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born upon the river Tanaïs. And let us, both on common and festal days, amidst the gifts of joyous Bacchus, together with our wives and families, having first duly invoked the Gods, celebrate, after the manner of our ancestors, with songs, accompanied with Lydian pipes, our late valiant commanders, and Troy, and Anchises, and the offspring of benign Venus.

HORACE'S EPODES;

OR, THE

FIFTH BOOK OF THE ODES.

ODE I.

TO MECENAS.

Horace offers to accompany him, on his departure for the Actian expedition.

You will go, my friend Mæcenas, with Liburnian galleys, amongst the towering forts of Antony's large ships, ready, at your own hazard, to undergo any of Cæsar's dangers. What shall I do? to whom life may indeed be agreeable if you survive, but, if otherwise, it will be insupportable. Whether shall I, at your commands, pursue my ease, which cannot be pleasing unless in your company? or shall I endure this toil with such a courage as becomes uneffeminate men to bear?— I will bear it; and with an intrepid soul will I follow you, either through the summits of the Alps, and the inhospitable Caucasus, or to the farthest western bay. You may ask, perhaps, how I, unwarlike and infirm, can assist your labours by mine? While I am your companion, I shall be in less anxiety, which takes possession of the absent in a greater measure; as the bird that has 11*

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unfledged young is in a greater dread of serpents' approaches, when they are left,-not that if she should be present when they came, she could be of any more service. Not only this, but every other war shall be cheerfully embraced by me, for the hopes of your favour: and this, not that my ploughs should labour to a greater number of teams of mine own oxen; or that my cattle, before the scorching dog-star, should change the Calabrian for the Lucanian pastures; neither that my white country-box should reach (approach in magnificence) the Circean* walls of lofty Tusculum. Your generosity has already enriched me enough, and more than enough: I shall never wish to amass, what either, like the miser Chremes in the play, I may bury in the earth, or luxuriously squander, like a prodigal rake.

ODE II.

THE PRAISES OF A COUNTRY LIFE.

Alphius, the usurer, weary as it were with his craft, praises a country life; but, shortly overcome with avarice, he returns to his natural bent, and his old way of living.

HAPPY the man, who, remote from business, after the manner of the ancient race of mortals, cultivates his paternal lands with his own oxen, disengaged from every kind of usury; he is neither alarmed with the horrible trumpet, as a soldier, nor dreads he the angry sea; he shuns

*Circean, because Tusculum was built by Telegonus, the son of Circe,-Telagoni juja parricida.

both the bar, and the proud portals of the men in power. Wherefore he either weds the lofty poplars to the mature branches of the vine, or, lopping off the useless boughs with his pruning-knife, he ingrafts more fruitful ones; or takes a prospect of the herds of his lowing cattle wandering about in a lonely vale; or stores his honey, pressed from the combs, in clean vessels; or shears his tender sheep, or, when autumn has lifted up in the fields his head adorned with mellow fruits, how glad is he while he gathers the pears grafted by himself, and the grape that vies with the purple, with which he may recompense thee, O Priapus, and thee, father Silvanus, the guardian of his boundaries! sometimes he delights to lie under an aged holm-tree, sometimes on the matted grass: meanwhile the waters glide down from steep clefts: the birds warble in the woods; and the fountains murmur with their purling streams, which invites on gentle slumbers. But when the wintry season of the tempestuous* air prepares rains and snows, he either pushes the fierce boars, with dogs on every side, into the intercepting toils; or spreads his thin nets with the smooth pole, as a snare for the voracious thrushes; or catches in his gin the timorous hare, or that stranger the crane, pleasing rewards for his labour. Amongst such joys as these, who does not forget those mischievous anxieties, which are the property of love? But if a chaste wife, assisting on her part in the

*Thundering Jupiter: but as thunder is the least frequent in winter, and Jupiter, it has above been observed, frequently signifies the air, the expression may perhaps be best understood of the loud hurricanes and the general troubled state of the atmosphere in the winter season.

management of the house, and beloved children, (such as is the Sabine, or the sun-burnt spouse of the industrious Apulian,) piles up the sacred hearth* with old wood just at the approach of her weary husband; and shutting up the fruitful cattle in the woven hurdles, she milks dry their distended udders; and drawing this year's wine out of a well-seasoned cask, prepares the unbought collation; not the Lucrine oysters could delight me more, or the turbot, or the scar, should the tempestuous winter drive any from the eastern floods to this sea; not the turkey, nor the Asiatic wild fowl, can come into my stomach more agreeable, than the olive gathered from the richest branches of the trees, or the sorrel, that loves the meadows, or mallows, salubrious for a sickly body, or a lamb slain at the feast of the Godt Terminus, or a kid just rescued from the wolf. Amidst these dainties, how it pleases one to see the wellfed sheep hastening home! to see the weary oxen, with drooping neck, dragging the inverted ploughshare; and numerous slaves, the test of a rich family, ranged about the smiling household Gods! When Alphius, the usurer, now on the point of turning countryman, had said all this, he collected in all his money on the Ides ;-and endeavours to put it out again at the Calends.§

*The Roman hearths were doubly sacred; first to their household Gods, and secondly to Vesta.

+ The tutelar God of their boundaries.

The middle of one month. The beginning of another.

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