ishing Rome.1 A change is frequently agreeable to the rich, and a cleanly meal in the little cottage of the poor has smoothed an anxious brow without carpets or purple. Now the bright father of Andromeda displays his hidden fire; now Procyon rages, and the constellation of the ravening Lion, as the sun brings round the thirsty season. Now the weary shepherd with his languid flock seeks the shade, and the river, and the thickets of rough Sylvanus; and the silent bank is free from the wandering winds. You regard what constitution may suit the state, and are in an anxious dread for Rome, what preparations the Seres and the Bactrians subject to Cyrus, and the factious Tanaïs are making. A wise deity shrouds in obscure darkness the events of the time to come, and smiles if a mortal is solicitous beyond the law of nature. Be mindful to manage duly that which is present. What remains goes on in the manner of the river, at one time calmly gliding in the middle of its channel to the Tuscan Sea, at another, rolling along corroded stones, and stumps of trees forced away, and cattle, and houses, not without the noise of mountains and neighboring woods, when the merciless deluge enrages the peaceful waters. That man is master of himself and shall live happy, who has it in his power to say, "I have lived to-day: to-morrow let the Sire invest the heaven, either with a black cloud, or with clear sunshine; nevertheless he shall not render ineffectual what is past, nor undo or annihilate what the fleeting hour has once carried off. Fortune, happy in the execution of her cruel office, and persisting to play her insolent game, changes uncertain honors, indulgent now to me, by and by to another. I praise her, while she abides by me. If she moves her fleet wings, I resign what she has bestowed, and wrap myself up in my

1 We may compute how great the noise of a city must have been, which reckoned three millions of inhabitants; whose circuit, according to Pliny, including the suburbs, was forty-eight miles; and where the houses might be raised seven stories, each of them ten feet high. Lampridius tells us, that Heliogabalus collected ten thousand pound weight of cobwebs in Rome. FRAN.

2 The Scythians and Sarmatians, who bordered upon this river, were frequently engaged in wars with each other, from whence the poet calls it discors. LAMB.

3 Resigno quæ dedit-is a figurative expression. Resignare properly signifies to unseal or open, in opposition to signare. It is here to be understood, reddere, restituere, to restore. LAMB.

virtue, and court honest poverty without a portion. It is no business of mine, if the mast groan with the African storms, to have recourse to piteous prayers, and to make a bargain with my vows, that my Cyprian and Syrian merchandize may not add to the wealth of the insatiable sea. Then the gale and the twin Pollux will carry me safe in the protection of a skiff with two oars, through the tumultuous Egean Sea.

ODE XXX.

ON HIS OWN WORKS.

I HAVE Completed a monument more lasting than brass, and more sublime than the regal elevation of pyramids, which neither the wasting shower, the unavailing north wind, nor an innumerable succession of years, and the flight of seasons, shall be able to demolish. I shall not wholly die; but a great part of me shall escape Libitina." I shall continually be renewed in the praises of posterity, as long as the priest shall ascend the Capitol with the silent [vestal] virgin. Where the rapid Aufidus shall murmur, and where Daunus," poorly supplied with water, ruled over a rustic people, I, exalted from a low degree, shall be acknowledged as having originally adapted the Eolic verse' to Italian measures. Melpomene, assume that pride which your merits have acquired, and willingly crown my hair with the Delphic laurel.

4 These conditional prayers, which virtue blushes for, and which the gods disregard, are by Plato called Tέxvas μñopikús, a merchant's traffic; and by Persius, preces emaces, prayers of purchase. FRANCIS.

5 This was the goddess who presided over funerals. She is called Venus inferna or Epitymbia, in some ancient epitaphs, and reckoned among the infernal deities. A place in Rome, as the ancient Scholiast informs us, was called Libitina, where the undertaker lived, who received a certain piece of money for every person who was buried, from whence they knew the number of their dead. FRANCIS.

6 This Daunus was the son of Pilumnus and Danaë. He reigned over Daunia, and gave his name to the country. WATSON.

7 In this poem, which ought to be the last of his lyric works, the poet shows that he has preserved his resolution of imitating Alcæus and Sappho, which he mentioned in his first ode. Nor is it probable, that he could have so frequently boasted of being the first who formed himself upon an imitation of the Grecian poets, if the public had not in general acknowledged his claim. SAN.

THE FOURTH BOOK

OF THE

ODES OF HORACE.

ODE I.

TO VENUS.

AFTER a long cessation, O Venus, again are you stirring up tumults? Spare me, I beseech you, I beseech you. I am not the man I was under the dominion of good-natured' Cynara. Forbear, O cruel mother of soft desires, to bend one bordering upon fifty, now too hardened for soft commands: go, whither the soothing prayers of youths, invoke you. More seasonably may you revel in the house of Paulus Maximus, flying' thither with your splendid swans, if you seek to inflame a suitable breast. For he is both noble and comely, and by no means silent in the cause of distressed defendants, and a youth of a hundred accomplishments; he shall bear the ensigns of your warfare far and wide; and whenever, more

1 Bona. Horace appears to intimate by this epithet, that the affec tion entertained for him by Cynara, was rather pure and disinterested than otherwise. The word is often used in the sense of "generous,' "unrapacious." Comp. Tibull. ii. 4, 45, “At bona, quæ nec avara fuit." ANTHON.

2 Purpureis ales oloribus. The allusion is to the chariot of Venus, drawn by swans; and hence the term ales is, by a bold and beautiful figure, applied to the goddess herself, meaning literally "winged." As regards purpureis, it must be remarked that the ancients called any strong and vivid color by the name of purpureus, because that was their richest color. Thus we have purpurea coma, purpureus capillus, lumen juventæ purpureum, etc. Compare Virgil, Æn. i. 591. Albinovanus (El. ii. 62) even goes so far as to apply the term to snow. The usage of modern poetry is not dissimilar. Thus Spencer, "The Morrow next ap peared with purple hair;" and Milton, waves his purple wings." So also Gray, "The bloom of young desire and purple light of love.* WHEELER.

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prevailing than the ample presents of a rival, he shall laugh [at his expense], he shall erect thee in marble under a citron dome near the Alban lake. There you shall smell abundant frankincense, and shall be charmed with the mixed music of the lyre and Berecynthian pipe, not without the flageolet. There the youths, together with the tender maidens,* twice a day celebrating your divinity, shall, Salian-like, with white foot thrice shake the ground. As for me, neither woman, nor youth, nor the fond hopes of mutual inclination, nor to contend in wine, nor to bind my temples with fresh flowers, delight me [any longer]. But why; ah! why, Ligurinus, does the tear every now and then trickle down my cheeks? Why does my fluent tongue falter between my words with an unseemly silence? Thee in my dreams by night I clasp, caught [in my arms]; thee flying across the turf of the Campus Martius; thee I pursue, O cruel one, through the rolling waters.

ODE II.

TO ANTONIUS IULUS."

WHOEVER endeavors, O Iülus, to rival Pindar, makes an effort on wings fastened with wax by art Dædalean," about

3 The music in the temples was usually composed of a voice, one lyre, one or two flutes, and a flageolet. There was at Delos a statue of Apollo, who held in his left hand his bow and arrows, and on his right the three Graces, each with an instrument in her hand. The first held a lyre, the second, a flageolet, and the third, a flute. FRANCIS.

4 The ancients had not any children educated to sing in their temples, nor employed any theatrical performers, but chose from the best families a certain number of young people of both sexes, who sung until others were elected to succeed them. DAC.

5 Julius Antonius, to whom the present ode is addressed, was the second son of M. Antonius the triumvir, by Fulvia, born about A. U. C. 710. He was brought up by Octavia, whose daughter Marcella he married. He was honored with the prætorship, A. U. c. 741, and the consulate, 744. In 752, he was guilty of a gross outrage on the family of Augustus, by committing adultery with Julia. Julia was banished, consequently, to the island Pandateria, and Julius put himself to death by order of Augustus. "Iulius Antonius rogaverat Horatium, ut scripta Pindari Græca in laudem Cæsaris transferet." SCHOL. ANTHON.

6 Dædalus. A most ingenious artificer, so famous, that when we would

to communicate his name to the glassy sea. Like a river pouring down from a mountain, which sudden rains have increased beyond its acccustomed banks, such the deep-mouthed Pindar rages and rushes on immeasurable, sure to merit Apollo's laurel, whether he rolls down new-formed phrases through the daring dithyrambic, and is borne on in numbers. exempt from rule: whether he sings the gods, and kings, the offspring of the gods, by whom the Centaurs perished with a just destruction, [by whom] was quenched the flame of the dreadful Chimæra; or celebrates those whom the palm, [in the Olympic games] at Elis, brings home exalted to the skies, wrestler or steed, and presents them with a gift preferable to a hundred statues: or deplores some youth, snatched [by death] from his mournful bride-he elevates both his strength, and courage, and golden morals to the stars, and rescues him from the murky grave. A copious gale elevates the Dircean swan, O Antonius, as often as he soars into the lofty regions of the clouds but I, after the custom and manner of the Matinian bee, that laboriously gathers the grateful thyme, I, a diminutive creature, compose elaborate verses about the grove and the banks of the watery Tiber. You, a poet of sublimer style, shall sing of Cæsar, whenever, graceful in his wellearned laurel, he shall drag the fierce Sygambri along the sacred hill; Cæsar, than whom nothing greater or better the fates and indulgent gods ever bestowed on the earth, nor will bestow, though the times should return to their primitive gold. You shall sing both the festal days, and the public rejoicings on account of the prayed-for return of the brave

commend a thing for the curiousness of the work, we use the proverb Dadali opera. He lived in Crete, at the court of king Minos, by whose order he made the celebrated labyrinth, into which he was put himself, because he had discovered the windings and intricacies of it to Theseus. WATSON.

7 i. e. from oblivion.

8 Sicambros. This triumph, which the poet promises, and which was designed for the return of Augustus, was never carried into execution. To avoid the honors intended for him, he entered Rome in the night, without informing the senate of his arrival. He went the next day to the Capitol, and, taking the laurels off his statues, placed them at the feet of Jupiter.

9 During the absence of Augustus vows were made to the gods for his return, which the new consuls repeated in 741 by decree of the enate, as appears by medals and inscriptions. TORR.