ODE X.

The praise of Mercury as the Greek Hermes, god of eloquence (xóyios, facundus), of athletics (évaywvios), messenger of the gods (diákтopos), patron of thieves (λéπτŋs), helper (épioúvios), wielder of the golden wand and shepherd of the shades (χρυσόῤῥαπις ψυχοπομπός).

On Greek gods in Horace, cf. Sellar, pp. 161–162.

1. The Pleiads were daughters of Atlas, and of the eldest of those stars of spring-Maia . . . is born the shepherd of the clouds, wing-footed and deceiving, — blinding the eyes of Argus, – escaping from the grasp of Apollo, - restless messenger between the highest sky and topmost earth, the herald Mercury, new lighted on a heaven-kissing hill' (Ruskin). Cf. Alcaeus, fr. 5, χαῖρε Κυλλάνας ὃ μέδεις σὲ γάρ μοι | θῦμος ὕμνην, τὸν κορυφαῖς ἐν αὐταῖς Maîa yévvato Kpovídą μiyewa. Simon., fr. 18 (27); Eurip. Ion, 1 Martial, 7. 74. 1; Ov. Fast. 5. 663.

2. feros cultus: cf. Tenn., 'These were the rough ways of the world till now.' - recentum: early, i.e. 'recent' from their origin. 3. voce: 'I gave man speech, and speech created thought,' says Shelley's Prometheus. Before language men were mutum et turpe pecus (Sat. 1. 3. 100). — catus: an archaic word. Cf. 3. 12. 10. - et decorae: cf. 3. 14. 7. Grace and beauty come from gym

nastic exercises.

4. more: habit, practice.

6. parentem: cf. 'father of chemistry and cousin of the Earl of Cork.' Cf. on 1. 21. 11; 1. 32. 14; 3. 11. 3.

7. callidum. with complementary inf. Cf. 3. 11. 4, and callet, 4. 9. 49; Epist. 1. 10. 26. —iocoso: μáλa ǹdeîαι ai kλoĦal toû Dɛoû (Philost. Imag. 1. 26).

8. furto Eurip. (?) Rhesus, 217, onλntŵv ăva§; Longfellow, Masque of Pandora, by thy winged cap and winged heels I know thee. Thou art Hermes | captain of thieves.' Cf. Shelley's exquisitely funny version of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.

9-12. Cf. Dobson, A Case of Cameos, Here great Apollo with unbended bow, | His quiver hard by on a laurel tree, | For some new theft was rating Mercury, | Who stood with down-cast eyes

and feigned distress | As daring not for utter guiltiness, | To meet that angry voice and aspect joined. | His very heel-wings drooped; but yet not less | His backward hand the sun-god's shafts purloined.' — reddidisses: the threat implied by minaci would run in the direct form nisi reddideris. Dum terret is equivalent to a secondary tense for the sequence.

11. viduus: i.e. (to see himself) bereft of. Cf. Gk. Lex. s.v. χηρόω.

12. risit: had to laugh. Cf. 3. 11. 22.

13. quin et a rather prosaic transition. Cf. 2. 13. 37 ; 3. 11. 21. Priam's stealthy visit to the Greek camp by night, under the conduct of Hermes, to kiss the murderous hands of Achilles, and ransom the body of Hector, is told in one of the most touching episodes of the Iliad, 24. 159 sqq.

14. dives: perhaps with special reference to the rich ransom he bore (Il. 24. 232).

15. iniqua: a metrically convenient word freely used by Horace in various shades of meaning. Cf. 1. 2. 47; 2. 10. 4; 2. 4. 16; 2. 6. 9; 3. 1. 32. -Troiae: dat. of course.

17. reponis: bringest to their appointed place. For force of re, cf. 1. 3. 7; 1. 9. 6. But cf. Sen. Dial. 6. 19. 5, mors... quae nos in illam tranquillitatem in qua antequam nasceremur iacuimus reponit. The idea then would be that pious souls are restored to the Elysium from which they were taken at birth. Cf. Verg. Aen. 6. 756 sqq.

18. sedibus: abl. virga: the caduceus, κηρύκειον, ράβδος (Hym. Herm. 529); 'The golden wand that causes sleep to fly | Or in soft slumber seals the wakeful eye; | That drives the ghosts to realms of night or day, | Points out the long uncomfortable way' (Pope's Odyssey, 24. 1-4); His sleepy yerde in hand he bore upright, | And hat he wered upon his haires bright' (Chaucer); The serpent-wanded power | Draw downward into Hades with

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his drift | Of flickering spectres' (Tenn. Demeter); Verg. Aen. 4.242. In Pind. O. 9. 35, Hades has a similar staff. coerces: as a shepherd his flock. Cf. 1. 24. 18.

ODE XI.

Have done with unlawful pryings into futurity, Leuconoe. Live while you live. Old time is still a-flying.

Cf. Dobson's Villanelle, 'Seek not, O maid, to know, | Alas! unblest the trying, | When thou and I must go '; George O. Trevelyan's amusing parody, 'Matilda, will you ne'er have ceased | Apocalyptic summing, | And left the number of the beast | To puzzle Doctor Cumming?' There is a weak imitation in Dodsley, 4. 105, and a poor version by Hamilton, Johnson's Poets, 15. 635. For the beautiful choriambic metre, cf. 1. 18, 4. 10, Catull. 30, Sappho, fr. 68 (19), and Swinburne's metrical experiment, 'Love, what ailed thee to leave life that was made lovely, we thought, with love?'

1. quaesieris: ne with perf. subj. is a more peremptory colloquial prohibition than ne with present subj., or the normal polite periphrasis with noli. Between Terence and Livy it is found only in distinctly colloquial passages in Cicero and four times in Horace. Elmer, Latin Prohibitive, pp. 3, 19.- scire nefas cf. Lucan, 1. 127; Stat. Theb. 3. 563; infra, 4. 4. 22; Epode 16. 14; 3. 29. 32.

2. nec: Elmer, Lat. Prohib. p. 27, says that Horace is the first poet to use nec with perf. subj. in clearly prohibitive sense following ne. Neve or neu was normal. It will be observed that nec temptaris is virtually a mere expansion of ne quaesieris, and adds nothing new; temptaris temptando. Cf. Munro on Lucret. 5. 891.

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3. numeros: the calculations of Chaldaean astrologers, called mathematici. Cf. on 2. 17, and Tac. Hist. 1. 22. ut melius : how much better. Cf. Sat. 2. 6. 53; Verg. Aen. 2. 283. — quidquid erit: cf. Verg. Aen. 5. 710, quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est.

4. hiemes: the years are marked by summers or winters to suit the rhetorical color. Cf. Tenn., A hundred winters snowed upon his breast.' — tribuit: has assigned; ědwkev, étékλWOEV.

5. debilitat: breaks the force of. Cf. Lucret. 2. 1155, fluctus plangentis saxa. - pumicibus: any wave-eaten stone. Cf. Verg. Aen. 5. 214; Lucret. 1. 326, vesco sale saxa peresa.

6. liques: i.e. strain out the sediment through the colum or colander. spatio brevi: abl. abs. of reason, because of the briefness of our span.

7. spem longam: cf. 1. 4. 15, the long thoughts' of youth; 'quittez le long espoir et les vastes pensées.' Cf. Cowley, Shortness of Life, 'Horace advises very wisely, and in excellent good words, spatio brevi spem longam reseces; from a short life cut off all hopes that grow too long. They must be pruned away like suckers that choke the mother-plant, and hinder it from bearing fruit.'-dum loquimur: cf. Persius, 5. 153, vive memor leti, fugit hora, hoc quod loquor inde est; Longfellow, Wisely the Hebrews admit no present tense in their language; | While we are speaking the word, it is already the past'; Boileau, ‘Le moment où je parle est déjà loin de moi.' — fugerit: will be gone. Cf. Lucret. 3. 915, iam fuerit; Milton, Fly, envious time, till thou run out thy race'; Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyám, 7, The Bird of time has but a little way | To flutter and the Bird is on the wing.' -invida: that grudges to grant the prayer of happy youth, ‘O temps, suspends ton vol,' etc. (Lamartine).

8. carpe diem: catch as it flies or pluck the flower of. Cf. Martial, 7. 47. 11, vive velut rapto fugitivaque gaudia carpe; But 3. 27. 44, carpere flores; Juv. 9. 126, flosculus angustae miseraeque brevissima vitae Portio. The two points of view blend in Tennyson's They lost their weeks; they vexed the souls of Deans . . . And caught the blossom of the flying terms.' For the general Epicurean sentiment, cf. Epist. 1.4. 13; 1. 11. 23; Eurip. Alcest. 782; Ecclesiastic. 14. 14. - credula: cf. Epist. 1. 4. 13; Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyám, 'To-morrow! why, to-morrow I may be | Myself with yesterday's seven thousand years'; Trevelyan, And book me for the fifteenth valse: there just beneath my thumb, | No, not the next to that, my girl! The next may never come.'

ODE XII.

What man, what hero, what god shall we sing, O Clio, while echo repeats his name in the fabled haunts of the Muses? Of gods, the All-father first, then Pallas, Diana, Liber, Phoebus. Of heroes,

Hercules, Castor, Pollux. Of men, Romulus and the worthies whose virtues and sacrifices built up the Empire of Rome. Brightest in the constellation of glory shines the Julian star. Augustus, conqueror of the Orient, reigns on earth the vicegerent of Jove in heaven.

The date seems fixed by 1. 46 to some time between the death of Marcellus, in в.c. 23, and the announcement of his marriage to Julia, which took place в.c. 25.

Translated by Pitt, Johnson's Poets, 12. 381.

1. quem virum, etc.: taken from Pindar's τíva Oeóv, Tív' pwa, Tíva d'ávdpa keλadhooμev; (0. 2. 2). The attempts to trace further a spiritual resemblance between the two odes are fanciful. We might as well compare Sir Charles Williams' poem, The Statesman, because of its beginning, 'What Statesman, what hero, what King, Whose name thro' the island is spread, | Will you choose, oh, my Clio, to sing, | Of all the great living, or dead ?' — heroa : demigod.-lyra is Greek, tibia Roman, but we need not press the distinction.acri: Quintil. 8. 2. 9. cites the epithet as a proprium. Cf. 'ear-piercing fife.' Ayein, Il. 9. 186.

2. sumis: so sumite materiem (A. P. 38; Epp. 1. 3. 7).- celebrare celebrandum in normal prose. G. L. 421. 1. b.- Clio was later the Muse of history. But Horace uses the names of the Muses freely on the principle of the Alexandrian poet, Rhianus, πᾶσαι δ ̓ εἰσαίουσι, μιῆς ὅτε τ ̓ οὔνομα λέξεις. Cf. on 1. 24. 3.

3. recinet: 3. 27. 1.

3-4. iocosa. . . imago: cf. 1. 20. 6. Imago alone may = ǹxά; Varro, R. R. 3. 16. 12; Verg. G. 4. 50, saxa sonant vocisque offensa resultat imago; Lucret. 4. 571, imagine verbi. Cf. Words. Power of Sound, 'Ye voices and ye shadows and images of voice.' On echo, cf. further, Ov. Met. 3. 356; Eurip. Hec. 1111; Soph. Philoctet. 186; Aristoph. Thesm. 1059; Daniel, Echo, daughter of the air, | Babbling guest of rocks and hills'; Shaks. Twelfth Night, 1. 5, ‘And make the babbling gossip of the air | Cry out Olivia'; Shelley, Adonais, 15.

5. oris cf. 2. 9. 4; the hem, border, or edge where Helicon breaks down in cliff to the sea.' Horace is thinking of the Boeotian or Hesiodic school of poetry, and there are touches that sug

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