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Until the unexampled counsel fixed

The wavering senate on its author's side,
And, pauseless, through the ranks

Of mournful friends, the glorious exile passed.

Albeit he knew what the barbarian skill
Of the tormentor for himself prepared,
He motioned from his path

The opposing kindred, the retarding crowd,

Calmly as if, some client's tedious suit
Closed by his judgment,1 to Venafrian fields
Or mild Tarentum, built

By antique Spartans, went his quiet way.

1 The patrons were accustomed to settle the dispute between their clients.

Donec labantes consilio patres

Firmaret auctor nunquam alias dato, Interque mærentes amicos Egregius properaret exsul.

Atqui sciebat quæ sibi barbarus
Tortor pararet; non aliter tamen
Dimovit obstantes propinquos,

Et populum reditus morantem,

Quam si clientum longa negotia
Dijudicata lite relinqueret,1

Tendens Venafranos in agros,

Aut Lacedæmonium Tarentum.

ODE VI.

ON THE SOCIAL CORRUPTION OF THE TIME.

Macleane observes that, 'As the former (five) odes are addressed more to qualities of young men, this refers more especially to the vices of young women, and so Horace discharges the promise with which this series of odes begins.' To me, on the contrary, it is precisely because of the lines which so freely describe the vices of young women, single and married, that I hesitate to class this ode among those to which the introductory verse of the first ode applies. Let any man consider if a poet, as the Muse's priest, could have addressed,

Roman, the sins thy fathers have committed,
From thee, though guiltless, shall exact atonement,
Till tottering fanes and temples be restored,
And smoke-grimed 2 statues of neglected gods.

Thou rul'st by being to the gods subjected,
To this each deed's conception and completion
Refer; full many an ill, the gods contemned
Have showered upon this sorrowing Italy.

Twice have Monæses 3 and the Parthian riders
Of Pacorus crushed our evil-omened onslaught,

And to their puny torques smiled to add

The spoils of armour stripped from Roman breasts.

1 The restoration of the temples and fanes decayed by time, or burned down in the civil wars, was among the chief reforms of Augustus.Suet., Oct. xxx.

2 Smoke-grimed,'-partly by conflagrations commemorated by Tacitus and Suetonius, partly by the fumes from the sacrifices. Stated times for the washing of the statues, with solemn rites, were appointed.

• Pacorus, son of the Parthian king Arsaces XIV., defeated Decidius

addressed, in the original, lines from 21 to 32, not to freedwomen and singing-girls, but to the well-born maidens and brides of Rome. That the poem was written about the same time as the others is a reasonable conjecture, and probably with the same intention of assisting the reforms of Augustus, among which Horace subsequently celebrates the stricter laws regulating and affecting marriage. But I do not think the poem was or could be one of those specially addressed to the young; and, independently of the lines I have referred to, the concluding stanza, in fierce condemnation of themselves and their immediate parents, would be very unlike the skilful way in which Horace 'admissus circum præcordia ludit,'

CARM. VI.

Delicta majorum immeritus lues,
Romane, donec templa1 refeceris,
Edesque labentes deorum, et
Fœda nigro simulacra fumo.2

Dis te minorem quod geris, imperas :
Hinc omne principium, huc refer exitum.
Di multa neglecti dederunt
Hesperia mala luctuosæ.

Jam bis Monæses3 et Pacori manus
Non auspicatos contudit impetus
Nostros, et adjecisse prædam
Torquibus exiguis renidet.

Saxa, legate to M. Antony. Four years later, when Pacorus was dead, the Parthians defeated Antony commanding in person. It is not known who is meant by Monæses. Plutarch mentions a Parthian of that name who fled to Antony, but it nowhere appears that he bore arms against the Romans. Orelli and Macleane favour the conjecture that by Monæses is meant Surenas, who defeated Crassus, A. U. C. 701-supposing Surenas to be merely an Oriental title of dignity, and Monæses to have been the proper name of Crassus's conqueror.

R

Dacian and Æthiopian,' dread-inspiring-
One with his archers, with his fleets the other—
Well-nigh destroyed this very Rome herself,

While all her thought was on her own fierce brawls.

This age, crime-bearing, first polluted wedlock,
Hence race adulterate, and hence homes dishallowed ;'
And from this fountain flowed a poisoned stream,
Pest-spreading through the people and the land.
The ripening virgin, blushless, learns delighted
Ionic dances; in the art of wantons

Studiously fashioned; evën in the bud,
Tingles, within her, meditated sin.3

Later, a wife-her consort in his cups,

She courts some younger gallant, whom, no matter,
Snatching the moment from the board to slip,

And hide the lover from the tell-tale lights.*

Prompt at the beck (her venal spouse conniving)
Of some man-milliner 5 or rude sea-captain

Of trade-ship fresh from marts of pilfered Spain,
Buying full dearly the disgrace she sells.

This is an allusion to the threats of Antony and Cleopatra against Rome

'Dum Capitolio

Regina dementes ruinas,

Funus et imperio parabat.'

-Lib. I. Od. xxxvii.

The Dacian archers were auxiliaries in Antony's army at Actium. By the Æthiopians is meant the Egyptian fleet. The ode must therefore have been written after the battle of Actium.

* Here Horace, tracing the corruption of the times to the contempt of the marriage-tie, whether by adultery or the excess to which the licence of divorce was carried, aids Augustus in the reforms he effected in the law of marriage.

3 'Jam nunc et incestos amores.

De tenero meditatur ungui.'

I have adhered to the received and simplest interpretation of de

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