The Complete Odes and Epodes
Page 13
to one condition: let them not,
too loyal, and confident of gain,
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wish to restore the roofs of ancestral Troy.
Should the fortunes of Ilium be reborn,
evil omens and woeful slaughter
shall come again and I, Jove’s queen
and sister, shall lead the invading hosts.
Should walls of bronze arise three times
by Phoebus’ power, thrice shall my Argives
lay them low and destroy them, thrice shall
the captive wife weep for her husband and sons.’
– But these things do not suit my cheerful lyre:
Muse, where are you bound? Cease doggedly 70
to report the debates of the Gods,
to trivialize great themes with little metres.
4
Descende caelo
Come down from heaven, Calliope, articulate
on the flute a melody long drawn out,
or with your incisive voice, if you prefer,
or upon the strings of Phoebus’ cithara.
– Do you hear her, or does an amiable
delusion mock me? I seem to hear,
and to wander through sacred groves
where soothing waters and breezes rise.
On pathless Vultur, beyond the threshold
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of my nurse Apulia, when I was exhausted
with play and oppressed with sleep,
legendary wood-doves once wove for me
new-fallen leaves, to be
a marvel to all who lodge in lofty
Acherontia’s eyrie and Bantia’s woodlands
and the rich valley farms of Forentum,
as I slept with my flesh secure
from bears and black snakes, covered
with holy laurel and gathered myrtle,
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a brave child by the Gods’ assent.
Yours, my Muses, yours, I climb
to the Sabine heights, or visit cool
Praeneste or hillside Tibur
or lucent Baiae, just as I feel inclined:
neither the broken line at Philippi,
nor that cursed tree, nor Sicilian seas
off Palinurus’ cape, have quite destroyed me,
a friend to your springs and choirs.
Whenever you go with me,
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I shall gladly attempt as sailor
the raving Bosphorus, as voyager
the scorching sands of Syrian shores;
shall visit the Britons savage to guests,
the Concanian merry on horses’ blood,
shall visit unscathed the quiver-
bearing Geloni, the Scythian stream.
It is you who refresh high Caesar
in some Pierian grotto when he seeks
to rest from his labours, and has billeted
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in the towns his campaign-weary legions.
You give calm wisdom, kindly ones,
and having given, rejoice. We know
how the mutinous Titans and their foul
horde suffered the falling thunderbolt
of him who controls still earth, the wind
swept sea, the cities, the realms of the dead,
who rules alone with equitable power
both the Gods and the throngs of mortals.
That arrogant progeny bristling with hands
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and the brothers striving to heap
Pelion on shadowy Olympus
inflicted great fear on Jove.
But what could Typhoeus do, or powerful Mimas,
what Porphyrion, for all his menacing posture,
what Rhoetus, or Enceladus,
brave hurler of tree-trunks uprooted,
by charging against the resounding shield
of Minerva? Here stood avid
Vulcan, here matronly Juno and he
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who shall never leave bow from shoulder
and washes his waving hair in pure
Castalian dew, who keeps his native woods
and the Lycian thickets,
Patara’s and Delos’ Apollo.
Force without polity falls by its weight:
force directed the Gods themselves
make greater – but force that cogitates
in its heart fell sin, they loathe.
(Hundred-handed Gyas be witness
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to my maxims, and Orion the known
assailant of chaste Diana,
but tamed by the virgin’s arrows.)
Heaped on her monsters, Earth mourns
and laments the offspring the thunderbolt sent
to ashen Orcus; nor has the quick
fire eaten through Aetna superimposed;
nor does the vulture (set to guard
his iniquity) relinquish the liver
of immoderate Tityos; and three hundred chains
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hold fast the amorous Pirithous.
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Caelo tonantem
His thunder confirms our belief that Jove
is lord of heaven; Augustus shall be held
an earthly God for adding to the Empire
the Britons and redoubtable Parthians.
Did Crassus’ troops live in scandalous
marriage to barbarians (o Senate,
and custom perverted), grow old
bearing arms for alien fathers-in-law;
did Marsians, Apulians, under a Parthian
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king, forget the sacred shields,
the name, the toga, and immortal Vesta;
while Jove and his city Rome were unharmed?
The provident mind of Regulus was ware
of this when he rejected shameful terms,
extrapolating catastrophe in time
to come from such a precedent
unless the captured youths should
perish unpitied. ‘I myself have seen
our standards affixed to Punic shrines,’
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he said, ‘with the weapons wrested
from our soldiers and no blood spilt; I myself
have seen the arms of free men, citizens,
twisted back, the gates of Carthage open,
the fields we ravaged worked again.
Ransomed with gold our cohorts will, of course,
re-form with heightened morale… To shame
you add expense. The wool that’s treated with dye
will never resume the colours it lost;
nor does manhood, once it has lapsed,
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consent to lodge in less than men.
When the doe disentangled from close-
meshed nets puts up a fight, then will he
be brave who entrusted himself to treacherous foes;
and he will trample Carthage in another war
who has tamely felt the thongs
on his pinioned arms, and dreaded death.
Not knowing whence he draws his life, he
has confounded peace and war. Obscene!
O mighty Carthage, more sublime
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by Rome’s opprobrious downfall!’
They say that like an outlaw
he put aside his chaste wife’s kiss
and little children and sternly lowered
his manly gaze to the ground,
hoping to steady the vacillating Senate
by counsel never given before,
and hurried out among his grieving
friends an unexampled exile.
He knew very well what the alien
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torturers proposed. Nevertheless,
he parted the kinsmen blocking his path
and the crowd delaying his going,
as though, some tedious law-suit settled,
he were leaving his clients’ affairs
in order to travel amid Venafran fields
/> or perhaps to Spartan Tarentum.
6
Delicta maiorum
Though innocent you shall atone for the crimes
of your fathers, Roman, until you have restored
the temples and crumbling shrines of the Gods
and their statues grimy with smoke.
Acknowledge the rule of the Gods – and rule:
hence all things begin, to this ascribe the outcome.
Contemned, the Gods have visited many
evils on grieving Hesperia.
Already twice Monaeses and Pacorus’ band
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have crushed our ill-starred offensive
and preen themselves on having added
Roman spoils to their paltry gauds.
Our city busied with sedition has almost
suffered destruction by Egypt allied to Dacia,
the former renowned for her fleet, the latter
rather for hurtling arrows.
Teeming with sin, the times have sullied
first marriage, our children, our homes:
sprung from that source disaster has whelmed
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our fatherland and our people.
The grown girl loves to be taught to be
artful and dance oriental dances,
obsessed to her dainty fingernails
with illicit amours.
She sniffs out young philand’rers at her
husband’s feast, nor is she nice to choose
to whom she (hurriedly) grants her favours
when the lamps are removed,
but brazenly stands when called – with her
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husband’s assent – though some travelling
salesman or Spanish ship’s captain
may be the agent of Shame.
The generation that dyed the Punic
sea with blood and laid low Pyrrhus,
Antiochus and Hannibal was not born
of parents such as these,
but of manly comrades, yeoman soldiers
taught to turn the soil with Sabine hoes
and carry cut firewood at a strict
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mother’s bidding when the Sun
advanced the shadows of the hills
and lifted the yokes from weary steers
his departing chariot leading in
the hours of comfort.
What does corrupting time not diminish?
Our grandparents brought forth feebler heirs;
we are further degenerate; and soon will beget
progeny yet more wicked.
7
Quid fles, Asterie
Asterie, why are you crying? At the first
bright hint of spring the west wind will
bring back to you, rich with Bithynian
merchandise, your young and faithful
Gyges. Driven to Oricus by the east
wind and the Goat’s insensate stars,
he passes the chilly nights waking
and weeps a myriad tears.
His fluttered hostess’ maid
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telling how sad Chloe sighs
(alight with fires like yours),
tricksily tempts him a thousand ways.
She tells him how his wicked wife
by bearing false witness egged on
the gullible Proetus to plot an untimely death
for the too honest Bellerophon;
she speaks of Peleus, all but given over
to Tartarus for his abstinent flight
from Hippolyte; and subtly cites other
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stories to teach him sin.
In vain: for deafer than Icarus’ cliffs
as yet he resists her temptations. But you
must beware lest Enipeus your neighbour
attract you more than he should
(I grant you no one else is so conspicuously good
at managing a horse on the Field of Mars,
and nobody swims as fast
as he can downstream in the Tiber).
Close up your house at dusk and don’t
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peep out when you hear in the street
his cooing flute: and though he keeps calling
you hard-hearted, be stubborn.
8
Martiis caelebs
You wonder what I, a bachelor, am about
on the Kalends of March; what is the meaning of
these flowers, this box of incense, these coals
placed on fresh turf –
you, so versed in Greek and Latin customs? Well,
when I was nearly killed by that falling tree
I vowed to Bacchus a tasty dinner
with a white goat.
Each year when this day comes round
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I’ll draw the well-sealed pitchy cork
from ajar put up to bask in smoke when
Tullus was consul.
So drink a hundred toasts, Maecenas,
to your friend’s escape and let the lamps
burn on till dawn. Keep well away, all
clamour and anger.
Let go your concern for the City.
Dacian Cotiso’s column is crushed.
The perilous Parthians pitiably
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fight each other.
Our old friend the Cantabrian Spaniard
is tamed at last, a captive, in chains. Even
the Scythian, his bow unstrung, is considering
flight from his plains.
Relax, be private, don’t worry too much
about whether the people are suffering at all:
be glad to accept the here and now, and don’t
be serious.
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Donec gratus eram
‘When I was dear to you
and no more favoured rival put his arms
about your snowy neck,
I flourished then as bless’d as Persia’s king.’
‘When you burned for no one
more than for me and Lydia came before Chloe,
Lydia’s reputation
flourished as bright as Roman Ilia’s name.’
‘But Thracian Chloe rules
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me now (a clever lyrist and skilled in seduct–
ive modes), for whom I would
not fear to die if the Fates would let her live.’
‘But Thurian Calais
kindles me now with a torch of mutual love,
for whom I would die twice
if the Fates would agree to let my love live.’
‘What if our love should come
again and Venus yoke her strays with bronze,
blonde Chloe be jilted,
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