The name of Antony is ignored, as it was in the declaration of war against Aegypt and in the triumph.

The first two lines imitate Alcaeus' song over the death of the tyrant Myrsilus: νῦν χρὴ μεθύσθην καί τινα πρὸς βίαν | πίνην ἐπειδὴ Káтlave Mupoíλos; fr. 20. One of the earliest poems in Alcaic meter, as shown perhaps by metrical harshness of 5 and 14.

1. pede libero: cf. 3. 18. 15; 1. 4. 7; Catull. 61. 14, pelle humum pedibus. But libero also suggests liberation from fear of the enemy. Cf. Hector's крηtîpa éλeúðepov, Il. 6. 528; Aesch. Ag. 328.

2. Saliaribus: proverbial, as 2. 14. 28, pontificum. Cf. 1. 36. 12; Otto, p. 306.

3. pulvinar: see Lex. s. v., and s.v. lectisternium.

4. erat: variously taken (1) as Greek imperfect of surprise or recognition (cf. on 1. 27. 19), or (2) more simply as rebuke of delay. Cf. Ov. Am. 3. 1. 23, tempus erat, thyrso pulsum graviore moveri, | cessatum satis est, incipe maius opus; Livy, 8. 5, tempus erat... tandem iam vos nobiscum nihil pro imperio agere; Ov. Trist. 4. 8. 24, me quoque donari iam rude tempus erat, | tempus erat nec me peregrinum ducere caelum; Her. 6. 4; Tibull. 3. 6. 64; Arist. Eccles. 877. Logically this is somewhat inconsistent with antehac nefas, which favors (1), but in the rapid movement of the ode the exclamatory first strophe may be forgotten. A. and G. 311; III. c. R., interpret, it would be time (if it were for us to do it, but it is a public act).

5. depromere: cf. 1. 9. 7. antehac dissyllable. bum: cf. Epode 9. 1.

6. Capitolio: the symbol of Roman empire (cf. on 3. 30. 8; 3. 3. 42) menaced by the foul Egyptian. Cf. Ov. Met. 15. 827, frustraque erit illa minata, | servitura suo Capitolia nostra Canopo; Lucan, 10. 63, terruit illa suo, si fas, Capitolia sistro.

7. regina: a doubly invidious title to Roman ears. 'There was a Brutus once that would have brooked | The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome | As easily as a king' (Shaks. Jul. Cæs.). Cf. 3. 5. 9, sub rege Medo; Epode 9. 12, emancipatus feminae; Propert. 4. 10. 39, scilicet incesti meretrix regina Canopi. . . . Ausa Iovi nostro latrantem opponere Anubin.; El. in Maec. 53. She is

called Regina or Baolλiora on extant coins. Cf. Florus, 4.11; Dio. 50. 5.-dementes: transferred epithet. Cf. 3. 1. 42; 1. 12. 34 ; 1. 15. 33, etc. Virgil's sceleratas poenas (Aen. 2. 576).

8. et loosely placed as 1. 2. 18 and passim.

9-10. The Eunuchs, etc. Cf. Epode 9. 13; Shaks. Ant. and Cleop. 1. 2; Propert. 4. 10. 30; Tac. Ann. 15. 37.

10. virorum: with emphatic scorn.-morbo: like vóσos, of base passions.-impotens: with sperare, frenzied enough to. There is no equivalent in modern English. It denotes the weakness of uncontrolled passion. Cf. Shaks. As some fierce thing replete with inmost rage | Whose strength's abundance weakens its own heart'; Tenn. 'Impotence of fancied power'; Milton, Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire, | Belike through impotence or unaware?' Cf. άкрaтýs and impotentia, Epode 16. 62; and Trench, Study of Words, § 70; F. Q. 5. 12. 1, ‘O sacred hunger of ambitious minds | And impotent desire of men to reign.'

12. ebria: so μelvew, Demosth. Phil. 1. 49. Tenn. has drunk with loss.' Cf. 'If, drunk with sight of power, we loose! Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe' (Rudyard Kipling, Recessional).

13. Vix una sospes: the escape of barely one ship. Cf. on 2. 4. 10. It was the fleet of Antony that was thus destroyed. Cleopatra fled early in the action, and Antony followed her. Cf. Ant. and Cleopat. 3. 9; Propert. 3. 8. 39, hunc insanus amor versis dare terga carinis | iussit; and Tenn.'s youthful poem, ‘Then when the shriekings of the dying | Were heard along the wave, | Soul of my soul I saw thee flying, | I followed thee to save. | The thunder of the brazen prows | O'er Actium's ocean rung; | Fame's garland faded from my brows, | Her wreath away I flung. | I sought, I saw, I heard but thee, | For what to love was victory?'

14. lymphatam: her panic is attributed to Bacchus, author of panic fear, no less than Pan, or rather to her deep potations of sweet Egyptian wine. Now no more | The juice of Aegypt's grape shall moist this lip,' she says, in her death hour (Ant. and Cleop. 5. 2). The superstition that the sight of a nymph (lymphae, water-nymphs) caused madness is preserved in the word nympholepsy.

15. veros: as contrasted with the panic alarms of 14. Cf.

Epist. 2. 1. 212, falsis terroribus; Lucan, 1. 469, Vana quoque ad veros accessit fama timores.

16. ab Italia: she had come against Italy, if she had not reached it. volantem: sc. Cleopatra. Cf. Vergil's pelagoque volamus. The imaginative transition is easy to the image of the fleeing (flying) dove in the next strophe.

17. adurgens: as a matter of fact, Octavian returned to Italy to quiet a mutiny of the veterans, wintered at Samos, and entered Aegypt only in the following spring. — accipiter: cf. Il. 22. 139; Aeschyl. Prom. 856; Verg. Aen. 11. 721; Ov. Met. 5. 606. For Cleopatra's flight, cf. Verg. Aen. 8. 707-712; Propert. 4. 10. 51, fugisti tamen in timidi vaga flumina Nili; El. in Maec. 47.

19. Horace may have seen the plains of Thessaly white with snow in his travels with Brutus. Winter was the hunting season (Epode 2. 30. n.).

20. daret: sc. Caesar, who was eager to exhibit Cleopatra in his triumph. Cf. Plut. Ant. 78.

21. monstrum: sc. Cleopatram. Cf. Lucan's dedecus Aegypti, Latii feralis Erinnys (10. 58). quae synesis. - generosius : 'fitting for a princess descended of so many royal kings' (Ant. and Cleo. 5. 2).

22. quaerens: with inf. Cf. 3. 4. 39; 3. 24. 27; 3.27.55; 4.1.12; Epode 2. 70; 16. 16. So Lucret. and Vergil, not, it seems, Cicero. muliebriter: Velleius, 2. 87. 1, Cleopatra .

expers muliebris metus spiritum reddidit; Ant. and Cleo. 5. 2, 'My resolution's placed, and I have nothing | Of woman in me.'

23. ensem: she first attempted suicide with a dagger (Plut. Ant. 79).

24. reparavit : Perhaps 'procured by exchange a place of hiding by her swift fleet' a tortuous expression for 'sought refuge in remote lands.' Cf. 1. 31. 12. Penetravit, properavit, repetivit, etc., have been proposed. Dio. 51. 6 and Plut. Ant. 69, speak of schemes for taking refuge beyond the Red Sea, etc.

25-32. The construction is awkward. Ausa (participle) fortis and ferocior, with their modifiers, expand the thought of 21-25. -Deliberata morte (abl. abs.) motivates ferocior, fiercely defiant in (by) her resolve to die. (Non) humilis mulier effectively contrasted by juxtaposition with superbo . . . triumpho belongs

with invidens, and the consummation of her defeat in the triumph, privata deduci triumpho, is the thing Cleopatra grudges to the cruel Liburnian galleys of Caesar.

25. iacentem: metaphorically. Cf. 4. 14. 36.

26. asperas cf. 1. 23. 9; 3. 2. 10.

27. serpentes: the asps. Cf. Verg. Aen. 8. 697; Ant. and Cleo. 5. 2. -atrum: cf. 3. 4. 17. n.

30. Liburnis; cf. on Epode 1. 1-2.

31-32. Cf. the cry attributed to her in Livy, Apud Porphyr. où Opiaμßeúσoμai; Shak. Ant. and Cleo. 5. 1, 'her life in Rome | Would be eternal in our triumph'; 5. 2. 'Shall they hoist me up,| And show me to the shouting varletry | Of censuring Rome?' Tenn. Dr. of Fair Women, 'I died a queen'; F. Q. 1. 5. 50, Highminded Cleopatra that with stroke | Of aspës sting herself did stoutly kill.' Her effigy was borne in the triumph. Cf. Propert. 4. 10. 53, Bracchia spectavi sacris admorsa colubris. - privata : discrowned queen. Superbo (1. 35. 3). — non humilis: Martial, 7. 40. 2, pectore non humili.

ODE XXXVIII.

This pretty trifle is intended to relieve the severity of the thirtyfifth and thirty-seventh Odes (Sellar, p. 137). Translated by Hartley Coleridge, and in two forms by Cowper. Austin Dobson's rendering in Triolets is well known: 'Davus, I detest Orient display.' Cf. Thackeray's amusing, 'Dear Lucy, you know what my wish is, I hate all your Frenchified fuss, | Your silly entrées and made dishes | Were never intended for us'; and the irreverent 'Persicos odi, puer apparatus, | Bring me a chop and a couple of potatoes.'

1. Persicos: e.g. Achaemenium costum (3. 1. 44). The ad of apparatus and adlabores (5) marks the unnecessary additions to the simple requirements of nature which the wiser Epicurean rejects. Cf. Lucret. 2. 20 sqq.-puer: cf. 2. 11. 18; 1. 19. 14. Anacr. fr. 64.

2. philyra: ready-made coronae sutiles, garlands sewn on linden bark, were bought at the shops. Cf. Ov. Fast. 5. 335.

3. mitte: cf. 3. 8. 17; Epode 13.7; and omitte, 3. 29. 11. - quo locorum: cf. 1. 29. 5, quae virginum.

4. sera: the rose is a spring flower in Italy; sub arta vite (7) suggests midsummer heat.

6. sedulus: originally se dulo (?) malo, i.e. sine dolo malo. Here with adlabores of the servant's officiousness, cf. A. P. 116, sedula nutrix, and Delia serving Messalla in Tibull. 1. 5. 32, et tantum venerata virum hunc sedula curet. - curo: with adlabores. Cf. Sat. 2. 6. 38, imprimat his, cura, Maecenas signa tabellis. — ministrum: cf. Cat. 27. 1, minister vetuli puer Falerni; Fitzgerald, Omar Khayyám, 'And lose your fingers in the tresses of | The cypress-slender minister of wine'; Mart. 8. 67. 5.

7. arta: thick-pleached, trellised.

BOOK II., ODE I.

Pollio, forsaking the tragic stage and the triumphs of the Forum, undertakes the history of our civil wars-setting his feet on the thin crust of ashes beneath which the lava is still glowing.' (Macaulay, Hist. Eng. c. 6.) Methinks even now I hear the trumpet's blare. Again our Italy shines o'er with civil swords.' Again the tale is told of great captains soiled with noble dust, and all the world subdued save Cato's indomitable soul. Now, Jugurtha, thou art avenged. Our blood has fertilized every field, crimsoned every pool, and the crash of ruin in Italy rejoiced the ears of our enemy the Mede. But hush! my light muse. So high a

strain is not for thee.

C. Asinius Pollio had been a friend of Cicero and member of the circle of Calvus and Catullus in his youth (Catull. 12. 8), had studied at Athens a few years before Horace's sojourn there, and fought under Caesar at Pharsalus. After his consulate B.C. 40 (cf. Verg. Ecl. 4) he was sent against the Parthini, a Dalmatian tribe, by Antony, and celebrated a triumph over them в.c. 39 (cf. 1. 15; Verg. Ecl. 8; Dio, 48. 41). From the spoils he established the first public library at Rome (Pliny N. H. 7. 115, 35. 10). Octavian allowed his plea that self-respect required him to be neutral in the conflict with Antony (Vell. 2. 86), and the remainder of his life