between Troy and Rome, let them, exiles, reign happy in any other part of the world: as long as cattle trample upon the tomb of Priam and Paris, and wild beasts conceal their young ones there with impunity, may the Capitol remain in splendor, and may brave Rome be able to give laws to the conquered Medes. Tremendous let her extend her name abroad to the extremest boundaries of the earth, where the middle ocean separates Europe from Africa, where the swollen Nile waters the plains; more brave in despising gold as yet undiscovered, and so best situated while hidden in the earth, than in 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, upon 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 fortune of Troy, reviving under unlucky auspices, shall be repeated with lamentable destruction, I, the wife and sister of Jupiter, leading on the victorious bands. Thrice, if a brazen wall should arise by means of its founder Phoebus, thrice should it fall, demolished by my Grecians; thrice should the captive wife bewail her husband and her children." These themes ill suit the merry lyre. Whither, muse, are you going?-Cease, impertinent, to relate the language of the gods, and to debase great things by your trifling measures.

ODE IV.

TO CALLIOPE.

Do ye

DESCEND from heaven, 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 Phoebus. hear? or does a pleasing frenzy delude me? I seem to hear [her], and to wander [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 Apulian Vultur, just without the limits of my native 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 body safe from deadly vipers and ravenous bears; how I could be covered with sacred laurel and myrtle heaped together, though a child, not animated without the [inspiration of the] gods. Yours, O ye muses, I am yours, whether I am elevated to the Sabine heights; or whether the cool Præneste, or the sloping Tibur, or the watery Baie have delighted me. Me, who am attached to your fountains and dances, not the army put to flight at Philippi," not the execrable tree, nor a Palinurus in the Sicilian Sea has destroyed. While you shall be with me, with pleasure will I, a sailor, dare the raging Bosphorus; or, a traveler, the burning sands of the Assyrian shore:" I will visit the Britons inhuman to strangers, 20 and the Concanian delighted [with drinking] the blood of horses: I will visit the quivered Geloni, and the Scythian river" without hurt. You entertained lofty" Cæsar, seeking to put an end to his toils, in the Pierian grotto, as soon as he had distributed in towns

17 Horace calls Acherontia a nest, because it was situated upon rocks, on the frontiers of Lucania. Cicero says of Ulysses, so powerful is the love of our country, that this wisest of the Greeks preferred his Ithaca, fixed, like a nest, upon rocks, to the enjoyment of immortality." DAC. 18 The poet here collects three facts, to show that the gods particularly watched over his preservation. He fled from the battle of Philippi in 712; he avoided the fall of a tree, 734; and he was preserved from shipwreck, probably, in the year 716, when he went aboard the fleet with Mæcenas, to pass over into Sicily against Pompey. SAN.

19 Assyria, properly speaking, is an inland country, and far distant from the sea; it is therefore used by the poet for Syria, which extends itself along the shore as far as Babylon. Such liberties are usual to the poets. DAC. SAN.

20 Upon the authority of the scholiast Acron, the commentators believe that the Britons sacrificed strangers to the gods.

21 The commentators here understand the Tanais; but the poet seems rather to speak of the Caspian Sea, which is also called Scythicus sinus. The Latins, in imitation of the Greeks, make use of the word amnis instead of mare. DAC.

22 Dacier and Sanadon, in opposition to all the commentators, agree that this epithet is here used for alumnus, that it refers to almæ in the forty-second line, and that they are both derived from the verb alere.

his troops, wearied by campaigning :" you administer [to him] moderate counsel, and graciously rejoice at it when administered. We are aware how he, who rules the inactive earth and the stormy main, the cities also, and the dreary realms [of hell], 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 shady Olympus, had brought great dread [even] upon Jove. But what could Typhoeus, and the strong Mimas, or what Porphyrion with his menacing stature; what Rhoetus, and Enceladus, a fierce darter with trees uptorn, avail, though rushing violently against the sounding 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 dew 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 discreet force to further advantage; but the same beings detest forces, that meditate every kind of impiety. The hundred-handed Gyges is an evidence of the sentiments I allege: 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 murky Hades by a thunderbolt; nor does the active fire consume Etna 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 Pirithoüs.

23 It is a noble encomium of Augustus, that he was fatigued with conquest, which he was always willing to end by an honorable peace. Piso having happily terminated the Thracian war in 743, Augustus returned to Rome in the beginning of the year following, with Tiberius and Drusus, who had reduced the Germans, the Dacians, and other nations bordering upon the Danube. The empire being thus at peace, Augustus executed a decree of the senate to shut the temple of Janus. This naturally supposes the disbanding of his armies, of which Horace speaks. SAN.

ODE V."

ON THE RECOVERY OF THE STANDARDS FROM PHRAATES.

We believe" from his thundering that Jupiter has dominion in the heavens: Augustus shall be esteemed a present deity, the Britons and terrible Parthians being added to the empire. What! has any soldier of Crassus lived, a degraded husband with a barbarian wife? And has (O [corrupted] senate, and degenerate morals!) the Marsian and Apulian, unmindful of the sacred bucklers, of the [Roman] name and gown, and of eternal Vesta, grown old in the lands of hostile fathers-inlaw, Jupiter and the city being in safety? The prudent mind of Regulus had provided against this, dissenting" from ignominious terms, and inferring from such a precedent destruction to the succeeding age, if the captive youth were not to perish unpitied. I have beheld, said he, the Roman standards affixed to the Carthaginian temples, and their arms taken away from our soldiers without bloodshed. I have beheld the arms of our citizens bound behind their free-born backs, and the gates [of the enemy] unshut, and the fields, which were depopulated by our battles, cultivated anew. The

24 In the year of Rome 731, Phraates received his son, who was detained as a hostage at Rome, from Augustus, on the express condition that he would restore the Roman standards taken from the army of Crassus. Phraates however considered that distance was safety, and accordingly neglected to fulfill his engagement, until a rumor prevailed that Augustus would no longer be trifled with, and had already advanced as far as Syria, with the intention of renewing the war. By policy then the standards were restored, yet the vanity of the Romans transformed this peaceable transaction into the result of a violent warfare, and accordingly it was celebrated by triumphal arches, monuments and coins. Wн. History, with correct simplicity, assures us (F. H. 228), that in B. C. 23, Tiridates being then at Rome, on an embassy arriving from Phraates, Augustus seized the occasion, among other points, to demand the restitution of the standards; and to the natural expectation of prompt compliance, which such a demand would create, Mr. Clinton thinks may be referred this splendid stanza, when hope is at once converted into certainty." TATE.

25" Credidimus, i. e. semper, atque etiam nunc credimus." ORELLI.

26 Jove. "Salvo capitolio.' SCHOL.

27 We have adopted the reading of MSS. with the interpretation of Jahn, "of Regulus dissenting from this base proposal, and deducing from this precedent destruction for all futurity," etc. WHEELER

soldier, to be sure, ransomed by gold, will return a braver fellow!-No-you add loss to infamy; [for] neither does the wool once stained by the dye of the sea-weed ever resume its lost color; nor does genuine valor, when once it has failed, care to resume its place in those who have degenerated through cowardice. If the hind, disentangled from the thick-set toils, ever fights, then indeed shall he be valorous, who has intrusted himself to faithless foes; and he shall trample upon the Carthaginians in a second war, who dastardly has felt the thongs with his arms tied behind him, and has been afraid of death. He, knowing no other way to preserve his life, has confounded peace with war. O scandal! O mighty Carthage, elevated to a higher pitch by Italy's disgraceful downfall! He (Regulus) is reported to have rejected the embrace of his virtuous wife and his little sons like one degraded; and to have sternly fixed his manly countenance on the ground, until, as an adviser, by his counsel he confirmed the wavering senators, and amid his weeping friends hastened away, a glorious exile. Notwithstanding he knew what the barbarian executioner was providing for him, yet he pushed from his opposing kindred and the populace retarding his return, in no other manner, than if (after he had quitted the tedious business of his clients, by determining their suit) he was only going to the Venafrian plains, or the Lacedæmonian Ta

rentum.

ODE VI.

TO THE ROMANS.

THOU shalt atone, O Roman, for the sins of your ancestors, though innocent, till you shall have repaired the temples and tottering shrines of the gods, and their statues, defiled with sooty smoke. Thou holdest sway, because thou bearest thyself subordinate to the gods; to this source refer every undertaking; to this, every event. The gods, because neglected, have inflicted many evils on calamitous Italy. Already has

28 Ut capitis minor, "As one no longer a freeman." Among the Romans, any loss of liberty or of the rights of a citizen was called Deminutio Capitis. ANTHON.