a bride you will say: "I, skilled in the measures of the poet Horace, recited an ode which was acceptable to the gods, when the secular period25 brought back the festal days."

ODE VII.

TO TORQUATUS.

THE Snows are fled, the herbage now returns to the fields, and the leaves to the trees. The earth changes its appearance, and the decreasing rivers glide along their banks: the elder Grace, together with the Nymphs, and her two sisters, ventures naked to lead off the dance. That you are not to expect things permanent, the year, and the hour that hurries away the agreeable day, admonish us. The colds are mitigated by the zephyrs: the summer follows close upon the spring, shortly to die itself, as soon as fruitful autumn shall have shed its fruits: and anon sluggish winter returns again. Nevertheless the quick-revolving moons repair their wanings in the skies; but when we descend [to those regions] where pious Æneas, where Tullus and the wealthy Ancus [have gone before us], we become dust and a mere shade. Who knows whether the gods above will add to this day's reckoning the space of to-morrow? Every thing, which you shall indulge to your beloved soul," will escape the greedy hands of your heir. When once, Torquatus," you shall be dead,

25 The Sæcular games were celebrated once every hundred and ten years. Before the Julian reformation of the calendar, the Roman was a lunar year, which was brought, or was meant to be brought, into harmony with the solar year, by the insertion of an intercalary month. Joseph Scaliger has shown that the principle was to intercalate a month, alternately of twenty-two and twenty-three days, every other year during periods of twenty-two years, in each of which periods such an intercalary month was inserted ten times, the last biennium being passed over. five years made a lustrum, so five of these periods made a sæculum of one hundred and ten years. (Scaliger de Emendat. Temp. p. 80 sqq. Niehbuhr's Roman History, vol. i. p. 334. Hare and Thirlwall's transl.) 26 i. e. thyself. See Orelli.

ANTHON.

As

27 Torquatus was descended from Manlius, who, in a combat at Anio, defeated Uncagula the Gaul, and took a gold chain from his neck.

WATSON.

and Minos shall have made his awful decisions concerning you; not your family, not your eloquence, not your piety shall restore you. For neither can Diana free the chaste Hippolytus" from infernal darkness; nor is Theseus able to break off the Lethæan fetters from his dear Pirithous.30

O CENSORINUS, liberally would I present my acquaintance with goblets and beautiful vases of brass; I would present them with tripods, the rewards of the brave Grecians: nor would you bear off the meanest of my donations, if I were rich in those pieces of art, which either Parrhasius" or Sco

28 Hippolytum. What the poet says of Hippolytus contradicts the fable; and what he adds of Theseus and Pirithous destroys his reasoning; since, although Theseus could not bring Pirithous from hell, yet Hercules delivered Theseus. Horace, through this whole ode, speaks like an Epicurean; and, according to Epicurus, all the popular opinions concerning Hippolytus, Theseus, Pirithous, and many others, were all pure chimæras and fables. SAN.

29 Theseus, the son of Ægeus, king of Athens, and Æthera. He was related to Hercules, whose actions he imitated. He slew the Minotaur in Crete, and conquered the Amazons, and took their queen, Hippolyte, to wife, by whom he had Hippolytus. He subdued Thebes, worsted the Centaurs, and did other famous actions. He and Pirithous were a noble pair of friends. He died in the island of Paros. WATSON.

30 Pirithous, the son of Ixion, who assisted Theseus against the Centaurs. They descended both together into hell, to carry off Proserpine; but were detained prisoners. Hercules descending some time after, and resolving to deliver these two princes, took Theseus by the hand, who did the same to Pirithous; but an earthquake happening, by which they were separated., Theseus only escaped, and Pirithous was left. WATSON. 31 Censorinus. This was Caius Marcius Censorinus, who was consul with Asinius Gallus, in the year of the city 746. He was greatly esteemed at Rome, and accompanied Caius Cæsar, the grandson of Augustus, into Syria, where he died, eight years after the death of Horace. WATSON.

32 Parrhasius was an Ephesian; he flourished about 400 B. C. He is celebrated for his admirable representation of a curtain, before the vine and grapes of Zeuxis, which deceived even the artistical eyes of the latter. Scopas was a native of Paros, born Olymp. 97. A Venus, Phaeton, and Apollo, are mentioned among his chief productions; but he is chiefly

33

36

pas produced; the latter in statuary, the former in liquid colors, eminent to portray at one time a man, at another a god. But I have no store of this sort, nor do your circumstances or inclination require any such curiosities as these. You delight in verses: verses I can give, and set a value on the donation. Not marbles engraved with public inscriptions, by means of which breath and life returns to illustrious generals after their decease; not the precipitate flight of Hannibal, and his menaces retorted upon his own head:3 not the flames of impious Carthage *** ** more eminently set forth his praises, who returned, having gained a name from conquered Africa, than the Calabrian muses; neither, should writings be silent, would you have any reward for having done well. What would the son of Mars and Ilia be, if invidious silence had stifled the merits of Romulus? The force, and favor, and voice of powerful poets consecrate acus, snatched from the Stygian floods, to the Fortunate Islands. The muse forbids a praiseworthy man to die: the muse confers the happiness of heaven. Thus laborious Hercules has a place at the longed-for banquets of Jove: [thus] the sons of Tyndarus, that bright constellation, rescue shattered vessels from the bosom of the deep: [and thus] Bacchus, his temples adorned with the verdant vine-branch, brings the prayers of his votaries to successful issues.

celebrated for his exuberant fancy, and rich invention in depicting Bacchic subjects, whence the use of protulit, i. e. "ut inventor finxit," not 'spectandas exposuit." ANTHON.

as Notæ. These are probably abbreviations, but are used here for inscriptions; such as S. P. Q. R. for Senatus Populusque Romanus. TORR. 34 Rejectaque retrorsum minæ. The threats of Hannibal, driven back from Italy, when he was obliged to fly to the defense of Carthage. BOND. 35 On this lacuna see the commentators.

36 Nomen ab Africâ lucratus. Scipio was the first of the Romans who was honored with the name of a conquered country. Sempronius Gracchus must be an unsuspected witness to his character, when he says, that he subdued Africa; defeated in Spain four of the most famous Carthaginian generals; took Syphax prisoner in Numidia; vanquished Hannibal; rendered Carthage tributary to Rome, and obliged Antiochus to retire on the other side of Mount Taurus. TORR.

5*

ODE IX.

TO MARCUS LOLLIUS.

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37

LEST you for a moment imagine that those words will be lost, which I, born on the far-resounding Aufidus, utter to be accompanied with the lyre, by arts hitherto undivulged-If Mæonian Homer possesses the first rank, the Pindaric and Cean muses, and the menacing strains of Alcæus, and the majestic ones of Stesichorus, are by no means obscure: neither, if Anacreon long ago sportfully sung any thing, has time destroyed it: even now breathes the love and live the ardors of the Eolian maid, committed to her lyre. The Lacedæmonian Helen is not the only fair, who has been inflamed by admiring the delicate ringlets of a gallant, and garments embroidered with gold, and courtly accomplishments, and retinue: nor was Teucer the first that leveled arrows from the Cydonian bow: Troy was more than once harassed the great Idomeneus and Sthenelus were not the only heroes that fought battles worthy to be recorded by the muses: the fierce Hector or the strenuous Deïphobus were not the first that received heavy blows in defense of virtuous wives and children. Many brave men lived before Agamemnon: but all of them, unlamented and unknown, are overwhelmed with endless obscurity, because they were destitute of a sacred bard. Valor, uncelebrated, differs but little from cowardice when in the grave. I will not [therefore], O Lollius, pass you over in silence, uncelebrated in my writings, or suffer envious forgetfulness with impunity to seize so many toils of thine.99 You have a mind ever prudent in the con

37 Lollius. This Lollius is the same with him to whom he addresses the 2d and 18th Epistles of the First Book. He was consul with Q. Æmilius Lepidus in the 732d year of the city. WATSON.

38 Stesichorus was of Himera in Sicily, and flourished about 610 years before Christ. WATSON.

"9 Totve tuos patiar labores. Lollius commanded the Roman legions in Germany, Thrace, and Galatia. In the German war he lost the eagle of the fifth legion, and his defeat was called the Lollian slaughter. Lolliana clades; but he soon revenged the affront, and obliged the Germans to repass the Rhine, to demand a peace, and deliver hostages. FRAN.

duct of affairs, and steady alike amid success and trouble: you are an avenger of avaricious fraud, and proof against money, that attracts every thing; and a consul not of one year only, but as often as the good and upright magistrate has preferred the honorable to the profitable, and has rejected with a disdainful brow the bribes of wicked men," and triumphant through opposing bands has displayed his arms. You can not with propriety call him happy, that possesses much; he more justly claims the title of happy, who understands how to make a wise use of the gifts of the gods, and how to bear severe poverty; and dreads a reproachful deed worse than death; such a man as this is not afraid to perish in the defense of his dear friends, or of his country.

ODE X.

TO LIGURINUS.

O CRUEL still, and potent in the endowments of beauty, when an unexpected plume shall come upon your vanity, and those locks, which now wanton on your shoulders, shall fall off, and that color, which is now preferable to the blossom of the damask rose, changed, O Ligurinus, shall turn into a wrinkled face; [then] will you say (as often as you see yourself, [quite] another person in the looking-glass), Alas! why was not my present inclination the same, when I was young? Or why do not my cheeks return, unimpaired, to these my present sentiments?

40 "Rejects with disdainful brow the bribes of the guilty; and, victorious, makes for himself a way by his own arms amid opposing crowds." Explicuit sua arma may be rendered more literally, though less intelligibly, "displays his arms." The "opposing crowds" are the difficulties that beset the path of the upright man, as well from the inherent weakness of his own nature, as from the arts of the flatterer, and the machinations of secret foes. Calling, however, virtue and firmness to his aid, he employs these arms of purest temper against the host that surrounds him, and comes off victorious from the conflict. ED. DUBL