by Horace
to your hair, or your inoffensive dress.
18
Nullam, Vare, sacra
Varus, plant no tree before the sacred vine
about Catilus’ walls and the fertile fields of Tibur:
the God proposes to the abstainer all things hard
and he alone dispels anxiety’s stings.
Who after wine holds forth on poverty
and hard campaigns, rather than speaking
of father Bacchus and graceful Venus?
Lest anyone take too much of moderate Liber’s gift,
be warned by the Centaurs’ and Lapiths’ brawl
10
that was fuelled and fought on unmixed wine;
be warned by Bacchus’ disdain for the Thracians
when they distinguish right from wrong only
by their drunken passions’ fine divide. Not I,
bright Fox’s-Pelt, will wake you against your will
or expose to daylight your emblems dressed
in varied leaves. Restrain wild tambourines
and Berecyntian horns, which lead to blind ‘love’
of self; to ‘glory’ lifting its empty head
unconscionably high; and to ‘faith’
20
prodigal of secrets, transparent as glass.
19
Mater saeva Cupidinum
The Cupids’ fierce mother
and Theban Semele’s son with lickerish
Licence command me
give heed once more to loves gone by.
Bright Glycera burns
gleaming more pure than Parian marble:
her pretty frowardness
burns too dangerous to be beheld.
Venus entire rushing down
10
deserts her Cyprus, forbids me to sing
Scythians or Parthian cavalry
bold in flight or anything not to her point.
Here put living turf, here
foliage, slaves, and incense and a bowl
of choicest two-year wine:
she’ll come more kindly for sacrifice.
20
Vile potabis
You’ll drink a modest Sabine wine
from tankards – but I myself put it up
in Greek jars when in the Theatre
the plaudits were yours,
sweet knight Maecenas, so that together
the banks of your native stream
and the joyous echo of Vatican Hill
might return your praise.
You can imbibe Caecuban and wine
10
from Cales’ press: but neither Falernian
vines nor Formian slopes shall
replenish my cups.
21
Dianam tenerae
You tender virgins, praise Diana;
you boys, praise longhaired
Apollo, and Latona entirely
loved by Jove in the highest.
Girls, praise her who delights in the streams
and the crests of the trees that stand out
on cool Algidus or in the dark woods
of Erymanthus and verdant Cragus.
Boys, give your praise to Tempe
10
and Apollo’s birthplace Delos,
his shoulder marked out by his quiver
and the lyre contrived by his brother:
moved by your prayer, he shall drive
grievous war and pitiable famine and plague
off from our people and Caesar our prince
and on to the Parthians and Britons.
22
Integer vitae
The man of upright life and free from sin
requires no Moorish spears nor bow
and quiver laden with poisoned
arrows, Fuscus,
whether his route lies through
the sweltering Syrtes or inhospitable
Caucasus or regions the fabulous
Hydaspes laps.
For as I wandered free from care
10
singing of Lalage in Sabine
woods, unarmed, beyond my bounds,
there fled a wolf,
a monster such as warlike
Daunia does not rear in her widespread
groves of oak nor Juba’s land, the barren
nurse of lions.
Put me amid a limp plain where no
tree resurrects in the summer breeze,
20
a tract oppressed by Jupiter’s haze
and dingy sky;
put me in uninhabitable
regions beneath the Sun’s close car –
and I’ll love my Lalage’s sweet talk
and sweeter laugh.
23
Vitas inuleo
You avoid me, Chloe, like a fawn
seeking his mother on the pathless
mountain and starting with groundless
fears at the woods and winds:
if the coming of spring shivers
the dancing leaves, or some green lizard
twitches a bramble,
his knees and heart quake.
Am I a tiger or fierce Gaetulian lion
10
to hunt you down and maul you?
It is time to get loose from Mamma:
you are ripe for a man.
24
Quis desiderio
What shame or limit to grief
for a life so dear? Teach sad laments
Melpomene to whom the Father
gave cithara and liquid voice.
And does sempiternal sleep oppress
Quintilius? When shall incorruptible Faith
(the sister of Justice) and Modesty
and naked Truth ever find his like?
Mourning for him aggrieves so many good men,
10
and none more mournful than you, my Virgil:
in vain, alas, you require of the Gods
Quintilius, whom loyal grief may not buy back.
What if you managed more sweetly
than Thracian Orpheus the lyre the trees heard?
Would blood then return to that vacant form
which with his harsh rod Mercury,
granting no prayer that fate be disclosed,
has herded into the darkling throng?
Severe: but patience may lighten
20
things we may not presume to change.
25
Parcius iunctas
The insistent blows of roistering youths
seldom rattle your shutters,
your sleep is unbroken, the door
that moved its hinges
so smoothly once now clings to its
jamb. Now you hear less and less:
‘Lydia, do you sleep while I expire for
you the whole night long?’
A lonely crone in an alley, you in your turn
10
shall snivel for fornicators’ disdain
on moonless nights (the rising wind a
bacchante from Thrace)
when the scorching love and lust
that more usually madden mares
shall rage about your liver.
And you shall deplore
that pleasant young men take greater delight
in myrtle’s pale– and ivy’s dark-green
20
and consign dead leaves to Eurus,
winter’s companion.
26
Musis amicus
The Muses’ friend, indifferent alike
to what king of the frozen Northern marches
is feared and to what now menaces
Tiridates, I shall consign
sadness and fear to unruly winds
to carry away across the Cretan sea.
Sweet Muse who delights in clear springs,
weave sunny flowers, oh weave a garland
for Lamia. For lacking you my tributes are
10
as no
thing: fitting that you and your sisters
should celebrate him with new strings,
should sanctify him with Lesbos’ plectra.
27
Natis in usum
Throwing the cups about is behaviour
fit only for Thracians: abstain
from such barbarous habits, protect
seemly Bacchus from bloody brawls.
A Persian scimitar assorts
so grotesquely with wine and lamps – friends,
friends! – contain your blasphemous
clamour, lean back on your couches.
I too must drink up my ration of potent
Falernian? Then Megilla’s brother shall tell us 10
with what wound he is beatified,
what arrow has made him droop.
You would rather not? I shall drink
on no other terms. Whichever Venus possess you,
she burns you with a fire which need
not make you blush and you sin
only with freeborn lovers. Come on, man –
whoever it is, you can trust our discretion.
Oh. Bad luck. In what a Charybdis
20
you flounder, you deserve a better flame.
What witch or wizard with Thessalian drugs
can set you free – what God can, indeed?
Pegasus himself could hardly extricate you
from a tangle with the triple Chimaera.
28
Te maris et terrae
A little mound of earth near the Matine shore
contains you, Archytas, who measured
the sea, the land, the innumerable sands,
and it avails you nothing
that you attempted the mansions of heaven and traversed
with a mind born to die the polar rotund.
For Pelops’ father died, though once a guest of the Gods;
and Tithonus, translated to the winds;
and Minos, privy to the secrets of Jove; and Tartarus
10
holds Euphorbus, consigned a second time
to Orcus, though by taking down the shield he witnessed
to Trojan times and conceded to black
death nothing beyond his sinews and skin –
in your opinion no mean critic
of nature and truth. But a common night awaits us,
we all must walk death’s path.
Some the Furies offer to bloody Mars as an
entertainment; the hungry sea devours
sailors; obsequies for young and old contend for room;
20
no head escapes cruel Proserpina.
The south wind, swift attendant of setting Orion, has over
whelmed me too in Illyrian waves.
Then sailor do not, from spite, begrudge the sifting sand:
bestow a little upon my unburied bones
and skull. Then, whatever threats the east wind may vent
against the Hesperian waves when Venusian forests
are beaten, may you be safe and a great reward, as it can,
flow down to you from equitable
Jove and from Neptune the guardian of sacred Tarentum.
30
Do you think it a small matter to do a wrong
that would harm your innocent children hereafter? Perhaps
a right denied and outrageous misfortune are
lying in wait for you: my petition would not go unanswered,
nor any amount of sacrifice redeem you.
I know you are impatient: the delay will not be long. Scatter
three handfuls of earth and hurry away.
29
Icci, beatis
Iccius, are you eyeing
Arabian treasures, preparing a dire foray
against Sabaean kings never before
conquered and forging fetters
for the gruesome Mede? What exotic
virgin, her fiancé killed, shall attend you?
What palace boy with unctuous curls,
taught to aim Eastern arrows
with his father’s bow, shall be your
10
cupbearer? Who will deny that descending
streams may well flow back to the heights
and Tiber reverse his course
when you, who promised so well, intend to swap
the illustrious books of Panaetius,
collected far and wide, plus
the Socratics, for a Spanish armour?
30 O Venus, regina
O Venus, queen of Cnidos and Paphos, desert
the delights of Cyprus and come to the charming
shrine of Glycera who calls on you with
so much incense.
Please hurry, and bring your hot-head son,
the Graces (their zones undone), and Nymphs,
and Youth (so ungracious when you’re away),
and Mercury.
31
Quid dedicatum
What shall a poet ask of a consecrated
Apollo? What beg, as he pours young wine
from a dish? Not the rich cornfields
of fertile Sardinia,
nor the grateful herds of sultry
Calabria, nor India’s ivory and gold,
nor land that the limpid waters of Liris
erode with silent flowing.
Let those appointed by Fortune prune the vines
10
with Calenian hooks that the wealthy merchant
may drink to the dregs from golden cups
the wine for which he trades Syrian goods:
he is dear to the Gods, for three or four times
each year he goes again upon the Atlantic
unscathed. My treat is olives,
endives and wholesome mallows.
Son of Latona, grant me I pray
to enjoy the things I have and my health
and to pass my old age with a sound
20
mind, with my cithara, and with style.
32
Poscimur. Si quid
A commission! If ever I have perpetrated
with you in the shade some trifle that lives
for this and future years, come sound a Latin
poem, barbitos
first played by Lesbos’ citizen who,
whether valiant between the weapons of war
or making fast his sea-flung boat
on the streaming beach,
sang Bacchus, the Muses, and Venus
10
with her ever clinging boy,
and personable Lycus’s jetty
eyes and jetty hair.
O badge of Phoebus, tortoise-shell lyre belov’d
at the banquets of Jove on high, o sweet and healing
