tious. Whether the persons designated by the names existed is another matter-probably enough: their types are always existing. There is no reason for supposing the various Lydias whom Horace addresses were the same person; every reason, judging by the internal evidence of the several poems, to suppose they were not. There is no other ode in this metre. CARM. VIII. Lydia, dic, per omnes Te deos oro, Sybarin cur properes amando Oderit campum, patiens pulveris atque solis? Cur neque militaris Inter æquales equitat, Gallica nec lupatis Cur timet flavum Tiberim tangere? Cur olivum Sanguine viperino Cautius vitat, neque jam livida gestat armis Sæpe trans finem jaculo nobilis expedito? Quid latet, ut marinæ Filium dicunt Thetidis sub lacrimosa Troiæ Cultus in cædem et Lycias proriperet catervas? D ODE IX. TO THALIARCHUS. Thaliarchus signifies in Greek 'arbiter bibendi'-commonly translated 'feastmaster.' Some editors, as Dillenburger and Macleane, refusing to consider it meant to be a proper name, print 'thaliarche,' O feastmaster.' Orelli and Yonge, however, retain the capital T, and it is perhaps more agreeable to Horace's habit of individualising generals, and is certainly more animated in itself, to consider, with Buttmann, that the word is meant for a proper name, though of course a fictitious one, and invented to signify the official character of the person addressed. I may also add that there is no instance, I believe, in Latin authors, in which the word thaliarchus is used as a feastmaster; and that, therefore, if Horace did not mean it to be considered a pro See how white in the deep-fallen snow stands Soracte! Halting mute in the gripe of the frost. per Thaw the cold; more and more on the hearth heap the fagots More and more bringing bounteously out, Thaliarchus, In the great Sabine two-handled jar. Leave the rest to the gods, who can strike into quiet per name, it would have been unintelligible to those of his readers who did not understand Greek; and to those who did, would have appeared a pedantic affectation, which was precisely the reproach that a man of Horace's good taste and keen sense of the ridiculous would not voluntarily have incurred. The references to the manner in which Thaliarchus may spend his day, all belong to the life of a town; and there is no reason to suppose the scene otherwise than at Rome. Walckenaer says that the isolated and singular form of Soracte strikes the eye on quitting the city by one of the two gates to the north. Though, to judge by a fragment preserved in Athenæus, the poem is more or less imitated from an ode by Alcæus, the scene and manners are altogether Roman; in fact, the more the fragments left of Greek poets are fairly compared with the verses in which they are imitated by Horace, the more Horace's originality in imitating becomes conspicuous. CARM. IX. Vides, ut alta stet nive candidum Dissolve frigus, ligna super foco Permitte divis cetera, qui simul Shun to seek what is hid in the womb of the morrow; Spurn not, thou, choral dances and song, While the hoar-frost morose keeps aloof from thy verdure. Thine the sports of the Campus,' the gay public gardens; Thine at twilight the words whispered low; Each in turn has its own happy hour: Now for thee the sweet laugh of the girl-which betrays her Hiding slyly within the dim nook of the threshold, And the love-token snatched from the wrist, I C Campus et areæ '-the Campus Martius, in which, in the forenoon, athletic sports were practised, and the public promenades (area) in different parts of the city, and especially round the temples, which were the resort of loungers in the afternoon. Orelli thus gracefully elucidates the concluding verse. 'The scene,' he says, is this: the lover goes at the appointed hour to the door of his mistress, which stands ajar; he calls upon her with low whispers: the girl keeps silence, having playfully hid herself behind the threshold, until at last she betrays herself by her laugh. The lover then rushes in, and carries off as a love-pledge her bracelet or ring, after a struggle on her part not too pertinaciously coy.' Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quærere, et Quem Fors dierum cunque dabit, lucro Appone, nec dulces amores Sperne, puer, neque tu choreas, Donec virenti canities abest Nunc et latentis proditor intimo |