ODE XV.

ON THE IMMODERATE LUXURY OF THE AGE.

This ode is generally considered to be among those written to assist Augustus in his social reforms, and, as Macleane observes, it should be read in connection with the earlier odes of Book III. Dillenburger assigns the date to A.U.C. 726, in which year Octavius, then Censor, restored and adorned the public temples fallen into decay. Mac

Lo, those regal piles rising! methinks, to the harrow
They will leave but few acres ; on every side round us
Vasty stewponds for fishes extend

Wider bounds than the Lake of Lucrinus.

leane

Yield the vine-wedded elms to that Cælebs the plane-tree; Then the violet, the myrtle, the whole host of odours Scatter sweets where the owner of old

Placed his pride and his wealth in the olive;

Serried laurel must, next, screen each stroke of a sunbeam. Ah! not such the decrees left by Rome's hardy Founder, Nor the auspice of Cato unshorn,

Nor the customs bequeathed by our fathers.

Petty then was to each man the selfish possession,
Mighty then was all to men the Commonwealth's treasure;
No one sought the cool shade of the North
Under peristyles planned out for temples;2

I have added to ulmos the explanatory epithet 'vine-wedded,' without which the general reader could not understand the author's intention. The elm, as supporting the vine, was useful and remunerative, the

leane favours that date. But the poem alludes also to the sumptuary laws passed by Augustus at various periods ;practically inoperative, as sumptuary laws always must be in rich communities.

CARM. XV.

Jam pauca aratro jugera regiæ
Moles relinquent : undique latius
Extenta visentur Lucrino

Stagna lacu platanusque cælebs

Myrtus et omnis copia narium,
Spargent olivetis odorem
Fertilibus domino priori;

Tum spissa ramis laurea fervidos
Excludet ictus. Non ita Romuli
Præscriptum et intons Catonis

Auspiciis, veterumque norma.

Privatus illis census erat brevis,
Commune magnum : nulla decempedis
Metata privatis opacam

Porticus excipiebat Arcton ; 2

plane-tree not. -Horace intimates that the growth of luxury was hostile to the 'resources of industry,' -that garden flowers and plants appropriated the soil in which the vine and the olive had sufficed for the income of other and simpler owners-Poets and Communists sometimes agree in contempt for the rudiments of Political Economy.

2 Nulla decempedis

Metata privatis opacam

Porticus excipiebat Arcton.'

No private man had porticoes measured by a ten-feet rule, which appears to have been a measurement for temples and public buildings. The peristyles at Pompeii, which form an inner court to the house, give sufficient idea of these corridors, opening to the north for coolness in summer, and to the south for sunshine in winter.

The chance turf next at hand roofed the citizen's dwelling,
But the State, at its charge, rarest marble devoted

To the State's sacred heirlooms ;-the shrines
Of the gods, and the courts of a people.

Nec fortuitum spernere cæspitem Leges sinebant, oppida publico Sumptu jubentes et deorum Templa novo decorare saxo.

ODE XVI.

TO POMPEIUS GROSPHUS.

According to the scholiast in Cruquius, this Pompeius Grosphus, a Sicilian by origin, was of the Equestrian order. Cicero (in Cic. Verr. II. iii. 23) speaks of Eubulides Grosphus Centuripinus, as a man of eminent worth, noble birth, and princely wealth. Estré conjectures that this Grosphus was made

For ease prays he who in the wide Ægæan
Storm-seized, looks up on clouds that heap their darkness
O'er the lost moon, while dim the constellations
Fade from the sailor.

Ease, still for ease, sighs Thracia fierce in battle,
Still for ease sighs the quivered Mede. Ah, Grosphus !
Nor gems nor purple, no, nor gold can buy it ;

Ease is not venal.

Bribed by no king,' dispersed before no lictor,
Throng the wild tumults of a soul in trouble,
And the cares circling round a sleepless pillow,
Under ceil'd fretwork."

He lives on little well who, for all splendour,
Decks his plain board with some prized silver heirloom.3
From him no greed of gain, of loss no terror,

Snatch the light slumbers.

Why, briefly strong, with space in time thus bounded,
Launch we so many arrows into distance?

Non enim gazæ.' 'Gazæ,' from a Persian word, means the king's treasury,' 'the royal coffers.'

2 'Laqueata tecta,' 'non totius domus sed cubiculorum et tricliniarum.'-DILLENBURGER.

Paternum salinum'-'the paternal or hereditary salt-cellar."