Quam pæne furvæ regna Proserpinæ,
Et judicantem vidimus Æacum,
Sedesque discretas piorum, et
Aeoliis fidibus querentem

Sappho puellis de popularibus ;1
Et te sonantem plenius aureo,
Alcæe, plectro dura navis,

Dura fugæ mala, dura belli!

Utrumque sacro digna silentio
Mirantur Umbræ dicere; sed magis
Pugnas et exactos tyrannos

Densum humeris bibit aure volgus.

Quid mirum? ubi illis carminibus stupens
Demittit atras belua centiceps

Aures, et intorti capillis

Eumenidum recreantur angues;

Quin et Prometheus et Pelopis parens
Dulci laborum decipitur sono;
Nec curat Orion leones

Aut timidos agitare lyncas.

Sappho puellis de popularibus.'

'Incertum autem est quid quereretur.'-Estré, Horat. Prosop. 26. Estré cites the various interpretations, and inclines to that of the commentators in Cruquius-viz., Sappho complained of the girls of her country that they loved Phaon whom she loved. This is, at all events, the most agreeable conjecture. Welcker has written with ingenious eloquence in vindication of Sappho's memory from the scandal, ‘quod nimis diu ei adhæsit.'

ODE XIV.

TO POSTUMUS.

Who this Postumus may have been is, in spite of the various conjectures of various commentators, as uncertain as, happily, it is immaterial. It is, at all events, an agreeable supposition that he may be identical with the Postumus whom

Postumus, Postumus, the years glide by us,
Alas! no piety delays the wrinkles,

Nor old age imminent,

Nor the indomitable hand of Death.

Though thrice each day a hecatomb were offered,
Friend, thou couldst soften not the tearless Pluto,
Encoiling Tityus vast,

And Geryon, triple giant, with sad waves

Waves over which we all of us must voyage,
All whosoe'er the fruits of earth have tasted;
Whether that earth we ruled

As kings, or served as drudges of its soil.

Vainly we shun Mars and the gory battle,
Vainly the Hadrian hoarse with stormy breakers,

Vainly, each autumn's fall,

The sicklied airs through which the south wind sails.1

Still the dull-winding ooze of slow Cocytus,

The ill-famed Danaids, and, to task that ends not,
Sentenced, Æolides ;

These are the sights on which we all must gaze.

1 'Auster,' the sirocco.'

whom Propertius (Lib. iii. Eleg. 10) reproached for leaving his wife Galba to join a military expedition, possibly that of Ælius Gallus against the Arabians. This supposition would give a more pathetic significance to the placens uxor' of the ode.

CARM. XIV.

Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume,
Labuntur anni, nec pietas moram
Rugis et instanti senectæ

Afferet indomitaque Morti,

Non, si trecenis, quotquot eunt dies,
Amice, places illacrimabilem
Plutona tauris; qui ter amplum
Geryonen Tityonque tristi

Compescit unda, scilicet omnibus,
Quicunque terræ munere vescimur,
Enaviganda, sive reges

Sive inopes erimus coloni.

Frustra cruento Marte carebimus,
Fractisque rauci fluctibus Hadriæ,
Frustra per auctumnos nocentem
Corporibus metuemus Austrum:1

Visendus ater flumine languido
Cocytos errans, et Danai genus
Infame, damnatusque longi
Sisyphus Æolides laboris.

Lands, home, and wife in whom thy soul delighteth,
Left; and one tree alone of all thy woodlands,
Loathed cypress, faithful found,

Shall follow to the last the brief-lived lord.

The worthier heir thy Cæcuban shall squander,
Bursting the hundred locks that guard its treasure,
And wines more rare than those

Sipped at high feast by pontiffs,' dye thy floors.

'As the English say, 'A dinner fit for an alderman,' so the Romans said, 'A banquet fit for a pontiff.' 'Pontificum dapes, Saliares cœnæ.'

Linquenda tellus, et domus, et placens Uxor; neque harum, quas colis, arborum Te, præter invisas cupressos,

Ulla brevem dominum sequetur.

Absumet heres Cæcuba dignior
Servata centum clavibus, et mero
Tinget pavimentum superbo,
Pontificum potiore cœnis.

N