proceedings, why dost thou look at me as a step-mother, or as a wild beast stricken with a dart? While the boy made these est complaints with a faltering voice, he stood, with his bandages 19 of distinction taken from him, a tender frame, such as might soften the impious breasts of the cruel Thracians; Canidia, having interwoven her hair and uncombed head with little e vipers, orders wild 20 fig-trees torn up from graves, orders funeral cypresses and eggs besmeared with the gore of a loathsome toad, and feathers of the nocturnal screech-owl, and those herbs, which Iölchos, and Spain, fruitful in poisons, transmits, and bones snatched from the mouth of a hungry bitch, to be burned in Colchian flames. But Sagana, tucked up for ex pedition, sprinkling the waters of Avernus all over the house, bristles up with her rough hair like a sea-urchin, or a boar in the chase. Veia, deterred by no remorse of conscience, groaning with the toil, dug up the ground with the sharp spade; where the boy, fixed in, might long be tormented to death at the sight of food varied two or three times in a day: while he stood out with his face, just as much as bodies suspended by the chin [in swimming] project from the water, that his parched marrow and dried liver might be a charm for love; when once the pupils of his eyes had wasted away, fixed on the forbidden food. Both the idle Naples, and every neighbouring town believed, that Folia of Ariminum, [a witch] of masculine lust, was not absent: she, who with her Thessalian incantations forces the charmed stars and the moon from heaven.21. Here the fell Canidia, gnawing her unpaired dered with purple, until they were fifteen years of age. The boy, therefore, conjures Canidia by this robe, which showed his youth and quality, which was in itself esteemed sacred, and should therefore protect him from danger. The Romans, with regard to this robe, used the expression majestas pueritia, the majesty of childhood. TORR. DAC. טר 19 Constitit insignibus raptis. His robe and bulla (which was hung round his neck, and made of gold or silver in form of a heart) are by the poet called insignia. 20 Jubet sepulcris caprificos erutas. Here Canidia calls for the drugs that witches were supposed to use in composing their philtres. She commands the wild fig-tree to be brought, because it bears neither fruit nor flower, and is esteemed unlucky and ill-omened. To make the charm more powerful, it must grow in a burying-place, and be torn up by the roots. DAC. 21 That the moon could be brought down by magic was a common superstition among the ancients, and the Thessalians were thought to be possessed of this art more than any other people. ANTHON. + thumb with her livid teeth, what said she? or what did she not say? O ye faithful witnesses to my proceedings, Night and Diana, who presidest over silence, when the secret rites are celebrated: now, now be present, now turn your anger and power against the houses of our enemies, while the savage wild beasts lie hid in the woods, dissolved in sweet repose; let the dogs of Suburra (which may be matter of ridicule for every body) bark at the aged profligate, bedaubed with ointment, such as my hands never made any more exquisite. What is the matter? Why are these compositions less efficacious than those of the barbarian Medea? by means of which she made her escape, after having revenged herself on [Jason's] haughty mistress, the daughter of the mighty Creon; when the garment, a gift that was infected with venom, took off his new bride by its inflammatory power. And yet no herb, nor root hidden in inaccessible places, ever escaped my notice. [Nevertheless,] he sleeps in the perfumed bed of every harlot, from his forgetfulness [of me]. Ah! ah! he walks free [from my power] by the charms of some more knowing witch. Varus, (oh you that will shortly have much to lament!) you shall come back to me by means of unusual spells; nor shall you return to yourself by all the power of Marsian enchantments.22 I will prepare a stronger philtre: I will pour in a stronger philtre for you, disdainful as you are; and the heaven shall subside below the sea, with the earth extended over it, sooner than you shall not burn with love for me, in the same manner as this pitch [burns] in the sooty flames. At these words, the boy no longer [attempted], as before, to move the impious hags by soothing expressions: but, doubtful in what manner he should break silence, uttered Thyestean imprecations. Potions [said he] have a great efficacy in confounding right and wrong, but are not able to invert the condition of human nature; I will persecute you with curses; and execrating detestation is not to be expiated by any victim. Moreover, when doomed to death I shall have expired, I will attend you as a nocturnal fury; and, a ghost, I will attack your faces with my hooked talons, (for such is 22 Marsis vocibus. The Marsi had the same character of witchcraft in Italy, as the Thessalians had in Greece. But they particularly owed their reputation to Marsus, the founder of their nation, who was the son of Circe. the power of those divinities, the Manes,) and, brooding upon your restless breasts, I will deprive you of repose by terror. The mob, from village to village, assaulting you on every side with stones, shall demolish you filthy hags. Finally, the wolves and Esquiline 23 vultures shall scatter abroad buried limbs. Nor shall this spectacle escape the observation of my parents, who, alas! must survive me. your un ODE VI. AGAINST CASSIUS SEVERUS. O CUR, thou coward against wolves, why dost thou persecute innocent strangers? Why do you not, if you can, turn your empty yelpings hither, and attack me, who will bite again? For, like a Molossian,24 or tawny Laconian dog, that is a friendly assistant to shepherds, I will drive with erected ears through the deep snows every brute that shall go before me. You, when you have filled the grove with your fearful barking, you smell at the food that is thrown to you. Have a care, have a care: for, very bitter against bad men, I exert my ready horns uplift; like him that was rejected as a sonin-law by the perfidious Lycambes, or the sharp enemy of Bupalus. What, if any cur attack me with malignant tooth, shall I, without revenge, blubber like a boy? 23 Esquilina alites. The Esquilian Hill was a place of public executions, and the poor of Rome were buried there, in ditches called puticuli. The birds, which came to this hill, to prey upon carcasses of criminals, are called Esquilinæ alites. CRUQ. 24 The Molossian and Laconian dogs were of a robust make, and valuable as well in hunting wild beasts, as in defending the flocks from nocturnal thieves, and from the attacks of wolves. The Molossi occupied the north-eastern part of Epirus. Virgil (Geor. iii. 405) characterizes both species, "Veloces Sparta catulos acremque Molossum Pasce sero pingui." Shakspeare praises the former. M. N. D. iv. 11: My hounds are bred out of the Spartan breed. ANTHON. ODE VIL TO THE ROMAN PEOPLE.25 WHITHER, Whither, impious men, are you rushing? Or why are the swords drawn,26 that were [so lately] sheathed? Is there too little of Roman blood spiled upon land and sea? [And this,] not that the Romans might burn the proud towers of envious Carthage, or that the Britons, hitherto unassailed, might go down 27 the sacred way bound in chains:28 but that, agreeably to the wishes of the Parthians, this city may fall by its own might. This custom [of warfare] never obtained even among either wolves or savage lions, unless against a different species. Does blind phrensy, or your superior valour, or some crime, hurry you on at this rate? Give answer. They are silent: and wan paleness infects their countenances, and their stricken souls are stupified. This is the case: a cruel fatality and the crime of fratricide 25 After the defeat of Brutus and Cassius, the death of Sextus Pompeius, and the resignation of Lepidus, Octavius and Antony alone remained in a condition of disputing the sovereign power. Sometimes Octavia, sometimes their common friends reconciled them; but, at length, they came to an open rupture, in the year 722, when all the forces of the republic were armed to give the last stroke to Roman liberty. During these preparations, Horace composed five or six odes on this subject. His design here is, to represent to both parties the horrors of their criminal dissensions, which threatened their common country with total ruin. SAN. 26 Enses conditi. Peace had sheathed their swords ever since the death of Sextus Pompeius, that is, for more than two years. SAN. 27 Descenderet. From the top of the sacred street they went downward to the forum, and the way from thence ascended to the Capitol. This ascent was called Clivus Capitolinus. LAMB. 28 Intactus Britannus. Julius Cæsar was the first of the Romans who carried his arms into Britain; and, although Suetonius tells us that he obliged the Britons to give hostages, and imposed tributes upon them, yet we may say that he rather opened a way for his successors into the island, than that he conquered it; or perhaps it was never totally subdued by the Romans. In the time of Horace, the reduction of this people was considered as a new conquest, reserved for the arms of Augustus, from whence the poet here calls them intacti, as he always mentions them with epithets of terror, which represent them as a nation formidable to the Romans, even in the highest strength and glory of their republic. ED DUBLIN. have disquieted the Romans, from that time when the blood of the innocent Remus, to be expiated by his descendants, was spilled upon the earth. ODE VIII. UPON A WANTON OLD WOMAN. CAN you, grown rank with lengthened age, ask what unnerves my vigour ? When your teeth are black, and old age withers your brow with wrinkles: and your back sinks between your staring hip-bones, like that of an unhealthy Cow. But, forsooth! your breast and your fallen chest, full well resembling a broken-backed horse, provoke me; and a body flabby, and feeble knees supported by swollen legs. May you be happy: and may triumphal statues adorn your funeral procession: and may no matron appear in public abounding with richer pearls. What follows, because the Stoic treatises 29 sometimes love to be on silken pillows? Are unlearned constitutions the less robust? Or are their limbs less stout? But for you to raise an appetite, in a stomach that is nice, it is necessary that you exert every art of language. ODE IX. TO MÆCENAS.30 WHEN, O happy Mæcenas, shall I, over-joyed at Cæsar's being victorious, drink with you under the stately dome (for so it pleases Jove) the Cæcuban reserved for festal entertainments, while the lyre plays a tune, accompanied with flutes, that in the Doric, these in the Phrygian measure? As lately, 29 "It was a common custom to place such books on the pillows, that, when the favoured one came, the lady might pretend that philosophy, not pleasure, was the object of her attention." SCHOL. 30 The date of this piece cannot be disputed, since the battle of Actium, which is the subject of it, was fought on the 12th of September, 723. SAN |