by Horace
the door thrown open for disregarded Lydia?’
‘Though he is as fair as a star
and you are as light as cork and bad-tempered
as the Adriatic, I’d love
to live with you, with you would gladly die.’
10
Extremum Tanain
If you drank from the distant Don, Lyce,
a savage’s squaw, you would weep for me
stretched out in the bitter north wind
before your hut.
You hear the creak of your gate, the groan
of the trees in your villa’s elegant court
as Jupiter’s pure divinity freezes
the fallen snow?
Resign to Venus your graceless pride
10
lest the rope fall back from the whirling wheel.
No Tuscan fathered a girl as Penelope-
frigid as you.
Though neither presents nor prayers
nor lovers’ faces violet pale
nor husband hurt by a Pierian whore
can sway you, spare
us suitors, o harder than oak
and softer than Moorish snakes.
I will not always tolerate sky, and
20
rain, and doorstep.
11
Mercuri – nam te
Mercury, by whose magisterial teaching
Amphion’s music moved the rocks;
and Tortoise-Shell skilled to resound
to your seven strings,
once neither fluent nor liked, but now a friend
at rich men’s tables and in the temples:
now sound the tones to which Lyde must lend
her obstinate ear
(who like a three-year filly disports
10
herself on the open sward and shrinks from touch,
a stranger to marriage, as yet not ripe for
an eager husband).
You have power to draw the tigers and woods
in your train, and stay the rushing brooks;
hell’s janitor Cerberus succumbed
to your enchantment,
though a hundred snakes defend
his raving heads, and foul breath
and bloody slaver flow
20
from his triple maw.
Why, even Ixion and Tityos were forced
to smile; and the urn stood briefly dry
as you soothed with your pleasant song
Danaus’ daughters.
Let Lyde hear of those virgins’ sin
and punishment, the liquid disappearing
through the base of the empty jar,
the long-deferred fate
that awaits the guilty under Orcus.
30
Those monsters – what worse could they do? –
those monstrous women put down their
husbands with cold steel.
Just one of the many, a virgin
noble for ever, honoured the marriage torch
and was shiningly false to
her perjured father.
‘Get up!’ she said to her youthful husband,
‘get up! lest a long sleep come from where
you least suspect: frustrate my father
40
and wicked sisters –
alas! like a lioness making her kill,
each rends her own young bull: but I,
more gentle than them, will neither strike
nor imprison you.
Let my father load me with cruel chains,
since I pity and spare my ill-used husband:
let him ship me to exile in the farthest parts
of Numidia.
Go! wherever your feet and the breezes take you,
50
while Night and Venus assent. Go! while the signs
are propitious, and carve on my tomb a sad
commemoration.’
12
Miserarum est
Frustrated women may neither give love play nor bathe
their cares in wine or else, dispirited, they fear
the lash of Uncle’s tongue.
Neobule, Venus’s aerial boy upsets your wool,
your loom, your pious devotions to busy Minerva,
the moment the brightness
that is Hebrus has bathed in Tiber his oiled shoulders –
a finer horseman he than Bellerophon himself;
fist and foot, unbeaten;
10
canny to spear the stags stampeding in panicked herds
along the Campagna; and quick to intercept the boar
routing in thickset brakes.
13
O fons Bandusiae
Bandusian spring, more brilliant than glass,
worthy of flowers and classic wine,
tomorrow shall bring you a little goat
whose forehead bumpy with budding
horns prognosticates love and war –
in vain: the kidling of wanton herds
shall dye with his scarlet blood
your icy streams.
The terrible scorching Dog-Days cannot touch
10
the grateful chill you dispense
to roaming flocks and oxen
fatigued with the ploughshare.
You now shall become a famous spring
through my words for your dell in the rocks,
the ilex superimposed and
loquacious streams leaping down.
14
Herculis ritu
Herculean Caesar, o people, who lately was said
to be earning the bays whose price is death,
returns once more to his household Gods
as victor, from Spain.
Rejoicing in her paragon, sacrifice made
to the just Gods, let his consort come forward;
and our glittering premier’s sister; and decked with
suppliant head-bands,
the mothers of youths and virgins
10
recently spared. You boys and still
unmarried girls, refrain from
words of ill omen.
This day of days is festal indeed for me
and takes away black cares; I will fear
no insurrection nor violent death while
Caesar keeps the world.
Go, find perfume boy, and garlands,
and ajar that remembers the Marsian troubles
(if any sherd has somehow evaded
20
Spartacus’ roving).
Bid witty Neaera make haste
to put up her hair and scent it with myrrh.
If that evil, grumbling janitor causes
delay, ignore him.
My greying hair remits a litigious spirit
once eagerly looking for violent trouble:
I’d not have borne this in my fiery youth, when
Plancus was consul.
15
Uxor pauperis Ibyci
Impoverished Ibycus’ wife,
keep within bounds your turpitudes
and egregious doings:
ripening for interment, desist from
playing the fool among maidens
and casting a cloud across brilliant stars.
What suits Pholoe, Chloris,
does not quite suit you – fitter your daughter
storm the homes of gallants,
10
a bacchante aroused by pulsing drums:
love of Nothus makes her
cavort like a nannygoat in season.
Fleeces shorn near Luceria,
not citharas or the crimson bloom
of the rose or wine-jars
drunk to the dregs, become you, old.
16
Inclusam Danaen
Brazen tower and oaken doors
and a surly watch of vigilant dogs
would have secured imprisoned Danae from
nocturnal
lechers
had Jove and Venus not mocked Acrisius,
the virgin’s agitated guard: they knew
the way would be clear and safe when the
God had cashed himself.
Gold loves to make its way through the midst
10
of attendants and break through rock, more potent
than thunderbolt’s blow. For lucre the house of the
Argive prophet fell
and sank in ruin; by bribes the Macedonian
split the gates of cities and undermined
all rival kings; percentages have ensnared
fierce captains of ships.
Accumulating money creates the greed
for more. I was right to shrink from raising
my head to conspicuousness, Maecenas, you
20
flower of knighthood.
The more a man denies himself, the more
he will get from the Gods: a deserter, I long to leave
the moneyed side, and seek the camp of those
desiring nothing.
I am more the master of the wealth I spurn
than if, still poor amid my riches, I had
in my barns the produce of all that the busy
Apulians plough.
A brook of pure water, few acres of timber,
30
and confident hope of harvest: my lot
is more bless’d than that of fertile
Africa’s bright lord.
Though Calabrian bees bring me no honey,
no wine matures for me in Laestrygonian
jars, no dense fleeces are growing for me
in Gallic pastures:
yet irksome poverty does not come near,
nor if I wanted more would you refuse it.
By scanting my desires I shall the better
40
augment my income
than by adding Alyattes’ to Mygdon’s realm,
the two to be contiguous. Who seeks much
lacks much. Bless’d is he to whom the Gods have
given just enough.
17
Aeli vetusto
Aelius, noble sprig of legendary Lamus
from whom, men say, the bygone Lamiae
and the line of their descendants took
their name through all recorded time;
you draw your blood from that founder,
that extensive tyrant said to have been
the first who held the walls of Formiae
and the Liris where it floods the Goddess
Marica’s shores. Tomorrow, unless the ancient
10
crow, prophet of rain, deceive us, a tempest
unleashed from the east shall strew the grove
with multitudinous leaves, the shore
with useless seaweed. Pile up dry wood
while you can: tomorrow, the tasks of your slaves
remitted, you shall comfort your soul
with unmixed wine and a piglet two months old.
18
Faune, Nympharum
Faunus, lover of fugitive Nymphs,
gentle may you cross my bounds and sunny
meadows and bless the young of the flocks
before you move on:
then at the full year’s turn a kid shall fall
to you, largesse of wine shall brim the bowl
that’s Venus’ friend, and the ancient altar
smoke with much incense.
The whole flock plays on the grassy plain
10
when the Nones of December come round;
in the fields the parish and its idle cattle
make their holiday;
the wolf now roams among fearless lambs;
for you the wild-wood sheds its leaves;
and the ditch-digger loves to tread his opponent
earth in three-four time.
19
Quantum distet
You relate how far removed in time
from Inachus was Codrus not afraid to die
for his country; the genealogy of
Aeacus; and the war that was waged at sacred Troy:
but as to the price of a jar of Chian;
or who will light the fire to heat the water; and when
and in whose house I may shut out
the Paelignian cold; you have nothing to say.
Boy, make haste. Here’s to the moon!
10
Here’s to midnight! Here’s to Murena’s augurship!
In our bowls plain water is mixed
with three or nine stoups of wine according to taste.
In a fine frenzy and in love
with the Muses’ odd number, the poet asks for nine
full stoups: fearing a fracas,
hand in hand with her naked sisters, Gratia
prohibits a drop more than three.
It is good to run mad. But why has the piercing
Berecyntian flute stopped playing?
20
Why do the pipe and lyre hang silent on the wall?
I hate hands that hold
back. Scatter the roses. Make jealous Lycus
hear our mind-blown din – and
his fair neighbour (she’s too good for doddering Lycus).
Ripe Rhode seeks you,
Telephus (with your gleaming mass of hair
you are bright as the evening star):
slow fires of my love for Glycera scorify me.
20
Non vides quanto
Do you not see, Pyrrhus, at what grave personal risk
you touch the cub of this North African lion
ess? Soon, a cowardly thief, you will
shun a hard fight
when, seeking her glamorous Nearchus,
she goes through the crowd of obstructive youths.
A heroic duel must decide which one of you two
shall have the prey.
Meanwhile, as you count swift arrows out
10
and she makes sharp her appalling teeth,
the referee (and prize) of the match is said to
trample the palm
with his naked feet and cool in the gentle breeze
his shoulders overspread with perfumed locks –
just like Nireus or the boy shanghai’d from
many-springed Ida.
21
O nata mecum
O faithful jar that was born
like me when Manlius was consul,
whether you bring complaints, or jokes,
or insensate quarrels and love, or easy sleep,
for whatever end was gathered the Massic
you keep, fit to be served on some
auspicious day, come down, since Corvinus
