'Or the chariot-chase, fearlessly follow:

Merion, too, thou shalt know, but look yonder, Through the battle comes raging to find thee Tydides, more dread than his sire!

'Ah! from him, as a hart in the valley
Sees the wolf and forgetteth its pasture,
All unnerved and deep-panting thou fliest ;

Not such was the pledge to thy love.

'Though the wrath in the fleet of Achilles Bring a respite to Troy and Troy's mothers; Ilion's domes, after winters predestined,

Shall sink in the flames of the Greek!'

Pugnæ, sive opus est imperitare equis, Non auriga piger: Merionen quoque Nosces. Ecce furit te reperire atrox. Tydides melior patre,

Quem tu, cervus uti vallis in altera
Visum parte lupum graminis immemor,
Sublimi fugies mollis anhelitu,
Non hoc pollicitus tuæ.

Iracunda diem proferet Ilio

Matronisque Phrygum classis Achilleï ;

Post certas hiemes uret Achaïcus

Ignis Iliacas domos.

ODE XVI.

RECANTATION.

There is no ground for safe conjecture as to the person here addressed. The old inscriptions applying it to Tyndaris, the daughter of Gratidia, celebrated as Canidia in the Epodes, or the assertion in Cruquius that it is Gratidia herself, are now generally considered to be purely fic

O, of mother so fair thou the yet fairer daughter,
To such end as thou wilt put my guilty iambics,
Fling them into the flames to consume,
Or the ocean of Hadria to drown.

titious.

Phrygian Cybele, no, nor the Pythian Apollo
In the innermost shrines soul-convulsing his priesthood,
No, nor Liber, nor Corybants mad

When their cymbals redouble the clash,

Craze the mind like the woeful disorders of anger,
Which are scared from their vent, nor by Norican falchion,
Wreckful oceans-untameable fires,

Nor ev'n Jove though himself thunder down.

It is said that Prometheus to man's primal matter
Was compelled to add something from each living creature,
And thus from the wild lion he took

Rabid virus to place in our gall.

Anger shattered in ruins the House of Thyestes;
Anger stands forth the cause by which cities have perished,
And the ploughshare of insolent hosts

Has passed over the site of their walls.

titious. Horace, no doubt, in his youth wrote a great many satirical or vituperative poems which he had too good taste to republish, and which, happily for his fame, have perished altogether. To some lady so libelled we may well suppose this ode to have been addressed, for it has an air of reality about it. It may have been suggested by the poem in which Stesichorus recanted his slanders on Helen, but to what extent Horace here imitates that poem, there are no means of judging.

CARM. XVI.

O matre pulchra filia pulchrior,
Quem criminosis cunque voles modum
Ponis iambis, sive flamma

Sive mari libet Hadriano.

Non Dindymene, non adytis quatit
Mentem sacerdotum incola Pythius,
Non Liber æque, non acuta

Sic geminant Corybantes æra,

Tristes ut iræ, quas neque Noricus
Deterret ensis, nec mare naufragum,
Nec sævus ignis, nec tremendo
Juppiter ipse ruens tumultu.

Fertur Prometheus, addere principi
Limo coactus particulam undique
Desectam, et insani leonis

Vim stomacho apposuisse nostro.

Iræ Thyesten exitio gravi

Stravere, et altis urbibus ultimæ

Stetere causæ, cur perirent

Funditus, imprimeretque muris

Be appeased then that vehement heat of the bosom In the sensitive heyday of youth tempted me too, And it whirled me all frantic away

Down the torrent of scurrilous song.

Now I seek to exchange rude emotions for soft ones
Provided my penitence move thee to pardon,
And my full recantation thus made,
O be friends, and restore me thy heart.