by Horace
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Quando repostum Caecubum
My bless’d Maecenas, when shall you and I,
in your lofty palace, rejoicing in
Caesar’s triumph, as is grateful to Jove,
drink the Caecuban put up for special feasts,
while the lyre propounds the Dorian mode
in consort with exotic pipes? – As when,
of late, Neptune’s admiral Pompey,
his ships all burned, was driven from the sea
and fled, though he had threatened the City
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with fetters struck off from the treacherous slaves
his friends. – Alas when Romans, bought and sold
(posterity will deny it), bear stakes
and weapons for a woman; when soldiers
can bring themselves to serve under withered
eunuchs; and among the Army’s standards
the sunshine brights a shameful pavilion –
at which two thousand Gauls, chanting the name
of Caesar, swerved aside their snorting mounts;
and rebel warships signalled to the left
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la hid in harbour. Hail Triumph! You’d not
keep back the victor’s chariots of gold,
the unyoked kine? Hail Triumph! You brought us
no such general back from Jugurtha’s war –
not Africanus, whose manhood built his tomb
upon Carthage. Defeated on land and sea,
the foe has changed his crimson cloak for mourning;
and is either sailing mazed among cross winds
to Crete and her hundred storied cities;
or makes for the Syrtes the south wind keeps
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in exercise; or is borne away upon
uncharted seas. Boy! bring larger goblets
and Chian or Lesbian wine, or measure out
Caecuban to settle our seasick stomachs:
it is sweet to disperse with Bacchus’ aid
our anxious concern for Caesar’s affairs.
1O Mala soluta navis
The ship sets her sail and leaves,
rank-smelling Macvius on board.
Auster, do not omit to lash
her port and starb’d with waves.
Scatter her rigging and splintered oars,
Eurus, on somersaulting seas.
Arise, Aquilo, as though to rend
the thrumming oaks of the mountain heights.
May no kind star appear
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in the lowering night when harsh Orion sets.
Let him be borne upon no calmer sea
than was the band of victorious Greeks
when Pallas turned her rage from Ilium burned
to sacrilegious Ajax’ craft.
What sweating lies in wait for your crew –
what muddy pallor for you, unmanly shrieking,
and prayers to inattentive Jove,
when Notus howling across
the Ionian gulf shall smash your keel…
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And if prime carrion sprawled
on the curving shore shall entertain
the gulls, a randy goat and a lamb
shall be killed for the Tempest Gods.
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Petti, nihil me
Pettius, no longer does it delight me as before
to write my verses, for I am stricken with love –
with love, that seeks me out before all others
to ignite my yearning for tender boys and girls.
The third December shakes the glory from the woods
since my infatuate warmth for Inachia ceased.
I was (alas) a weighty theme of city gossip:
I am ashamed of so much slander. The silence
and listlessness at dinner that proved me in love,
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and the sighs fetched up from the depths of my lungs,
now grieve me. ‘A poor man’s inherent qualities
have no value when weighed with wealth,’ I would complain
to you, in tears, as soon as the injudicious God’s
impetuous wine elicited my secret thoughts.
‘But if honest resentment should come to the boil
in my breast, and scatter to the winds these ineffective
fomentations (that no way ease my grievous wound),
supplanted propriety shall break off the unequal strife.’
And having sternly met your eyes and praised this course,
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told to go home I made my way with faltering steps
to a door (alas) inimical (alas) to me
and steps of stone on which I bruised my sides and thighs.
Love of Lyciscus holds me now, who prides himself
that his tenderness surpasses that of any girl,
from whom no frank advice or urgent contumely
on the part of my friends can set me free,
but only another blaze of desire, for a fair girl
or a sleek boy, long hair put up in a knot.
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Quid tibi vis
‘What’s up, lady most apt for elephantine niggers?
Why send me presents and letters, although
I am no strapping youth, have no distended nose –
yet I sniff out the polyp or goat that beds
in your armpits’ bushes more shrewdly
than does the keenest hound where the boar lies hid.’
– The cock gone slack, what sweat, what evil stench,
envelops all her withered limbs
as she hastes to placate her invincible madness;
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foundation cream tinted with crocodile crap,
damp powdered chalk, will not adhere; her lust
makes the overtaxed bedding and canopy split.
Or else she mocks my revulsion with these fierce jibes:
‘You flag with Inachia less than with me:
you manage Inachia thrice in one night, to me
you are nice and make the effort just once.
An ill death may that Lesbia die who discovered
your impotence when I looked for a bull,
when Amyntas of Cos was mine for the taking,
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in whose invincible groin is stuck a member
more resolute than a burgeoning mountain tree.
For whom are those woollens hurriedly dyed
again and again in Tyrian purples? For you,
of course, in case in your age-group
there should be found a guest whose mistress values him
more highly than you. Oh! I am so unhappy;
you flee me as lambs fear wolves, as deer fear lions.’
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Horrida tempestas
A violent tempest narrows the heaven, and rain
and snow-storms lead down Jove: now seas, now forests
resound with the Thracian north wind. Friends, let us seize
opportunity day by day, and while our limbs are strong
and it suits, let’s wipe responsibility from furrowed brows.
Bring a wine that was trod when Torquatus was consul,
and speak of nothing else: kind Bacchus may ameliorate
our cares and put them to bed. Now it is pleasing to be
besprinkled with Persian nard, for Cyllenean lyres
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to soothe away from our breasts all ominous disquiet,
as the famous Centaur once sang to his stalwart foster-child:
‘Invincible, mortal son of Goddess Thetis,
Assaracus’ land awaits you, which the chilly streams
of little Scamander divide, and perilous Simois,
your return from which the Fates’ immutable weft
debars – your sea-blue mother may not bring you home:
relieve all evils there with wine and song,
sweet ministration to ugly hurts.’
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Mollis inertia
why feeble apathy spreads oblivion over
my quintessential faculties, as though
I had sucked with a parched throat
from the cups that bring on Lethean sleep.
The God, the God forbids me
to reach the last verse of the numbers begun,
the lines long promised. They say
that Teian Anacreon, who very often
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in simple metres deplored his love
to his hollow tortoise-shell lyre,
burned like this for Samian Bathyllus.
You are singed yourself, poor man.
If your flame is fair as that which ignited
beleaguered Troy, rejoice in your luck.
The promiscuous ex-slave Phryne macerates me.
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Nox erat et caelo
The moon was shining in a cloudless sky
amid the dim stars on the night when you,
your twining arms clinging more tight
than the lofty oak is wound about with ivy,
so soon to mock the mighty Gods’ divinity,
swore me an oath that as long as Orion
the sailors’ foe should discompose
the wintry sea and the wolf the flock,
as long as the breeze should wave Apollo’s
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unshorn hair, so long would be our love.
Neaera, my manhood shall grieve you much,
for if Horace contains any man at all
he will not bear being second best
to some swain to whom you give it nightly,
but angrily seek a more suitable girl – nor will
his firmness yield to your errant charms
once fixed resentment has entered in.
– And you, whoever you are, who amble
happy and proud in my misfortune,
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though perhaps you are rich in flocks
and land and Pactolus flows for you alone
and Pythagoras’ reincarnations pose
no problems for you and your beauty
surpasses that of Nireus, alas,
you shall bewail her favours transferred
to another, and I shall laugh last.
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Altera iam teritur
Already another generation
is being ground down by civil war. Rome reels
from her own might. What neighbouring Marsians,
invading bands of Etruscan Porsenna,
Capua’s emulous courage, Spartacus’
aspiration, treacherous Allobrox’ insurrection,
the German beast with its blue-eyed youth
and Hannibal whom parents wished away
could not destroy or tame, this impious
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generation of fated stock will waste
and the land belong once more to beasts of prey.
Alas, a heathen conqueror shall spurn our ashes,
his cavalry trample the City with clattering hooves
and wantonly scatter (a sin to behold) Quirinus’ bones
that now are shelter’d from wind and sun.
Perhaps ou all, or at least the better part,
would try, as behoves you, to shun these heavy wrongs?
Then as the Phocaean people cursed
their fields and ancestral Gods, went into exile
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and left their shrines to be the lairs of boars
and rapacious wolves; so let no plan be preferred to that
we go, wherever our feet shall bear us, wherever
the south and boisterous south-west winds shall call us
across the waves. A valid motion? Will any oppose?
Then why delay, since the omens are good, to embark?
But let us swear: – Just as soon as rocks are raised
from the deeps and float, then let it be no sin to return;
no provocation to set our sails for the passage home
when the Po shall wash the Matine peaks,
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the Apennine heights j ut out in the sea,
wonderful love join monsters in novel passion, tigers
be pleased to mount deer, doves fornicate with hawks,
the trusting herd not fear the tawny lion
and the hairless goat enjoy the briny sea.
Having sworn these oaths and whatever else
has the power to cut off our sweet retreat,
let the whole State go – or the portion better than
the unteachable flock – let the weak and despairing
weigh down their fated beds. But you
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who have spirit, cast off womanish grief
and glide away past Etruscan coasts.
Encompassing Ocean awaits us. Let us seek
the rich islands and farms, the blesséd farms,
where every year the earth, untilled, yields corn;
and the vines, unpruned, forever bloom;
and the never failing sprigs of olive bud;
and dusky figs adorn their trees;
and honey drips from the hollow oak; and the stream
with plashing feet leaps lightly down from the lofty crag;
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and the goats, unbidden, come to the milking-pail;
and the kindly flock brings home full udders;
and no bear growls around the sheepfold at dusk;
and the soil is never tumescent with snakes.
And, bless’d, we shall wonder at yet more things –
how rainy Eurus does not scour the land
with heavy showers, how the fertile seeds
are not too scorched in the dried-out clods,
since Heaven-Father moderates both extremes.
The pine-built Argo’s oarsmen did not venture here,
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and no lewd queen of Colchis here set foot;
no Sidonian sailors turned their vessels’ beaks this way,
nor Ulysses’ toiling companions.
No infection harms the cattle,
no planet’s sweltering fury blasts the sheep.
Jupiter set apart these shores for a God-fearing race
when he stained with bronze the age of gold:
with bronze, then iron, he hardened the ages, from which,
I prophesy, the godly are offered auspicious escape.
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Iam iam efficaci
‘Now at last I salute your potent art,
and kneeling I beg by Proserpina’s realm,
by Diana’s immovable godhead, by your books
of incantations strong to unfix the stars
and call them down from the sky, Canidia,
leave off at length your supernatural spells
and let the swift wheel reverse, reverse.
Telephus moved to pity Nereus’ grandson
‘gainst whom in his conceit he had marshalled
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the Mysian columns and hurled sharp spears.
