Vidimus flavum Tiberim, retortis Iliæ dum se nimium querenti Labitur ripa, Jove non probante, u- Audiet cives acuisse ferrum, Quo graves Persæ melius perirent; Quem vocet Divum populus ruentis Cui dabit partes scelus expiandi Sive tu mavis, Erycina ridens, Quam Jocus circum volat et Cupido; at the river-god's incursion on the left bank is variously conjectured: it may be either that on that side he threatened the temple of Jove himself, or that Jove, as supreme guardian of all temples and of Rome itself, resented the outbreak as an offence to himself, or, as Macleane interprets it, He disapproved the presumption of the river-god, because he had reserved the task of expiation for other hands and happier means.' Joying in battle-clang and glancing helms Thine own neglected race, thine offspring, come ! Stay thy return to heaven: long tarry here Here rather in grand triumphs take glad rites, All recent editors have Mauri peditis.' Munro, though retaining that reading in his text, is not convinced that "Marsi peditis" is not far finer and more appropriate.' The Moors fighting habitually on horseback, the interpretation of 'peditis' most favoured by the commentators is that in the translation; the rider being unhorsed is rendered more fierce and stubborn by despair. 2 Mercury in the form of Augustus. Orelli dryly observes that Augustus was forty years old at the date when he is here called juvenem.' No doubt juvenis' and 'adolescens' were words descriptive of any age between pueritia' and 'senectus,' and Cicero called himself adolescens' at the age of forty-four, when he crushed the conspiracy of Catiline; but still a juvenis' of forty, or even of thirty years old, would have little resemblance to the popular effigies of the smooth-faced son of Maia (Mercury); and considering the whole space of time which this poem reviews and condenses, starting from the death of Julius Cæsar, is it not probable that Horace here applies the word ' juvenis' to Augustus in reference to the age in which he first announced himself as 'Cæsaris ultor' (Cæsar's avenger), and in order to achieve that name and fulfil that object descended from his celestial rank as Mercury, or (to define Heu! nimis longo satiate ludo, Sive mutata juvenem figura Serus in cælum redeas, diuque Tollat; hic magnos potius triumphos, more clearly the mythical functions of Mercury) as the direct messenger from Jove to man? Augustus, then, was a youth in every sense of the word. In fact he was barely twenty when he declared it to be his resolve and his mission to avenge the death of his uncle. At that age, judging by his effigies in gems, the resemblance of the young Octavius to the face of Mercury in the statues is sufficiently striking to have created general remark, and to save from extravagant flattery the lines in the ode. For of the two faces that of the young Octavius is of a higher and more godlike type of beauty than appears in any extant statue of Mercury. The way in which he introduces the name of Cæsar unexpectedly at the end, has always appeared to me an instance of consummate art.'-MACLEANE, ODE III. ON VIRGIL'S VOYAGE TO ATHENS. There is a well-known dispute as to the date and the occasion of this ode, and it has been even called in question whether the Virgil addressed were the poet. It is, no doubt, difficult to reconcile the received chronology of the publication of the first three books of Odes with the supposition So may the goddess who rules over Cyprus, Speed thee, O Ship, as I pray thee to render1 Oak and brass triple encircled his bosom, Headlong he charges the blasts of the North; Fearing no gloom in the face of the Hyads; Hadria, to rouse her or lull at his will. I side with Dillenburger, Ritter, Munro, and Macleane in rejecting the punctuation of Orelli, who places a comma before 'precor,' putting the word in parenthesis, for the reason thus ably stated in the following note, for which I am indebted to a friend, than whom there is no higher authority in critical scholarship: 'It is not commonly observed, but position that this ode was addressed to Virgil the poet, on the occasion of the voyage to Athens, from which he only returned to die but there is no reason why Virgil should not have made or contemplated such a voyage before the last one; and Macleane, here agreeing with Dillenburger, is 'inclined to think such must have been the case.'-See his introduction to this ode. CARM. III. Sic te Diva potens Cypri, Navis, quæ tibi creditum Illi robur et æs triplex Decertantem Aquilonibus, Nec tristes Hyadas, nec rabiem Noti, Major, tollere seu ponere vult freta. certainly true, that the 2d pers. pres. subj. (reddas) is never used as a mere imperative, "redde." It may be used precatively in addressing a deity, a superior (or in politeness), as "serves" in Ode xxxv. 1. 29. Where it is used with "precor," the verb is not in parenthesis, but distinctly governs "reddas," "I pray you to render." There should therefore be no comma between them; and this view shows "precor the true apodosis of the passage.' to be |