With the boy-archer-but his bow was loosened; Know thyself bride of Jove the all-subduing. Name everlasting.' 1 'Sectus orbis' literally means 'half the world,' as the ancients divided our planet only into the two great divisions, Europe and Asia. 'Uxor invicti Jovis esse nescis: Mitte singultus, bene ferre magnam Disce fortunam; tua sectus orbis1 Nomina ducet.' ODE XXVIII. ON THE FEAST-DAY OF NEPTUNE. It is but a waste of ingenious trifling to conjecture who or what Lyde was, or, indeed, if any Lyde whatever existed elsewhere than in the poet's fancy. The poem is very lively and graceful, and evidently intended for general popularity as a song, without any personal application to the writer. What, on the feast-day of Neptune, Can I do better? Up, Lyde! Out from its hiding-place, quick, Drag forth the Cæcuban hoarded; Make an attack upon Wisdom! On to the siege of her fort! See how the noon is declining, Yet, as if day were at stand-still, laggard, thou leav'st in the store The cask which has lazily slumbered Since Bibulus acted as consul; now is its time to awake. Sing we, by turns, of King Neptune, And the green locks of the Nereids; then to thy bowshapen lyre Chant us a hymn to Latona, And to the swift-footed Dian, and to her arrows of light; Then, as the crown of thy verses, Chant to the goddess who visits, borne on her car by the swans, Cyclades, Cnidos, and Paphos ; Night, too, shall have her deserts, and lullabies rock her to sleep.1 CARM. XXVIII. Festo quid potius die Neptuni faciam ? Prome reconditum, Munitæque adhibe vim sapientiæ. Inclinare meridiem Sentis; ac, veluti stet volucris dies, Cessantem Bibuli Consulis amphoram. Nos cantabimus invicem Neptunum, et virides Nereïdum comas; Latonam, et celeris spicula Cynthia : Summo carmine, quæ Cnidon Fulgentesque tenet Cycladas et Paphon Dicetur merita Nox quoque nenia.1 1 'Dicetur merita Nox quoque nenia.' The word 'nenia' is applied to funereal dirges, and also, as Dillenburger observes, to the songs by which nurses rocked infants to sleep; and Orelli and Macleane suggest that such is the meaning of the word here. Y ODE XXIX. INVITATION TO MECENAS. No ode of Horace specially addressed to Mæcenas exceeds this in dignity of sentiment and sustained beauty of treatment. Horace's descriptions of summer are always charming, and though he rejects the prosaic minuteness by which modern poets, when describing external nature, make an inventory of scenic details as tediously careful as if they were cataloguing articles for auction, he succeeds in bringing a complete picture before the eye, and elevates the subject of still life by the grace of the figures he places, whether in the fore or the back ground. But he has seldom surpassed the beautiful image of summer in its sultry glow and in Long since, Mæcenas sprung from Tuscan kings, Balms to anoint the hair, And roses meet for wreaths on honoured brows, Wait at my home for thee. Snatch leisure brief, The slopes of Æsula,2 And parricidal Telegon's blue hills; Desert fastidious wealth, and that proud pile The riches, and the roar of prosperous Rome. Ne semper udum Tibur.' I interpret 'udum' as referring to the cascades of Anio; it may mean the rills meandering through the orchards of Tibur. 2 Munro has Æfulæ. The fis found in some of the best MSS. of Horace, in the best of the scholiasts, as well as of Livy, as shown by |