The Works of Horace Part 13

O cur, thou coward against wolves, why dost thou persecute innocent strangers? Why do you not, if you can, turn your empty yelpings. .h.i.ther, and attack me, who will bite again? For, like a Molossian, or tawny Laconian dog, that is a friendly a.s.sistant 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 son-in-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?

ODE VII.

TO THE ROMAN PEOPLE.

Whither, whither, impious men are you rus.h.i.+ng? Or why are the swords drawn, that were [so lately] sheathed? Is there too little of Roman blood spilled upon land and sea? [And this,] not that the Romans might burn the proud towers of envious Carthage, or that the Britons, hitherto una.s.sailed, might go down the sacred way bound in chains: 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 phrenzy, or your superior valor, 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 stupefied. This is the case: a cruel fatality and the crime of fratricide 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 vigor?

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 sometimes love to be on silken pillows? Are unlearned const.i.tutions the less robust? Or are their limbs less stout? But for you to raise an appet.i.te, in a stomach that is nice, it is necessary that you exert every art of language.

ODE IX.

TO MAECENAS.

When, O happy Maecenas, shall I, overjoyed at Caesar's being victorious, drink with you under the stately dome (for so it pleases Jove) the Caecuban reserved for festal entertainments, while the lyre plays a tune, accompanied with flutes, that in the Doric, these in the Phrygian measure? As lately, when the Neptunian admiral, driven from the sea, and his navy burned, fled, after having menaced those chains to Rome, which, like a friend, he had taken off from perfidious slaves. The Roman soldiers (alas! ye, our posterity, will deny the fact), enslaved to a woman, carry palisadoes and arms, and can be subservient to haggard eunuchs; and among the military standards, oh shame! the sun beholds an [Egyptian] canopy. Indignant at this the Gauls turned two thousand of their cavalry, proclaiming Caesar; and the s.h.i.+ps of the hostile navy, going off to the left, lie by in port. Hail, G.o.d of triumph! Dost thou delay the golden chariots and untouched heifers? Hail, G.o.d of triumph!

You neither brought back a general equal [to Caesar] from the Jugurthine war; nor from the African [war, him], whose valor raised him a monument over Carthage. Our enemy, overthrown both by land and sea, has changed his purple vestments for mourning. He either seeks Crete, famous for her hundred cities, ready to sail with unfavorable winds; or the Syrtes, hara.s.sed by the south; or else is driven by the uncertain sea. Bring hither, boy, larger bowls, and the Chian or Lesbian wine; or, what may correct this rising qualm of mine, fill me out the Caecuban. It is my pleasure to dissipate care and anxiety for Caesar's danger with delicious wine.

ODE X.

AGAINST MAEVIUS.

The vessel that carries the loathsome Maevius, makes her departure under an unlucky omen. Be mindful, O south wind, that you buffet it about with horrible billows. May the gloomy east, turning up the sea, disperse its cables and broken oars. Let the north arise as mighty as when be rives the quivering oaks on the lofty mountains; nor let a friendly star appear through the murky night, in which the baleful Orion sets: nor let him be conveyed in a calmer sea, than was the Grecian band of conquerors, when Pallas turned her rage from burned Troy to the s.h.i.+p of impious Ajax. Oh what a sweat is coming upon your sailors, and what a sallow paleness upon you, and that effeminate wailing, and those prayers to unregarding Jupiter; when the Ionian bay, roaring with the tempestuous south-west, shall break your keel. But if, extended along the winding sh.o.r.e, you shall delight the cormorants as a dainty prey, a lascivious he-goat and an ewe-lamb shall be sacrificed to the Tempests.

ODE XI.

TO PECTIUS.

It by no means, O Pectius, delights me as heretofore to write Lyric verses, being smitten with cruel love: with love, who takes pleasure to inflame me beyond others, either youths or maidens. This is the third December that has shaken the [leafy] honors from the woods, since I ceased to be mad for Inachia. Ah me! (for I am ashamed of so great a misfortune) what a subject of talk was I throughout the city! I repent too of the entertainments, at which both a languis.h.i.+ng and silence and sighs, heaved from the bottom of my breast, discovered the lover. As soon as the indelicate G.o.d [Bacchus] by the glowing wine had removed, as I grew warm, the secrets of [my heart] from their repository, I made my complaints, lamenting to you, "Has the fairest genius of a poor man no weight against wealthy lucre? Wherefore, if a generous indignation boil in my breast, insomuch as to disperse to the winds these disagreeable applications, that give no ease to the desperate wound; the shame [of being overcome] ending, shall cease to contest with rivals of such a sort." When I, with great gravity, had applauded these resolutions in your presence, being ordered to go home, I was carried with a wandering foot to posts, alas! to me not friendly, and alas! obdurate gates, against which I bruised my loins and side. Now my affections for the delicate Lyciscus engross all my time; from them neither the unreserved admonitions, nor the serious reprehensions of other friends can recall me [to my former taste for poetry]; but, perhaps, either a new flame for some fair damsel, or for some graceful youth who binds his long hair in a knot, [may do so].

ODE XII.

TO A WOMAN WHOSE CHARMS WERE OVER.

What would you be at, you woman fitter for the swarthy monsters? Why do you send tokens, why billet-doux to me, and not to some vigorous youth, and of a taste not nice? For I am one who discerns a polypus, or fetid ramminess, however concealed, more quickly than the keenest dog the covert of the boar. What sweatiness, and how rank an odor every where rises from her withered limbs! when she strives to lay her furious rage with impossibilities; now she has no longer the advantage of moist cosmetics, and her color appears as if stained with crocodile's ordure; and now, in wild impetuosity, she tears her bed, bedding, and all she has. She attacks even my loathings in the most angry terms:--"You are always less dull with Inachia than me: in her company you are threefold complaisance; but you are ever unprepared to oblige me in a single instance. Lesbia, who first recommended you--so unfit a help in time of need--may she come to an ill end! when Coan Amyntas paid me his addresses; who is ever as constant in his fair one's service, as the young tree to the hill it grows on. For whom were labored the fleeces of the richest Tyrian dye? For you? Even so that there was not one in company, among gentlemen of your own rank, whom his own wife admired preferably to you: oh, unhappy me, whom you fly, as the lamb dreads the fierce wolves, or the she-goats the lions!"

ODE XIII.

TO A FRIEND.

A horrible tempest has condensed the sky, and showers and snows bring down the atmosphere: now the sea, now the woods bellow with the Thracian North wind. Let us, my friends, take occasion from the day; and while our knees are vigorous, and it becomes us, let old age with his contracted forehead become smooth. Do you produce the wine, that was pressed in the consuls.h.i.+p of my Torquatus. Forbear to talk of any other matters. The deity, perhaps, will reduce these [present evils], to your former [happy] state by a propitious change. Now it is fitting both to be bedewed with Persian perfume, and to relieve our b.r.e.a.s.t.s of dire vexations by the lyre, sacred to Mercury. Like as the n.o.ble Centaur, [Chiron,] sung to his mighty pupil: "Invincible mortal, son of the G.o.ddess Thetis, the land of a.s.saracus awaits you, which the cold currents of little Scamander and swift-gliding Simois divide: whence the fatal sisters have broken off your return, by a thread that cannot be altered: nor shall your azure mother convey you back to your home. There [then] by wine and music, sweet consolations, drive away every symptom of hideous melancholy."

ODE XIV.

TO MAECENAS.

You kill me, my courteous Maecenas, by frequently inquiring, why a soothing indolence has diffused as great a degree of forgetfulness on my inmost senses, as if I had imbibed with a thirsty throat the cups that bring on Lethean slumbers. For the G.o.d, the G.o.d prohibits me from bringing to a conclusion the verses I promised [you, namely those]

iambics which I had begun. In the same manner they report that Anacreon of Teios burned for the Samian Bathyllus; who often lamented his love to an inaccurate measure on a hollow lyre. You are violently in love yourself; but if a fairer flame did not burn besieged Troy, rejoice in your lot. Phryne, a freed-woman, and not content with a single admirer, consumes me.

ODE XV.