lewd judge, *and a foreign woman,t have reduced to ashes, condemned together with its inhabitants and fraudulent prince, by me and the chaste Minerva, ever since Laomedon disappointed the Gods of the stipulated reward. Now neither the infamous guest of the Lacedæmonian adulteress shines any more; nor does Priam's perjured family break the warlike Grecians, by the aid of Hector; and that war, spun out to such a length by our factions, hath sunk to peace. Henceforth, therefore, I will give up to Mars both my bitter resentment and my detested grandson, whom the Trojan priestess bore. Him will I suffer to enter the bright regions, to drink the juice of nectar, and to be enrolled amongst the peaceful orders of Gods. As long as the extensive sea rages between Troy and Rome, let them, whilst exiles, reign happy in any other part of the world, as long as cattle trample upon the busts of Priam and Paris, and wild beasts there conceal their young ones with impunity, may the capital remain in splendour, and may brave Rome give laws to the conquered Medes. Tremendous, let her extend her name abroad to the extremest boundaries of the earth, where the interlocated ocean separates Europe from Africa, where the swollen Nile waters the plains, deriving more bravery from the contempt of gold as yet undiscovered, and so best situated whilst hid in the earth, than from forcing it out for the uses of mankind, with a hand ready to make depredations on every thing that is sacred. Whatever end of the world has made resistance, that let her reach with her arms, joyfully alert to visit even that part where fiery heats rage madding, that where clouds and rains* storm with unmoderated fury. But I pronounce this fate to the warlike Romans, on this condition, that, neither through an excess of piety, nor of confidence in their power, they become inclined to rebuild the houses of their ancestors' Troy. The state of Troy, reviving under unlucky auspices, shall be revisited with lamentable destruction, while I, the wife and sister of Jupiter, lead on the victorious bands. Thrice, if a brazen wall should arise by the means of its founder Phœbus, thrice should it fall, demolished by my Grecians, thrice should the captive wife bewail her husband and her children slain." These themes ill suit the merry lyre: whither, muse, are you going? Cease, impertinent, to relate the language of the Gods, and to debase things of such grandeur by your trifling * Alluding to the judgment of Paris. † Helen. Apollo and Neptune, for building the walls of Troy. The origin of the fable is supposed to have been, his borrowing money out of the temples of those two Gods which he never returned. Romulus, the founder of the Roman state, was grandson to Juno by her son Mars, but detested by the goddess on account of his Trojan mother. This spirited speech strongly sets forth the resentment of a slighted woman, whom the miseries of a ten-years' war of half the world, and the destruction of Troy, had not appeased. measures. * A periphrasis beautifully expressive of the torrid and frigid zones, which the ancients thought not habitable, on account of the intolerable extremity of their respective temperatures. ODE IV. TO CALLIOPE. That every thing goes well with those who are under the protection of the Gods. DESCEND from heaven, O queen Calliope, and come sing with your pipe a lengthened strain; or, if you had now rather, with your clear voice, or on the harp or lute of Phœbus. Do ye hear? or does a pleasing frenzy delude me! I seem to hear her, and to expatiate with her, along the hallowed groves through which pleasant rivulets and gales make their way. -Me, when a child, and fatigued with play, in sleep the woodland doves, famous in story, covered with green leaves in the Apulia mountain Vultur, just without the limits of plentiful Apulia; so that it was matter of wonder to all that inhabit the nest* of lofty Acherontia, the Bantine forests, and the rich soil of low Ferentum, how I could sleep with my person secure from deadly vipers and ravenous bears; how I could be covered with sacred laurel and myrtle heaped together, never considering me as a child not so animated without divine assistance. Yours, O ye muses, wholly yours, whether I am elevated to the Sabine heights, or whether the cool Præneste, or the sloping Tibur, or the watery Baiæ, have engaged me. Me, who am attached to your fountains and choral sports, not the army put to flight at Philippi, not the execrable tree, nor Pali * Acherontia was situated on the summit of a mountain, uke a nest in a tall tree. nurus* in the Sicilian sea, have destroyed. Whilst you shall be with me, with pleasure will I, a sailor, dare the raging Bosphorus, or, a traveller, the burning sands of the Assyrian shore: I will visit the Britons, inhuman to strangers, and Concanus, delighted with drinking the blood of horses: I will visit the quivered Geloni, and the Scythian river Tanais, without a hurt. You entertained the sublime Cæsar, studious to put an end to his toils, in the Pierian grotto, soon as he had distributed in towns his troops, wearied by campaigning. You administer to him moderate counsels, and, gracious, rejoice at them when administered. We are aware how he, who rules the inactive earth and the stormy main, the cities also, and the dreary infernal domains, and alone governs, with a righteous sway, both Gods and the human multitude; how he took off the impious Titans, and the gigantic troop by his falling thunderbolts. That horrid youth, trusting to the strength of their arms, and the brethren proceeding to place Pelion upon the shady Olympus, had brought great dread even upon Jupiter. But what could Typhœus, and the strong Mimas, or what Porphyrion with his menacing stature; what Rhætus, and Enceladus, a fiercer darter with trees entire uptorn, avail, though rushing with all their fury against the resounding shield of Pallas? At one part stood the eager Vulcan, at another the matron Juno, and he who is never desirous to lay aside his bow from his shoulders, Apollo, the God of Delos and Patara, who bathes his flowing hair in the pure water of Castalia, and possesses the groves of Lycia and his native wood. Force, void of conduct, falls by its own weight; moreover, the Gods promote dis creet force to farther advantage; but the same beings detest forces that meditate every kind of impiety. The hundred-handed Gyges is an evidence of the justness of my sentiments, and Orion, the tempter of the spotless Diana, destroyed by a virgin dart. The earth, heaped over her own monsters, grieves and laments her offspring sent to dismal heil by a thunderbolt; nor does the active fire consume Ætna that is placed over it, nor does the vulture desert the liver of incontinent Tityus, being stationed there as an avenger of his baseness; and three hundred chains confine the *amorous Pirithous. * A promontory, so called from a pilot of Eneas who was lost there. He praises Augustus, who, by the terror of his arms, had subdued the Britons, but most especially because he had subdued the Parthians. We have believed that the thundering Jupiter has dominion in the heavens: Augustus shall be esteemed a present deity, the Britons and terrible Parthians being added to the Roman empire. What! has any soldier of Crassus lived an infamous husband with a barbarian wife? and has (O the corrupted senate and inverted morals of the times!) the Marsian and Apulian, unmindful of the sacredt shields, of the Roman name and habit, * For being Pluto's rival. + Called Ancilia, one of which being sent from heaven, was a token of empire being established at Rome; and, ン |