proach; by not one outrage is the pure household stained; morality and a law have quelled the tainted sin; mothers are commended by the likeness of their children; punishment, a close companion, follows guilt.

Who would dread the Parthian, who would dread the icy Scythian, who would dread the brood which savage Germany engenders, while Cæsar is preserved? Who would heed the warfare of fierce Iberia?

On his own hills each man passes through the day, and weds the vine to the unmarried trees; after this, he joyfully returns to his cups, and to the second course invites you as a god; you with many a prayer, you with wine poured forth from the bowl he worships, and your divinity he mingles with his household-gods, as did Greece, in her regard for Castor and mighty Hercules.

Oh, that you may, good chief, grant to Hesperia a length of holidays! So pray we sober in the morning, when the day is all before us; so pray we bedewed with wine, when the sun is sinking down beneath the Ocean.

VI.

Hymn to Apollo. This ode forms a kind of introduction to the Secular Hymn.

God, whose might to punish a boastful tongue the offspring of Niobe felt, and which Tityos the ravisher felt, and Phthian Achilles, almost the conqueror of lofty Troy, a warrior greater than all the rest, yet not a match for thee; albeit he, the son of ocean Thetis, as he fought with his terrific spear, shook the Dardan battlements. He, like a pine struck by the biting steel, or a cypress beneath the East wind's shock, fell down extended far and wide, and laid his neck in Trojan dust.

He would not, shut up in the horse which counterfeited an offering to Minerva, have ensnared the Trojans in their ill-timed revelling, and Priam's palace in the gaiety of its dances: but openly dreadful to the captured, (alas, foul crime! alas!) he would have burnt with Achæan flames the children that could not speak, even him who was still hidden within his mother's womb; had not the sire of the gods, vanquished by thy prayers and those of sweet Venus, granted to the fortunes of Æneas a circle of walls built with a fairer omen.

Minstrel, teacher of Thalia with the ringing voice, Phoebus, who dost bathe thy hair in Xanthus' stream, defend the honour of the Daunian Muse, Agyieus ever young! 'Tis Phoebus who has given me inspiration, Phoebus has given me the art of song and the name of poet.

Flower of our maidens, and boys born of noble parents, you that are the wards of the Delian goddess who with her bow stops the flight of lynxes and stags, observe the Lesbian measure and the note my finger strikes, while you duly hymn Latona's youthful son, and duly hymn the Shiner of the Night with her growing torch, her who is gracious to the crops, and swift to roll along the current of the months.

Presently, as a bride, you will say: "I, when the cycle brought round its festal days, rendered a hymn that was pleasing to Heaven, well taught in the measures of Horace the bard."

VII.

To his noble friend the eloquent advocate Torquatus, on the return of Spring. Though the earth renews itself, and the waning moon waxes afresh, yet death is the ending of human life. Let us then make the best of our days while they last.

The snows have fled away; now grass to the plains comes back, and foliage to the trees; Earth changes her phase, and streams subsiding glide within their banks; the Grace, with the Nymphs and her twin sisters, ventures unclad to lead along the dance.

Not to hope for immortality the year warns you, and the hour that whirls along the kindly day. The cold grows mild beneath the western gale's, Summer treads on the steps of Spring, doomed itself to perish, so soon as fruit-bearing Autumn has poured forth his store, and lifeless Winter next speeds back again.

Yet the swift moons make good their losses in the sky; we, when we have fallen to that place whither fell father Æneas, whither fell wealthy Tullus, and Ancus, are but dust and shadow.

Who knows whether the gods in heaven will add to-morrow's hours to the sum to-day completes? All that you shall chance to have bestowed on your own dear heart will escape the covetous hands of your heir.

When once you have met your doom, and Minos has pronounced upon you his august decree, not your birth, Torquatus, not your eloquence, not your piety will restore you to life: for neither does Diana release from the darkness of hell her chaste Hippolytus, nor has Theseus power to break off the fetters of Lethe from his beloved Pirithous.

To C. Marcius Censorinus.

VIII.

The poet's gift is an immortality of fame. It was usual for friends to exchange presents called strena, "étrennes," on the Kalends of March and at the Saturnalia, towards the end of December.

Censorinus, I would munificently bestow on my familiar friends bowls and pleasing vases of bronze; I would bestow tripods, that were the prizes won by gallant Greeks; and you would bear away not the meanest of my gifts, if I in truth were rich in works of art, which either Parrhasius or Scopas produced, the latter skilful -to present in stone, the former in limpid colours, at one time a mortal, at another a god. But the means to do this I possess not; nor does your fortune or your choice need toys like these.

In verse is your delight; verse we are able to bestow, and to set its value on the gift. Not marble statues graved with a people's inscriptions, whereby soul and life after death come back to valiant leaders, not Hannibal's hurried flight, and threats flung back upon

himself, not the burning of impious Carthage, blazon more plainly the exploits of him, who, when he came back home, had earned a name from Africa subdued, than do the Calabrian Muses; and if paper holds its peace, you will never bear away the guerdon of what you have excellently done. What would the son of Mars and Ilia be, if jealous Silence suppressed the deserts of Romulus? Eacus, rescued from the Stygian waves, the genius and goodwill and tongue of mighty poets commit enshrined to the isles of wealth.

'Tis the Muse who forbids to die the man that is worthy of renown; 'tis the Muse who blesses him with a place in heaven. Thus the vigorous Hercules is a guest at the coveted banquets of Jove. The sons of Tyndarus, a bright constellation, rescue from the depth of the waters the shattered ships; Liber, with fresh vine-leaves decked, to happy issues brings the vows of men.

IX.

To M. Lollius, who was consul 21 B.C. The immortality of poetry. Many heroes of old have become forgotten because they had no poet to sing their exploits. Horace will immortalize the feats and the virtue of Lollius.

Lest perchance you may deem that the words will perish, which I, born beside Aufidus who echoes afar, utter by arts not made known before, words to be wedded to the strings of the lyre;-think how, if Mæonian Homer possess the higher seat, the Muse of Pindar does not lie unfamed, and the songs of Ceos, and the threatening verses of Alcæus, and Stesichorus' stately lays; and whate'er of yore Anacreon playfully sung, time has not destroyed; still breathes the love, and still live the ardours, that were committed to the lute of the Æolian girl.

Not Laconian Helen alone has been fired with love for an adulterer's glossy dressed locks, and admired his robes o'erspread with gold, and his regal array and retinue; nor was Teucer the first to point shafts on a Cydonian bow; not once only was Ilium assailed; 'twas not Idomeneus or Sthenelus alone who fought battles meet for the Muses to rehearse; not the first was dauntless Hector or valiant Deiphobus to sustain wounds for the sake of their chaste wives and their children. Many a brave man lived ere Agamemnon; but they all, unwept and unknown, are o'erwhelmed by eternal night, because they are without a sacred bard.

Worth hidden is not far from buried sloth. I will not pass you by unsung and unpraised by my pages, and will not, O my Lollius, suffer envious Forgetfulness undisturbed to prey on your feats so manifold. You have a mind that is both sagacious in action, and steady in prosperous and perilous times; one that punishes greedy fraud, and abstains from money which draws the world to follow it; and your mind is a consul not only for a single year, but so often as it, a good and faithful judge, sets the honourable before the expedient, flings back with lofty mien the bribes of the guilty, and through opposing battalions victoriously opens a way for its arms.

You would not rightly call "blest" the man who has great posses

away; she, blessed after Cinara, a form well-loved, and full of winning wiles?

But Fate to Cinara granted fleeting years, while she resolved to preserve Lyce to be a match for the date of the beldame crow; so that glowing youths might be able to view with many a laugh the torch sunk away into the ashes.

XIV.

The praise of Tiberius Claudius Nero, the step-son of Augustus, on his victories over the tribes of the Rhaetian Alps. His brother Drusus is the hero of the fourth ode of this Book. But the present ode is so framed as to be in the main a panegyric of the emperor.

What zeal of the Fathers, or what zeal of the Quirites, with ample awards of honours, can for ever immortalise your virtues, O Augustus, by inscriptions and recording annals, O mightiest of all princes, wherever the sun sheds light on shores where man may dwell? You the Vindelici, free before from Latin law, lately learned to know, what was your might in war.

For with your soldiers Drusus fiercely struck to earth with more than a single requital the Genauni, a restless tribe, and the nimble Breuni, and the castles set upon the dreadful Alps: next, the elder of the Neros engaged in an obstinate conflict, and by the favouring grace of Heaven routed the savage Rhæti; he, glorious to view in the struggle of Mars, with what havoc he beat down the breasts that were vowed to a free death, much as the South wind troubles the wild waves, when the group of the Pleiades is piercing through the clouds; he, swift to overthrow the enemy's squadrons, and drive the neighing charger through the midst of the fires.

So bull-shaped Aufidus is whirled along, who flows beside Apulian Daunus' realm, when he begins to rage, and against the well-tilled fields designs a terrible deluge,-as Claudius with overwhelming rush swept away the iron ranks of the barbarians, and, by mowing down the foremost and the last, strewed the ground, a conqueror without disaster; while you supplied troops, while you supplied strategy, and the gods that are your friends.

For on the same day on which Alexandria humbly opened wide to you her havens and deserted palace, propitious Fortune, after the space of three lustres, rendered successful the issues of war, and conferred upon your accomplished commands the glory and the honour that we yearned for.

You the Cantabrian reveres, unconquerable ere now and the Mede and the Indians; you the roving Scythian reveres, O unfailing guardian of Italy and sovereign Rome! You Nile obeys, who hides his fountains' sources, and Ister; you rushing Tigris obeys, you the monster-haunted Ocean obeys, which roars against the distant Britons. You the land of Gaul obeys, she who quakes not at death, and the land of hardy Iberia; to you the Sygambri, who delight in carnage, do homage with arms laid down.

XV.

This epilogue to the fourth Book contains a panegyric of Augustus, as the restorer of peace, the reformer of morals, the guardian of the state, and the dread of foreign enemies.

Phoebus, when I would sing of battles and conquered cities, sharply warned me with the note of his lyre, not to spread my tiny sails across the Tuscan main.

Your age, O Cæsar, has both given back to the fields abundant crops, and restored to Jove, our country's god, the standards torn down from the Parthians' haughty portals, and closed the gate of Quirine Janus freed from wars, and imposed the regular rule of order to be a curb on wild-wandering lawlessness, and put away our faults, and recalled the ancient virtues, whereby the glory of Latium and the might of Italy grew, and the renown and majesty of the empire was extended to the rising of the sun, from his chamber in the West.

While Cæsar is guardian of the state, no frenzy among the citizens, or violence, shall drive away our repose; no passion, which forges swords and embroils unhappy towns.

Never shall they who drink the deep Danube break the Julian decrees; never shall the Getæ, never shall the Seres or the faithless Parthians; never they who are born beside the stream of Tanais.

And we, on common days and holy days as well, while we enjoy the gifts of playful Liber, together with our children and our matrons, having first duly made our prayer to Heaven, will sing, after the manner of our forefathers, in strain blended with Lydian flutes, of chieftains who fulfilled all Virtue's work, and of Troy and Anchises and the offspring of bounteous Venus.