by Horace
surcease of distress, accept invocations
conforming to lore.
33
Albi, ne doleas
Tibullus, don’t grieve overmuch to recall
inimical Glycera, don’t keep on declaiming
lugubrious verses querying why, faith
broken, a younger man outshines you.
Love for Cyrus scorches Lycoris known
for her dainty forehead; Cyrus inclines
to waspish Pholoe; but sooner
shall she-goats go with Apulian wolves
than Pholoe err in shabby indiscretion.
10
This is Venus’s way: her cruel humour
is pleased to subject to her yoke of bronze
incompatible bodies and minds.
Even I, when a better love sought me,
was detained in pleasant chains by Myrtale,
a one-time slave-girl more stormy than
Adriatic waves rolling round to Calabria.
34
Parcus deorum cultor
A parsimonious and infrequent worshipper
of the Gods, adept of an ignorant
wisdom, I had gone astray, but now
have gone about, am forced to resume
the course I abandoned. Normally Jupiter
cleaves the clouds with his flashing fires,
but now he drove his thundering horses
and speeding chariot across a clear sky:
by which the dull earth, meandering streams,
10
and Styx, and hated Taenarus’ waste home,
and Atlas at the end of the world,
were shaken. The God has the power
to invert our zenith and nadir, raising obscurity,
lessening fame: rapacious Fortune
with shrill susurration removes his crown
from one, yet gladly grants it another.
35
O diva, gratum
Goddess, Fortuna, ruler of pleasant Antium,
prompt to raise our mortal clay
from the lowest rank or transform
a pompous Triumph to a sad cortège,
you are entreated by the rustic
peasant’s anxious prayer, as queen of the deep
by those who dare the Carpathian
sea in Bithynian ships,
by Dacian savages and Scythian refugees,
10
by cities and tribes and warlike Latium.
The mothers of heathen kings,
and tyrants in purple fear
lest you unfairly kick down standing
pillars, and the thronging mob incite
(‘To arms!’) the indecisive (‘To arms!’)
to challenge law and order.
Before you your servant Necessity stalks
with spikes and wedges in her brazen
hand, nor does she lack
20
the cruel hook or molten lead.
Hope, and Loyalty swathed in white
attend you nor deny their allegiance
whenever you choose to desert
in mourning the homes of the great –
though the faithless rabble and perjured whore
turn away; and even friends, just
as fickle beneath the yoke of grief, disperse
when the jars are drained.
Preserve our Caesar, soon to go out
30
against ultimate Britain; preserve our young
recruits, soon to plant fear in Eastern
realms and along the Arabian seaboard.
Alas, our scars and fratricides
shame us. What has this hard generation
balked at, what iniquity left
undone? From what have our youth
refrained through fear of the Gods?
What altars spared? Fortuna, reforge
against the Arabs and Massagetae
40
on new anvils our blunted swords.
36
Et ture et fidibus
With incense and lyres and
offerings of bullock’s blood let us appease
the Gods that guarded Numida
now safely returned from the furthest West,
who distributes many kisses
among his peers, and on none more than on
sweet Lamia, since he recalls
their boyhood under the selfsame tutor and
manhood’s toga assumed together.
10
So chalk it up against this blessèd day –
don’t ration the wine-jugs,
don’t rest your feet from the dance of Mars,
and may our vinous Damalis not beat
Bassus at Thracian ‘drinking-without-taking-breath’,
and let our feast lack neither
roses nor lingering parsley nor passing lilies.
All shall cast their swooning
eyes on Damalis, but Damalis will not be torn
from her love to whom
20
she clings more close than doting ivy.
37
Nunc est bibendum
Friends, now is the time to drink,
now tread the earth with our dancing,
now set Salian delicacies
before the Gods’ couches.
Heretofore it had been a sin
to produce Caecuban from ancient racks,
while a crazy queen was plotting,
with her polluted train
of evil debauchees, to demolish
10
the Capitol and topple the Empire –
a hopeful derangement drunk
with its luck. But the escape
from the flames of scarcely one ship
dampened her fury, and Caesar
dragged back to fearful reality
her mind swimming in Mareotic:
his galleys harried her fleeing from
Italy (just as the hawk the mild dove,
or the quick hunter the hare across
20
Thessaly’s plains of snow), in order
to put the curs’d monster in chains. Yet she,
seeking to die more nobly, showed
no womanish fear of the sword nor retired
with her fleet to uncharted shores.
Her face serene, she courageously viewed
her fallen palace. With fortitude
she handled fierce snakes, her corporeal
frame drank in their venom:
resolved for death, she was brave indeed.
30
She was no docile woman but truly scorned
to be taken away in her enemy’s ships,
deposed, to an overweening Triumph.
38
Persicos odi
I scorn these Persian preciosities, boy –
wreaths bound with linden bark, indeed,
and inquiries as to where the last rose
is blowing.
It is misplaced zeal to elaborate
on simple myrtle. Here under trellised vines
myrtle is correct both for me drinking,
you pouring.
ODES
BOOK II
1
Motum ex Metello
You treat of the civil troubles begun when Metellus
was consul, the causes of war, its blunders and phases,
the game of Fortune and the tragic amity
of great men and weapons smeared
with still unexpiated blood:
a task laden with perilous chances –
you proceed across fires
concealed beneath deceptive ashes.
May our theatres lack only briefly your Muse
10
of stern tragedy: soon, when you have chronicled
these affairs of state, take up once more
that lofty Athenian calling, Pollio,
celebrated shield of sad defendants,
pillar of the Senate’s deli
berations,
in whose Dalmatic Triumph
the laurel procured you eternal fame.
Meanwhile you draw our ears
with the menacing blare of horns; tuckets resound;
the flashing of weapons strikes alarm
20
into nervous horses and the horsemen’s faces.
Even now I seem to hear mighty captains
(grimed with not inglorious dust)
and all the world subdued
except the fierce heart of Cato.
Now Juno and the Gods who inclined to Numidia
but were forced to desert her take their revenge
by offering on Jugurtha’s grave
his conquerors’ grandsons.
What plain is not enriched with Latin blood
30
to witness with its graves to our unholy
wars, the resounding fall of the West
audible even to Parthian ears?
What eddy or stream untainted
by the shameful war? What sea
is not incarnadined with Apulian blood?
What shore has no news of our slaughters?
– But lest you leave your pleasantries,
insouciant Muse, to attempt again a Cean dirge,
come seek with me in some Dionean ravine
40
music in a more cheerful mode.
2
Nullus argento
There is no lustre to silver concealed
in the greedy ground, Sallustius Crispus,
you foe to metal unless it shine
from rational use.
Proculeius shall survive long ages, known
as a father towards his brothers;
lasting Fame shall bear him up on wings
that refuse to droop.
You shall rule a larger realm by subduing
10
your own acquisitive heart than by joining Libya
to distant Gades, the Punic both sides
to serve only you.
Dire dropsy swells by feeding, and thirst
is not quenched until the disease’s cause
has fled from the veins and watery dullness
from the pallid flesh.
Virtue, dissenting from the mob, declines to
number Phraates among the bless’d, though restored
20
to Cyrus’s throne, and teaches the people
to call things by their
right names, granting power, a secure crown
and especial laurels only to the man who can gaze
on mountains of treasure without glancing.
over his shoulder.
3
Aequam memento
Dellius, all must die: be sure to retain
an equable mind in vexation
avoiding also intemperate joy
at advantages gained,
whether you lead a life of gloom
or relax stretched out on some sequestered
lawn throughout the holy days
and rejoice in classic Falernian wine.
Why do the pines and silvery poplars
10
share their hospitable shade?
Why does runaway water
tremble in winding streams?
With us, for us. Command all perfumes, wines
and the too brief spell of the rose
while affairs and times
and the Fates’ black thread allow:
then goodbye freehold woodlands, home
and the manor the yellow Tiber washed
and the spoils piled up to the heights,
20
which your heir shall get.
Rich man born from ancient Inachus
or poor man, it makes no odds, from the lowest
race under sky you shall fall
Orcus’s victim, who pities none.
All are thus compelled;
early or late the urn is shaken;
fate will out; a little boat
shall take us to eternal exile.
4
Ne sit ancillae
No need to blush because you love
a slave-girl, Xanthias. By way of precedent,
the snowy skin of Briseis
moved Achilles;
the beauty of Tecmessa moved her
master Ajax; Agamemnon himself
in the midst of triumph burned for
a captive girl
when barbarian hosts went down
10
before Thessaly’s victor and Hector’s fall
brought forward for the weary Greeks
the sack of Troy.
For all you know your blonde Phyllis’s parents
would lend their son-in-law lustre – surely
a line of kings, and she grieves at her
Gods’ unfairness.
Believe me, she is no wretched pleb
and a girl so loyal and averse to profit
20
was not born of a mother you would
not want to know.
(I praise her arms, her face and her
full calves chastely: avoid
suspicion of one who is already
forty years old.)
5
Nondum subacta
She has not yet the strength to submit
to the double yoke and manage her part
or bear the weight of a bull
plunging in venery.
The mind of your heifer is given
to green fields, now easing her stifling
warmth in the brook, now longing
to play with the calves in marshy
willow-groves. Forswear desire
10
for unripe grapes: soon varicoloured
Autumn will paint your
darkening clusters purple.
Soon she will woo: injurious time
makes haste and adds to her those years
it takes from you. Soon froward
Lalage will seek a husband
delectably – more so than fugitive
Pholoe; than Chloris, whose snowy
shoulder gleams like the purest moon
20
on the sea by night;
than Cnidian Gyges, who if placed
in a group of girls would deceive
a shrewd stranger by his flowing
hair and ambiguous face.
6
Septimi, Gades aditure
Septimius, ready to go with me to Gades;
to Cantabria, untaught to bear our yoke;
to the barbarous Syrtes where Moorish
waves forever seethe:
