theoretical reasons why you should avoid this, or seek that. But I shall be quite content, if I can keep the good old ways of earlier times, and as long as you need some one to look after you, if I can keep your life and honour stainless. When time has hardened your muscles and your brain, you will be free to swim without a cork.' Thus did he mould my boyish mind with his wise words. . . . And so even now, as I lie in bed, or stroll by myself, I am my own Mentor, as I call to mind the ways and experiences of others, and of myself."

In another place he tells us (Sat. I. vi. i ): " For whatever of good there is in me, for whatever affection I have gained from friends, my father alone must have the credit. Though his little farm was poor enough, and his means but scanty, he could not bear to send me to the provincial school, to which the fine sons of our fine garrison officers went, with their satchels and their note-books slung over their arms, and their monthly fee in their pockets. But while I was still a boy he had the courage to carry me to Rome, so that I might get an education as good as any knight or Senator could give his sons. If any one had noticed my dress and my attendants, amidst the crowd of a great city, he would have certainly imagined that some old family estate must provide for such an outlay. But my chief attendant was my own father, a guardian not to be bribed or tricked by any one; and hfe trudged con- tentedly along beside me as I went from one professor to the next. And so he kept safe for me that first element of goodness, a mind unstained not merely with deed of evil, *5'5

x Horace

but with the very suspicion of it. Nor was he afraid lest some day his extravagance might be cast up to him, if, after all, I had to earn my living in some paltry office, or like himself as a tax-collector. I at least should not have com- plained, if that had been the end of it. But as things have turned out, the more praise, the more gratitude I owe him. I hope, as long as I keep my senses, I shall never blush for such a father. Nor shall I seek to excuse my faults and failings, as one hears many do, on the ground that I have not had the advantages of birth. On the contrary, were the choice given me to relive my life, and choose what parent- age I pleased, I should still be content with my own, pre- ferring it to any other, however illustrious in the world's ranks and dignities."

Not content with such sacrifices as these, Horace's father sent him to Athens, - - the intellectual centre, the university of the world. There he studied at the fountain- head Greek Science and Greek Philosophy: there, an equal among equals, he mixed with other Roman youths living a university life. While he was at Athens, Julius Caesar was assassinated at Rome (B.C. 44), and the civil wars broke out that were to end in the downfall of the Republic, and the establishment of the Empire. The cause of the Republic was popular with the young bloods of the Athenian university, and when M. Junius Brutus, the " Liberator " as he was called, visited Athens shortly after the assassination, Horace among others was offered and accepted a position as tribune in the army which Brutus was collecting, to resist the party of Caesar's avengers. Such a position (equal perhaps to our " colonel," if not to something higher) doubtless flattered Horace's youthful vanity, but it suggests doubts as to Brutus's prudence. For Horace was not only little, and some- what of a weakling, but he tells us himself he was neither fond of, nor fit for, fighting. At any rate he took his part in marching and drilling in Thrace and elsewhere, till at last the battle of Philippi (B.C. 42) crushed the hopes of the Republicans, and ended the lives of Brutus and Cassius. Horace himself tells us, humorously enough (Ode II. vii. 9), of his own inglorious flight. He managed ere long to find

Introduction xi

his way back to Rome, as he himself puts it (Epist. II. ii. 49), " a miserable object with draggled wings, my father's land and property all gone." His father had probably died in the interval; and now that he was thrown on his own resources, he was driven to write verses for a living. There was a market then for literary wares; we know from Horace himself that two brothers named Sosius were his publishers, at least in later times. But as in our own country in the early eighteenth century, the chief hope of literary men was in the patronage of the great. Fortu- nately for Horace, his poetry brought him the friendship of the poet Virgil, and of the would-be poet Varius (see Odes I. iii. and vi.), and through them he was introduced to the great patron of letters, Maecenas, the chief political adviser of Octavian, or as he came later to be called, Augustus. Horace tells the story himself. In a Satire addressed to Maecenas (I. vi. 45) he says: "Every one carps at me ' the son of a freedman father.' Their present reason for doing so is because you are kind to me, Maecenas ; their former one, that I was given command of a Roman legion. . . . For my friendship with you, I cannot give the credit to luck. It was no mere chance that made me known to you; it was my noble Virgil, and after him Varius, who told you about me. When I came into your presence, I managed to stammer out a word or two; a dumb bashfulness would let me say no more. But at any rate I did not talk to you of a high-born father, or of my cantering round my estates on a Tarentine thoroughbred. I told you just the plain facts. You answered, as you usually do, very briefly, and I withdrew. Nine months after you summoned me again, a^id bade me reckon myself among your friends. And proud I am that I pleased a man like yourself, one who measures the noble and the ignoble, not by the rank of their father, but by their own character and honesty of heart." This introduction took place in B.C. 38. From that time Horace's position was secure. Maecenas was wealthy and generous; and the works written largely at his instigation, the Satires, the Odes (i.-iii.), the first book of Epistles, all dedicated to Maecenas, were, we mav be sure, liberally acknowledged.

xii Horace

With Maecenas he seems to have been a spectator of the battle of Actium in B.C. 31 (Epod. i. and ix.), which finally settled who should be the world's sovereign; and he had already probably received from Maecenas the gift he most valued, a little estate among the Sabine hills, not far from Tibur.

In his Epistle I. xvi. he gives this description of the place to a friend: " There is a range of hills, broken only by a shady valley; not so shady however but that the rising sun can shine on its right slope, and the setting sun warm its left. The climate would delight you. Even the sloes and ruddy cornels bear their fruits more abundantly here than elsewhere; and the oaks and ilexes feed my herds with their acorns, and rejoice me, the master, with their shade. In fact you would imagine a slice of leafy Tarentum had been transported hither. There is a spring too, abundant enough to give name to a stream. Not cooler or more clear the Hebrus winds through Thrace; and its water is good for head troubles and stomach troubles too. The pleasant, nay I can call them the quite delight- ful nooks about it, keep me strong and well through the September heats."

This little estate was within an ace of being the death of him, when a tree suddenly fell and came near to crush its owner (see Odes II. xiii. and xvii.). He has several semi- humorous allusions to this escape which he classes with his escape from Philippi, and another from shipwreck off Palinurus (see III. iv. 28), as the three crowning mercies of his life. If he was a poor soldier, he seems to have been a worse sailor; he never has a good word to say of the sea, except from the shore, and as viewed from a pleasant watering-place, like Baiae or Tarentum. In fact, Horace was in no way heroic as the world understands heroes; he had bad eyes, and a poor stomach, and he, and Virgil too, detested athletics and sport. When in the course of a journey which they made with Maecenas and other great folks, very humorously related in Sat. I. v., Maecenas and the others went off to play tennis, Horace and Virgil went off to bed.

Horace in short never pretended to be a fine gentleman,

Introduction xiii

and detested pomp and affectation. In Sat. I. vi., from which we have already quoted, he gives as one reason why he would decline, if the choice were offered him, to have a grand family pedigree thrust upon him, the following :- " For with this higher rank I should have to make more money to keep it up. I should have to be civil to all sorts of people. I should have to hire grooms and valets, for fear I should ever be condemned to the dreadful fate of a journey by myself. I should have to keep a stud of horses, and carriages too. As it is, I am free to ride my bob-tailed mule to Tarentum if I like all alone, with my valise rubbing his crupper, and myself his shoulders. . . . And at Rome I walk wherever I like ; I go into the market and price my meal or my salad; I stroll round the Circus to watch its quacks, or view the fun of the fair of an even- ing in the Forum. Then after listening to the fortune- tellers I dawdle home to my frugal meal of leeks and pulse and pancakes. Finally I go to bed, with no thought to worry me of early rising and an appointment at the courts. I lie abed till ten; then take a walk, or read or scribble some lines to please myself ; next, I brush myself up, and as the day grows hot go off to my bath, but take very good care to steer clear of the Campus Martius and its tennis- courts. Then I have my little lunch, just enough to stay the stomach, and for the rest of the afternoon take my siesta in my own corner. That's the life of a man who knows not the worries and the burdens of ambition; and I'm well content with it; for I know that it will give me more happiness than I could ever get out of the fact (supposing it were a fact) that my father was a magistrate, and my grandfather, and my uncle too for that matter."

His relations of friendship with Maecenas were not, how- ever, without their drawbacks. As he says in Sat. II. vi. 40; " It is now some seven or nearer eight years since Maecenas began to reckon me among his friends, at least so far as to take me out with him when he was driving, and to condescend to such trifling questions or remarks as ' What's o'clock! ' ' What are the odds on such and such a boxer ? ' ' It's a chilly morning ' -the trifles in short which a great man can entrust to a ' leaky ' listener. Meanwhile

xvi Horace

writer, one finds even in these earlier works many expres- sions and illustrations of the better and more enjoyable Horace: his humour, as in the postscript to Epode ii., in Epode iii., in Satires iii., v., and ix. of the same book: his patriotism, as in Epodes i., vii., and xvi. ; his love of country life, as in Epode ii. ; and above all, his hope for Rome, and for himself, through the rising greatness of Augustus, and, with Augustus, of his own kind patron Maecenas, as in Epodes i., ix., xiv., and in Satire vi.

The Epodes and this first book of Satires were published, evidently under the patronage and personal sanction of Maecenas, in B.C. 35, when Horace was thirty years of age. The second book of Satires appeared some five years later. In contains a set of somewhat lengthier and more elaborate discourses on the luxury and insincerity of town-life, on the charms of his own rural retreat, which had been given him by Maecenas, on the qualities that constitute just criticism in life or letters, with many a humorous touch, throughout all his talk, of irony against himself, just as readily as against anybody else.

Then in the peace and cheerfulness of an assured position, with a home of his own in the country and a kindly winter- nest in Rome, with powerful friends and a sufficient income, Horace set himself to his magnum opus, his masterpiece, the three books of Odes. They appeared together in B.C. 19, and at some date not much later he published his Epistles.

Many of the Odes so-called are, in their primary purport, poetical epistles, professedly written on the spur of the moment in view of some pleasant or unpleasant event in his own or a friend's life, just past or just about to be, and, as a rule, Horace is at his best when he maintains this per- sonal and impulsive note. It was of the essence of Horace's temper to think, or at least to say, small things of himself, his work, and all that concerned either as compared with the grandiose performances and productions of more ambitious doers and writers ; he was only a bee, he tells us (Odes IV. ii. 27), flitting from flower to flower, to gather here or there a little honey; but one bee-like quality he did insist on, the most unwearied labour in the perfecting of his little humble themes.

Introduction xvii

In B.C. 17, he wrote, to please the Emperor, a sort of pageant poem called the " Saecular Hymn," to celebrate officially the splendour of Rome's destiny under Augustus. He was in fact the recognised poet-laureate of his time and had now and then to write accordingly.

His closing works were a fourth book of Odes and three Epistles, the last of which is named separately the " Art of Poesy." This last was perhaps unfinished when Horace died. In these final compositions he seems to gather up, in somewhat sterner or at least more pensive mood, his theories of life and the worth of life, of literature and what is truly worth in literature, of friendship and love and patriotism. Something of a farewell note echoes here and there, as of one who had lived his life, and was quietly waiting for the end.

Taking all these varied works as a whole, apart from the accidents that suggested them individually, apart from differences of method and metre and form, we shall recog- nise in them the intrinsically real and sincere and personal utterances of a true man's heart and conscience. They are the expressions of an experience as varied as that of most, showing vicissitudes of position and fortune from almost the lowest to something not far from the highest. They are uttered from a vantage-point at the very heart and centre of a world's activities, and amidst the fierce strain and stress of a revolution in the government of men and in the social life of mankind, paralleled for its rapidity, its thoroughness, and its results, only when we come down to the days of Robespierre and Napoleon. The mightiest republic of the world's history had just disappeared, the mightiest empire, till our own, had just begun. Old re- ligions had fallen, or were falling, to pieces in every land, the first prophetic murmurings of a new one were already faintly audible.

What wonder that the thoughts of the most genuine and gifted and sensitive spirit of such a time, clothed as they were in words of unequalled pregnancy and power, should have interlaced themselves, as proverbs do, in the thought and language of almost all the thoughtful men of later ages,

xviii Horace

so that Horace has become and remains one of the most quoted men in literature ?

As a matter of fact, the circumstances of Horace's life and experience were in many of their most important aspects very largely an anticipation of the experiences, and the consequent convictions and beliefs of our later ages.

In the course of her conquest of a world, very little indeed of it savage or barbarous, much the greater part a chaos of far-stretching civilisations, with religious and civic organisa- tions more elaborate and pompous than her own, Rome, or at least the more thoughtful of Rome's sons, very soon lost faith in the old traditional religion, with its somewhat scanty and arid ritual, its lack of scenic display, its poverty of artistic adornment in legend and poesy and sculpture. The poets and would-be poets of conquering Rome were almost forced to borrow from the gorgeous and vivid splendour of Greek religion, and to convey the apparatus of the Greek Olympus and the Greek Hades into the duller sphere of Roman mythology.

But it is doubtful whether this wholesale transfer of a religion more alien in its spirit even than it was in outward forms and ceremonies, ever came to signify more in the actual life and convictions of Rome than an artistic make- believe. The Greek myths were a perfect godsend to Rome's official poets, and Horace himself makes as much as he may of them in his most ambitious and least convinc- ing odes. But one can hardly imagine that the sane and plodding, the sensible and practical Roman folks, including Horace himself, ever came to care much or believe much in any religious mysteries or mummeries that Greece could teach them.

Horace himself was always on much surer, and more congenial ground, when he recalled the honoured names and memories of Latin farmer-soldiers or soldier-farmers as duty required, who by the old-world virtues of simplicity and frugality and self-denial and courage, enriched their country in time of peace or enlarged it in time of war. In describing these heroes and patriots, he had to make much of the rewards of honest and clean living which these men had received in the honour and respect of their own and

Introduction xix

after ages, he could make little of the somewhat ghostly rewards and punishments of an after-world, which the unimaginative Romans but dimly pictured, and still more dimly believed in.

Moreover, the Romans in their conquering advance trampled through and trampled over, but could not trample down, all sorts of strange and passionate and fiercely de- fended, fiercely critical religions, which they could hardly ignore and would certainly not believe in. It is interesting in this connection to recall a gathering at the time of a great religious festival in a comparatively obscure and un- important provincial Roman capital, Jerusalem, which occurred only a generation after the time of Horace. (Acts of the Apostles, ii.) — " Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cap- padocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews, and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians." These, and others not there named, represented different religions, and votaries of every one of these religions, not content to carry on their cults at the obscure corners of a conquered world, flocked across seas and lands to the centre of things, and set up, in sincerity, or for purposes of plunder, their little shrines of mystery in Rome itself. Horace seems in his younger days to have been now at- tracted, now repelled, by some of these mysterious folks and their doings. Everybody in Rome knew about them, most despised them, hated them, persecuted them, but they not infrequently feared them in a vague way, they at any rate had to recognise them as a fact and a force in Rome, hard if not impossible to get rid of, difficult to refute or silence.

In these later ages, and more particularly in the extraor- dinary developments of our own Empire, the men who have in successive centuries shared and aided in its development have of course had the enormous moral and religious anchorage, so to call it, of the Christian religion, though even this had its hold slackened for many by the unhappy divisions and dissensions that have torn its votaries asunder. But alongside of this mighty force working for continuity

xx Horace

and stability of belief, the thinking men who were busy conquering and organising a world-wide empire have had to face and deal with a very similar clashing of multiform beliefs and mythologies, so that what with Buddhism, and Brahminism and Mahomedanism and countless other " isms " from China to Peru outside the bounds of Chris- tianity, and what with Crusades and Inquisitions and Reformations, — Lutheran, Calvinistic, Methodistic, what with Mormonism and Salvationism, and endless other strange phantasmagoria of the modern seething-pot of faiths, the average modern man has often found himself much in the position of Horace, so that with Horace he is apt to say, if not to others, at least to himself and for him- self, " Credat Judaeus, non ego." Thus among at least many of the ruling and thinking members of the modern European community a certain silence, a certain tolerance, a certain indifference has become the characteristic note, the real essence of their mood about the unknown mystery that seems to hedge about humanity. It is the mood al the heart of Chaucer and Shakespeare and Pope and Gray and Lamb and Scott and Emerson and Stevenson, to name only a few of our own masters, and a like array could be quoted from the other great modern literatures. The holders of this tacit mood of doubt or silence are not active proselytisers, their belief or temper feels no call for stated creeds or accepted forms. But it is a profoundly influential temper nevertheless, and churchmen of every creed have to reckon with it, even when they do not share it. And the high-priest of this mood of gentle doubt is Horace.

As with many other doubters on eternal things, Horace retained and expressed a kind of religious fervour hi his conviction of the inherent value of beauty in speech and in the work of men's hands and brains. The latter, as the Romans found it, expressed for them with perfectness in the sculpture and architecture of Greece, they borrowed or stole ready-made, to adorn the capital of a conquered world. As Horace puts it (Epist. II. i., 158), " Captive Greece captured her rude conqueror," and Greece taught Rome all she ever knew or could imagine of visible beauty hi temples and statues and the rest. Greece also handed

Introduction xxi

over to Rome an unapproachable splendour of literary masterpieces in epics, in drama, in history, in philosophy, such as Rome could never hope to rival or even very suc- cessfully imitate. Only the smaller fields seemed left, the familiar letter, or essay, or friendly personal ditty — the Epistle, the Satire, the Ode.

To Horace's mind these small aftermaths of poesy could only earn a place even on the outskirts of literature by absolute and unwearied perfection of language and ex- pression. Grandeur of subject, magnificence of scope might conceivably earn pardon or even demand assent for a certain wild irregularity at times, " Interdum dormitat Homerus " (Homer sleeps at times). But to the poor and petty labourers of a later and less vigorous day, what he called the " labour of the file," must be applied relentlessly, or the result was a mere nonentity. Hence his frequent criticisms of earlier and more easy-going Latin writers (as in Satires I. iv. xx. ; Satires II. i. ; Epistles I. xix. ; Epistles II. i. ii. Ars Poetica}. Whatever their merits as men or as moralists, these men, to Horace's mind, wrote themselves outside literature altogether by the total neglect of style and perfectness in the ordering of their thought and language.

The war between form and matter thus so often and so emphatically raised by Horace has remained a cause of bitterness and division among the writers and the critics of all succeeding ages. It would be out of place to discuss it on the merits here. Suffice it to say that in his own case Horace did succeed, at least in his Odes, in so combining perfection of form with worthiness of substance that he has more than justified his claim to live for ever on the tongues of men, as the fashioner for all time of the fit word in its fittest setting.

Another item of almost religious conviction Horace ex- pressed with growing emphasis all through his works. This was a faith in the greatness of the destiny of Rome, personi- fied to him but by no means swallowed up in his allegiance to Augustus and his love for Maecenas. Through Rome and through Rome alone were Right and Order and Purity and Peace to be built up and perfected and assured in all

Horace

time to come for the world that Rome had conquered. There was a work that had never yet been done as Rome could do it; in these there remained a career for the Im- perial city, which no previous empire had ever dreamed of. The whole training and development of earlier times, the whole traditions of patriotism and self-devotion and courage which Republican Rome bequeathed to the Empire, the supremacy of Senate and people personified in a deified Augustus, these were Rome's gifts to the world for which she and she alone was now responsible.

The anticipations of an earthly paradise of order and good government thus expressed had a rude awakening ere long in the moral and intellectual collapse of the Caesarian regime, as we find it exposed in the pages of the next great Roman writer, Tacitus. In fact the Decline and Fall of the Roman empire may be said to have dated from the very hour in which it was proclaimed. Viewed at its centre, in the palace of the Caesars, such Caesars as Tiberius and Caligula and the rest, no worse government for any state could possibly be imagined.

Yet in a deeper sense, and viewed over a larger area in space and in duration, the political dreams of Horace have had and still have ample and growing fulfilment. The centuries during which the Imperial system of Rome, viewed at the centre, might be regarded as slowly but surely sinking in corruption and disgrace, were centuries not of loss but of enormous and even incalculable gain to the outer and greater world. Order, and the instruments of order, in cities and harbours and roads, in courts of justice and chambers of government, in a universal civilised speech, a universally valid law of property and conduct, — these things grew and developed and strengthened, so rooting themselves in the minds and habits of the whole world as it was then known, from India to Britain, that when the deluge of invasion of Saxons and Goths and Vandals and the rest poured over the weakened ramparts of the Empire, devastating and devouring, as it seemed, the entire Roman civilisation even to Rome itself, the real and permanent effects were exactly the reverse. It was now a case of captive Rome capturing her rude conquerors. Slowly but inevit-

Introduction xxiii

ably the invading hosts settled down to Roman speech and Roman order and Roman laws. The whole civilisation of the modern world is and must remain that Roman civilisation whose imperial and eternal supremacy Horace thus, with a truth greater than he conceived, prophesied in the name of Augustus his patron, and Maecenas his friend.

To the first book of his Epistles he appends an " Envoi " addressed to the book itself, for which if it ventures out into the world he predicts all sorts of dangers, and con- cludes thus: — " Finally, my book, your destiny will be, in stammering old age to teach boys their first elements in schools remote. However, should the warm sun gather a few gossips about you, you can tell them that I had a freed- man for father, and but scanty fortune to begin with, yet boldly spread my wings far from the parent nest. Thus what you take from my birth, you will be adding to my merits. Tell them I had the friendship of the world's greatest men at home and abroad; was little of stature, early grey, fond of the sunshine; quick-tempered, but easily appeased. And should any one ask my age, tell him I .had completed forty-four Decembers in the year when Lollius got Lepidus for his Colleague."

We may conclude this short notice with a translation, in rhyme by way of variety, of the last eighteen lines of Horace's last epistle (II. ii. 199-216), in which he sums up fairly well his matured philosophy of conduct. In this passage Horace, after the manner he learned from his father, is his own Mentor, as he converses with himself.

" Let but my house from sordid pinch be free, Then small or big my bark, — all's one to me. 200

I may not (winds being fair) spread sail so wide, — But, in a gale, less danger I abide; In strength, brains, looks, in virtue, wealth and place, Last of the leaders, not last in the race." — " Well you're not greedy? Good! that's but one part; Lurks then no other sin within your heart ? Ambition, anger, fear of death, — are these Unknown? Smile you at witchcraft's mysteries, Ghosts, dreams, and portents? Count you with grateful heart Your birthdays up, and take in kindly part 210

The faults of friends, each year the gentler growing? If not — why pluck one thorn, so many showing?

xxiv Horace

Dolt in good deeds, make way for men of skill; You've had of sport and food and drink your fill. 'Tis time you went, lest gorged beyond your worth, Youths fitlier gay laugh you, or beat you, forth!"

JOHN MARSHALL.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS (Latin): Editio princeps, 1470 (?), followed by numerous editions in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Later editions of note are those of N. Heinsius, 1612; R. Bentley, 1711 (3rd edition, 1869); O. Keller and A. Holder (text only), 1864-9 (Supple- mentary Volume of textual criticism, Epiligomena Zu Horaz by O. Keller, 1879-80), 2nd edition, 1899-1925 ; C. W. King, revised by H. A. J. Munro, 1869; L. Miiller, 1874, 1900; Schiitz, 1880-3; F. W. Cornish, 1882; J. K. Orelli — Baiter — Mewes — Hirschfilder, 1886-92; A. Kiessling, revised by R. Heinze, 1914-30; J. Vahlens, 1908; F. Vollmer (Teubner edition), 1912; E. C. Wickham, revised by H. W. Garrod (Oxford Classical Texts), 1912. There are separate editions of the Odes by T. E. Page, 1895, and F. Plessis, 1924; of the Satires by A. Palmer, 1883, and P. Lejan, 1911; and of the Epistles by A. S. Wilkins, 1892.

WITH ENGLISH NOTES AND COMMENTARIES: By J. E. Yonge, 1857, 1865-6, 1867; and with revised text by same, 1868; A. J. Macleane, 2nd edition, revised by G. Long (Bibl. Class.), 1869; J. M. Marshall (Catena classicorum), 1874; E. C. Wickham, 2 vols., 1874-91.

LATIN AND ENGLISH: Verse by P. Francis, 4 vols., i743~6, 9th edition, 1791; edited by W. H. D. Rouse, 2 vols. (Unit Library), 1902; verse (with literal prose interpretations), C. Smart, 1756, 1762, and later editions.

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS: Variorum Ed., A. Browne, 1666, etc.; T. Creech, 1684, etc.; J. Buncombe and others, I757~9; w- Boscowen, 1793; C. Smart (prose), 1756, with notes by T. A. Buckley (Bohn's Classics), 1850, (Classical Library), 1906; Globe edition (prose), by J. Lonsdale and S. Lee, 1873; Theodore Martin (verse), 2 vols., 1881; Chandos Classics (by various hands), 1889; J. C. Elgood (prose), 1893; A. H. Bryce (prose) (Bohn's Classics), 1897; E. C. Wickham (prose), 1903; J. Conington (verse), 1905).

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF SEPARATE WORKS:

Odes: Dryden, A few Odes in Miscellany, pt. 2, 1685; Literal trans- lation (with Latin text), H. G. Robinson, 1846-59; with Epodes and Carmen Saeculare (verse), G. J. Whyte-Melville, 1850; literally and rhythmically, W. Sewell, 1850; unrhymed metres, F. W. Newman, 1853, 1876; Th. Martin (with Epodes and Carmen Saeculare, verse), with life, 1860, 1861; with addition of Satires, 1870; with Carmen Saeculare (verse), J. Conington, 1863; Books I. and II. (verse), H. N. Jones, 1865; C. S. Matthews (verse), 1867; with Epodes, Carmen Saeculare, and Satires (with Latin text), C. Hughes, 1867; Selections (verse), E. H. Brodie, 1868; with Epodes (with Latin text, metrical translation), Lord Lytton, 1869, 1872, 1887 (Excelsior Series), 1894 (Lubbock's Hundred Best Books); E. Yardley (verse), 1869; with Satires and Epistles (verse), J. B. Rose, 1869; T. C. Baring (verse)

Bibliography xxv

1870; (with Latin text), M. Harris, 1874; metrical paraphrase. R. M. Hovenden, 1874; literal translation in metre, A. S. Way, 1876; W. E. H. Forsyth (verse), 1876; literally versified (with Latin text), W. T. Thornton, 1878; in rhyme and blank verse, H. H. Pierce, 1884; H. Grant (verse), 1885; C. W. Duncan (verse), 1886; T. R. Clark (verse), 1887; J. L. S. Hatton (verse), 1890; T. A. Stewart, 1890; with Epodes (with Latin text, verse), J. B. Hague, 1892; J. O. Sargent (verse), 1893; with Carmen Saeculare (verse), T. A. Walker, 1893; with Epodes, S. de Vere, 1893; with Carmen Saeculare, W. E. Gladstone, 1894, 3rd edition, 1895; Books III. and IV., with Epodes and Carmen Saeculare (verse), J. H. Deazeley, 1895; A. S. Aglen (verse), 1896; in original metres, P. E. Phelps, 1897; A. D. Godley (prose), 1898; W. C. Green (verse), 1903; (with Latin text, verse), J. Conington (Pocket Book Classics), 1903, 1904; collected and arranged by M. Jourdain (Temple Classics), 1904; by various hands (Broadway Booklets), 1905; with Epodes and Carmen Saeculare, E. Dufaur, 1906; E. R. Garnsey, 1907* with Epodes (with Latin text, verse, corresponding with the original metres by J. Marshall) (Temple Greek and Latin Classics), 1907; by various hands (with Latin text), S. A. Courtauld, 1908; with other verses and translations, F. L. Latham, 1910; C. E. Bennet (Loeb); W. S. Morris, 1912.

Epodes: A. S. Way (verse), 1898, see also under Odes.

Epistles: With Satires (prose, with Latin text), E. Dunster, 1712* 5th edition, 1739; with Satires and Art of Poetry (verse), J. Conington, 1870; with Latin text (Pocket Book Classics), 1904; metrical trans- lation, F. W. Finlay, 1871; with Art of Poetry (verse), A. Wood, 1872; with Satires (English version of P. Francis) (Popular Classics), 1906; with Satires, Ars Poetica, and Latin texts, H. R. Fairclough (Loeb).

Satires: A. Wood (verse), 1870; see also under Epistles.

Art of Poetry: B. Jonson (with occasional Odes), 1640; Earl of Roscommon (blank verse with Latin text), 1860, and later editions; H. G. Robinson (verse), 1861; D. Bagot (prose and verse), 1863, 3rd edition, 1880; A. Hill, 1883; Howes, 1892; see also under Epistles.

GENERAL: A. W. Verrall: Studies in Horace, 1884; W. Y. Sellar: Horace and the Elegiac Poets, 1892; J. F. D'Alton: Horace and his Age, 1917; A. Y. Campbell: Horace: a New Interpretation, 1924; L. P. Wilkinson: Horace and his Lyric Poetry, 1945.

CONTENTS

THE ODES— BOOK I

Translated by Dr. John Marshall, 1908. ODE

INTRODUCTION .....

i. To Maecenas ......

ii. Rome's Woes and their Avenger in. To a Ship bearing Virgil over Seas iv. Spring .......

v. Pyrrha .......

vi. To Agrippa ......

vii. To Plancus ......

vni. To Lydia ......

ix. To Thaliarchus .....

x. To Mercury ......

xi. Leuconoe ......

xii. To Clio, Muse of History ....

xni. To Lydia ......

xiv. To the Ship of State ....

xv. The Doom of Paris .....

xvi. A Palinode or Song of Apology xvn. To Tyndaris ......

xvni. To Varus ......

xix. In Praise of Glycera ....

xx. To Maecenas ......

xxi. Hymn to Latona and her Children xxn. Lalage .......

xxni. Chloe .......

xxiv. Quintilius ......

xxv. To a Beauty Faded ....

xxvi. In Honour of Lamia ....

xxvn. Of Wine and Love .....

xxvin. Archytas ......

xxix. To Iccius ......

xxx. To Venus . . .' xxxi. To Apollo ......

xxxn. On receiving a Request for a Song xxxni. To Albius Tibullus, a Brother Poet . xxxiv. Horace a Convert . .

xxvi

PAGE

vii

i

2 4 5 6

7 7 9 9

10 ii ii 13 14 15 16

i? 18

19 20

20 21 22

22

23 24

24 25

26

27

27 28 29 29

Contents

xxvu

ODE

xxxv. To the Goddess Fortune . xxxvi. In Numida's Honour xxxvn. Cleopatra .... xxxvin. In Praise of Simplicity

ODES— BOOK II

i. To Pollio

n. To Sallustius Crispus in. To Dellius iv. To Xanthias . v. Of Lalage

vi. In Praise of Tibur and Tarentuni vn. To Pompeius .... vin. To Barine .... ix. To Valgius x. To Licinius xi. To Hirpinus Quinctius xn. To Maecenas . xin. To a Fallen Tree xiv. To Postumus xv. Old Times and New xvi. To Grosphus . xvii. To Maecenas Sick . xvin. To a Miser xix. A Rhapsody to Bacchus . xx. Horace a World's Poet

ODES— BOOK III

i. Of Rome and Life . n. Of Roman Virtue in. Of Rome and Troy . iv. To Calliope

v. Of Roman Soldiers' Honour vi. Of Rome's Degeneracy vn. Asterie .... vin. An Anniversary ix. A Dialogue .... x. A Doleful Serenade xi. To Mercury and the Lyre xii. Neobule's Complaint xiu. Bandusia's Fountain xiv. Triumphal Ode to Augustus xv. To Chloris .... xvi. Of Riches and Contentment

PAGE 3" 3i 32 33

34

35 36 37 38 39 40

4i 42 43 44 45 46

47 48

49 50 5i 53 54

55 56 53 60

63

65 66

67 68 69 70 72 72 73 74 75

XXV111

Horace

ODE

xvii. To Aelius Lamia .

xvin. To Faunus ......

xix. In Honour of Muraena made Augur . xx. A Sculptured Contest . xxi. For Corvinus .

xxn. Hymn to Diana . xxin. To Phidyle, a Country Housewife xxiv. Of Rome's Decay . xxv. A Bacchanalian Rhapsody xxvi. Love Renounced and Resumed xxvn. To Galatea Wishing Good Voyage xxvni. To Lyde ......

xxix. To Maecenas ......

xxx. A Closing Song to his Muse

ODES— BOOK IV

I. To Venus ......

n. To lulus Antonius, a Brother Poet in. To Melpomene .

iv. In Praise of Drusus . . ._

v. To Augustus . . . ...

vi. To Apollo and Diana . vii. To Torquatus .

vni. To Censorinus .

ix. To Lollius ......

x. To Ligurinus ......

xi. For Maecenas' Birthday . xn. To Virgil ......

xni. To Lyce grown old .

xiv. In Praise of Tiberius ....

xv. Praises of Augustus ....

THE EPODES

Translated by Dr. John Marshall EPODE

i. Before the Battle of Actium ii. In Praise of Country Life, with Postscript . in. A Curse on Garlic . ...

iv. A " Nouveau Riche " v. Canidia the Poisoner ....

vi. The Biter Bit

vii. The Curse of Rome ....

ix. The Victory at Actium ....

x. A Prayer Ill-omened ....

xi. To Pettius . ....

PAGE

76 77 77 73

79

80

80 81

83 84 84

87 88 90

92

94 95 98

99 101

102

103 IO4

105

106 107 108 no

112

116 119 119

I2O 121 122

Contents xxix

EPODE PAGE

xiii. Winter ......... 123

xiv. To Maecenas . ..... 124

xv. To Neaera . ..... 124

xvi. Iron and Golden Age . . . . . 125

xvn. Horace and Canidia . . . . . .127

THE SAECULAR HYMN ... . 130

Translated by Dr. John Marshall THE ART OF POETRY 133

Translated by the Earl of Roscommon

THE SATIRES

Translated by Christopher Smart.

FIRST BOOK SATIRE

i. That all, but especially the Covetous, think theif own

Condition the hardest ..... 148

ii. Bad Men, when they avoid certain Vices, fall into their

opposite Extremes . . . . . .151

in. We ought to connive at the Faults of our Friends, and all Offences are not to be ranked in the Catalogue of Crimes ....... 156

iv. He apologises for the Liberties taken by Satiric Poets in

general, and particularly by himself . . . 160

v. He describes a certain Journey of his from Rome to

Brundusium with great Pleasantry . . .165

vi. Of true Nobility ....... 168

vii. He humorously describes a Squabble betwixt Rupilius

and Persius . . . . . . .172

vin. Priapus complains that the Esquilian Mount is infested

with the Incantations of Sorceresses . . 173

ix. He describes his sufferings from the Loquacity of an

impertinent Fellow . . . . . 175

x. He supports the Judgment which he had before given of Lucilius, and intersperses some excellent Precepts for the writing of Satire ..... 177

SECOND BOOK

I. He supposes himself to consult with Trebatius, whether

he should desist from writing Satires, or not . . 181

ii. On Frugality .... . 184

in. Damasippus, in a Conversation with Horace, proves this Paradox of the Stoic Philosophy, that most Men are actually Mad . . . . . . .189

iv. He ridicules the absurdity of one Catius, who placed the

Summit of Human Felicity in the Culinary Art , 198

XXX

Horace

SATIRE V

PAGE

In a Humourous Dialogue between Ulysses and Tiresia?. he exposes those Arts which the Fortune- Hunters made use of, in order to be appointed the Heirs of rich old Men ... . . 201

vi. He sets the Conveniences of a Country Retirement in

Opposition to the Troubles of a Life in Town. . 204

vn. One of Horace's Slaves, making use of that Freedom which was allowed them at the Saturnalia, rates his Master in a droll and severe Manner . . 208

vni. A smart Description of a Miser ridiculously acting the

Extravagant . . . . . .212

THE EPISTLES

Translated by Christopher Smart.

FIRST BOOK EPISTLE

i. To Maecenas ..... ii. To Lollius

in. To Julius Florus .... iv. To Albius Tibullus . v. To Torquatus . vi. To Numicius .

vn. To Maecenas ..... vni. To Celsus Albinovanus ix. To Claudius Tiberius Nero x. To Aristius Fuscus .... xi. To Bullatius . xii. To Iccius xin. To Vinnius Asina xiv. To his Steward .... xv. To C. Numonius Vala xvi. To Quinctius . . . . . xvn. To Scaeva . .

xviii. To Lollius ..... xix. To Maecenas ... xx. To His Book

SECOND BOOK

I. To Augustus . II. To Julius Florus

. 215

. 218

220

221

222

223

. 225

. 228

229

230

. 231

. 232

• 233

• 234 236

• 237 24O

. 242

• 245

• 247

249 256

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

Note. — The names in Italics occur in the Odes. B.C. 753. Romulus founds Rome. He is followed by six other kings: —

Nutna, Tu'lus Hostilius, Ancus, Tarquinius Priscus ; Servius

Tullius, and Tarquinius the Proud. 508. Porsena, king of Etruria, on the expulsion of the kings, attacked

Rome.

390. Rome captured by the Gauls, saved by Camillus. 280. War with Pyrrhus, king of Epirus; Fabricius refuses his bribes. 275. M. Curius Dentatus finally defeats Pyrrhus. 256. In the First Punic war Regains, a Roman General, is defeated and

taken prisoner in Africa, is sent home to negotiate peace, advises

against it, and goes back to torture and death. 242. The First Punic war finished in a great naval victory for Rome in

the Sicilian sea. 216. In the Second Punic war great victory of Hannibal at Cannae;

Paullus is killed. Capua seeks to obtain pre-eminence in Italy-

In same year M. Claudius Marcellus repulses Hannibal from

Nola.

212. Marcellus takes Syracuse from the Carthaginians. 207. Battle of Metaurus ; Claudius Nero defeats and slays Hasdrubal. 202. Battle of Zama. P. Cornelius Scipio the Elder conquers Hannibal

and Carthage. 190. Antiochus the Great, king of Syria, is crushed by L. Cornelius

Scipio at Magnesia. 184. Censorship of Cato the Elder.

146. Carthage destroyed by P. Cornelius Scipio the Younger. 143. Ten years' war with Numantia begun. 109. Censorship of M. Aemilius Scaurus. 106. Cimbri and Teutones, German tribes, invade Italy, but are crushed

by Marius.

105. Marius overthrows Jugurtha, a usurping African king. 88. Social or Marsian war in Italy. 73. Revolt of slaves in Italy under Spartacus. 65. Horace born at Venusia. 63. In the conspiracy of Catiline, the Allobroges, a Gallic tribe who

had sworn fealty to Rome, were inclined to assist him. 60. The first triumvirate (Caesar, Pompey, Crassus) formed during the

consulship of Metellus.

xxxi

xxxii Horace

B.C.

55. Caesar invades Britain.

53. Defeat of Crassus at Carrhae by the Parthians. Standards lost.

48. Caesar defeats Pompey at Pharsalia, and becomes master of the

world. 46. Pompeian remnant crushed by Caesar at Utica, in Africa; Cato

the younger commits suicide there.

43. Horace joins Brutus iii Macedonia, as commander of a legion. 42. Brutus and Cassius defeated at Philippi. 40. Treaty of Brundisium between Octavian and Antony. Parthians

overrun Syria, under Pasorus.

36. Antony fails in a war against the Parthians, led by Monaeses. 31. Antony and Cleopatra defeated by Octavian at Actium. 27. Octavian receives from the Senate the titles of Prince, Augustus,

Father of his Country. The worship of " Rome and Augustus "

spreads throughout the Empire.

26. The Sygambrians, a German tribe, defeat f.ollius. 20. Augustus secures restoration of standards lost in 53, and defeats

the Dacian Cotison.

19. The Cantabrians in Spain finally subdued. Virgil dies. 18. Julian laws for reformation of Society and promotion of marriage. 17. The Saecular games and Saecular hymn. 15-14. Augustus through his deputies Tiberius and Drusus Nero

crushes the Raetians and other Alpine tribes. 8. Death of Maecenas and of Horace.

PROPERTY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

THE KI ; PJ3LIC LIBSAKY

MANHATTAN RESERVE

THE ODES— BOOK I

i

TO MAECENAS

MAECENAS, SPRUNG FROM KINGS OF ANCIENT STORY, STAY OF MY FORTUNE AND MY CHIEFEST GLORY-

Some men delight Olympic dust to raise Upon the course. Deftly the post to graze \Vith fiery wheels, and victory's palm to know, Makes them as gods, supreme o'er earth below. Another's happy, if Rome's fickle crowd To him their triple honours have allowed. A third, if in his private barn he stores The corn wide-swept from Libya's threshing-floors. 10

That man who joys his natal fields to hoe, Not ev'n the bribes an Attalus could bestow Would e'er induce in Cyprian bark to sail The Aegean surge, and shiver in the gale. Not so the merchant. He, while squalls blow high, Battling Icarian waves, in fear may sigh For peaceful home-fields; yet shall soon repair His storm-tost hulks, untaught hard times to bear. Cups of old Massic wine one man admires, Or to steal half the working day desires, 20

Basking beneath green arbute, or where clear Sounds the nymph-haunted fountain babbling near. Many the camp delights, the trumpet's call With bugle mingling, and fierce battle's brawl By mothers hated. Heedless of tender spouse B5J5 £>i;

2 Horace

Your sportsman waits, the chilly sky his house,

If his good cubs a doe have chanced to view,

Or his slim nets a Marsian boar's broke through

Me ivy-wreaths, which poets' brows reward,

Set with the gods. Me the cool grove, whose sward

Light-footed Nymphs with Satyrs linked make gay,

Parts from the crowd ; if but Euterpe say

Her flute she'll lend, if Polyhymnia sing

Kindly for me upon the Lesbian string.

BUT IF BY THEE PLACE 'MID THE BARDS I'M GIVEN, WITH SOARING HEAD I'LL STRIKE THE STARS OF HEAVEN.

II

ROME'S WOES AND THEIR AVENGER

Surely enough of snow and icy showers From the stern north Jove hath in vengeance called, Striking with red right hand His sacred towers And Rome appalled, —

Ay, the whole earth, — lest should return the time Of Pyrrha's blank amaze at sights most strange, When Proteus drove his finny herd to climb The mountain range;

And fishes in the elms' high tops did rest, Where late the doves had homed ; while o'er the main 10 Of outspread flood hinds swam with labouring breast In fear and pain.

Tiber's brown stream we saw an angry sheet Hurled in wild flood from the Etrurian shore, And swirl back Vesta's fane and Numa's seat To topple o'er.

Boasting himself forsooth the avenging knight Of tearful Ilia's wrongs, the lovelorn river O'erflowed his leftward bank in Jove's despite,

Amends to give her. 20

The Odes — Book I 3

Our sons shall hear how Romans Romans slew With swords that fitlier Parthian foe had slain, When through their parents' crimes a sorry few Those sons remain.

What god from Heaven shall Rome invoke to save Her tottering power? Or with what prayer prevailing Shall the chaste Virgins grace from Vesta crave, Deaf ears assailing?

Who shall be given the task by Jove's decree Our guilt to appease? Augur Apollo, come; 30

Hid in earth's cloud let thy bright shoulders be, And rescue Rome !

Or haply, smiling Venus, thine the boon To save us, Jest and Cupid in thy train ! Or Mars, if on thy children, none too soon, Thou smil'st again ;

Tired of thy cruel sporting at the last,

Though well thou lov'st smooth helms and battle's cry,

And Moor afoot who on fall'n foe doth cast

A.n angry eye ! 40

Or haply, gentle Maia's son, 'tis thou, Wing'd god, who deign'st to don a manly frame, And on the earth " Caesar's Avenger " now Assum'st for name !

Whate'er thy godhead, late return, we pray, To heaven; long love to dwell with Romulus' seed ! O let no wind too swift bear thee away For our ill deed !

Here rather may'st thou choose thy triumphs proud; Here love as " Father," " Prince," thy folk to guide; 50 Nor while thou, Caesar, rul'st, be Mede allowed At will to ride !

Horace

III

TO A SHIP BEARING VIRGIL OVER SEAS

Thee may kind Venus, Cyprian queen, And Helen's brothers, stars by sailors blest,

And Aeolus the winds' father, screen And guide, hushed every wind except the west, —

If, Ship that bear'st as precious store Our Virgil, safely treasured thou convey

Cargo so dear, and to the shore Of Athens my soul's better half repay !

Him, heart of oak and brass thrice-knit The breast encased, who 'gainst the cruel deep 10

His fragile bark first dared to pit, Nor feared the Afric storms that onward sweep,

With northern gales fierce war to wage, Nor the Rainstars ill-famed, nor Southwind's frown, —

No wind than this o'er Hadria's rage Stronger, to raise his waves, or beat them down !

What stride of Death could him amaze, Who with unwavering eyes on seas agloom,

And on strange weltering beasts did gaze, And the Ceraunian peaks, those cliffs of doom ? 20

Vain all the care a god hath ta'en By Sea's deep gulf to part, of forethought wise,

Lands each from each, if o'er the main The Ship forbidden leaps, and Fate defies.

Daring all chances to endure, The race of man from crime to crime is driven.

Prometheus thus for men did lure, With evil-fated cunning, fire from Heaven.

The Odes — Book I

5

Once fire from its true home on high Was filched, slow Canker and a dismal band 30

Of Fevers to the world drew nigh. And Death, though sure yet far, came nearer hand.

By a like daring Daedalus tried With wings to set through empty air his course,

Proving a gear to man denied ; So 'twas that Hercules' toil Hell's gate could force.

No task's too steep for human wit; Heaven's self we dare to assail in madness vile ;

Nor ever by our deeds permit Great Jove to rest his angry bolts a while. 40

IV SPRING

Melts Winter now, his bitter frosts in Spring's sweet change expire;

Sleds drag the long-dry keels now to the shore. No longer beasts in stall delight, nor ploughman by the fire,

Nor gleam the lawns with hoar-frost any more.

Now Venus 'neath the sailing moon leads forth her dancing

bands;

The dainty Graces sport on twinkling feet Adown the lea, linked with the Nymphs; and glowing

Vulcan's hands Strain the great Cyclop forges fierce to heat.

Now is the time thy glossy locks with myrtle leaves to twine, Or flowers, which earth new-thawed makes haste to bear;

Now with a lambkin or with kid, as the god's choice incline, In cool groves gift for Faunus to prepare. 12

\Vith equal foot pale Pluto knocks at hovels of the poor, And at the tyrant's towers. My Sestius dear,

6 Horace

Brief is thy span, nor may'st thou dream of pleasures far or

sure. Soon Night, and fabled Shades, and mansion drear

Of ghostly Death, shall close on thee. Thither when thou

hast passed,

No dice thou'lt throw to rule the drinkers' sport; No more on the young Lycidas fond looks of love thou'lt

cast, — The men's pet now, whom soon the girls will court. 20

V

PYRRHA

What slender youth, with wealth of roses sheen And with sweet essences besprent, pursues thee,

In cool grot, Pyrrha, woos thee ? For whom thy yellow hair dost preen,

Simple yet exquisite ? Now oft, ah me !

Vows broken he'll deplore and gods that change ;

And, to thy whimsies strange, Shall gaze where glooms a wind-swept sea;

Who credulous now dotes on thy tinsel gold,

And dreams thee ever willing ever kind, 10

To thy fair falseness blind ! 0 hapless, who untried behold

Thy glitter ! Lo, my dripping weeds I place, With picture vowed, on Neptune's temple wall,

My saving to recall From shipwreck by thy siren face.

The Odes— Book I

VI TO AGRIPPA '

Not I, but Varius, swan of Homer's brood, Must sing thy valour, sing the victor hand, Guided by which Rome's men on sea and land The mighty brunt of battle stood.

Such themes, Agrippa, I no more presume To handle, than the mighty tales I'd sing Of fierce Achilles' wrath, the voyaging

Of sly Ulysses, or the doom

Of cruel Pelops' house. Such things to dare

Were task too great. Shame and my muse that sways 10

A timid lyre, forbid me Caesar's praise,

Or thine, by lack of gift to impair.

What voice could sing Mars clothed in adamant, Or Merion black with dust from Trojan field, Or Tydeus' son, to whom ev'n gods might yield, Such aid to him did Pallas grant?

My themes are wassail, and girls' mimic fight,

Fierce (with pared nails) against the youths engaging;

Naught know I in my song of passion's raging;

Or if I burn, the scars are slight. 20

VII TO PLANCUS

By others be bright Rhodes or Ephesus named, Or Mitylene, or Corinth's double bays.

Delphi for Phoebus, Thebes for Bacchus famed, Fair Tempe too, each claims its meed of praise.

8 Horace

Some of unwed Athena's seat prefer

In endless verse to sing, and wreathe their head

With olive leaves, gathered no matter where. For Juno's sake much is of Argos said,

And its horse-breeding; much., of Mycenae's gold.

Me, ev'n stern Sparta charms not half so well, 10

Or rich Larissa's plain of fruitful mould,

As nymph Albunea with her echoing cell,

Or Anio swift, or Tiburn's orchard groves, Refreshed with their led waters day by day.

The Southwind lifts at times, and straight removes Clouds from the sky, nor breeds the showers alway;

So be thou wise, my friend, let gloom go past;

And soothe life's toils with wine, whether the sight Of camp with standards decked its glamour cast,

Or thy own Tibur's shadowed glades invite. 20

Teucer, we're told, when driven in banishment From Salamis and sire, yet wreathed his brow

With poplar, and to comrades ill-content

Thus cheerly spake: " Where'er our fortune now

(Kinder at least than was my sire) allures,

Thither we'll follow. Never despair, my friends,

While Teucer leads, and Teucer luck assures ! Know that Apollo, who true omens sends,

Foretells for us a Salamis o'er seas,

Foil to the first. To-night with wine drown care, 30

Friends oft who've braved worse things with me than these;

At morn o'er the wide sea once more we'll fare ! "

The Odes— Book I

VIII TO LYDIA

Lydia, 'fore Heaven say, Why them dost haste with loving thy Sybaris to slay

Why he, long since to sun And dusty days inured, the open field doth shun?

Why rides he not abreast With comrades, nor the jaws of Gallic steed doth wrest

To obey the wolf-bit? \Vhy Fears he the tawny tide of Tiber's stream to try?

Why worse than blood of snake Shrinks he the athlete's oil upon his skin to take? TO

Nor now shows arms all blue, Who oft far past the pin his quoit or javelin threw?

Why lurks he, as once, they say, Lurked sea-nymph Thetis' son, before Troy's woeful day,

Lest manhood's dress should call Her young Achilles straight to blood and Lycian maul?

IX TO THALIARCHUS

Thou see'st how whitely fair Soracte stands In snow-wreaths clad, and how the labouring woods Their load sustain not; how the floods Are gripped in frozen bands.

Melt me this cold, freely the firelogs throwing On hearth, my Thaliarchus ! And from crock Two-eared, of Sabine make, unlock Wine, with four years a-glowing! *B 5'5

~ Horace

- -.- r v. :!-_* z-.-ir! Or.'

-. . -• : -..: .----. -_-.. ----.--•• - . FT:- t- - ---. r'.-r - - r^re.

- .

--

ur: 20

r.er arr. ":/. : ;, ".t

X v TO MERCURY

••-..- .'. . : —>.-. .- -' - . ' '.

Ll - .'. I"..' -- : - - . -- - -..•

;• .-.: -:'.,.: V : -, ..; ... . . :' IO

Yet cc -lc but liui'li -*-h«i a fresh k/ss hfe proved,

The Odes — Book I 1 1

Under thy escort Priam safely went. Gold-laden, the grim sons of Atreus by : Passed the Thessalian fires, passed tent by tent Each enemy.

To the blest fields thou pious souls dost steer, Checking with rod of gold Death's phantom train; Thus both to gods of Heaven and Hades dear

Thou dost remain. 20

XI LEUCOXOE

Leuconoe dear, seek not I pray to know

what Heaven hath hid ; The span to me accorded, or to thee,

is lore forbid ! Tempt not Chaldean horoscopes ! More wise,

what comes, to bear; Nor fret, whether some winters more from Jove

fall to our share, Or this, which lashes now the Tuscan shore.

our last decreed. Be wise and strain the wine ! Since short at best

of joy our meed, Prune distant hopes. Ev'n as we speak, grim Time

speeds swift away; Seize now and here the hour that is. nor trust

some later day !

XII TO CLIO. MUSE OF HISTORY

Clio, what man, what demigod, dost choose, What god, with lyre or shrill-voiced pipe to praise ? Whose name shall sportive Echo send, my Muse, Adown the ways, —

1 2 Horace

Haply through Helicon's umbrageous bounds, O'er Pindus, or by Balkan's frozen height, Whose groves, bewitched by Orpheus' tuneful sounds, In tangled plight

Pursued the bard, while by his mother's skill The gliding streams and the swift storms he steers, 10 And with his tuneful lyre-strings led at will The oaks all ears ?

What better theme for prelude could I try Than the great Father's ritual praise ; whose hand Men's realm and gods', earth, sea, and changeful sky, Doth still command ?

From whom naught greater than himself is born, Naught stands ev'n equal, or holds second place; What honours nearest come, Pallas hath worn

By special grace. 20

Nor, Bacchus, brave in battle, shall I here Thy praise pass o'er, — thine, Dian, huntress-foe Of savage beasts, — thine, Phoebus, name of fear For thy sure bow !

Hercules too I'll sing, and Leda's twins, Skilled victor he to box, and he to ride :- Soon as their star its brightening course begins, Sailors to guide,

Straight from the rocks the storm-driven waves recoil, Hushed are the winds, and all the clouds obey; 30

While, since they two so will, the storm's turmoil Dies swift away.

Shall I sing Romulus next, or Numa's reign Unwarlike, or the Tarquins' regal pride? Or shall I rather tell in nobler strain How Cato died?

The Odes — Book I i 3

Regulus, Scaurus, Paulus spendthrift proved Of his brave life, when Carthage swept the field, Fabricius, also, — praise to each I'm moved

In song to yield. 40

Him, shock-head Curius, and Camillas too, Stern Want did train to deeds of daring done,- Their school the croft, whose humble home they knew From sire to son.

Ev'n as a tree unmarked through centuries grows, So grows Marcellus' fame. And yet more bright Shines out the Julian star, as moon outglows Each lesser light.

0 Son of Saturn, Sire and Shield of men, To thee 'tis given, by mighty Fate's decree, 50

Caesar to guard ! Still be it thine to reign, Thy depute, he !

Whether these Parthian swarms, whose threat'ning cloud Shows dark o'er Rome, he to his car shall bind In triumph just, or China's orient crowd, Or furthest Ind,

Second to thee he'll rule broad earth with right,

Whilst thou in thy great car Olympus shake,

And on dishonoured groves, with thunderous might

Thy vengeance take ! 60

XIII TO LYDIA

Ah ! Lydia, when I hear thee praise Telephus' rosy neck, his wax-smooth arms,

Alas ! my tortured heart's ablaze, And my soul frets with anger and alarms

14 Horace

No more my thoughts or looks may keep Their form unmoved, while down my features flow

The unheeded tears, showing how deep Within my heart slow fires of passion glow.

When on thy shoulders white remains The mark of drunken quarrellings, I mourn ; 10

Or when the furious madman stains Thy pretty lips with tokens of his scorn.

Wouldst thou but hear me, lover true Thou ne'er should'st see in him, whose ire had sought

A savage wrong on lips to do, Which Venus hath with finest nectar fraught.

Thrice happy they, ay ! and beyond, Whom an unbroken link holds close ! Thrice blest,

Whom never breach of lover's bond Shall part in anger, till their final rest ! 20

XIV TO THE SHIP OF STATE

O ship, fresh waves will bear thee out to sea! What art about ? With a brave effort wear

To shore ! Seest not how bare Of rowing gear thy bulwarks be ?

How groans thy mast, by hurtling southern gale Wounded, and all thy yards? How ev'n thy hull,

Without the girdropes' pull, Can scarce o'er insolent seas prevail?

Thy sails, once sound and taut, are torn or lost; Lost too thy gods, to invoke again hard-pressed; 10

Howe'er, true pine confest Of Pontus, thy high birth thou boast,

The Odes — Book I 15

And vaunt a name outworn. Little men care, In hour of fear, for a ship's painted trash*

If thou would 'st 'scape the lash Of mocking tempests' scorn, beware !

Dear Ship, of late to me a hateful thing,

But now my dear desire, my weightiest thought,

0 shun the seas distraught Which round the sun-smit Cyclads swing ! 20

XV THE DOOM OF PARIS

When that false shepherd Paris o'er the seas In Trojan fleet his hostess Helen wiled, Nereus with tedious calms the winds beguiled Which sped them, that Fate's stern decrees

He might declare. " Ill-omened art thou gone Bearing her home, whom Greece shall from thee rend With a great host, oath-bound thy intrigue to end, And end, too, Priam's ancient throne.

Alas, what sweat for steeds and warriors waits; What massacre for all the Trojan folk 10

Dost thou contrive ! Pallas ev'n now doth yoke Her car, her casque, her shield, her hates.

Vainly, with Venus' help puffed up, thou'lt preen Thy locks, and the fond airs which women like On the effeminate cithern strike;

Vainly thyself in bower thou'lt screen

From deadly spears' assault and Cretan bow, From shout of war, and Ajax swift to chase. At length, though late, thy adulterous tresses' grace In dust bedrabbled shalt thou show. 20

1 6 Horace

See'st thou not even now Laertes' son, Bane of thy race, and Nestor, Pylus' lord? Brave Salaminian Teucer plies his sword, Fierce Sthenelus drives thee on.

Skilled warrior he, or charioteer at need As skilled. Of Merion too thou'lt know the ire. Tydides, better fighter than his sire, See him, in rage to find thee, speed !

And as a stag, that spies across the vale A wolf's approach, thinks not of pasture nigh, 30

So thou wilt flee with gasping throat held high; Not such to Helen once thy tale !

The wrath of armed Achilles will delay Troy's, and Troy's matrons', doom awhile. But these After fixed years Achaean fires shall seize, And sweep the Trojan towers away."

XVI A PALINODE OR SONG OF APOLOGY

Daughter, than lovely mother lovelier still, What doom for my curst lines fits thy desire, Thou shalt thyself inflict, — with fire, Or Hadria's sea at will.

Not Dindymene, or Phoebus, so o'ercomes In Delphic cave the senses of his priests, Nor Bacchus, — Corybants at feasts Never so beat the drums,—

As doth sour Wrath; which not fierce fire can end, Nor Noric sword-blade, nor ship-wrecking sea, 10

No, nor great Jove himself, though he With thunderous roar descend.

The Odes — Book I 17

Prometheus, forced, to man's primeval shell, Some grain to add from all things living cut, A raging lion's fury put Man's natural gall to swell.

Wrath, of Thyestes' dreadful doom was cause; Wrath, on proud cities for dire issues falls, When vengeful foe along their walls The hostile ploughshare draws. 20

Check the first heats ! Me too, in sweet sunshine Of youth's heyday, frenzy of passion rent, And to calumnious Epodes sent This foolish pen of mine.

But now these sours to exchange for sweets I'm fain, If thou'lt be kind, and of thy favour grant, That hearing me my gibes recant, Thy heart thou'lt give again.

XVII TO TYNDARIS

Oft Faunus hastes to quit the Arcadian dales, And taste instead our Sabine upland's charm, Guarding my goats from summer's harm And winter's watery gales.

Through the safe groves their way the she-goats take, They and their odorous mate, and crop the bed Of thyme or arbute, nor need dread Ambush of sea-green snake,

Or of Haedilia's wolves that Mars loves well, — Let but the polished rocks the notes repeat 10

Of shepherds' piping clear and sweet, In sloped Ustica's dell.

1 8 Horace

Heaven is my guardian, for to heaven is dear My pious meed of song. Here then shall pour From Plenty's horn abounding store Of gifts thy heart to cheer.

Here in deep vale the Dogstar's fire thou'lt shun; And to thy Teian harp thou'lt sing to me Green Circe and Penelope,

Smit both with love of one. 20

shalt thou drink mild Lesbian in the cool. But never fear lest Bacchus here may fight, At odds with Mars : no need for fright Lest Cyrus play the fool,

And on thy tender strength, for his no match, Lay his rude hands in wrath, the crown to tear that clings amid thy wealth of hair, Or thy kind kirtle snatch.

XVIII

TO VARUS

For no tree, Varus, rather than Heaven's vine

be furrow made, Round Tibur's mellow tilth, and the old walls

by Catilus laid. For, to the sober, Heaven makes every task

more hard to bear; And by no other magic than by wine

flies carking care.

Who after wine grumbles at toils of war

or stinted days?

Who does not rather thee, Sire Bacchus, sing,-

thee, Venus, praise?

The Odes — Book I 19

But the old tale how Centaurs drunken fought

the Lapithae, Warns us the modest Wine-god's gifts to use

in modest way.

And Bacchus warns us too, on Thracians base

who wreaked his ire,

When they no boundary drew 'twixt good and ill

save foul desire. 10

0 god in shining fox-skin clad, thy power,

unless thou bid

1 will not rouse, nor sacred things of thine

in pied leaves hid

Shall I reveal ! Cease, fool, thy savage drums

and Thracian horn !

Blind Love of Self comes in their train, and Pride,

lifting in scorn

o

An empty head, which in its emptiness

past bounds doth swell;

Comes too unfaithful Faith, clearer than glass

hid things to tell.

XIX

IX PRAISE OF GLYCERA

Venus, of love the mother stern.

And Theban Semele's son. and wanton Ease, Bid me once more my mind concern

With the dear joys that long had ceased to please.

Melts my fond heart the dainty hue

Fair Glycera shows, than Parian stone more white; Melts me her pretty skill to woo,

Her glance for lovers' eyes too dazzling bright.

Venus, her Cyprus quitting, leads

'Gainst me' full force; no talk for me, how teems 10 Scythia with war, how wheel their steeds

The Parthians tierce, — or other alien themes.

2O Horace

Here set me, lads, live turf four-square;

The incense bring, and chains of greenery bind ; The cup of ritual wine prepare;

A lamb once slain, She'll haply come more kind.

XX

TO MAECENAS

Here from a homely cup plain Sabine wine Thou'lt quaff. Stored in a Grecian jar it stands, My seal on't, set that year, Maecenas mine, When clapping hands

In theatre, dear knight, thy coming greeted ; So loud, that thy ancestral Tiber's banks And Vatican in echo gay repeated The praiseful thanks.

Caecuban vintage thy home goblets fills; The clustered grapes at Cales pressed, are thine. 10

But vines Falernian, or from Formiae's hills, Temper not mine.

XXI

HYMN TO LATONA AND HER CHILDREN

Hymn to Diana, tender maidens, raise;

You boys, to unshorn Cynthian Phoebus sing;

Sing her, too, whom Heaven's King Loves dearly, sing Latona's praise.

Sing, girls, of her who joys in mountain rills, And leafage on cold Algidus that grows,

Or on green Cragus shows Or Erymanthus' pine-gloomed hills.

The Odes — Book 1 2 i

By you, boys, with like praise be Tempe named,

And Delos, his birth-isle. His shoulder sing, 10

With quiver glittering And with the lyre his brother framed.

He shall from Rome and Caesar bear away Dire famine, pestilence, and tearful war

To Medes and Britons far, Heart-melted by the prayers ye pray.

XXII

LALAG£

TO ARISTIUS FUSCUS

He that is clean of life, and pure from ill, Needs not to be with Moorish darts equipped Or bow ; no case with arrows need he fill In poison dipped,

Whether o'er burning Afric wastes he go, Or Caucasus, to strangers never kind; Or where Hydaspes' fabled river, slow His course doth wind.

Mark thou the proof ! Past bounds in Sabine glade Singing of Lalage I strolled unthinking; 10

When lo ! a wolf, of unarmed me afraid, Fled cowardly slinking.

Yet he so huge a beast that the wide woods Of warlike Daunus feed not such another, No, nor swart Juba's coast, of lion broods The sunparched mother.

Place me where o'er the dull and frost-bound plain No tree is e'er by summer's breath restored. Beneath a sky where endless beats the rain

And storm abhorred ; 20

22 Horace

Or to a homeless land my steps exile, Where the fierce sungod's car rolls all too near; My Lalage's sweet voice, her gentle smile, Shall still be dear.

XXIII CHLOE

Thou shun'st me, Chloe, ev'n as might a fawn That for his timid dam on pathless hills

Searches, while terror thrills At sound of breeze through woodlands drawn.

Perchance Spring's advent down the quivering brakes A whisper sends, or lizards green are peeping,

Through bramble-bushes creeping; Forthwith in heart and knees he quakes !

But not like Afric lion I pursue,

Or tiger grim, thy tender flesh to eat; 10

Cease for thy dam to bleat,— Full ripe by now if lover woo.

XXIV QUINTILIUS

Why blush that for a friend so dear we've grieved, Why stint our tears ? Fit songs of woe inspire, Melpomene, who from Heaven's mighty Sire Voice crystal clear and lyre received !

Now on Quintilius broods the burden drear Of sleep unending ! WThen shall Modesty, And Justice' sister, proud Integrity, And naked Truth, find one his peer?

The Odes — Book I 23

A many good men mourn him ; Virgil, friend, None mourn him more than thou ! But all in vain 10 Thy pious vows ask him from Heaven again, Whom thou to Heaven not so didst lend.

Though to thy touch lyre-notes more sweet were given, Than Orpheus swayed for listening trees to learn, Not then to the pale form would blood return Which with stern rod once Mercury's driven

To join the ghostly crowd. Howe'er thou prayed, Ne'er should'st thou move him Death's doom to repeal. 'Tis hard ! But ills which Fate forbids to heal, Are by endurance lighter made. 20

XXV TO A BEAUTY FADED

More sparingly youths batter than of yore On thy closed casements, in their wanton game ; No longer do they spoil thy sleep; the door Clings to its frame,

Which on an easy hinge of old would move At call. Not now, as then, art wont to hear " 0 Lydia, sleepest thou, while thus thy love Lies dying near? '

An old hag soon, the scorn in turn thou'lt wail Of insolent lechers, in some alley lone, 10

While 'twixt moons old and new the northern gale Shall fiercely moan;

And torturing passion such as mares besets, And hot desire, shall like a furnace glow About thy plague-corroded heart, which frets This truth to know, —

24 Horace

That youths to ivy old prefer the young, — To myrtle dried, wreaths of a richer shade; And to cold Hebrus, winter's mate, have flung

The leaves that fade. 20

XXVI IN HONOUR OF LAMIA

Protected by the Muses, fear and grief I will toss from me, for the lusty blast Into the Cretan sea to cast. Naught heed I whom as chief

They dread o'er Arctic wastes, what fears appal A Tiridates. Thou who dost rejoice In founts fresh-struck, 0 let thy choice, Sweet Muse, on Lamia fall !

For him twine sunny wreaths; and since my praise Is naught without thee, tune thy Lesbian lyre; 10 And hymns, thou and thy sister choir, In Lamia's honour raise !

XXVII OF WINE AND LOVE

What, wield in quarrel cups for pleasure meant? That were a Thracian trick ! Such barbarous mood Forbear, and Bacchus kind and good From bloody strife prevent!

With wine and lights accordeth marvellous ill The dirk a Mede might use. Hush, friends, 0 cease Your impious clamour; and for peace Keep elbows resting still !

The Odes — Book I 25

You'd have me too your heady vintage try? Then let Megylla's brother, our fair guest ic

From Opus, say what arrow blest Makes him with love to die.

Thou'rt loth to name h^r? On these terms alone I'll taste. Whoe'er the dear unknown may be, No flame to blush for singes thee ; 'Tis gentle dame, or none.

Drop in my ears (they're safe ones) just the name ! What say'st thou ? That jade ? In what whirl, What fell Charybdis pool didst swirl,

Youth worth a nobler flame ! 20

What witch, what wizard with Thessalian brew, What god shall save ? A Pegasus might toil, Yet scarce from such Chimaera's coil Threefold, shall bear thee through!

XXVIII ARCHYTAS

Though in thy time, Archytas, skilled to weigh The immeasurable sands and earth and sea,

Poor gift of trivial dust by Matine bay Confines thee now ! Little avails to thee

The starry heights to have scaled, and to its end

Heaven's arch surveyed, since doomed at length to die !

So Tantalus died, yet he to gods was friend; Tithonus too, though love-borne to the sky.

Minos, Jove's confidant, died. Hell will not yield Twice-born Pythagoras now. Once more he's fared 10

To Death's dark realm, though he unfixed his shield From temple-wall, proving Troy's war he shared,-

26 Horace

And that, then dying, naught to Death he passed But flesh and skin ; though too, as thou dost know,

No mean judge he of Nature. At the last

One night waits all; Death's road we all must go.

The Furies some to gloating Mars assign;

Of some the insatiate Sea his meal doth make. Thick perish young and old ; and Proserpine

Fails not from each in turn a lock to take. 20

Me the Southwind, which ever comes in storm When sets Orion, whelmed in Hadria's wave.

0 sailor, to this poor unburied form

Grudge not unkindly the small boon I crave, —

A pinch of sand ! For thee thus kind I'll vow:

" When 'gainst Hesperian waves the Eastwind's driven,

Let the Venusian woods be tost, but thou

Unharmed remain ! Let guerdon free be given

By Jove who's just and can give, Neptune too, The god who guards Tarentum's sacred fane ! ' 30

Art thou so reckless as foul wrong to do,

Which may for doom to thy poor babes remain ?

Scorn of thy rights may yet such wrong repay;

Then shall my vengeance come ! Nor gift nor groan Shall save ! Brief, though thou haste, the needful stay;

Thou'rt free to run, when thrice the dust is thrown.

XXIX

TO ICCIUS

On wealthy Arabs' coffers and their gains Hast thou an eye, planning for Sheba's Kings, Untamed as yet, most dreadful things In war, and forging chains

The Odes — Book I 27

For the fierce Mede ? What virgin hast in hand (First having slain her lover) thy swart slave To make ? What cupbearer dost crave Behind thy chair to stand,

Locks all perfumed, a princeling he with skill From heirloom bow to shoot shafts of Cathay? 10 Who'll deny now that prone streams may (Ev'n Tiber) flow uphill,

When after all thy better promise, thou Who for Panaetius' tomes the shops did range, These and all Socrates' school would'st change For Spanish corslets now ?

XXX TO VENUS

0 thou, of Cnidos and of Paphus queen, Spurn thy loved Cyprus, and at Glycera's call, Who with much incense greets thee, be thou seen In her fair hall !

Be visitant with thee thy glowing boy, Graces loose-zoned, and Nymphs, and with their crew Youth, who without thy aid brings little joy; Mercury too !

XXXI

TO APOLLO

What craves the bard from Apollo on his throne ? What asks, as from the cup new wine he drops ? No fertile acreage of crops In rich Sardinia grown !

28 Horace

No fat herds such as hot Calabria breeds, Gold, ivory of Ind, or meadows gay, Such as swoln Liris eats away, The happy poet needs.

Let Fortune's favourites prune their Calene vines; With Syrian wares let the rich merchant buy, 10

And from gold cups drink joyously, The dearly bartered wines ;

Surely of Heaven a favourite indeed, Since thrice or more a year the Atlantic sea He can revisit safe. But me Olives and endives feed,

And mallows light. Grant, god, that with my lot I live content, hale, and still fresh my gift,— Grant that in age I may not drift

Long years, my lyre forgot ! 20

XXXII ON RECEIVING A REQUEST FOR A SONG

I have a call ! If ever song, with fire To outlive one year or more, we've sung for pleasure, just mine and thine, — swell now, my Grecian lyre, The Latin measure !

Alcaeus 'twas, that Lesbian patriot stark, Who tuned thee first, and when he'd fiercely fought, Or had on dripping shore his storm-tost bark To anchor brought,

He sang the Muses, Bacchus, Venus fair, And Cupid, who upon her still attended; 10

Of Lycus too he sang, with raven hair And dark eyes splendid.

The Odes — Book I 29

Phoebus' delight, Shell welcome to the board Of Jove, my heartaches be it thine with might To soothe, whenever the invoking word I sing aright !

XXXIII TO ALBIUS TIBULLUS, A BROTHER POET

Grieve not, Tibullus, nor past bounds repine thee, Brooding o'er Glycera's hardness thus so long In doleful elegies, as though 'twere wrong For some one younger to outshine thee.

Lovely low-browed Lycoris, a like fate Torments, for love of Cyrus. He in turn To the sour Pholoe swerves. But ere she burn For one so plain, she-goats will mate

With fierce Apulian wolves. That so 'tis best Venus decrees, whose joy it is to bind 10

Body ill-matched with body, mind with mind, In her stern yoke, — a gruesome jest.

So with myself. A gentler charmer smiled, But Myrtale my soul love-bound did hold; A freedgirl she, than Hadria's seas more bold Which sweep Calabria's inlets wild.

XXXIV HORACE A CONVERT

Spare and infrequent pietist was I While, skilled in the philosophy of fools, I strayed. Now back from all the schools Reversed my course I try

30 Horace

Towards whence I came. For Jove, who's wont to rend High-towering stormclouds with his lightning's flash, Now through clear sky with thunder's crash His steeds hath willed to send.

Whereat dull Earth, swift Streams, and Styx abhorred, And the ill-omened Taenaran caves are shaking, 10

And Atlas, the world's limit, quaking. Now know I, Heaven's strong lord

Can change high things for low. The proud he breaks, And lifts the obscure to light. Like bird of prey, Chance with a whoop tears crown away, And, pleased, elsewhither takes.

XXXV

TO THE GODDESS FORTUNE

Goddess, of thy loved Antium queen, and strong Poor mortals to upraise of low degree, Or change to funeral pageantry A triumph's haughty throng,

To thee cries rustic hind with fond appeal ; To thee, true mistress of the main, they cry, Who the Carpathian waters try With their Bithynian keel !

Rude Dacians fear thee, and Scythians swift of flight; Fear Cities, Tribes, and Latium proud of mien; 10

Fears every Eastern mother-queen, And Tyrants' purple might, —

Lest with stern foot thou should'st the pillar shake That bears their lordship up, and clamorous swarms Should rouse the slow with call to arms, And the proud empire break.

The Odes — Book I 3 i

Before thy mighty coming still doth tread Stern Fate, who in her brazen hand bears high The clamps and bolts of destiny.

Strong hook and molten lead ! 20

Hope and rare Faith white-robed upon thee wait, Thy comrades still, ev'n when with garments changed Thou passest forth, a friend estranged, From mansions of the great.

Then 'tis that harlot false and traitorous folk Slip forth and go. When drained ev'n to the lees The casks go dry, each flatterer flees, Too base to share the yoke.

Our Caesar, to world-ending Britain bound, O do thou save ! Save Rome's young soldier bands, 30 That to Red Sea and Eastern lands Their name may terror sound !

Woe's me, I blush for each ill-deed, each scar, Each brother slain ! What have we feared to essay, A race accurst ? What evil way E'er shunned ? What deed of war

Through fear of Heaven have Romans blenched to do? What shrines left unpolluted? 0 would'st thou 'Gainst Goth and Arab temper now

Blunt blade on anvil new ! 40

XXXVI IN NUMIDA'S HONOUR

With incense and with lyre 'tis brave

Ay, and with well-earned blood of calf, to bless

The gods who Numida did save !

He now from furthest Spain in peacefulness

32 Horace

Returned, gives kisses of good-will

To each fond friend, but more to none doth bring Than to lov'd Lamia, mindful still

Of schoolboy days fagged for no other " King,"

And schoolboy gown cast off with his.

Let not the white mark fail on day so blest, 10

Nor wine-jar spare at feast like this !

Let not the feet in Salian steps have rest,

Nor Damalis, who loves her wine,

Beat Bassus in a drinking match to-night !

Spare not the roses, wreaths to twine ; Spare not brief lily, or the parsley bright !

On Damalis, each man love-lorn

Fond eyes will cast. But by no languishing

Will she from her new love be torn,—

Closer than wanton ivy shall she cling. 20

XXXVII CLEOPATRA

Now 'tis the hour for wine, now without check To trip it gaily, now with feasts sublime Worthy a Salian board, 'twas time Each deity's place to deck !

Who could till now his Caecuban exhume From bins ancestral, while a queen designed For Rome's high seat destruction blind, And for Rome's empire doom,—

She, and her plague-scarred crew of evil fame, Reckless enough to dream joys without bound, 10 And in sweet fortune's frenzies drowned? But pause to madness came,

The Odes — Book i

33

When scarce one ship from burning she could save ! Her soul, with Mareotic wine o'erwrought, Caesar to real terrors brought, When he from Italy drave

j

Her flight, and tracked her o'er the sea (as track Hawks the soft dove, or as swift hunters ply A hare in snow-clad Thessaly),

Minded a plague so black 20

To enchain. But she, seeking her end to grace By nobler dying, feared not as woman might The sword's keen edge, nor sought by flight Some seaward hiding-place;

Dared ev'n to look upon her Court o'erthrown With eye serene, and with untrembling lip The deadly hissing asps to grip, And drink their venom down.

With death resolved upon, more proud her mien; Scorning that such as she, in hostile sloop 30

Her foes like some poor trull should coop For triumph, her, a queen 1

XXXVIII IN PRAISE OF SIMPLICITY

Your Persian pomps, my lad, I cannot brook; Chaplets with linden laced suit not my brow; Summer's last rose seek not, in what odd nook It lingers now.

Think not with gaudy splendours to replace The simple myrtle. Myrtle, to my thinking, Thee at thy service, me not less will grace In vine-bower drinking.

C5'5

THE ODES— BOOK II I

TO POLLIO

The civil broils which from Metellus date,— Motives, mistakes, manoeuvres, — irony Of Fortune, — Chiefs' conspiracy, — Arms stained in mutual hate

By blood not yet atoned, — so runs the rede With hazard fraught, which thy bold pen aspires To trace, while over hidden fires The treacherous foot- tracks lead.

Our stage must miss awhile thy tragic vein ; But when Rome's tale is ended, thou'lt take on 10 Thy great Athenian role, and don The buskin, once again.

Stay of desponding suitors, Stay as true Of senate in debate, thou didst beat down Dalmatia, and a triumph's crown For thee the laurel grew.

Ev'n now the threat'ning din assails my ear Of honis, and bugles' blare ; now the fierce light Of flashing arms scares steeds to flight,

And blanches men with fear. 20

I mark of heroes dead the mighty scroll, With no inglorious dust in death bestrewed; And the whole orb of earth subdued, Save Cato's dauntless soul.

34

The Odes — Book II 35

Juno, and what powers else failed to defend The Africa they loved, old wrongs repay To slain Jugurtha; for they slay His slayers in the end.

What field with Roman gore did we not feed ? What, proves not by its graves our impious war, 30 And Roman ruin heard afar Ev'n by the distant Mede?

What strait, what stream, can ignorant remain Of our curst strife ? What sea, with Latin blood Was not full many a time imbrued ? What shore bears not its stain?

Ah, wayward Muse, such themes fit thee but ill ! Dirge of Simonides, a singer grave,

They need ! Come seek, in Venus' cave,

Strains of a lighter quill ! 40

II TO SALLUSTIUS CRISPUS

No sheen hath silver while the greedy mine Keeps it close hid. Nor fairer to thine eyes The minted metal shows, unless it shine With usage wise.

Through length of days shall Proculeius' name Live, for paternal care to brothers shown; On unrelaxing wing a deathless fame Shall bear him on.

A bigger power is his, who can subdue Greed in the heart, than if his rule controlled 10

The earth from Spain to Libya, — Carthage too, Both New and Old.

36 Horace

By self-indulgence fed, daily afresh The greed-plague grows, unless from out the veins The taint's expelled, and from the pallid flesh The dropsy drains.

On Cyrus' throne Phrahates reigns anew;

Yet Truth, that thinks not with the mob, denies

A place to him among the happy few.

From custom's lies 20

She fain would wean us, granting to him alone A real crown and a sure triumph's bays, Who; though piled ingots in his vision shone, Not twice would gaze.

Ill

TO DELLIUS

Brace thee, my friend, when times are hard, to show A mind unmoved ; nor less, when fair thy state, A sober joy. For Death doth wait As surely, whether woe

Dogs all thy days, or fortune bids thee bask On peaceful lawn reclined while life goes well, And quaff thy wine, from inner cell Drawn at Falernian cask.

Why else do soaring pine and poplar white Love with twined boughs a hospitable nook 10

Thus to enlace ? Why speeds the brook Thus swift in swirling flight?

Hither the wine-cup, scents, and short-lived flowers Of the gay rose, bid bring; while years, estate, And the three Sisters' threads of fate Grudge not the golden hours !

The Odes — Book II 37

Soon shalt thou pass from each fair purchased field ; From home, from seat where yellow Tiber rolled, Thou'lt pass; and all thy treasured gold

Thou to thy heir shalt yield. 20

Whether from ancient blood, to wealth and fame Thou'rt born,, or whether poor and base of birth Thou lingerest stretched on pauper earth, Grim Death strikes just the same.

To the same bourne we're driven; in the urn for all Death spins a lot that must erelong be cast, And each in Charon's boat at last To endless exile call.

IV TO XANTHIAS

Blush not, my Phocian friend, that thou dost love A pretty slave-girl ! Others have felt the smart. Briseis though a slave had pow'r to move Achilles' heart

With her white beauty. Ajax, Telamon's son, Was with his slave Tecmessa's grace enraptured; Atrides loved, even amid triumph won, A maid he'd captured;

What time Achilles o'er Troy's hosts prevailed, And with great Hector ousted from the fray, 10

The wearied Greeks Troy's citadel assailed, An easier prey.

Haply her folks are rich, and wealth may come To him who fair-haired Phyllis weds ; the glory Of some blood-royal hers, of her fall'n home She mourns the story.

38 Horace

Think not at least that e'er from tainted breed Thy darling's sprung; that one for faith so famed, So proof 'gainst filthy lucre, could proceed

From mother shamed. 20

As for her ankles trim, her arms, her face, On my chaste praise put not thy prohibition,— Praise which my fortieth birthday passed should place Beyond suspicion.

V OF LALAGE

Not yet is She of strength the yoke to wear With subject neck, or the dear stress to meet Of mutual love, and of bull's heat The amorous rage to bear.

About the verdant fields thy heifer's mind Still circles, now the summer's glow in pool Appeasing, now 'neath sallows cool Eager her sport to find

'Mid skipping calves. No longer fondly sigh For grapes unripe ; soon richly dark for thee 10

Autumn, skilled limner, shalt thou see The purple clusters dye.

Soon she'll seek thee. Unbending Time flits past, And years which mean thy loss, to her he'll lend For gain ; then Lalage will mend Her ways, and try to cast

Her charm on thee; dear as shy Pholoe Ne'er was, or Chloris, though with shoulders white She shone as fair as moon by night

Gleaming across the sea. 20

The Odes — Book II 39

Ev'n than young Gyges sweeter she'll be deemed., Though he 'mid maidens placed could show as fair, Shrewd strangers puzzling, such his hair,

So girlish-faced he seemed.

VI IN PRAISE OF TIBUR AND TARENTUM

Septimius, thou wouldst ev'n to Cadiz haste, If I went too, — or to Cantabria, slow Our yoke to take, or to the Afric waste Where fiercely flow

The Moorish tides. Yet better to mv mind.

^ j

Did Argive Tibur shelter my old age; There rest from toils by land and sea I'd find, And battle's rage.

If harsh Fates frown me thence, I'll seek the clime Where the Galaesus flows, where sheep are trained 10 Skin-coats to wear, and where in Spartan time Phalanthus reigned.

Fairest on earth that little nook of ground Smiles to my sight, nor doth Hymettus bear Honeys more sweet; Venaf rum's oil hath found Its rival there.

There winters mild and springs that softly sigh Kind Jove affords. There Aulon's vineyards blessed By fruitful Bacchus, clusters can defy

Falernian-pressed. 20

That is the spot, those the blest heights that cheer Us two to dwell in. There shalt thou imbue Thy poet-friend's warm ashes with a tear To friendship due.

40 Horace

VII

TO POMPEIUS

Friend who didst oft with me in danger stand, When Brutus led our war, what man at last Hath giv'n thee back, thy warfare past, To native gods and land?

My earliest comrade thou in that far day, When oft I sped the lingering hours with wine, While my wreathed locks would brightly shine, With Syrian unguents gay.

With thee Philippi's rout I knew full well, When in ignoble flight I dropped my shield, 10

While Valour brake, and on the field High hearts to ruin fell.

But me through the foe's ranks did Mercury urge, And mist-enwrapped his trembling votary bore; Thee battle's wave sucked back once more Across the boiling surge.

Pay then to Jove the gift his kindness asks; And rest thy body, by long service worn, Beneath my laurel shade, nor scorn

Thy share of treasured casks. 20

Fill the bright cups with wine that conquers care; From the wide phials unguents liberal shed ! Who shall moist parsley for each head, Or myrtle wreaths, prepare ?

Whom shall the lucky throw of Venus greet Lord of our cups? Not wiselier I'll carouse Than Thracians might. With friend in house Mad Folly's self is sweet.

The Odes— Book II 41

VIII

TO BARIN£

Did aught of penalty for perjured truth Once in thy life, Barine, overtake thee; Did ev'n one blemished nail or blackened tooth Less charming make thee,

I'd take thy word ! But with each vow forsworn, Even thou shin'st the more enchanting woman; Stepping the naughty streets, tormentor born Of every Roman.

It hurts thee not to invoke thy mother dead, Or the stern stars, for witness to thy lying, 10

Nay, the whole canopy of heaven outspread, And gods undying.

Venus herself, methinks, laughs at thy guile, The Nymphs must laugh, their simple truth forgetting; Wroth Cupid too, on blood-drenched stone the while Hot arrows whetting.

There's worse behind ! New broods grow for thy sport, Destined in turn to wear the yoke they're born to; Nor do thy elder bondslaves cease their court,

Though oft they've sworn to. 20

Thee for their growing cubs the mothers dread, Thee skinflint sires ! Girls tremble when they marry, Lest glint of thee wile from the bridal bed Their men to tarry.

*C5r5

42 Horace

IX TO VALGIUS

Not always from black clouds the rainstorm pours Upon the sodden fields; the gusty sleet Doth not for aye the Caspian beat, Nor on Armenian shores

Stands, Valgius, through all months the ice as hard. Gargan's great oaks do not for ever toss, Nor ash-tree mourn of leaves the loss, By storms continuous scarred !

But thou dost never cease thy dreary wails, Harping on Mystes dead; nor do thy sighs 10

End when the Evening Star doth rise, Nor when at dawn he pales.

Not so did the thrice-aged Nestor keep Mourning for aye his dear Archilochus; Not so did for young Troilus His sire and sisters weep.

0 cease at length to bruit thus thy woe In womanish plaints ! Better for us to sing Augustus Caesar's triumphing;

How with less boastful flow 20

Wintry Niphates and the Median tide, Ranked with the conquered now, go slinking past; How the Gelonians cooped at last In narrower limits ride.

The Odes— Book II

43

TO LICINIUS

Safer thou'lt sail life's voyage, if them steer Neither right out to sea, nor yet, when rise The threat'ning tempests, hug the shore too near, Unwisely wise.

What man soe'er the golden mean doth choose, Prudent will shun the hovel's foul decay; But with like sense, a palace will refuse And vain display.

It is the lofty pine that by the storm Is oftener tost; towers fall with heavier crash 10

Which higher soar; where lifts the mountain's form, There lightnings flash.

A mind well-schooled hopes, when the skies show stern, When they show kindly, fears, a change of states; For Jove, who leads black storms afield, in turn Those storms abates.

Think not if days are gloomy now, that so 'Twill be erelong. With lyre Apollo wakes The Muse at times to song, nor his stern bow

Forever shakes. 20

In adverse hours show thee a man of mind And mettle. Yet not less thou'lt wisely know To reef the prosperous sails, when comes the wind Too good to blow.

44 Horace

XI

TO HIRPINUS QUINCTIUS

What the Cantabrians bold design to do Or Scythian horsemen, care not to inquire; Broad Hadria parts us from their ire ! Nor seek thou to pursue

Plans for the needs of life, they're small at best. Swift from our cheeks youth's tender blooms are fled, And wizened age eftsoons hath sped Love's joys, and easy rest.

Spring's flowers, howe'er they bloom, must fade again; Not always with like glow the moon appears. 10

Why fret thy mind with hopes or fears Remote from mortal ken ?

WThy not 'neath lofty plane upon the sward, Or at our ease beneath this pine repose, Scenting our grizzled hair with rose, And with Assyrian nard

Perfumed, drink while we may? The Wine-god routs Corroding cares. What boy from sparkling spring Water to soothe the heats will bring

Of our Falernian bouts ? 20

Pest, Lyde lives so far! Who'll wile the jade Hither to haste, — she and her ivory lyre, — Coiling her hair in simple tire, As might a Spartan maid ?

The Odes — Book II 45

XII

TO MAECENAS

The tedious wars fought by Numantia's kings, — Grim Hannibal, — the blot on Sicily's seas Of Punic blood, — thou wouldst not themes like these Hear sung to cithern's gentle strings,

More than thou wouldst the savage Lapithae's fall, Drunken Hylaeus, or the giant band By Hercules tamed, when with assailing hand They shook the shining palace hall

Of ancient Saturn. Thou thyself shalt tell, In prose more eloquent than poet's song, 10

Caesar's great deeds, and proud kings led along Neck-bound through Rome for spectacle.

Me the Muse taught Licymnia's powers to approve, The dulcet singing of our lady fair, Her brightly flashing eyes, and heart most rare In true exchange of love for love.

Right well she shows guiding in dance her feet, Sharing in war of wits, or hand in hand Sporting with fair Diana's maiden band,

As on Diana's day is meet. 20

Wouldst thou for wealthiest Eastern monarch's hoard, Or for the gold of Midas, Phrygia's king, One hair of thy belov'd Licymnia bring To barter, — or for ingots stored

In Arabs' vaults; when to warm lips' appeal Her neck she stoops, or with kind sternness checks The boon she'd have thee snatch? Little she recks, At times, herself, first kiss to steal.

46

Horace

XIII

TO A FALLEN TREE

He on an evil day, whate'er his name, Planted thee first, and nurtured thee with hand 'Gainst future generations bann'd, And for the township's shame !

Him I might deem to have strangled his own sire, Or drenched his sacred hearth-stone with the gore Of guest by night. All Colchian lore He knew, of poisonings dire,

Nay, every villainy e'er dreamt, who dared Plant sorry log like thee by my homestead, 10

That on thy blameless master's head To tumble was prepared.

What hourly to avoid by none is known. The Punic sailor fears wild Bosphorus' strait, Nor dreams of unseen deaths that wait Elsewhere to strike him down.

Rome's soldier fears the speeding Parthian's bow; The Parthian dreads Italian cell and chains; Fate unforeseen for each remains,

And lays the nations low. 20

How near was I dark Pluto's realms to view, Judge Aeacus, and the fields where blest souls dwell! How nearly heard I Sappho tell On Lesbian lyre anew

Her sighs for Lesbian girls ; and louder far Thy voice, Alcaeus, sing to golden quill Sea perils, exile's tales of ill, And all the woes of war !

The Odes — Book II 47

From both alike the ghosts a music hear Worth reverent silence. But the jostling rout, 30

His tales of war and kings cast out Drink in with greedier ear.

What wonder, when, dazed by that wizard song, The hundred-headed beast his black ears droops, And each fell Fury's snake-brood swoops With joy her hair among?

His ancient pain no more Prometheus frets Or Pelops' sire, so sweet the music's grace. Lion and timid lynx to chase

Orion quite forgets. 40

XIV TO POSTUMUS

Ah ! Postumus, Postumus, fast fly the years, And prayers to wrinkles and impending age Bring not delay; nor shalt assuage Death's stroke with pious tears;

No, not though on each day that comes to thee With thrice a hundred bulls thou sought to gain Grim Pluto's pity, all were vain ! Great Geryon he'll not free,

Or Tityos, from the gloomy stream, whose tide Each child of earth must traverse shore to shore, 10 Whether a crown on earth we bore, Or crofters lived and died.

Vainly from bloody stroke of Mars we'll run, Or the hoarse Adriatic's surge escape ; Vainly our autumn plans we'll shape The southwind's blight to shun;

48 Horace

Still must our steps to dark Cocytus trend, That sluggish stream, and Danaids' ill-famed clan, And Sisyphus who bears the ban

Of labour without end. 20

Forth must thou go from home and kindly sward And wife beloved, nor shall one tree that late Was thine, save funeral cypress, wait On thee, its short-lived lord.

The heir, thy better now, shall quaff the wine A hundred keys did guard ; his reckless hand Shall stain thy floors with vintage-brand, For pontiffs' feasts too fine.

XV

OLD TIMES AND NEW

Soon few for tilth the acres will remain, Such princely piles we raise. On every side Fishponds, than Lucrine lake more wide, We'll see. The bachelor-plane

Will oust vine-wedded elms; and violets blue, And myrtle's fragrance, and flower-scents untold, Will scatter sweetness, where of old The owner olives grew.

Soon sultry sunshine by thick-planted bays Will be shut off. Not so taught Romulus' rule, 10 Or the unshaven Cato's school, And old folks' simpler ways.

WTith them men's private wealth was scant indeed, But great the common good. No colonnade With northern outlook yielded shade, To please a private greed.

The Odes— Book II 49

None dared for house-building chance turf eschew; Cities and public temples, these at most The laws bade deck at public cost

With pomp of stonework new, 20

XVI TO GROSPHUS

Peace from the gods the sailor craves if caught In open Aegean Sea, when clouds arise And hide the moon, and guiding stars show naught To watchers' eyes:

Peace Thrace desires, when rage of war burns high; Peace, Parthian bowmen, while they bear the quiver: Peace, that by gems or gold or purple's dye Is purchased never.

For not king's wealth nor consul's power can daunt The angry passions which keep souls in thrall, Or the fell cloud of carking cares which haunt The fretted hah.

Well yet at little cost he lives, who shows No silver on his board to outshine his sire's; His easy sleep nor sordid terror knows, Nor mean desires.

Why, when so brief our day, shoot we so wild At marks so many ? Why quit home to find Lands warmed by other suns? \Vho, self-exiled,

Leaves self behind ? '.

Soul-cankering Care climbs mighty ships, though ringed With brass ; riders she dogs across the plain ; Swifter is she than deer, or tempests winged With clouds of rain.

50 Horace

Let not his mind, who's happy now, be fixed On distant ills,, but soothe life's present pavns With imperturbable smile ; a good unmixed For none remains.

Brief was Achilles' life, but great his fame ! Tithonus wastes and wastes, but still must live. 30

So what Time keeps from thee, perchance that same To me he'll give.

Round thee a hundred flocks and heifers low, Sicilian bred ; to greet thee whinnies loud A mare, for chariot fit; thy vestments show Adornment proud

Twice purple-dyed. Fate grants me small estate, But with it, breath of the Greek Muse's air; And granting, too, of vulgar insolence hate,

Grants me full share. 40

XVII TO MAECENAS SICK

Why with forebodings would'st thou break me down? It pleaseth not thy friend, no, nor high Heaven, That from my love thou should'st be riven, My pillar and my crown !

Ah ! why should I, if earlier stroke of fate Steals my best half, to the worse portion cling, — Less dear, a dead dismembered thing? Like hour for both shall wait

To end us ! No deserter's oath I've said ! Be it that thou shalt lead, close on thee, friend, 10

I'll follow, ready to its end The last dark road to tread.

The Odes— Book II 51

Not gust of the Chimaera's fiery breath, Nor hundred-handed Gyas, should he rise, Shall part us ; so that Fates deem wise, And Justice, strong as death !

Whether at birth Libra, or Scorpio's sting, Burnt ominous my future to control, Or Capricorn, that o'er the roll

Of western waves is King, — 20

At least my horoscope with thine must mate In wondrous wise. For thee, Jove's star benign Against ill Saturn's power did shine, And checked the wings of Fate,

What time Rome's crowd through theatre thrice did send Glad shouts to greet thee, once more hale and well; For me, on hapless brainpan fell A tree-trunk, and made end,

Had not kind Faunus saved me, guard divine Of Mercury's guild. For thy debt see thou pay 30

Victims and votive shrine ; I'll slay A humble lamb, for mine.

XVIII TO A MISER

No ivory nor fretted gold Along my palace wall or ceiling's wrought;

No costly Afric pillars hold Rich beams, for me from Attic quarry brought.

Never have I, an unknown heir, Upon an Attalus' domain laid hand ;

High damsels spin not for my wear Laconian purples, at my proud command.

52 Horace

But honour's mine, and kindly vein Of the true poet-gift. My humble door 10

Rich men frequent, nor should I gain By worrying Heav'n, or my great friend, for more

Enough, nay amply, I am blest, Having from him one gift, my Sabine home.

Each day drives other to the west, And the new moons erelong to dying come;

Yet thou, whose days are nigh fulfilled, Art all on marble quarryings intent,—

A palace, not a tomb, to build ; Where strike the seas on Baiae, thou are bent 20

Seaward the line of shore to thrust; And deem'st thee poor, so long as coasts constrain.

What shall men say, when such thy lust That neighbours' landmarks thou dost lift for gain,

And past poor clients' marches leap ? See, wife and husband wander forth, — her part,

Their gods in bosom clasped to keep,- His, their poor babes to bear close to his heart!

Yet no great hall the purse-proud lord Awaits at last more sure, than greedy Death 30

Shall at the appointed hour afford,— Why larger build, why for aught else waste breath?

As wide as for the sons of Kings, Their spot of earth is open for the poor.

Death's boatman takes no bribe, nor brings Ev'n skilled Prometheus back from Hades' shore.

Tantalus' self, and Tantalus' son, For all their pride, Death grimly prisons still.

The poor, when their day's darg is done, Called or not called Death hears, ev'n 'gainst their will. 40

The Odes — Book II 53

XIX A RHAPSODY TO BACCHUS

Bacchus I've seen, teaching 'mid rocks remote (Believe it, later folks !) his Nymphs intent, And goat-foot Satyr-beasts, who lent Prick ears his songs to note.

Euoii with a strange awe my soul's possest; Filled with the god, it joys beyond compare ! Spare, Bacchus, thy disciple spare; Give thy dread vine-rod rest !

Now may I of thy tireless Bacchants sing; Of founts of wine and milk, which start to greet 10 Thy coming, and of honeys sweet, From hollow trunks that spring.

I may sing Ariadne's bridal crown Transported to the stars; and Pentheus' hall Parted asunder; and the fall That hurled Lycurgus down.

Thou turnest streams and orient seas, at will; Or on far peaks reposed, and drenched with wine, Thy votaries' locks dost intertwine

With snakes, yet without ill. 20

When the foul Giants from the under-world Scaled thy Sire's realms, then armed with lion's claws, With lion's skin, and monstrous jaws, Thou Rhoetus downward hurled.

Though fitter thou for dance and quaint caprice And merry jest, nor apt for fighting known, Yet equal master thou wast shown Of war, as erst of peace.

54 Horace

Ev'n Cerberus harmlessly thy steps did greet Seeing thy horn of gold ; and as thou went, 30

Tail-wagging his three tongues he bent To lick thy limbs and feet.

XX

HORACE A WORLD'S POET

On no stale wing or feeble shall I cleave, Poet two-formed, athwart the liquid air; No time on earth more shall I spare, But cities' censure leave.

I whom they sneered at, " born of parents poor," I, dear Maecenas, " whom thou makest free To bed and board," no death shall see, Or prisoning Styx endure.

Scaly ev'n now upon my limbs doth show The shrinking skin. Above, to Swan all white 10 I change, while feathers smoothly bright On arms and shoulders grow.

Soon than Daedalean Icarus more renowned, To the far-sounding Bosphorus' coasts I'll hie, Or to Gaetulian deserts fly, Or further north be bound,

A fluting bird. Colchis my work shall learn; Dacia, who hides her fear of Roman strength; Far Scy thia too ; till Spain at length,

And Rhone, be skilled in turn. 20

Let from a funeral where no corpse can be, Dirges be absent, base laments, and wails! Silence a mourning that avails Never a whit for me !

THE ODES— BOOK III I

OF ROME AND LIFE

The uninitiate crowd I ban and spurn ! Come ye, but guard your tongues ! A song that's new I, priest of the Muses, sing for you Fair maids and youths to learn !

Kings o'er their several flocks bear sway. O'er kings Like sway hath Jove, famed to have overthrown The Giants, by his nod alone Guiding created things.

One man may plant his vines o'er wider space; High birth another candidate commends 10

When he to polling-booth descends; A third with better grace

May plead his life unstained ; a fourth, his weight Of partisans. Alike for high and low Death votes. His mighty urn will throw- Each name or soon or late.

A Damocles, o'er whom the sword doth swing, Threat'ning his unblest neck, finds scanty zest At tyrant's banquet; him no rest

Birds' note or lyre's will bring. 20

But gentle sleep spurns not the humble home Of simple clown; it dearly loves the shade Of river-banks, and Tempe's glade Where whispering zephyrs roam.

55

56 Horace

Whoso craves just enough, no storm shall fret, Howe'er it rage, nor gale that fiercely blows When " Haedus risen " the star-chart shows, Or " fierce Acturus set ";

Nor hailstorms 'mid his vines; nor faith ill-kept Of orchard's promise, when void trees proclaim 30

Of floods or starry blight the blame, Or winters tempest-swept.

Fishes find narrower bounds, now Wealth hath filled The ocean-depths with piles, whereon in haste Men, master, magnate, stones have placed A palace high to build,

Scorning mere land. But Threats and Terror find Place there as well. If my lord sails, black Care Quits not the glittering deck, and where

He rides, She rides behind. 40

Since Phrygian marbles no relief can buy For one in pain, nor purples, though they shine More bright than stars, nor costliest wine, Nor eastern spikenard, — why

On columns proud provoking only hate A hall upraise, garish and new and strange ? Why take, in Sabine dell's exchange Wealth and its weary weight?

II OF ROMAN VIRTUE

How best the pinch of hardship to endure Let the young Roman learn in stress of fight, Till he can match fierce Parthians' flight, And ply a spear as sure.

The Odes— Book III 57

Amidst alarms let his young days go by, The sky his tent. Then when some King's at war, Let spouse or daughter watch afar, And from the ramparts cry:

" Unversed in war, ah! will my darling dare, A very untamed lion to impugn, 10

Whom through a field of slaughter soon Insatiate wrath may bear? '

Good 'tis and fine, for fatherland to die ! Death tracks him too who shirks ; nor will He fail To smite the coward loins that quail, The coward limbs that fly !

True Worth knows not defeat, and still preserves His robe unsullied by base Envy's stain; He takes not nor quits power again,

As mob-mood sways and swerves. 20

Heaven's gates he opes to men of deathless worth, And finds a way to fame where way's denied; Soaring he thrusts dull crowds aside, And spurns the sodden earth.

Yet faithful Silence too may claim his fee. But they who of dark Ceres tales would tell, Shall not beneath my roof-tree dwell, Or launch frail boat with me.

For oft Jove strikes good men and ill in one, When he is scorned. Justice may halt, yet Crime, 30 Whate'er his start, hath seldom time Her vengeance to outrun.

Horace

III OF ROME AND TROY

The man that's just and resolute of mood No craze of people's perverse vote can shake, Nor frown of threat'ning monarch make To quit a purposed good.

As soon would the unquiet lord of Hadria's surge, Roaring South- Wester, shake him, or Jove's stroke Of fire. If wide Creation broke, Upon its crumbling verge

He'd stand undaunted. 'Twas such strength did waft Pollux and roving Hercules to the skies; 10

By whom red-lipped Augustus lies, And nectar too hath quaffed.

Earning like place, Sire Bacchus ! by like strength, Thee did yoked tigers drag with restive neck To Heaven. Thus too did Romulus check Mars' steeds, and soared at length

Above Death's stream ; when Juno thus began,

By listening gods approved: " Troy's ruin came

Through Paris, that false judge, with shame

Of foreign courtesan; 20

What time Laomedon the spoken word Forswore, and to the gods his promise broke; Troy's doom then I and Pallas spoke, On town, false folk, and lord.

Less brightly now her ill-famed lover shines In the lewd Spartan's eyes. Priam's false race No longer helped by Hector chase The Greeks' embattled lines.

The Odes — Book III 59

The war, by our dissensions lengthened, lo ! Is ended. From this hour my bitter scorn 30

Of Troy, my hate for grandson born Of Ilia, I'll forego

(Though she a Trojan priestess), Mars to appease. Nay, where we peaceful sit he shall be placed, And in heaven's courts shall nectar taste. Nay more, while wide the seas

Are left 'twixt Ilium and Rome to rave, So long in peace the exiles blest may reign Where'er they list. While on the plain

Of Troy, and o'er the grave 40

Of Paris and of Priam cattle stray, And wild beasts squat unharmed, so long let stand Rome's Capitol renowned, — her hand Let humbled Medes obey;

Let her before a world in terror bear Her name to farthest coasts, beyond where pour Westward 'twixt Spain and Afric's shore The middle straits, — or where

Eastward Nile floods his fields. Be it her rule Gold aye to scorn, left deep by earth o'erlaid ; 50

So better, than when mined, and made Of impious hands the tool.

Rome shall be free by dint of arms to attain Earth's farthest bound, — whether she hath desire To go where rages tropic fire, Or where brood clouds and rain.

But on this one condition thus I've willed For warlike Rome, that in no maudlin mood Of piety or pride she should

Old Troy seek to rebuild. 60

60 Horace

A Troy with such ill auspices restored Like loss again shall know. For once again I, sister-spouse of Jove, in train Will set my conquering horde.

Nay, if a third Troy they in brass should house, And Phoebus helped, a third time Troy would burn, Sacked by my Greeks; third wife would mourn, Captive, her sons and spouse."

Such talk but ill my sportive lyre beseems. What mean'st thou, Muse ? Cease rashly to rehearse 70 The speech of gods, or with small verse Belittle mighty themes.

IV TO CALLIOPE

Descend from Heav'n, queenly Calliope; And a long strain, with pipe and thrilling voice, Or Phoebus' lyre, if such thy choice, Or cithern, sing for me !

Do ye too hear her? Or doth fond conceit Mock me ? Methinks I hear, methinks I stray Through the blest groves, where whispering play Fair streams and zephyrs sweet.

Me, on Apulian Voltur long ago,

Like bliss befel. Past my nurse Pullia's home 10

Wand'ring, with play and sleep o'ercome, The fabled doves did throw

Fresh leaves on me. Strange 'twas to all who keep High Acheruntia's eyry, Bantium's hills, Or the rich fields Forentum tills, How thus a child should sleep,

The Odes— Book 11J 61

Nor venomed snakes or bears have power to harm; How I, with sacred bay and myrtle pressed, Like babe inspired should calmly rest,

Safe through some god-giv'n charm. 20

Your nursling still, dear Muses, safe I climb The Sabine steeps ! Yours, if Praeneste keen, Or Tiburs slope, or Baiae's sheen, Allure me for a time !

Through the dear friendship of your choirs and springs Philippi slew me not, nor Tree accurst, Nor Sicily's sea, which at its worst Round Palinurus swings.

So long as you stand by me, without fear Seaward mad Bosphorus I'll dare to face, 30

Landward, Assyria's sunparched space; For Britain I will steer,

A cruel race, or for the tribe who drink Mares' blood, Concanians called; bowmen I'll sec Gelonian bred, and safe shall be By Scythia's river-brink.

When noble Caesar sends his veterans brave To their town quarters, 'tis to you belongs To cheer his weariness with songs

From your Pierian cave. 40

Calm thoughts to give, kind Powers, is your delight ! We know how Jove swept with the hurtling fire Of his fell bolts the Titans dire, Curst mob, clean out of sight, —

Jove, who controls slow Earth, and wind-swept Sea, Cities on earth, and Hades' gloomy den, And Gods, and mortal Tribes of men, And reigns with equity,

62 Horace

One and alone ! Yet ev'n He might have feared That daring horde in brutal strength arrayed, 50

Confederates who fain had laid A Pelion high upreared

On dark Olympus. But what could avail Typhoeus, Mimas, Rhoetus strong in fight, Porphyrion huge, or he whose might Dared with wrenched trees to assail,

Enceladus, — when 'twas against the shield Fierce-clanging of Minerva that they swept? To aid the cause keen Vulcan stept,

Stept Juno, on the field, — 60

Apollo too, his bow still drawn to aim ; Who laves loose tresses in Castalia clear, And Pataran, Delian, groves holds dear, Taking from each a name !

For ill-trained strength by its own weight's o'erborne ; But Heaven, to powers well-ordered, favour lends, Hating brute-force, which to ill ends Doth all its travail turn.

Be hundred-handed Gyas witness named, And lewd Orion, who foul slight would throw 70

On chaste Diana; her pure bow The base attempter tamed.

Earth, on her monstrous children piled, must grieve, Wailing her progeny in hell that drift,

Hurled by Jove's bolt. Hell-fire, though swift, Cannot through ^Etna cleave.

On shameless Tityos' breast devouring deep, A dreadful warder of his guilt remains, The bird unclean. Three hundred chains

Lustful Pirithoiis keep. 80

The Odes— Book III 63

V

OF ROMAN SOLDIERS' HONOUR

Jove when he thundered we for King confessed ; Augustus too a present god we'll call, As to Rome's sway new nations fall, And Britons, Medes, are pressed

Beneath the yoke. And shall we now be told That men of Crassus, wedding Parthian wives, Have dared (Changed Senate, perjured lives !) In treason to grow old,

Fighting for their new kin, though Latins bred; To sacred Shields, to Roman name and gown, 10

And deathless Vesta, callous grown, — A Median king their head,

Though Jove and Rome survive ? That so 'twould end Farseeing Regulus divined, when he Would to no treaties base agree, Or weak compliance lend

To acts with ruin fraught for ages yet, If Romans ta'en had not unpitied died. " Arms, eagles," said he, " I have spied In Punic temples set, 20

By Romans bloodless yielded. I have gazed At hands wrist-bound to backs that free we name ; Seen gates agape, and fields, where flame And sword of ours had blazed,

Now tilled anew ! Forsooth the men ye buy Will come back better soldiers ! Ye but wed Loss to disgrace. The tarnished thread Can take no second dye ;

64

Horace

And the true valour,, once it falls away, Is by no sham replaced. When fights a hind 30

Soon as the toils have ceased to bind, Then he the man will play

Who basely trusted a false enemy's faith;

Then in some later war he'll crush his foe,

Who Punic chain on wrist did know,

And cowardly blenched at death.

Frantic to save his life, whate'er the cost, He mixed up peace with war. 0 shameful hour ! Carthage stands high, that climbs to power

On Italy's honour lost ! ' 40

This said, we're told, his faithful wife's embrace, His babes, he waved aside, as being now No Roman ; and with frown of brow Bent down his manful face.

Hoping in a weak senate to infuse Share of his own resolve, he for new need New counsel gave. Then would he speed From weeping friends' adieux,

To exile and to glory. Yet, what pains The Punic headsman planned for him, he guessed; 50 Still calm he thrust aside where pressed His kinsfolk, and the trains

Of humbler friends, who stayed him. Even so Might one, when ends some client's tedious case, Calmly to his Venafran place Or Greek Tarentum go.

The Odes— Book III 65

VI

OF ROME'S DEGENERACY

Thy father's crimes shalt thou, the guiltless child, Repay, 0 Roman, until thou restore The fanes and shrines now toppling o'er, And statues smoke-defiled.

Only while thou before the gods bend low, Can'st thou be strong. Seek first and last their aid, Whate'er the task. Ignored, they've laid On Italy many a woe.

Twice have Monaeses', Pacorus', arms o'erborne Our evil-starred assaults. Twice have they hung 10 With glee the spoils from Romans wrung, Their small neck-chains to adorn.

Rome, with her civil quarrels hampered then, Came nigh to death, assailed by double foes,— The Egyptians, with their fleet, with bows The Dacians, better men.

Fertile in ill, the age infected first Wedlock and home and pride of honest birth; Fed from this spring, o'er all the earth

Poured forth the time accurst. 20

Our grown girls love to learn Ionian ways Of lewd suggestion in the dancer's school; Nay each with evil tricks is full Ev'n from her callower days.

Wedded, erelong she seeks some younger spark, — • While her man sips his wine, — no matter who, Forbidden joys to share, and woo

Her favours in the dark. D5'5

66 Horace

Why, orders she'll attend to, nowise nice, Nor her man either. If some pedlar call, 30

Or Spanish galleon's master, — all Are welcome, at a price.

Not from such parents was the manhood nursed That dyed the sea with Carthaginian blood, Pyrrhus, Antiochus, withstood, Or Hannibal, accurst.

No, but the sturdy hinds of soldier breed, Trained with their Sabine spades the soil to turn. And firewood bring, as mother stern

Day's darg to each decreed, 40

Ev'n though the setting sun now spread afar Shade on the hills, and from tired steers removed Their yokes, bringing eve's hour beloved On his departing car.

What have the fatal years not brought of ill ? Our father's age, than their sires' not so good, Bred us ev'n worse than they ; a brood We'll leave that's viler still.

VII ASTERI&

Asterie, why weep for him who's due

To thy dear arms with Spring's first brightening airs,

Rich with Bithynian wares, Thy Gyges, faithful fond and true ?

Doubtless at Oricum storm-stayed he's kept, Since mad Capella's star rose, — doubtless spent

Chill nights in drear lament, And for his absent darling wept.

The Odes— Book III 67

Meanwhile his love-sick hostess' depute says

How she, poor Chloe, sighs in sick desire, 10

Just like thyself on fire, — Tempts him (sly wretch) a thousand ways.

Relates how Proteus' naughty wife by lies Moved her fond husband, in his trust misplaced,

Bellerophon the chaste To slay, because more chaste than wise.

Tells too, how Peleus was nigh done to death, Because he chose Hippolyta to spurn ;

Each guileful tale in turn, The pander breathes, but wastes his breath. 20

More deaf than cliff where seas Icarian smite, He hears as though he heard not, — pure, till now.

See to thyself, lest thou Like neighbour Enipeus more than's right.

I own that finer horseman none can see, When on the field of Mars his steed he guides ;

And that upon the tides Of Tiber none swims swift as he.

Still as the night falls, best close doors; nor peep Forth to the streets at sound of plaintive flute. 30

And though he oft impute Unkindness, still thy distance keep.

VIII AN ANNIVERSARY

What I, a bachelor, have got for task, This first of March, with flowers and censer's blaze And coal on turf afire, I hear thee ask In blank amaze, —

6S Horace

Ar.d ye: ir. all two trzrues car. tea:h. thru'rt ski Lea— :hez. while zrat ani rrateful feast v rite

To Bacchus h.-.i beer, vcwec. when well-ni^h killed By fall :: Tree.

That day's return . well wcrth a festal wreath.

Shall :he 7:::hri ::rk :r:r.: rut a ;ir ir.vzke, i.

V, - -;"- -rs: IT p-""-' c-r.5"" = ~;n i';^ '-.----- =

-- _ ____ , _— _ . .„ • -'I---. -? - - . ... • - r± — 7.. _

A h"-~ irei ruT?. a~i keei till breik cf iav ine _irnts a^.Tw; yet sz.a... r. r r. use ;zer.d;

1-lave dine with p-atrlct w;rrles over Rome!

F; - .-_. T--?._ ,~ — ~-- lr- j^ __» . ^ T _t. Ji _..!'_.. ^. ». T _'_"Z^~ —

n :-.vs :ur :li ::e ui-:n the Sisinifh shire. ,^ntazrla. ta.zr.ei by fetters l;zg delayed. Ev'n Sc}thia slaiks her : :w. ani plits r.: ~:re

Lire less ::r ;r. :e if haply here or there

.- . : r.e's han;-trei. take thy quiet T^ST with ~e;

And frar.kly iheerfui while the hour sziiles fair,

LX A DIALOGUE

HOTOCS. ' -\= Itr.r ^s I t: thy ihirzr.ed sir:.:

Was pleacir.r; a^i ncz.e ieartr larei t: rli-g K:s ams about thy zeck ::" white.

1 diunshed. wealthier thaz. Persia's King/'

The Odes— Book III 69

Lydia. li While for no other thou didst sigh,

And Lydia was not after Chloe placed, A maid of fair renown was I.

Than Roman Ilia more nobly graced."

Horace. '' Xow Thracian Chloe holds my heart.

Sweetly she sings ; the lyre she's skilled to plav. Freely for her with life FU part. n

If Fate my love spare till a later day."

Lvdia. '' Thurian Calais. Ornvtus' son.

j j

Warms me with mutual fire naught can allay. The risk of double death I'll ran.

If Fate my lad spare till a later day.'"

Horace. " What if the ancient love return.

And parted hearts with yoke of brass rebinds, If I the fair-haired Chloe spurn,

And Lydia scorned the old door open finds ? ' 2z

Lydia. ': Though fairer than a star is he.

Though lighter thou than cork, more prone to ire Than the insatiate Hadria's sea. —

With thee I'd gladly live, with thee expire."

A DOLEFUL SERENADE

Ev'n. Lyce, didst thou drink of distant Don,

Some brute thy husband, thou would'st grudge to cast

Mv bodv victim to the native blast.

J f

With these hard posts to lean upon. Dost hear the din wherewith the grate, the trees

*— '

About this " pleasant " courtyard planted, shake; And how bright Jove the drifted snows doth make L'nder his skyey power to freeze ?

70 Horace

Beware ! the rope may quit the wheel at speed !

From pride,, which Venus hates, 0 get thee free ! 10

No suitor-snubbing chaste Penelope

Thy Tuscan sire in thee did breed.

Though neither lovers' gifts, nor lovers' sighs, Nor lovers' violet pallor, nor the share Of thy own man in that choir-girl's affair,

Melt thee, — to these last desperate cries

Give ear. Not softer thou than mountain oak, Nor kindlier of heart than Afric snakes ! These ribs at least shall not till morning breaks

At thy chill door endure to soak ! 20

XI TO MERCURY AND THE LYRE

Thou god, who in Amphion's soul instilled The art through song Thebes' walls to raise from ground ; And thou, dear Shell, that on seven strings art skilled To sweetly sound,—

Once dumb thou wert, with no true note or clear, But now at rich men's board and temples friend ; Teach me a strain whereto her wilful ear Lyde may lend.

For she like a young filly skips away

Heels up across the field, a skittish thing; 10

With ne'er a thought of love, while yet she may She takes her fling.

Thou hast the skill tigers and trees to wile, And of swift rivers to abate the swell ; Nay, to thy wooing Cerberus did smile, Grim guard of hell.

The Odes — Book III 71

Yet round his Fury-seeming head are hung

A hundred snakes for guard; foul is his breath;

And from his monstrous jaw a triple tongue

Drops gory death. 20

Grimly laughed Tityos and Ixion too; Rested for once the Danaids' pitcher dry, While thou the maidens from their toil did'st woo With melody.

Make Lyde hear the story of their sin, And of the pains they suffer, virgins still, Whose Jar the water, ever flowing in. Can never fill.

Make her to know the curse which falls though late On crime, ev'n after death. Fiends sure were they ! 30 What could they worse? Fiends, who in cruel hate Could bridegrooms slay !

One, only one, proved worthy bridal bed, To perjured father with brave treason lying, And for her virgin name, till time is sped, Earned fame undying.

Thus to her youthful spouse her words did run: " Rise, lest a sleep unending on thee fall, Whence thou suspectest not. My father shun

And sisters all, 4°

Maidens accurst, who like she-lions seize Each her own captive bull, his flesh to rend. I will not stab thee, nor, more kind than these, To bondage send.

Me let my father load with cruel chains, That mercy I to my poor husband show; Let him o'er sea to far Numidian plains Force me to go !

72 Horace

Haste thou, where'er or feet or winds may guide! While love and darkness aid, with luck begone ! 50

And the sad tale some day of thy lost bride, Carve on her stone !

XII NEOBULE'S COMPLAINT

0 the hapless fate of maidens who to love must not give play, Nor with wine relieve love's heart-aches; else with terror day by day

They must tremble at a bitter uncle's tongue !

0 that naughty robber Cupid, Neobule, how he steals Every stitch Minerva taught thee, when the wicked god reveals

All the splendour of thy Hebrus, fair and young,

As he shows his gleaming shoulders, while he swims in Tiber's

tides,

Or far better than Bellerophon among the horsemen rides, And as boxer, or as runner, conquers still.

Deft is he too in the open, when the deer in terror fly, 10 With his dart to overtake them, or the wild boar to espy, And from lair amid the thickets oust at will.

XIII BANDUSIA'S FOUNTAIN

Bandusia's fount, more bright than crystal thou, Well worthy gift of flowers and mellow wine, —

To-morrow at thy shrine A kid I'll dedicate, whose brow,

The Odes — Book III 73

Just budding, is to love and battle stirred. But vainly ! With his red blood by and by

Thy waters cool he'll dye, This youngling of a wanton herd.

Thee the fierce Dogstar with his fiery shock

Can never touch. Thy shadow coolness leaves 10

For ploughshare-wearied beeves, And for the straying pastured flock.

Thou too among famed fountains shalt be known, When I thy holm-oak sing, whose branches wave

Above the rocky cave, \Vhence leap thy babbling waters down.

XIV TRIUMPHAL ODE TO AUGUSTUS

Commons, from Spain our Caesar homeward hies ! Like Hercules, we're told, a laurel wreath He there hath sought, such as a hero buys At price of death.

Forth let his spouse, to her great consort true, Come with thank-offerings just: and by her side Our famed chief's sister; noble matrons too, Wearing in pride

Their votive wreaths, for daughter dear or son Now safe returned. And you, fair youths, I pray 10 And girls late wed, words of ill omen shun, Nor mar the day, —

A day to me so glad, that moody cares Shall be quite banished. No tumultuous tide Or stroke of death I'll fear, while Caesar bears Sceptre world-wide.

*D5I5

74 Horace

Bring scents, boy, wreaths, and jar of wine that knew The Marsian war, and keeps the name alive ! Haply from roving Spartacus some few

Unbroached survive. 20

And tell clear-voiced Neaera quick to braid In simple coil her locks of auburn hair; But if through her sour porter thou'rt delayed, E'en leave him there !

Years with their whitening locks subdue the heart Once keen for lawsuits and the reckless fray; I had not taken thus the peaceful part In Plancus' day.

XV TO CHLORIS

Thou, wife of humble Ibycus,

Fix at long last a limit to thy sin, And to thy labours infamous;

Now that thy span more near to death draws in,

Cease with the maidens to disport,

Or on their starry sheen to cast disgrace.

That which with Pholoe doth assort,

Befits not thee so well. With better face

Thy daughter young men's homes may storm,

Like frenzied Bacchant whom the timbrels craze; 10

'Tis love of Nothus that doth warm

Her heart, when like some wanton roe she plays.

Thee, wools near famed Luceria shorn

Better become, not cithern's tinkling note,

Nor rose-wreaths shining like the morn, Nor jars drained to the lees by aged throat.

The Odes— Book III . 75

XVI , OF RICHES AND CONTENTMENT

Imprisoned Danae, what with brass-bound vault, And doors of oak, and hounds that watchful swarmed, Must have for ever been preserved unharmed From nightly gallants' rude assault,

If Jove and Venus had not laughed to scorn Acrisius, the hid girl's cowardly guard, Since clear the way would be, the gate unbarred, Once god should be as gold reborn.

Gold can a path through hosts of warders clear, And walls of stone more swiftly can displace 10

Than ever lightning could. Thus fell the race Of Amphiaraus, Argive seer,

By gold undone. With bribes, full many a town The Macedonian opened, and o'erthrew The power of jealous kings. Ships' captains, too, Bribes oft can net, though stern their frown.

As riches grow, care follows, and a thirst

For more and more. Maecenas, knighthood's praise,

Well 'twas for me, that I have shunned to raise

My head, to be by envy curst. 20

The more a man denies himself, Heaven gives So much the more. I gladly strip me bare, And from the rich man's camp to his repair, Who with life's least contented lives, —

More gloriously rich, despising pelf, Than, were it said that in my barns I house To the last ear what stout Apulia ploughs, If midst it all I'm poor myself.

j6 Horace

A rill of sparkling water, woodland dells Some acres wide, a cornfield's hopeful show, 30

These with their deeper bliss he cannot know, Who with rich Libya's lordship swells.

Though no Calabrian bees their honeys bear, Nor vintage wine grows old for my delight In Formian jar, nor upon pastured height Of Gallic hills grow fleeces rare

For me, — yet cruel Stint haunts not my doors, Nor if I wished for more, would'st thou withhold ; Still, better by desires wisely controlled

Shall I enhance my modest stores, 40

Than could I join all Croesus' wealthy land To gold-fed Midas' bounds. Who much doth crave, Much ever lacks. Happy to whom Heaven gave Just what's enough, with sparing hand.

XVII TO AELIUS LAMIA

Aelius, thou scion of old Lamus' race, — JTis said at least that every Lamia names Lamus for ancestor, and claims Through pedigrees to trace

The lineage down : him then thou sure must boast Thy founder, who the walls of Formiae First ruled, and Liris' stream (they say) That laps Marica's coast, —

A mighty monarch he ! Well, storms erelong Down sweeping from the east shall strew the grove With leaves, with useless wrack the cove ; 1 1

Else my rain-prophet's wrong,

The Odes — Book III 77

A raven old. Dry wood, ere tempest soaks, Go fetch. Thou must thy birthgod cheer at morn With wine, and pigling two months born, Thou and thy resting folks.

XVIII TO FAUNUS

Faunus, — fond courtier of the Nymphs who flee, — Entering my bounds, O bless each sunny field ; And as thou leav'st them, to my kidlings be As friend revealed !

Since, chos'n for thee each year's end from my fold, A kid is slain; the bowl, kind Venus' friend, Brims for thee full with wine ; from altar old Rich fumes ascend.

Skip all my beasts with joy upon the mead, Whene'er thy day, December's fifth, hath place; 10 Hamlet and steer, from toil together freed, Thy feast-day grace.

My lambs that day no prowling wolf need dread; The woods for tribute drop their leafy treasure. Each ditcher joys the hated earth to tread In triple measure.

XIX IN HONOUR OF MURAENA MADE AUGUR

How far the space from Inachus, To Codrus, he who for his country fell, —

How long the line of Aeacus, — Or who fought whom at Troy, — thou'rt quick to tell;

Horace

But what a cask of Chian costs, Or who'll provide hot water, who afford

Houseroom, or at what hour the frosts From those Pelignian hills I'll thaw, — no word !

Wine, for the Rising Moon I Ho, wine For Midnight's Hour I Quick, boy ! A bumper toast 10

I give, — Muraena Augur! " One to nine ' Mild cups are mixed, or " one to three " at most;

The man who loves his Muses odd Will claim his ladlings three times three,

Being bard inspired. But drunkard's mode Of three beyond, for peace' sake must not be.

So the nude sister Graces think, Being foes of strife. But I'm for folly ! Why

Blow not the pipes ? Why when we drink Hangs the flute idle with the lyre laid by ? 20

The stingy hand at feasts I hate ! Fling roses ! Let sour Lycus hear the din !

And our fair neighbour, ill-matched mate Of dotard Lycus, let her list within !

0 Telephus, of the clustered hair, Youth bright and clear as evening star a-blooming.

Thou'rt loved by Rhode ripe and fair,- Me, a slow flame for Glycera's consuming.

XX

A SCULPTURED CONTEST

See'st thou not, Pyrrhus, what thy risk to beard That Afric lioness' cubs ? Thou show'st thee proud, But when the tussle's o'er thou'lt fly afeared, A spoiler cowed,

The Odes— Book III 79

When through thy serried ranks her course shall be, The bright Nearchus claiming ! Stern the maul ! Settling if in more part the prize to thee, Or her, shall fall.

But whilst thy shafts thou'rt drawing keen and fast, And she her fangs is whetting, death to wreak, — 10 The contest's umpire 'neath bare foot hath cast The palm they seek.

A fresh breeze sweeps his shoulder, and his hair Flows odorous down: a Nireus fair he seems, Or Ganymede, the youth whom Jove did bear From Ida's streams.

XXI FOR CORVINUS

Good Jar, whose years like mine from Manlius date, Born (who can tell?) to make men jest or weep, Quarrel, love madly, or just sleep,— Whate'er the mood or state

For which thou'rt nursing that old brand of thine, Only on some auspicious day shouldst thou Be drawn ! Come then, Corvinus now Demands a mellower wine !

Never shall he, although he's soaked already In talks Socratic, rudely say thee no : 10

Oft ev'n old Cato's worth would glow ('Tis said) with bumpers heady.

Thou hast the power to apply a merry screw To souls else hard to draw. Then wise men's craft And secret plans, by waggish draught Thou dost disclose to view.

80 Horace

To sorrow-stricken mourners thou bring'st hope, Strength dost thou give, lifting the poor man's horn; Then, monarch's angry crowns he'll scorn,

And with armed warriors cope. 20

Venus, if kind, and Bacchus who unbars Men's hearts, and Graces slow their clasp to break, And lamps, shall keep thy power awake, Till Phoebus chase the stars.

XXII HYMN TO DIANA

Protectress pure of hills and wooded heath Thou who, thrice called, makest young wives immune From child-birth pangs and savest them from death, — Goddess triune, —

Thine be this pine-tree, o'er my villa bending, Whose stem I hope to drench, in pious trust, Yearly with blood of boar-pig, just intending His first side-thrust.

XXIII TO PHIDYLfe, A COUNTRY HOUSEWIFE

If, rustic Phidyle, on New-moon's day With hands upturned to heaven thou make thy vow; And to the housegods, pigling thou, Nard, and new corn, repay,—

Then no Sirocco shall thy vines make brown, No mildew blast thy crops ; no killing blight In apple-bearing time shall smite Thy tender nurslings down.

The Odes— Book III 81

As for the costly beasts that browsing feed On snowy Algidus, 'mid ilex-trees 10

And oaks, or graze on Alba, these In votive death shall bleed

By Pontiffs' axe-stroke. Thy small gods to tempt With lavished blood of ewes, were bootless cost, — From aught but rosemary at most, And myrtle gift, exempt.

And if no vow fix what thy hand must lay

Upon the altar, then parched corn and salt

As well 'fore heaven shall clear a fault,

As costlier victims may. 20

XXIV OF ROME'S DECAY

Though than Arabia's treasured gold And all the wealth of Ind thou wealthier be ;

Though with thy ponderous piles thou hold The whole Tyrrhenian, ay, or Pontic sea;

Yet since the coping on thy roof Dire Fate her adamantine bolts hath set,

Ne'er shall thy shrinking soul be proof 'Gainst terror, and Death's all-enfolding net.

Better the Scythians live, whose days Are spent in huts, dragged each on its own wain 10

Across the steppes. Wiser the ways Of the rude Goths, whose fields unmarked remain,

Freely for each in turn to yield Their fruits. No tillage longer than a year

They grant. When each hath wrought his field, For a successor next the way is clear.

82 Horace

There from step-babes, their mother dead, A woman holds her hand, is good and kind.

No rich wife rules the man she's wed, Or dares to some spruce lover give her mind. 20

Their parents' worth for dower they prize, And their own virtue, that in simple faith

Must shrink from stranger's touch; their eyes Gazing appalled at sin, whose ransom's death.

0 if there be a man whose claim 'Twill be to end our deeds of civic wrong, —

If on his statues writ the name " Father of Cities " he desires erelong, —

Then let him dare our wills unblest To tame, and so earn after-ages' praise; 30

For Virtue living we detest, But mourn the goodness vanished from our gaze.

What benefit are empty wails, If crime we prune not with a knife severe?

Where life is tainted, what avails Law without morals ? Men no longer fear

The zone to invade of sweltering heat, Or the drear northern waste, whose snow-clad soil

Stands fast with frost. Our merchants meet The ocean's rage with skill and conquering toil. 40

Thus Poverty's inglorious load Bids man unheard-of things endure and try; While Virtue's solitary road

j

He deems too steep, and cowardly passes by.

Let's to Rome's Capitol hand o'er, — The shouts of flattering mobs invite us there, —

Or in the nearest sea-depths pour Our pearls, our gems, our gold, a useless ware !

The Odes— Book III 83

Gold, source of evil last and first, Away with it, if we for sin repent ! 50

We must this root of greed accurst Pluck up; and young minds on indulgence bent

We must in sterner studies guide ! The young lord now, how high soe'er his race,

Knows not with easy seat to ride ; He fears to hunt; gambles with better grace.

At the Greek hoop he'll challenge you, Or dice, though these no Roman laws allow.

His sire meanwhile, to rogue-craft true, Cheats partner, ay, guest-friend, no matter how, 60

And hastes to enrich a worthless heir. For with his growing wealth insatiate still,

Ever a gap he thinks shows bare, Which one small profit more is like to fill.

XXV

A BACCHANALIAN RHAPSODY

Whither, O Bacchus, bear'st thou me, Filled with thee full ? To what groves swept along,

Or caves, in rapture fresh from thee, Shall the grots hear me meditate a song,

That glorious Caesar's fame shall place Amid the stars, and in Jove's council-hall?

Song let me sing shall do him grace, Fresh, such as ne'er from other lips did fall!

Ev'n as to wakeful votary, From far height gazing, Hebrus' stream gives thrill, 10

And savage-haunted Rhodope, And snow-clad Thrace, — like joys my bosom fill

84 Horace

Wand 'ring by banks and woodlands lone. O Naiads' King and Bacchants', who through thee

Have strength tall ash-trees to dethrone, And by mere wrenching sink their majesty, —

No petty song or low be mine, Naught in't be mortal ! Sweet the attempt hath been,

God of the wine-press, brow to twine Like thee, with chaplet of the vine-leaf green ! 20

XXVI LOVE RENOUNCED AND RESUMED

I've lived my life, a lover with the best, Nor without glory my love-fights I fought: Now arms and war-worn lute I've brought, Upon that wall to rest,

Which on her left doth sea-born Venus guard. Here, ay ! just here, the gleaming flambeaux set, Crowbars, and bows, which many a threat Once hurled at gateways barred !

0 thou who art of fertile Cyprus queen And Memphis, where no Thracian snows can reach, 10 Raise thou the whip just once, and teach Chloe a milder mien.

XXVII TO GALATEA WISHING GOOD VOYAGE

Let screech-bird's cry bode impious travellers ill, While pregnant bitch or gravid vixen prowls, Or dun she-wolf, that from Lanuvium's hill Portentous howls.

The Odes— Book III 85

Let serpent blight their course ev'n from the start. When like an arrow flashed in flight oblique It scares their ponies ! But if friend depart Good words I'll speak,

Watching the signs; and ere a bird, whose cries Mean murky weather, for dull bogland bends, 10

A crow I'll call, that from the eastern skies Fair omen sends.

Good luck goes, Galatea, with thee still; O be my name upon thy heart engraven ! Upon the left no woodpecker bodes ill, Or flitting raven !

Yet may'st thou see amid what dire unrest

Orion hastes to setting. Well I know

Hadria's wild wrath, and how, though dear's the west,

Winds thence can blow. 20

May our foes' wives and children learn the roar Of fierce sou-wester blindly driv'n, the whirl Of surges dark, and buffets of the shore, Where breakers swirl !

So felt Europa, when her snowy form She to the crafty Bull did trust, and gazed On yawning seas, where weltering monsters swarm, — Brave yet amazed.

Some hours ere then she strolled through meads in bloom, Twining a votive wreath the Nymphs to please ; 30

Now in dim darkness, naught but ocean's gloom And stars she sees.

Soon as she touched Crete's hundred-citied isle, " Woe, Sire ! " she wailed, " for my lost maiden name, And maiden honour, which a love most vile Foully o'ercame !

86 Horace

Whence came I, whither go ? Death singly seems For maiden's fault too light. Do I for sure Waking deplore a sin, or, mocked by dreams,

Am I still pure, — 40

Dreams of deceit sent through the ivory gate? Which was the better choice, through weary hours To traverse tedious seas, or, as of late, Pluck tender flowers?

0 that some hand that thrice-accursed Steer Would to my wrath betray ! How should I strive With steel the monster's horns, erstwhile so dear, To rend and rive !

Shameless was I to leave my father's home; Am shameless still, failing myself to slay. 50

0 god that hears, miy I 'mid lions roam, A naked prey !

Ere squalid wasting mar this damask cheek, Or savour from this dainty form hath passed, While young and fair, to tigers' maw I seek Straight to be cast.

Perchance from my far sire these words are wrung. ' Base girl, thus slow to die ! Thy girdle take,- Lucky 'twas left, — and on this ash- tree hung,

Thy neck go break ! 60

Or if a cliff, and rocks all sharp for death, Please better, cast thee where the storms sweep by. Else must thou, cringing at a mistress' breath The distaff ply;

And, princess born, be forced some barbarous dame, Poor concubine, to serve.' To her thus wailing Venus with quizzing smile, and Cupid, came, His slack bow trailing.

The Odes— Book III 87

The goddess laughed a while, then thus commands " 'Twere well these angry censures to forbear, 70

When that curst Bull shall give into thy hands His horns to tear.

Of mighty Jove unknowing spouse thou art ! Cease then thy sobs ; and life in future frame Fitting thy state. Of the round world one part Shall bear thy name."

XXVIII TO LYD&

On Neptune's feast how best approach Our festal task? Quick, Lyde, from its vault

The treasured Caecuban come broach, And on embattled wisdom make assault !

Swift doth the mid-day sun decline ; Yet thou, as though the day would never fail,

Art slack that lingering jar of wine With " Bibulus Consul " stamped, from bin to hale !

I, taking the first turn, will tell Of Neptune and his green- tressed Nereid court. 10

Next thou shalt sing, to thy curved Shell, Latona, and swift Cynthia armed for sport.

Of Venus last, who Cnidos loves And the bright Cyclad isles, and o'er the surge

Oft with linked swans to Paphus roves. Night too shall have her meed, in timely dirge.

Horace

XXIX TO MAECENAS

Scion of Tuscan Kings, a wine of brand Mellow and still untapped, with roses fair, And fragrant nut-oil for thy hair, Long have I kept in hand.

Cast lingering from thee, nor for ever view Lush Tibur, Aefula's slope, the long hillside, Where Telegon of old did bide, He who his father slew.

Quit for a time the luxury that cloys, And thy high towers which touch the dizzy clouds; 10 Admire not so Rome's smoke and crowds, And all her prosperous noise.

Oft do the rich find in a change relief; And a plain meal beneath a poor man's roof, With no proud curtains' purpled woof, Smooths the tired brow of grief.

'Tis summer now. Cepheus, late hid, doth blaze; Bright Procyon rages, and the increasing glow Of the fierce Lion's star doth show

Return of sweltering days. 20

The weary shepherd with his drooping sheep Seeks the cool stream, and shade of clustered trees To rough Silvanus dear. No breeze Wakes the hushed banks from sleep.

Yet still thou'rt brooding what adjustment new Best fits our country's case; for her thy care, What factious Don and China dare, Or Bactria's King, to do.

The Odes— Book III 89

Wisely doth Heaven the future's issues mask In night of murkiest darkness, — wisely smiles, 30

When foolish fear poor men beguiles For bidden things to ask.

Learn calm to face what's pressing. For the rest. Life's like a river's flow, which now shall glide Straight on to meet the Tuscan tide : Now on its storm-tost breast

Sweeps cattle, trees uprooted, loosened stones, Ev'n houses, all in one. A rumbling fills Near woods and distant echoing hills,

While the rent river moans, 40

Which erst had flowed so still. Self-centred he, And blest, who can make boast each coming night " This day I've lived." Or dark or bright To-morrow's dawn may be,

As Jove shall please. But never deed that's done Can ev'n high Heaven make as 'twere thing of naught; Or act, by Time to issue brought, Cancel as though 'twere none.

Fortune, her cruel trade quite to her mind, Persistent still her wanton game to play, 50

Transfers her favours day by day, — To me, to others, kind.

Stays she, I'm pleased; but if swift wings she shake, I drop her paltry gifts, wrapping my life In its own worth; and Want for wife, Undowered but honest, take.

'Tis not my way to fly to shabby prayers, If in some southern gale the mast should creak ; Or patched-up peace by vows to seek,

For fear some cherished wares 60

90 Horace

From Tyre or Cyprus go to enrich the tide. A breeze ev'n then will o'er the Aegean waft Safely my little two-oared craft, The Twin-Star god my guide.

XXX

A CLOSING SONG TO HIS MUSE

A monument I've achieved more strong than brass,

Soaring kings' pyramids to overpass;

Which not corroding raindrip shall devour,,

Or winds that from the north sweep down in power,

Or years unnumbered as the ages flee !

I shall not wholly die. What's best of me

Shall 'scape the tomb. In later praise I'll grow

Still fresh, as long as Vestal still and slow

With Pontiff climbs Rome's Capitol. Men shall tell,

Where Aufidus' fierce torrents rave and swell, 10

Where drought-vexed Daunus filled a rustic throne,

How I, from humble stock to greatness grown,

First dared Aeolian song with Latin speech

To attune. Forth then for well-earned prize outreach

Thy hand, Melpomene, and deign to lay

Upon my locks chaplet of Delphic bay !

THE ODES— BOOK IV

TO VENUS

Venus, thy long forgone campaign Would'st thou renew? Spare me, 0 spare, I pray !

Not now, as in kind Cinara's reign My manly strength. Stern mother of Cupids gay,

Cease at long last a man to try, Left by his years, which touch two score and ten,

Hardmouthed to thy soft tyranny ! Go where fond prayers invite of younger men;

Fly hence on thy bright swans upstayed, And for young Paulus Maximus enquire; 10

There richer feast is for thee laid, If thou dost seek a fitting heart to fire.

Handsome, highborn, he's quick to raise His voice for trembling friends at justice' bar;

Young, charming in a hundred ways, The standards of thy fight he'll carry far.

Then gladly, should he by thy power Some rival rich and liberal outpace,

'Neath a brave citrus-pillared bower By Alba's lakes thy statue he will place. 20

There incense to thy heart's desire Thou'lt breathe, and listen for thy soul's rejoicing

To Berecyntian pipe and lyre, Mingled with music of the flute's sweet voicing;

91

92 Horace

There twice a dav will maidens sweet

f>

And youths in choir make thy dear praise resound,

And with their brightly gleaming feet In Salian measure triply tread the ground.

Nor maid nor youth delights me now, Nor credulous dream of heart's exchange, nor hours 30

Of challenged wine-bout, nor the brow Girt with a wreath of freshly gathered flowers.

And yet, dear Ligurinus, why Falls thus the infrequent teardrop o'er my cheek?

Why on my lips thus faltering die The love-pleas, once so manful, now so meek ?

In nightly dreams I hold thee fast, Or o'er the Campus Martius flying chase thee,

Or through the waters speeding past, I follow on, unkind one to embrace thee ! 40

II TO IULUS ANTONIUS. A BROTHER POET

The poet who with Pindar seeks to vie Soars on such wax-bound wings as Daedalus framed, Only that some green sea may by and by From him be named.

Like torrent's clamorous rush adown the steep, Which rains have sent past banks familiar roaring, So Pindar's song flows onward full and deep, Unfathomed pouring.

WTell worthy he Apollo's wreath to gain, When down bold dithyrambs new words he flings, ic

And in a verse no alien laws restrain, Impetuous sings,

The Odes— Book IV 93

Whether of gods, and kings with gods for sires, Through whom by a just death the Centaurs fell, — Fell, too, the grim Chimaera, belching fires Her foes to quell,

Or sings of boxers, or steeds swift of flight,

O ' O *

Led home like gods bearing the palm they gain, But not a hundred statues shall delight

Like Pindar's strain; 20

Or mourns a warrior reft from weeping spouse, And to the skies uplifts in golden setting The splendour of his virtues, nor allows Chill Death's forgetting;

Mighty's the breath in each, to bear on high The Swan of Dirce, when to Cloudland's plains He soars. More like some tiny bee am I. With endless pains

Sipping the scented thyme, it flits along The Matine hills; I round moist Tibur's glen 30

Wander, a modest poet, and my song Laborious pen.

Thyself shall sing, Bard of a mightier quill, Great Caesar's praise, when with earned wreath on head Sygambrians fierce he up the Sacred Hill Hath proudly led;

Caesar, than whom no boon of nobler worth Fate or kind gods e'er gave, or e'er shall give, Ev'n though the Golden Age upon the earth

Once more may live. 40

Thyself shall sing of festivals and sports, Proclaimed to show a nation's thankful glee For brave Augustus come, — sing Justice' courts From causes free.

94 Horace

Then if to me is giv'n a fitting word, My voice with thine full-throated I shall raise ; " Fair Sun," I'll sing, thankful for prince restored, " Day worth our praise ! '

Thee, Triumph God, ev'n as thy car ascends, Thee, Triumph God, not once nor twice we'll name; 50 All Rome will name thee ; and to gods proved friends Incense shall flame !

Thy vow will cost thee, lulus, many kine. One new-weaned calf, which on lush grass doth stray Feeding his lusty youth, shall pay for mine, On that blest day ;

On brow a mark he bears as white as snow, Shaped like the crescent moon, rising in view On her third eve ; his skin elsewhere doth show

A tawny hue. 60

III TO MELPOMENE

He whom at birth thou'st smiled upon Just once, dear Muse, shall ne'er at Isthmian game

Be decked for boxing victory won. No steed of strength shall from the field of fame

In Greek car bear him conqueror home. Nor shall great Rome his form have e'er beheld

Bay-wreathed to her high Capitol come In triumph for king's haughty threat'nings quelled.

But him, the brooks that peaceful glide Past fertile Tibur's tilth and the deep shade 10

Of leaf-clad trees, to fame shall guide, For songs such as Aeolian poets made.

The Odes— Book IV x 95

The sons of Rome, — 'mongst cities chief and queen,— Deign, in the poet-band whom she holds dear,

To grant me place. And now less keen Detraction at my heels doth snarl and sneer.

Pierian Muse, whose fingers rule The dulcet chime of music's golden shell, —

Thou who could'st ev'n dumb fishes school To sing like swans, if thou didst think it well,— 20

'Tis by thy gift that passers wait For my appearing, and a finger raise,

" Rome's Bard " to point at. Whether great Or small my power to please, thine, thine the praise !

IV IN PRAISE OF DRUSUS

Like the winged warder of the thunder's roll, Whom o'er the birds of air Jove king decreed, Because proved true when Ganymede, The fair-haired boy, He stole, —

Lo, from the eyry, though untrained for flight, Forth-driven by youth and inborn strength, he hies, Soon as Spring's breeze and cloudless skies His wavering swoop invite :—

Then, stronger grown, he to fresh effort wakes, Ruthless campaign on sheepfolds next to wage; 10

Last, hunger and the warrior's rage Hurl him on writhing snakes :

Or like a lion's cub that speeds away From his brown mother's dugs on roe-deer straight. Which, on lush grass intent, too late Sees him in act to slay, —

96 Horace

So showed young Drusus 'neath the Alpine heights To our Vindelic foes. The why and how, That from old times these wield till now

An Amazon axe in fights, 20

I have not asked; all things man may not learn. Enough meanwhile, that foes, who long and far Had forced their conquering way in war. By a youth's plans in turn

Overthrown, found to their cost what breed and brain Can grow to, fostered by Augustus' care, — For what great issues youths prepare, Whom his pure home shall train.

Only from parents brave, brave sons proceed. Horses alike and steers the merit prove, 30

That was their sires'. No timid dove, Do warlike eagles breed.

Yet doth wise schooling inborn powers extend; And culture, rightly ordered, to brave hearts New vigour brings ; but manly parts, Undrilled, fail in the end.

What, Rome, thou ow'st the Neros, testify Metaurus stream, fall'n Hasdrubal, Rome's day Of hope renewed, when passed away

The cloud from Latin sky, — 40

The day which first smiled with glad victory, Since Hannibal's dread power through Italy passed Like flame through firewood, or like blast Scouring Sicilian sea.

From that day forth, Rome's manhood grew apace In prosperous toils; and Roman fanes, brought low By impious Punic scathe, could show Their gods once more in place.

The Odes — Book IV 97

Till at the last false Hannibal hath said : " Like deer are we, of ravening wolves the spoils; 50 Yet madly chase we foes, whose toils 'Twere triumph to evade.

The race, that from Troy's burning took its strength, And tempest-tost bore through the Tuscan foam Gods, babes, and aged sires, from home To Latium's towns at length, —

Like oak on dark-leaved Algidus, which grows Stronger, the more with keen axe-stroke 'tis shorn, That race, through loss and death reborn,

Sword-hewn, the braver shows. 60

Not harder proved the Hydra, which increased, In Hercules' spite, the more he mowed it down; Not Thebes did breed, by Cadmus sown, Nor Colchis, direr beast!

Deep sink it in the sea, 'twill rise more hale; Grip it, and though ne'er foiled as yet thou engage, 'Twill throw thee, and fresh battles wage, For wives to tell the tale.

Never again shall message proud be sped By me to Carthage. Gone, ah ! gone, the fame, 70 The hope and fortune of our name, Now Hasdrubal is dead ! '

Nothing is there on earth which Claudian hands Shall not accomplish. For with kindly power Jove guards them, and when dangers lower Wisdom a way commands.

98

Horace

V

TO AUGUSTUS

Born under kindly gods, best guardian thou Of Romulus' race, absent art thou too long ! Promise of swift return thou gave the throng Of thy high Senate, — come then, now !

Restore, kind chief, light to this land of thine ; For when, like Spring, thou dost thy face display For thy folk's joy, more sweetly goes the day, And the new morns serener shine.

Ev'n as a mother longs, when o'er the plain Of wide Carpathian seas fierce storm's alarms 10

And envious gales from her fond waiting arms Long past the year her boy detain,—

Calling with omens, prayers and vows, her gaze Ever toward the curving shore she sets ; So, pierced with loyal passion of regrets, His land for absent Caesar prays.

For safe our oxen now stray in the fields; Ceres and bounteous Joy our tillage bless; Over the seas, now peaceful, sailors press,

And Honour her fair credit shields. 20

No vileness now to cleansed homes enters in; New ways, new laws have the old blots erased. For children like her spouse each wife is praised; And vengeance follows close on sin.

Who Parthia would fear or Scythia cold, Or the huge swarms that German forests breed, While Caesar lives to save us ? Who would heed The war waged by Iberia bold ?

The Odes— Book IV 99

Each tills his own vine-slope till sun goes down, Wedding his vines to the once-widowed trees; 30

Then cheerly to his cups, pledging in these Thy name divine, the feast to crown;

And with much prayer and gift of sprinkled wine, Thy favour, with his housegods' joined, doth crave. So grateful Greece to Hercules honours gave And Castor, deeming them divine.

" Such festivals long years for Italy yet

Grant us, kind Prince ! ' This pray'r at sober dawn,

While day's before us, — this, when wine is drawn,

We speak, what time suns seaward set. 40

VI

TO APOLLO AND DIANA

Thou scourge of boasters, as lewd Tityos proved, And Niobe, who saw her children slain; Achilles too, whom thy stern stroke removed Ere Troy was ta'en,-

Greater than others, matched with thee but small, Though he, of sea-nymph Thetis son, could shake WTith his tremendous spear Troy's leaguered wall, And bid it quake,—

There like a pine by biting axe-stroke shorn, Or cypress brought to ground by eastern gust, 10

Stretched all abroad he laid his neck forlorn In Trojan dust.

Not he the man in that false steed to cower From Pallas named, or at Troy's ill-timed feast To skulk in Priam's court, at the glad hour When looked-for least.

ioo Horace

He would his foes in open fight have matched,

Have burned the very babes in Greek-lit fire,

0 cruel! ev'n the unborn from womb have snatched,

In vengeful ire, 20

Had not the Father, moved by words of thine And of kind Venus, to Aeneas willed, That walls with kindlier omens for his line He yet should build.

Thou, who clear-voiced Thalia dost inspire, And in the Xanthus stream thy hair dost lave, Apollo, smooth-cheeked God, the Latin lyre Defend and save !

''Tis Pheobus' self granteth to my desires Breath of true poesy, and the poet's name; 30

Therefore, proud maidens, and ye sons of sires Glorious in fame, —

\

Since Dian doth protect you, she who stays With her dread bow the stags and lynxes fleet, — Mark well the Lesbian cadence of my lays, And finger-beat;

So shall ye fitly sing Latona's son;

Sing the curved goddess who o' nights doth shine,

Blessing the crops, and making swiftly run

The months in line. 40

Some day when wed thou'lt boast, girl, " I was one Who sang the heaven-blessed hymn by Horace taught, What time the Century's feast by circling sun Once more was brought."

The Odes— Book IV 101

VII TO TORQUATUS

Gone are the snows,, grass to the fields returns,

Their tresses to the trees. Earth decks herself afresh; the wimpling burns

Less full flow down the leas.

Lo ! the nude Graces linked with Nymphs appear,

In the Spring dance at play ! No round of hopes for us ! So speaks the year,

And Time that steals our day.

Melts Winter in the zephyrs ; Summer treads

On heels of Spring; in turn 10

To die, when Autumn forth her fruitage sheds; Last, Winter dull and stern.

Yet new moons swift replace the seasons spent;

But when we forth are thrust, Where old Aeneas, Tullus, Ancus went,

Shadow are we and dust.

Who knows that Heaven to this day's gift will please

To-morrow's sun to lend ? And all thy goods a greedy heir will seize,

Save what thyself did spend. 20

Once thou art dead, and Minos' high decree

Shall speak to seal thy doom- Though noble, pious, eloquent thou be,

These snatch not from the tomb.

Hippolytus, though chaste, Diana's love

Saves not from Death's grim hands;

Nor, for Pirithoiis dear, can Theseus move The grip of Lethe's bands.

O2 Horace

VIII TO CENSORINUS

Cups would I freely give, and bronzes fine

Bestow, dear friend, on every friend of mine;

Tripods I'd give, by Greeks for manful deed

As prizes gained, — nor least would be thy meed.

That is, were I so rich as to have bought

Works by Parrhasius or Scopas wrought.—

The first in colours soft, in stone the second,

A man or god to picture, skilful reckoned.

Not such my treasure, nor doth thy degree

Or temper ask such luxuries from me. ic

Thy fancy's all for poesy; 'tis mine

To give thee that; hear me its worth define I

Neither the public praise on marble urns

Engraved, whereby to patriots dead returns

The breath of life, — not Hannibal's fierce ire

And threats hurled back in ruin, nor the fire

Of impious Carthage burnt, makes him more famed,

Who snatched an epithet from Afric tamed,

Than does his poet friend's Calabrian muse,

When Ennius lauds him. So, if pen refuse 20

To tell the tale of thy good deeds, 'tis plain

Thou too wilt fail thy due reward to gain.

How had Mars' son and Ilia's e'er endured,

If Silence grim had Romulus' deeds obscured ?

Snatched from death's waves, ev'n Aeacus, judge below,

His refuge in the blessed isles doth owe

To poet's gift, and poet's kindly breath.

Him whom the Muse deems worth her praise, no death

Can reach; she grants him heaven. At Jove's prized board

She doth strong Hercules a place accord. 30

Castor and Pollux, 'tis the Muse that marks

As Stars, who from the deep save storm-tost barks.

Through her, his brows adorned with vine-leaves green,

Bacchus in act of answering prayers is seen.

The Odes— Book IV 103

IX TO LOLLIUS

Lest thou should'st think perchance the words may die \Yhich I, by roaring Aufidus born, impart For lyre to sing to, by an art None earlier dared to try, —

Though Homer highest sits, still set we near Pindar. Simonides. Alcaeus strong; Still from Stesichorus a song Of dignity we hear.

Time hath not yet effaced the merry jest Anacreon sang. Still lives and glows the fire 10

Aeolian Sappho to her lyre

Whispered from love-sick breast.

Not Spartan Helen only, burned to gaze On lover's braided locks, or joyed to see His train of regal pageantry,

And charm of princely ways.

Teucer was not the first well-skilled to loose Shaft from a Cretan bow. Troys many a time Were sacked ; more than one fight sublime

A huge Idomeneus 20

Or Sthenelus waged worthy to be sung. Not stern Deiphobus or Hector brave

Took wounds, chaste wife or child to save, First since the world was young.

Oft before Agamemnon brave men warred ; But all unwept they lie in endless night, Lacking, to deck their deeds with light, Song of a heaven-taught bard.

IO4 Horace

Valour unsung shows in no nobler dress Than cowardice when dead. ?Tis mine to save 30

Thy virtues, Lollius, from the grave; Xo sour forgetfulness

Shall I permit to gnaw thy toils away. A mind hast thou skilled in the world's affairs, One that through good and evil bears Right onward, nor doth stray

From that just honesty, which can but hate The tricks of greed, and which no love of gain, That all-absorbing pest, doth stain.

Thou play'st the magistrate 40

Xot one year, but as oft as honour's laws Thou dost uphold, or frown vile gifts aside, Or through opposing armies ride, Victor in virtue's cause.

The wealthy man thou could 'st not rightly choose As the supremely happy; rightlier goes The name of him, who wisely knows The gifts of Heaven to use;

Knows too to face reverse without a sigh, Xor death before dishonour fears to take; 50

Ready for dear companions' sake, Or native land, to die.

X TO LIGURIXUS

Though hard thou art still, thyself on the dear gift

of beauty pluming,

Yet when the unlooked-for change shall come to check

thy pride's presuming;

The Odes— Book IV 105

When dipt the locks that now about thy neck

in curls repose, When thy complexion's radiance, now more bright

than any rose, Fading hath changed thy daintiness to gloom

of years' decays, — ''' Alas ! " thou'lt cry, as on an altered self

in glass thou'lt gaze :: Why to my youth was not the wisdom given

which now I share ? Or with my old desires why come not back

youth's cheeks as fair ? '

XI

FOR MAECENAS' BIRTHDAY

A cask I treasure full of Alban wine, Nine years matured and more; my garden shows Parsley, dear Phyllis , fit thy wreath to twine ; And ivy grows

In plenty, to adorn thy tresses' splendour; The house with silver shines ; an altar stands In vervain wreathed, longing till lambkin tender Fall bv my hands.

* *

Each helpful soul is busy; in a whirl

Scurry the lads and maids about the rooms: 10

j *

The very flames are bustling, as they curl Their sooty fumes.

And now to tell thee why this glad unrest, — 'Tis Ides-day, girl, for which thy help is due, The day which parts the month by Venus blest, April, in two.

106 Horace

It is a day which justly I revere,

Not more my own birth-morning; since its date

For my Maecenas marks a fresh new-year

To celebrate. ro

I know thou'rt fond of Telephus; but he Soars past thy reach. Another holds him bound ; Rich, wanton, with the chains of pleasure she Enwraps him round.

Phaethon, burnt in car high-borne, gives warning 'Gainst greedy hopes. Offers example clear The winged Pegasus, a mortal scorning For cavalier;

These bid thee square ambition with desert, And owning hopes above thee wicked, shun 30

A lover set too high. Come then, sweetheart. My final one,

Since ne'er for other maid this heart shall glow, List to the strains, which with sweet voice rehearsed Erelong thou'lt render. Frowns and pique will go, By song dispersed.

XII TO VIRGIL

Spring's comrades, airs from Thrace, bringing repose To ocean, swell the sails now outward-bound. The lawns are hard no more, nor streams resound Swoln as of late with winter's snows.

Mark how she builds her nest, that bird ill-fated, Itys bewailing, — she the eternal shame Of Cecrops' house, who by deed none may name On a King's lusts her vengeance sated.

The Odes— Book IV 107

On the young grass reclined, with reed-note trills Each shepherd-swain, while he his fatlings tends; 10

Charming the god, who herded beasts befriends And loves Arcadia's shadowed hills.

The days, dear Virgil, pleasant thirsts prepare ; These if thou'rt fain with Bacchus-juice to allay Drawn from the vats of Cales, then thou'lt pay, Friend of great folks, with nard thy share.

A tinv onvx box of nard shall wile

» j

The cask, which now in stores Sulpician rests, Rich to inspire new hopes within our breasts,

And strong, life's bitters to beguile. 20

If for such joys thou'rt eager, come with speed Thy fee in hand. To drench thee with my wine, Thou paying naught, is bargain I decline; So trade the rich, who nothing need.

Of lingering and gain-seeking make an end ; Think, while there's time, how soon Death's pyre may blaze; And some brief folly mix with prudent ways: At the fit hour 'tis sweet to unbend.

XIII TO LYCE, GROWN OLD

Lyce, the gods have heard, have heard my vows! Old art thou now, yet still would'st fain seem fine,

In the old sports would'st shine, And, shameless still, dost still carouse.

Tipsy, in tones that quavering die away,

To wake dull Love thou singest. He's elsewhere.

On guard o'er Chia fair, Fresh-cheeked, skilled on the lyre to play !

io8 Horace

Ruthless is Love; for past each oak-tree dead

He flies, as he flies thee, — thy skin defaced, 10

With wrinkles overlaced, Teeth yellow, hair with snows bespread.

Not Coan gauze, though steeped in purple's glow, Nor costly jewels e'er the years restored, Which Time's swift pen hath scored On records which all men may know.

Whither hath fled thy charm, w^hither thy hue And comely gait ? What's left of that fair face,

Whereof the matchless grace Could from my soul its senses woo, — 20

The face, since my loved Cinara's, dearest known And daintiest? To Cinara, wroe's me !

Brief years did Fate decree, But chose, till Lyce should have grown

Old as an ancient raven, still to keep

Her life hung on, for hot young bloods to gaze

Amused, as sinks the blaze 'Mid smouldering ashes to its sleep.

XIV IN PRAISE OF TIBERIUS

What zeal by Senate or Assembly shown Could thy great deeds, Augustus, with fit word For future ages' praise record In annals or on stone,—

O thou of princes first, where'er abide Races of men o'er whom the sun hath passed? Ev'n the Vindelic tribes at last, W7ho long Rome's law defied,

The Odes— Book IV 109

The lesson learned how fierce thy warfare blazed. For with thy troops Drusus those savage powers, 10 Genaunian, Breunian, and the towers On awful Alps upraised,

With more than single vengeance overthrew. The elder Nero next fierce fight engaged, 'Gainst the huge Raetians battle waged, And with good fortune knew

To tramp them down. A noble sight was he, With what a rain of blows brave warriors, sworn To die as freemen, now o'erborne

He swept (as sweeps fierce sea 20

A southwest gale, while swift the Pleiads speed Dancing athwart the scud) with warlike ire Their squads to vex, and through the fire To hurl his snorting steed.

As the bull-fronted Aufidus with flood Sweeps lands where once Apulian Daunus led, And plans a watery waste to spread, Where kindly crops have stood, —

So Claudius planned their steel-clad power to cross, And with swift sweep of battle onward rode, 30

While front and rear like corn he mowed, A victor without loss:

For thine the men, the plans, the heav'n-blessed care ! As vanquished Alexandria op^d her port To admit thee, when her empty Court Submissive she laid bare

Just fifteen years ago, — the self-same date Brings victory from Fortune's hands once more; Thus to old deeds of fame new store Accrues, to swell thy state 40

1 10 Horace

To thee Cantabrian till this hour untamed, Mede, Indian, nomad Scythian, honour yield; A present god great Rome to shield And Italy, thou'rt acclaimed.

Thee Danube, Nile, which still their sources hide, Thee Tigris swift, and monster-haunted Deep, Which round far Britain's coasts doth sweep, Dashing his noisy tide,-

Thee Gallia's land that dreads not death to meet, Thee the domain of stern Iberia, hear; 50

Thee the blood-drunk Sygambrians fear, Their arms laid at thy feet !

XV

PRAISES OF AUGUSTUS

Pheobus, when I with wars my page would fill And with fall'n towns, by twang of lyre did chide My whim such petty sails to guide O'er Tuscan seas at will.

Caesar, thy Age hath brought our fields again Rich increase, and at our Jove's shrine rehung The standards which thy power had wrung From Parthians' haughty fane; —

For earth at peace, hath closed Rome's Janus-gate; — Curbed licence which past ordered limit strays; 10

Uprooted vice, and Rome's old ways Recalled to guide the state;

The ways whereby Rome's name and fame increased, And her great empire's majesty grew strong, Stretching from sunset's couch along Right to the rising East.

The Odes— Book IV 1 1 1

While Caesar guards, no strife of civic coil, Nor foreign stroke our country's peace shall fret, Nor leaders' quarrel, swords to whet

Or hapless towns embroil. 20

The Julian laws those shall not break, who drink From Danube's stream, nor Goths, nor Chinese foes, Nor treacherous Parthians, nor those Born by Don's river-brink.

But we, alike on feasts and working days, The merry Bacchus' gifts before us spread, After fit pray'rs to Heaven are said, With wives and babes shall praise,

As did our sires, brave men whose work is done, In songs that with the Lydian flute combine ; 30

Troy too, Anchises, and the line Of gentle Venus' son.

THE EPODES I

BEFORE THE BATTLE OF ACTIUM

Erelong, Maecenas, you in cruisers frail,

Mid men-of-war high towered, will sail; Ready in danger's hour, for Caesar's sake,

Each risk of his, your own to make. What then of me, whose years, while you remain,

Mean joy, — mean, without you, but pain? Shall I, as you suggest, seek home-bred ease,

Which, where you are not, cannot please; Or shall I, as a brave man should, prepare

The burdens of my friend to share? 10

I'll take my share ! And over Alpine heights,

Or where fierce Caucasus affrights, Or to the farthest creek of western sea,

My friend I'll follow manfully. Perhaps you ask, how I can help at all,

No soldier I, but weak and small,— I'll help at least myself, the fears to quell

Which parted friends know all too well. A bird dreads more lest gliding serpents slay

Her callow brood, if she's away; 20

Not that one whit more helpful could she be,

Though she cowered o'er her progeny. My part in this or any war I'll bear,

In hopes more of your love to share. Not that I wish more heifers to have bound

To ploughs of mine, tilling my ground ; Or flocks of mine Calabria's heats to exchange,

Ere dog-days, for Lucania's range. Or that some marble palace I may own,

Where Circe's Tusculan towers are shown. 30

112

The Epodes 1 1 3

Amply you have enriched your friend ere this.

I will not seek, to increase my bliss, For gold, which like sour Chremes I may hide,

Or like a spendthrift scatter wide.

II

IN PRAISE OF COUNTRY LIFE

' Happy the man, who far from town's affairs,

The life of old-world mortals shares; With his own oxen tills his forbears' fields,

Nor thinks of usury and its yields. Nor soldier he, by the fierce bugle called,

Nor sailor, at each storm appalled ; He shuns the forum, and the haughty gate

Of nobles stronger than the State. His business is round poplars tall to twine

The ripe young layers of the vine; 10

Or in some quiet valley to survey

His lowing heifers as they stray. Now with his knife the worthless shoots he lops,

Grafting instead for richer crops ; Draws the new honey, in pure jars to keep,

Or shears the timid staggering sheep. When Autumn, with his mellow fruitage gay,

Doth o'er the fields his head display, What joy it is the grafted pears to try,

And grapes which with sea-purple vie; 20

Fit gift, Priapus, choosing for thy hand,

Or Silvan, thine, guard of his land ! What joy, beneath some holm-oak old and grey

Or on thick turf, one's limbs to lay; While streams past toppling banks roll down their flood,

And the birds croon in every wood, And fountains murmur with their gushing streams

Sounds that shall sooth to sleep and dreams. Then when the thunderous winter comes again,

Rainstorms and snowdrifts in its train, 30

This side and that a many hounds he'll set,

i 14 Horace

Into the toils tierce boars to fret;

Or on smooth fork his fine-wrought network sling,

To clip the greedy thrush-bird's wing. Or trap the travelled crane or timid hare,

Prizes of joy beyond compare. Who amid sports like these forgets not quite

Love's ill desires and pestering plight? Nay if a modest wife be there to cheer

The home, and tend the children dear, 4.0

As stout Apulia's sunburnt women do,

Or Sabines, and at evening strew The sacred hearth with logs well-aged, to burn

Against her jaded man's return ; Next her fed beasts in hurdle-fence restrain,

And their distended udders drain; Last, from sweet cask the year's fresh wine-draught take,

And an unbought regalement make,— 0 then not Lucrine oysters so would please,

Or scaur, or turbot, that o'er seas 50

From eastern parts some thunderous storm may sweep

Into our waters from the deep ! Not guinea-fowl into my paunch would fare,

No nor Ionian partridge rare, More pleasingly, than fruit myself had pulled,

From olives' richest branches culled, Or meadow-haunting sorrel-leaves, combined

With mallows, to ill stomachs kind; Or haply lamb, slain at the Boundary-Feast,

Or kid, from a wolf's jaws released. 60

Mid junketings like these how good to spy

The fed sheep as they homeward hie, To see the wearied beeves with shoulders slack

Trundle the upturned ploughshare back; And seated hinds, the mansion's humming swarm,

Crowd where the hearth-gods' smiles show warm ! '

POSTSCRIPT

Alfius the usurer, when thus he swore

Farmer to be for ever more, At the mid-month his last transaction ending,

By next new moon is keen for lending. 70

The Epodes 1 15

III

A CURSE ON GARLIC

If ever knave his father's throttle break,

The doom for such foul crime I'll make, Garlic to eat, than hemlock deadlier far!

Flint surely, reapers' stomachs are ! What venom's this, that in my entrails boils?

Has poisoned gore from serpent coils Been in dead secret with my salad brewed,

Or has Canidia touched the food ? What time that comely Argonaut Jason charmed

Medea, she with garlic armed 10

Her lover, smearing him so strong, that he

Yoked the wild bulls quite easily. With it she soaked the gifts, his fere which slew,

Then forth on flying serpents flew. No heat like this, star-fed, e'er broiling fell,

Where parched Apulia's ridges swell; The poisoned cloak round Hercules' shoulders cast,

Did not the strong man fiercelier blast. If, wag Maecenas, e'er again you play

A trick like this on me, I pray 20

Your love with lifted hand each kiss may spurn,

And to the bed's far border turn.

IV A "NOUVEAU RICHE"

What feud's decreed 'twixt wolves and lambs by fate,

Like it 'twixt you and me the hate ; Seared are your loins, with Spanish ropes' ends mauled ,-

Your ankles, with hard fetters galled. Howe'er, proud of your cash, Rome's streets you range,

Your breed, mere fortune cannot change.

i 1 6 Horace

See you not, as the Sacred Way you pace,

With twice three ells of gown for grace, How change the looks of passers at your heels,

Swayed by a wrath which none conceals ? 10

"Torn by the hangman's whip, till sickness seized

The crier, see this rascal, pleased Four thousand roods to hold, Falernian ground;

While on the Appian Way resound His steeds, and in front seats, a noble knight,

He sits, in Otho's law's despite? W'hat good, a host of galleons to have led,

With their great brazen prows at head, 'Gainst pirates and absconded slaves, while now,

To this, — this cur, — a legion bow ? ' 20

V CANIDIA THE POISONER

0 Gods, who'er in heaven control the earth

And the whole race of mortal birth, What means this stir, what mean these looks of all,

Which, on me only, murderous fall? By thine own children, if Lucina's care

Aided thee truly child to bear, By this poor helpless childhood's dress, I pray,

And Jove, who will these deeds repay,- Why like a stepmother thus on me frown,

Or like wild beast, by knife struck down? ' 10

While thus with trembling lips the boy appealed,

And stripped, a naked form revealed So soft and young, that ev'n in Thracian's heart

Some throb of pity needs must start, — Canidia, who in her dishevelled hair

Small serpents wore, from graves bade bear Wild fig-trees torn, and cypress, trunk of gloom;

She calls too for a screech-owl's plume.

The Epodes 117

A screech-owl's eggs, with foul toad's blood bedewed ;

Herbs too she calls for, of the brood 20

Which poisonous Hiberia's famed to grow,

Or which lolcos' wastes can show. Bones from a starving cur-dog reft, these last

She bids in Colchian flames to cast. Meanwhile Sagana sprayed the house with care

In hellish waters, while her hair Like some sea-urchin's bristles upward stood,

Or boar's that haunts Laurentum's wood. Veia too, by no sense of sin dismayed,

Was busy piling with grim spade 30

The earth in heaps, panting at her employ.

There, in a hole deep-dug, the boy, By sight of meats, changed oft-times daily, dazed,

Should slowly perish as he gazed ; Just so much of his head above ground shown,

As one shows floating, chin upthrown. So might his marrow drained and liver dried

Sure philtre for her love provide, When once, after long stare at food forbid,

Sank on glazed eye the quivering lid. 40

Foul Folia of Ariminum, whose vile lust

Outrages Nature, she too must Have helped, so idle Naples swore, and each

Township hard by ; she with thrill screech Can summon down the stars, and from heaven's brink

The sailing moon can make to sink. But now Canidia with rage o'ercome

Gnaws with black tooth her untrimmed thumb, Then said, or left unsaid, what words of hell?

" Ye powers that answer to my spell, 50

Night, and Diana who still night dost rule,

When for our rites the time is full, Come now, and wreak upon your foe and mine

The wrath that stirs your hearts divine ! At this dread hour, when in fear-haunted woods

Each beast in grateful slumber broods, Grant that Suburra's prowling dogs bark loud

At that foul dotard, till the crowd

i i 8 Horace

Laugh him to scorn, though smeared with scents as fine

As e'er were wrought by hands of mine ! 60

What hath befall'n ? Why have the venoms failed,

Wherewith Medea's hate prevailed, When, ere she fled, the princess proud she paid,

Great Creon's child, and on her laid A drug-steeped wedding-vestment, which with flame

The newly-wedded bride o'ercame? Why is't, when not a herb or root forbid

Hath scaped me, in rough burrows hid ? He sleeps on beds so drugged, he must forget

What girl soe'er he's fondled yet. 70

Ah ! haply walks he thus about so free,

Helped by some rival's witchery ! Then, Varus, villain doomed to weep erelong,