by Horace
The soul content with the present
is not concerned with the future and tempers
dismay with an easy laugh. No
blessing is unmixed.
An early death snatched bright Achilles;
30
long senility reduced Tithonus:
this hour will offer to me, maybe, the good
it denies to you.
For you a hundred herds of Sicilian
cattle moo; for you are bred
neighing mares apt for the chariot;
you dress in twice-dyed
Tyrian purple wool: to me honest Fate
has given a little farm, the delicate breath
40
of the Grecian Muse, and disdain
for the jealous mob.
17
Cur me querelis
Why do you stifle me so with complaining?
It is neither my will nor that of the Gods
that I should die before you, Maecenas,
you glory and mighty prop of my affairs.
If some untimely blow should take you,
the half of my heart, ah, why should I linger,
neither loved as before nor surviving
whole? The selfsame day shall bring
us both our doom. I have taken
10
no false oath: we shall go, we shall go,
whenever you lead the way, comrades prepared
to take the last journey together.
No fiery breath of Chimaera, nor hundred-
handed Gyas, should he rise in our way,
shall ever tear me from you; this is the will
of the Fates and of mighty Justice.
Whether formidable Scorpio, or Libra,
or Capricorn (lord of the Western sea)
oversaw with more powerful
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influence my nativity,
your stars and mine accord in the most
incredible manner. The protection of Jove,
outshining baleful Saturn,
rescued you and hindered the wings
of impatient Fate when the thronging public
in the Theatre broke three times into glad applause:
a tree-trunk falling on my head
would have made away with me had not Faunus,
the guard of Mercurial men, warded off the blow
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with his hand. Remember to offer
a votive shrine with victims:
and I will sacrifice a humble lamb.
18
Non ebur neque aureum
No ivory or gilded
panels gleam in my house; no
beams from Hymettus
press on columns quarried in Africa’s
heartland; I have not
unexpectedly inherited a palace from Attalus;
I have no retinue
of ladies trailing Laconian purple
robes. I am loyal, however,
10
and of a kindly humour: though poor,
am courted by the rich. Content
with my Sabine farm, I make no more suits
to my powerful friend,
seek nothing further from the Gods above.
Each day drives out the day
before, new moons make haste to wane:
yet you, on the brink of the grave,
contract for the cutting of marble slabs;
forgetful of death you fret
20
to build your mansion out from the coast
in the roaring sea at Baiae –
the mainland shore will not suffice.
What do you hope to achieve
by tearing down fences and avidly
jumping your tenants’
boundaries? Men and women are evicted,
clutching to their breasts
both household Gods and ragged children.
And yet no hall more certainly
30
awaits the rich grandee than does rapacious
Orcus’ predestined
bourne. What more can you need? Earth
opens impartially for paupers
and the sons of kings, and Charon could not
be bribed to ferry back
even resourceful Prometheus. He holds
Tantalus and Tantalus’
progeny, and whether or not invoked
is alert to disburden
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the serf when his labour is done.
19
Bacchum in remotis
I have seen Bacchus amid far rocks
(believe me, posterity)
teaching paeans to attentive Nymphs
and goat-foot Satyrs with pointed ears.
Evoe! My heart is thrilled with awe still new
and wildly rejoices, my breast is so full
of Bacchus. Evoe! Spare me, spare me,
Liber, so feared for your rigorous rod.
My holy task is to sing of the unremitting
10
Bacchantes, rehearse the spring of wine,
the brooks of rich milk and the honey
dropping from hollow trees;
my holy task your deified queen’s reward
among the stars, the palace of Pentheus
overturned in grievous ruins, eradication
of Thracian Lycurgus.
You control rivers, you the savage sea;
on the distant ridges, euphoric,
you bind the hair of Bistonian
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women with harmless vipers;
you, when the mutinous company of Giants
would climb steep-up to the realms of the Father,
put on the terrible lion’s claws
and fangs and hurled back Rhoetus.
Though held to be more fit for dancing,
jokes and games, not competent
for battle, yet you have been
in the thick of war as well as at peace.
Cerberus saw you comely with your golden horn
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and did not harm you, but mildly
wagged his tail, and as you passed he lightly
touched your feet with his triple tongue.
20
Non usitata
A bard, I shall travel two-formed
in the clear aether upon no common
or feeble wings, nor linger
on earth, nor (bigger than envy)
desert the City. I, whose blood is
of indigent stock, I, whom you invite,
belovèd Maecenas, shall never perish
nor be confined by the waves of Styx.
Already dry skin becomes the norm
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on my shins, on top I transmogrify
to a white swan, soft down begins
to appear on my fingers and shoulders.
Soon, a melodious bird, more known
than Icarus son of Daedalus, I shall view
the Hyperborean prairies, the Syrtes,
the Bosphorus’ sighing seashore.
Colchians, Dacians (dissimulating fear
of our Marsian cohorts) and remote Geloni
shall come to study me, by glossing me
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Spaniards and drinkers of Rhône grow wise.
Omit from my delusive funeral rites
the dirge and ugly grief and lamentations:
restrain all outcry, forgo
the bootless tribute of a tomb.
ODES
BOOK III
1
Odi profanum vulgus
I shun and keep removed the uninitiate crowd.
I require silence: I am the Muses’ priest
and sing for virgins and boys
songs never heard before.
Dread kings rule over their own,
but over those kings is the rule of Jove,
famed for the Giants’ defeat,
governing all by the lift of his eyebrow.
It is true tha
t one man plants vineyards larger
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than his neighbour’s; that in the Campus
one candidate for office is of nobler blood;
another of greater reputation
and worth; another has a bigger crowd
of retainers: but with impartial justice
Necessity chooses from high and low,
the capacious urn shuffles every name.
Sicilian feasts will distil
no sweet savour, nor will the music
of birds and citharas restore
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his sleep above whose neck
the drawn sword hangs: soft sleep
does not disdain the cottages
of rustics nor the shady bank
nor Tempe fanned by Zephyrs.
Tumultuous seas and the furious onset
of setting Arcturus or rising Haedus
do not deter the man
who desires no more than his needs –
not by lashing his vines with hail,
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nor by fickle farmland, the trees
now blaming the floods, now stars
that parch the field, now hostile winter.
Fishes perceive the sea diminished
by foundations laid in the deep: here
the contractor and thronging slaves
and the master disdaining the land
lower stones. But Fear and Threats arise
to the selfsame mark as the owner, nor does
black Care quit the bronze-beaked trireme
40
and even mounts behind the horseman.
If neither Phrygian marbles nor purples
more lustrous than starlight
nor Falernian vines nor Persian nards
can comfort one grieving,
why should I construct a lofty hall
in the latest style with enviable pillars;
why would I change my Sabine dale
for burdensome wealth?
2
Angustam amice
Let the healthy boy learn to suffer
strait poverty gladly in hard campaigns;
as lancer molest with his point
the barbarous Parthian natives
and lead a fresh air life amid perilous
undertakings. From enemy ramparts
a queen and her daughter shall groan
for some struggling tyrant:
‘Dear husband and father, alas,
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unseasoned in warfare, do not provoke
with a touch that bloody lion
berserk amid the slaughter!’
It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country
and death harries even the man who flees
nor spares the hamstrings or cowardly
backs of battle-shy youths.
Manhood ignores the smear of outvoting
and shines with unalloyed esteem,
nor assumes nor resigns the fasces
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at the waftings of public opinion.
Manhood reveals their heaven to those
who deserve not to die, attempts the narrow pass,
and spurns with its soaring wings
the common crowd, the muddy ground.
Safe the recompense likewise of loyal
tact: who broadcasts the mysteries of Ceres
shall be forbidden to lie beneath
the same timbers or sail the same dinghy
as me – slighted, the Ancient of Days is apt
30
to confuse the innocent with the guilty:
though lame in one foot, Retribution
rarely abandons the Sinner’s trail.
3
Iustum et tenacem
The just man tenacious of his purpose
will not be shaken from his set resolve
by the inflamed citizenry demanding wrong,
nor by the impending face of a tyrant, nor Auster
the troubled master of the restless Adriatic,
nor the mighty hand of thundering Jove:
were the sky itself to fracture and collapse,
the wreckage would immolate him unafraid.
By such address both Pollux and roving Hercules
10
aspired to and reached the starry citadels,
reclining with whom Augustus shall
sip nectar with empurpled lips.
On account of such merit, father Bacchus,
you were conveyed by tigers bearing yokes
on untamed necks; and you, Quirinus,
with Mars’s steeds escaped from Acheron
as Juno in the Gods’ council
enounced the welcome speech: ‘Ilium, Ilium
has been reduced to dust
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by a fated, partial judge
and a foreign woman: for since Laomedon
cheated the Gods of their contracted pay
the city with its people and treacherous king
has been forfeit to me and to chaste Minerva.
The egregious guest no longer dazzles
his Spartan adulteress, nor can the perjured house
of Priam with Hector adjuvant
throw back the besieging Greeks:
the war that our vendettas prolonged
30
is now resolved. Henceforth my great wrath
is at an end. I shall restore to Mars
my hateful grandson the Trojan
priestess bore: I shall suffer him
to enter the abodes of light,
to imbibe the quickening nectar,
to be enrolled in the Gods’ calm ranks.
As long as broad ocean seethes between
Troy and Rome, let the bless’d exiles rule
wherever they will; as long as cattle trample
40
the memorials of Paris and Priam
where beasts with impunity hide
their cubs, so long may the gleaming Capitol
stand and brave Rome dictate terms
to the Medes and subject them to Triumphs:
feared far and wide, let her name extend
to ultimate borders where intervening waters
part Europe from the Moors; where Nile
by flooding irrigates the fields.
Let her be stronger by spurning at unprospected gold
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(and better so located, concealed in earth)
than by mining it out for human use
with hands that plunder all things sacred.
Whatever limit bounds the world
may her forces reach it, eager to view
both the frenzied dancing of heat
and mists and veils of rain.
But the fate of the warlike Romans is subject
