7. Fides, defined by Cic. Off. 1. 7 'dictorum conventorumque constantia et veritas,' and called there 'iustitiae fundamentum.' In calling Good Faith or Honour the sister of Justice, Horace implies that the two go together, and therefore that both were present in Quintilius.

nuda Veritas, as Acr. explains, 'quae nihil occulti habeat ut egeat tegumento.' Ritter compares the picture of Quintilius, the candid critic of A. P. 438 foll.; see Introduction to this Ode.

8. inveniet, for the sing. verb after several subjects, see Od. 1. 3. 3. 11. frustra pius. Virgil, the gentle and reverent poet, has committed his friend to the safe keeping of the gods, little dreaming how they would discharge the trust; now he asks back his depositum' (cp. Od. 1. 3. 5-8) only to find how fruitless his piety has been. Another interpretation is that of Lambinus, ‘Thou askest Quintilius of the gods, and findest, despite thy piety, that he was not lent to thee on such terms,' i. e. that you should never part. The first is probably right as assigning the same agent to creditum' and 'poscis,' and as giving a more definite sense and connection with the context to 'frustra pius.' With the thought of these words we may perhaps compare, as a characteristic difference between the two poets, Virgil's notice of the same moral difficulty, Aen. 2. 426–430, and his more reverent and religious comment, 'Dis aliter visum.'

ita hac conditione,' on such terms as this.

13-15. quid si.. num. The words frustra pius' have struck the note which is the key to this stanza. In vain-did I say?-while he was alive. What if you had the persuasive lyre of Orpheus? could it restore to us the dead'? Orelli reads 'Quod si .. non,' but against the preponderance of MSS. For the construction, a hypothetical question preceded by the interrogative or exclamatory 'quid,' Dill'. refers to S. 2. 3. 159, Epp. 1. 19. 10, Virg. Aen. 4. 311.

15. vanae imagini. Cp. Virg. Aen. 6. 292 'tenues sine corpore vitas.. volitare cava sub imagine formae.' The unsubstantial forms, vekúшv eïdwλa, in Hom. Od. 11, have to drink a draught of blood before they can recover life enough to talk with Ulysses.

17. lenis recludere, App. 2, § 2.

precibus, the dat. = in answer to.'

fata recludere, to open the door of fate. 'Panditur ad nullas ianua nigra preces,' Prop. 4. 11. 2.

18. nigro compulerit gregi, has gathered to the black fold. For the case, cp. Od. 1. 28. 10' Panthoiden iterum Orco demissum.' Madv. § 251. For the image, Od. 2. 3. 25 omnes eodem cogimur.'

19. patientia, see Introduction to the Ode.

ODE XXVI.

The

'The Muses' friend, I can cast sorrow and fears to the winds. politics of Parthia that trouble all the world are nothing to me. Help me, sweet Muse, to weave a chaplet of freshest lyric verse for my dear friend Lamia.

It is difficult to see the point of connection between the first and last parts of the Ode, unless, indeed, as has been suggested, Horace is holding up his own cheerfulness and its source to Lamia's imitation, see Introd. to Od. 3. 17. If Epp. 1. 14. 6 refer to the same person as the two Odes, the trait there given, 'rapto de fratre dolentis Insolabiliter,' may confirm the idea that he was a person on whom sorrow sat heavily.

Aelius Lamia, the school friend of Numida (Od. 1. 36. 7) and the 'vetusto nobilis ab Lamo' of 3. 17. 1, is generally identified with L. Aelius Lamia who was Praefectus urbi in A.D. 32, and died A.D. 33. Tac. Ann. 6. 27 genus illi decorum, vivida senectus.' If this Ode therefore is to be dated before B.C. 23, he must have been quite a young man when it was written. Ritter, feeling this to be a difficulty, suggests that the Lamia of the Odes is an elder brother of Lucius. The name of a Q. Aelius Lamia, triumvir monetalis,' has been found on a coin of this date. He thinks that it is his death that Lucius is represented as lamenting in Epp. 1. 14. 6.

On the date of the Ode and the allusion of vv. 3-5 see Introd. to Odes i-iii, § 8.

With vv. 1-6 cp. Virg. G. 2. 490-497. The friendship of the Muses gives to Horace the freedom which Virgil attributes to philosophy and a country life.

Line 1. Musis amicus, gives the reason for his being able to throw care to the winds; for the expression, cp. amicum Crethea Musis,' Virg. Aen. 9. 774.

metus. Cp. Virg. G. 2. 491 Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum Subiecit pedibus.'

2. protervis, the winds 'at play,' as 'ludibrium ventis,' 1. 14. 16. Creticum, see on Od. 1. 1. 14. It is a proverbially stormy sea.

Soph. Τr. 117 βιότου πολύπονον ὥσπερ πέλαγος Κρήσιον.

3. portare, for infinitive, see App. 2, § 1.

quis, best taken, perhaps, with the Schol., as a dative plur.; cp. Epod. 11. 9 'in quis'; 'by whom the king of the frozen coast beneath Arctos is dreaded.' Quid Tiridaten terreat' is the same question put another way: but it is more general, and Tiridates would fear other things besides the King of Scythia. Others make 'quis' a nom., 'who is the king so terrible,' &c. It will still, on our view, refer to the fears of Tiridates. Dill., however, urging the parallel' infidos agitans discordia fratres, Nec coniurato descendens Dacus ab Istro,' Virg. G. 2. 496, 497, takes 'metuatur' of the fears of the Romans themselves, and the Scythian king (cp. Od. 1. 19. 10, and see on 3. 8. 18) as representing the barbarians north of the Danube, of whose incursions so much is made in Horace.

5. unice, though every one else is full of these questions. 6. fontibus integris, &c. A second reminiscence (see Od. 1. 7. 7) of Lucr. 1. 926 iuvat integros accedere fontes Atque haurire; iuvatque novos decerpere flores,' &c. Observe how Horace combines the two claims for his poetry, integris,' 'novis fidibus,' and yet 'Lesbio plectro'; cp. Epp. 1. 19. 21 Libera per vacuum posui vestigia princeps, Non aliena meo pressi pede. . Parios ego primus iambos Ostendi Latio'; see on Od. 1. 1. 29. He only claims originality in imitation.

9. Pimples, prop. the name of a fountain in Pieria (cp. 'Pierides Musae'), near Mount Olympus. Horace uses it as an adj. of the Muse who haunts the spot. Bentley and others would read the Greek form 'Pimplei' against the MSS., which vary only between 'Pimplea' and 'Piplea.'

mei honores, 'honours that I can give'; cp. Pind. Nem. 9. 21 ἐπασκήσω κλυταῖς ἥρωα τιμαῖς.

11. sacrare, to canonize, to give the immortality which so many stout hearts have lacked for want of a 'vates sacer,' Od. 4. 9. 25.

ODE XXVII.

In Od. 1. 18 the poet had recommended moderation in the use of wine on moral and religious grounds. Here his object is the same though the tone is lighter. The Ode is a dramatic sketch of a banquet which is degenerating into a drunken brawl. Horace interrupts it by an appeal, playful in its mixture of the Bacchic hierophant with the genial poet of good living. The company would reply to their monitor by filling his glass. 'On one condition only,' he says, and diverts them at once from his own lecture and their rising quarrel to an absorbing

interest in the love affairs of Megilla's brother, his bashfulness, his imagined confidences, his mysteriously hopeless fate.

It is at least an ingenious suggestion of Ritter's that the 'Opuntiae frater Megillae' is the same as the Xanthias Phoceus of Od. 2. 4, whom Horace banters on his love for a slave girl (the 'Charybdis' on this view of this Ode), neither fidelis' if we read the irony aright, nor 'lucro aversa'; see the Introd. to that Ode.

Athen. x. p. 427 A preserves part of a poem of Anacreon, which may have inspired the beginning of this Ode:

ἄγε δηΰτε (al. δεῦτε) μηκέθ' οὕτω

πατάγῳ τε κἀλαλητῷ

Σκυθικὴν πόσιν παρ ̓ οἶνῳ

μελετῶμεν ἀλλὰ καλοῖς

Line 1. natis.

ὑποπίνοντες ἐν ὕμνοις.

Horace is fond of the trope; cp. 'nata mecum testa,' Od. 3. 21. 1; 'versus male nati,' Epp. 2. 1. 233. Cp. especially A. P. 377 animis natum . . poema iuvandis.'

scyphis pugnare; cp. Juv. 5. 26 Iurgia proludunt: sed mox et pocula torques Saucius, et rubro deterges vulnera mappa; Inter vos quoties libertinorumque cohortem Pugna Saguntina fervet commissa lagena.'

2. Thracum; see on Od. 1. 18. 9.

3. verecundum, ' modici Liberi,' Od. 1. 18. 7. From another point of view Horace calls him inverecundus deus,' the god who removes the restraints of bashfulness, Epod. 11. 13. Ritter thinks that there is an antithesis intended between 'verecundum' (cp. verecundus color,' Epod. 17. 21) and 'sanguineis,' the red of the blushing wine-god's cheeks (olvanos coû, Soph. O. T. 211) and the red stains of bloody quarrel. The construction, 'Bacchum prohibete rixis' (cp. Epp. 1. I. 31 'nodosa corpus prohibere cheragra') is found in prose, as Cic. de Leg. Man. 7 magnum civium numerum calamitate prohibere.'

6

5. vino et lucernis, the lamps are signs of festivity, as they imply a banquet prolonged into the night; cp. 'vigiles lucernas perfer in lucem,' Od. 3. 8. 14: 'vivae lucernae,' 3. 21. 23. So probably to exalt the hospitality of Dido's welcome, and not only for the picture, Virg. Aen. 1. 726 Dependent lychni laquearibus aureis Incensi et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.'

Medus acinaces, Plat. Rep. 8. p. 553 μéyav Baoiλéa riápas kai στρεπτοὺς καὶ ἀκινάκας παραζωννύντα, ' It is only barbarians that sit down with a dirk to drink wine, and so we must leave it to them to quarrel.' 6. immane quantum, ἀμήχανον ὅσον, θαυμαστὸν ὅσον. Tac. Hist.

4. 34 'Civilis, lapsu equi prostratus . . immane quantum suis pavoris et hostibus alacritatis indidit.' Cicero has 'nimium quantum,' Orat. 25. 87. Grammatically, it is a full parenthetical clause, after the model of 'nescio quis,' standing instead of the expected adverb of quantity, so that it is unnecessary to read discrepet.'

impium, because they offend Bacchus.

8. cubito presso, with the left arm deep in the cushions of the sofa. 9. severi, 'rough,'' strong tasted,' seems synonymous with the 'forte Falernum' of S. 2. 4. 24. Pliny (N. H. 14. 8. 6) distinguishes three sorts of Falernian, 'austerum' (Horace's 'severum'), 'dulce,'' tenue'; cp. Catull. 27. I 'minister vetuli puer Falerni Inger mi calices amariores.' 11. Megillae, a Greek name. Megillus is an interlocutor in Plat. Legg. She comes from Opus Locrorum. The challenge to give a name as a toast is common: Theoc. 14. 18 ἤδη δὲ προϊόντος ἔδοξ ̓ ἐπιχεῖσθαι ἄκρατον, | ἅτινος ἤθελ ̓ ἕκαστος, ἔδει μόνον ἅτινος εἰπῆν ; Mart. 1. 72. Ι 'Naevia sex cyathis, septem Iustina bibatur.'

beatus pereat, 'dies a happy death.' For the oxymoron, cp. Od. 1. 33. 14' grata detinuit compede,' and Tib. 2. 5. 109 'iaceo cum saucius annum Et faveo morbo, tam iuvat ipse dolor.'

13. cessat voluntas, Falters thy will'? Do you hesitate to tell us? 14. quaecunque Venus, Od. 1. 33. 13 'melior Venus'; cp. v. 16 'ingenuo amore,' i. e. love for a freeborn girl. Venus' is still more definitely for the beloved' in Virg. E. 3. 68 Parta meae Veneri sunt

munera.

15. The passion with which she fires thee need raise no blushes.'

16. que. Dillenburger draws attention to Horace's use of 'que' in such a case, where the first clause having a negative form an adversative conjunction would be more usual; cp. 2. 12. 9, 2. 20. 4, 3. 30. 6, and see on Epod. 15. 14.

semper, always, and so I am sure now.

17. Whisper to me, if you will not tell it to all the company.'

19. laborabas. There seems to be no doubt that this is the true reading. 'Laboras' is found in a few good MSS., but the hiatus is filled in none of any authority. The imperfect represents the Greek ap' émóveis, 'you are labouring all the time.' It is of a new discovery, and refers to the time before the discovery was made; see on Od. I. 37.4.

Charybdi. Compare the lines of Anaxilas, the comic poet, quoted by Athen. 13. p. 558 Ἡ δὲ Φρύνη τὴν Χάρυβδιν οὐχὶ πόρρω που ποιεῖ ; Τόν τε ναύκληραν λαβοῦσα καταπέπωκ ̓ αὐτῷ σκάφει. Cicero says of Antony 'Quae Charybdis tam vorax'? Phil. 2. 27. 67.

21, 22. saga.. magus.. deus, a climax.

21. Thessalis, Epod. 5. 21, 45.