youth more favored was wont to fold his arms around thy snowy neck, I lived happier than the Persian monarch." LYDIA. As long as thou hadst not a greater flame for any other, nor was Lydia below Chloe [in thine affections], I Lydia, of distinguished fame, flourished more eminent than the Roman Ilia. HOR. The Thracian Chloe now commands me, skillful in sweet modulations, and a mistress of the lyre; for whom I would not dread to die, if the fates would spare her, my surviving soul. LYD. Calais, the son of the Thurian Ornitus, inflames me with a mutual fire; for whom I would twice endure to die, if the fates would spare my surviving youth. HOR. What! if our former love returns, and unites by a brazen yoke us once parted? What if Chloe with her golden locks be shaken off, and the door again open to slighted Lydia. LYD. Though he is fairer than a star, thou of more levity than a cork, and more passionate than the blustering Adriatic; with thee I should love to live, with thee I would cheerfully die. ODE X. TO LYCE. O LYCE, had you drunk from the remote Tanais, in a state of marriage with some barbarian, yet you might be sorry to expose me, prostrate before your obdurate doors, to the north winds that have made those places their abode. Do you hear with what a noise your gate, with what [a noise] the grove, planted about your elegant buildings, rebellows to the winds? And how Jupiter glazes the settled snow with his bright influence? Lay aside disdain, offensive to Venus, lest your rope should run backward," while the wheel is revolving. Your 45 The kings of Persia, in the times of Horace, might more properly be called governors, as they were in subjection to the Parthians. The poet therefore means the ancient kings of Persia, such as Cyrus or Darius, who were called kings of kings; and whose riches and power gave birth to the proverb, "Happier than the king of Persia." CRUQ. 46 An allusion to some mechanical contrivance for raising heavy weights, and which consists of a wheel with a rope passing in a grove along its Tyrrhenian father did not beget you to be as inaccessible as Penelope to your wooers. O though neither presents, nor prayers, nor the violet-tinctured paleness of your lovers, nor your husband smitten with a musical courtezan, bend you to pity; yet [at length] spare your suppliants, you that are not softer than the sturdy oak, nor of a gentler disposition than the African serpents. This side [of mine] will not always be able to endure your threshold, and the rain. ODE XI. TO MERCURY. 47 O MERCURY, for under thy instruction the ingenious Amphion moved rocks by his voice, you being his tutor; and though my harp, skilled in sounding, with seven strings,"" formerly neither vocal nor pleasing, but now agreeable both to the tables of the wealthy and the temples [of the gods]; dictate measures to which Lyde may incline her obstinate ears, who, like a filly of three years old, plays and frisks about in the spacious fields, inexperienced in nuptial loves, and hitherto unripe for a brisk husband. You are able to draw after you tigers and attendant woods, and to retard rapid rivers. To your blandishments the enormous porter of the [infernal] palace yielded, though a hundred serpents fortify his head, and a pestilential steam and an infectious poison issue from his tripletongued mouth. Moreover, Ixion and Tityus smiled with a reluctant aspect: while you soothe the daughters of Danaus" 48 outer edge. Should the weight of the mass that is to be raised prove too heavy, the rope, unable to resist, snaps asunder, and flies back, being drawn down by the body intended to be elevated. ANTHON. 47 Diodorus tells us, that the lyre had at first but four strings, according to the number of seasons, or quarters of the heavens. Macrobius informs us, that it was afterward, in view to the number of the planets, mounted with seven strings; from whence Pindar calls it the seventongued lyre. FRAN. 48 Danaides; the daughters of Danaus. He was the brother of Egyptus, king of Egypt. He came into Greece, and having expelled Sthenelus, fixed at Argos. He had fifty daughters, who were married to the fifty sons of Egyptus, whereof all, except Hypermnestra, by their father's command, slew their husbands upon the wedding-night; for which they were condemned in hell to fill a tub with water, the bottom of which was 1 with your delightful harmony, their vessel for some time remained dry. Let Lyde hear of the crime, and the well-known punishment of the virgins, and the cask emptied by the water streaming through the bottom, and what lasting fates await their misdeeds even beyond the grave. Impious! (for what greater impiety could they have committed?) Impious! who could destroy their bridegrooms with the cruel sword! One out of the many, worthy of the nuptial torch," was nobly false to her perjured parent, and a maiden illustrious to all posterity; she, who said to her youthful husband, "Arise! arise! lest an eternal sleep be given to you from a hand you have no suspicion of; disappoint your father-in-law and my wicked sisters, who, like lionesses having possessed themselves of calves (alas)! tear each of them to pieces; I, of softer mold than they, will neither strike thee, nor detain the in my custody. Let my father load me with cruel chains, because out of mercy I spared my unhappy spouse; let him transport me even to the extreme Numidian plains. Depart, whither your feet and the winds carry you, while the night and Venus are favorable: depart with happy omen; yet, not forgetful of me, engrave my mournful story on my tomb." 9950 ODE XII. TO NEOBULE. Ir is for unhappy maidens neither to give indulgence to love, nor to wash away cares with delicious wine; or to be dispirited out of dread of the lashes of an uncle's tongue.1 The pierced, and full of holes, that it could not retain any; by which means their labor was perpetually renewed. WATSON. 49 This expression is taken metaphorically for the marriage; because in the nuptial ceremonies the bride was conducted in the night to the bridegroom's house by the light of torches. SAN. 50 Ovid (Her. xiv. 128) supplies the epitaph: Scriptaque sunt titulo nostra sepulchra brevi: ANTHON. 51 Among the Romans, uncles had a great power over their nephews; winged boy of Venus, O Neobule, has deprived you of your spindle and your webs, and the beauty of Hebrus" from Lipara of inclination for the labors of industrious Minerva, after he has bathed his anointed shoulders in the waters of the Tiber; a better horseman than Bellerophon himself, neither conquered at boxing, nor by want of swiftness in the race: he is also skilled to strike with his javelin the stags flying through the open plains in frightened herd, and active to surprise the wildboar lurking in the deep thicket. ODE XIII. 53 TO THE BANDUSIAN FOUNTAIN. O THOU fountain of Bandusia, clearer than glass, worthy of delicious wine, not unadorned by flowers; to-morrow thou shalt be presented with a kid, whose forehead, pouting with new horns, determines upon both love and war in vain; for this offspring of the wanton flock shall tinge thy cooling streams with scarlet blood. The severe season of the burning dog-star can not reach thee; thou affordest a refreshing coolness to the oxen fatigued with the plow-share, and to the ranging flock. Thou also shalt become one of the famous fountains, through my celebrating the oak that covers the hollow rock, whence thy prattling rills descend with a bound. and as they were not usually so indulgent as fathers, their severity passed into a proverb. TORR. 52 Hebri. The name of a river (as above Enipeus, Od. iii. 7, 23), is attributed to a lover, yet the addition of his country's name indicates some individual easily recognizable. ANTHON. 53 Ovid represents Numa sacrificing to a fountain, and placing round it goblets crowned with flowers, a particular not mentioned by Horace, although it was, perhaps, a usual part of the solemnity, intended to invite the divinity to drink. DAC. AUGUSTUS CESAR, O ye people who was lately said, like another Hercules, to have sought for the laurel to be purchased only by death, revisits his domestic gods, victorious from the Spanish shore. Let the matron (Livia), to whom her husband alone is dear, come forth in public procession, having first performed her duty to the just gods;55 and (Octavia), the sister of our glorious general; the mothers also of the maidens and of the youths just preserved from danger, becomingly adorned with supplicatory fillets. Ye, O young men, and young women lately married, abstain from illomened words. This day, to me a real festival, shall expel gloomy cares: I will neither dread commotions," nor violent death, while Cæsar is in possession of the earth. Go, slave, and seek for perfume and chaplets, and a cask that remembers the Marsian war, 58 if any vessel could elude the vagabond Spartacus.” And bid the tuneful Neæra make haste to 66 54 Augustus left Rome in the month of June, 727, for his British expedition; but satisfied with the submission of that people, he turned his arms against the Spaniards, and did not return to Rome until the year 730. TORR. 55 The gods are here styled "just" from their granting to Augustus the success which his valor deserved. This, of course, is mere flattery. Augustus was never remarkable either for personal bravery or military talents. ANTHON. 56 The Roman ladies usually bound their heads, as a mark of their chastity, with fillets, which common women durst not wear. But Horace rather means the sacred vails with which they covered their heads and hands in sacrifices, public prayers, and processions upon extraordinary occasions. DAC. 57 By tumultus the poet means the civil wars, and by vis, all foreign wars. He with reason speaks of the tranquillity of the Roman empire; for Augustus a second time shut the temple of Janus when he returned from Spain. TORR. SAN. 58 This war was called the Social and Italian war, which Horace calls Marsian, because it was begun by the Marsi; and as the memory of this war was marked on the cask, for which the poet sends his slaves, the wine must have been sixty-eight years old. SAN. 59 Spartacus, a gladiator, and Thracian by birth, who, putting himself at the head of a small number of gladiators, whom he had drawn |