by Horace
Pleased with her cruel dealings, resolved
50
to play her high-handed game, Fortune
shuffles her doubtful benefits
benign now to me, but now to some other.
I praise her as long as she stays: if she spreads
her swift wings, I renounce her gifts
and clad in my manhood pay court to honest
Poverty, though she brings no dowry.
It is not my way, when the mast is groaning
with southerly squalls, to rush
into craven prayer and bargain with vows
60
in case my Cyprian and Tyrian wares
should add to the wealth of the gaping sea:
then Pollux, his twin, and the breeze
shall bring me safe in my two-oared dinghy
through this Aegean tumult.
30
Exegi monumentum
I have achieved a monument more lasting
than bronze, and loftier than the pyramids of kings,
which neither gnawing rain nor blustering wind
may destroy nor innumerable series of ears
nor the passage of ages. I shall not wholly die,
a large part of me will escape Libitina:
while Pontiff and Vestal shall climb the Capitol Hill,
I shall be renewed and flourish in further praise.
Where churning Aufidus resounds, where Daunus
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poor in water governed his rustic people,
I shall be spoken of as one who was princely
though of humble birth, the first to have brought
Greek song into Latin numbers. Take hard-won pride
in your success, Melpomene, and willingly
wreathe my hair with Apollo’s laurel.
CENTENNIAL HYMN
Phoebe silvarumque
Phoebus, bright glory of heaven,
Diana, queen of the forests, o worshipped
and ever to be so, grant what we pray
at this sacred time
when the Sibyl’s verses have ordered
chosen virgins and virtuous boys
to sing a hymn to the Gods who
love the Seven Hills.
Kind Sun, who in your shining chariot reveal
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and then conceal the day, reborn another and yet
the same, may you view nothing greater than
the City of Rome.
Ilithyia, gently bringing on birth
at the proper time, whether you more approve
the name Lucina or Genitalis,
protect our mothers.
Goddess, rear our young and prosper
the Senate’s edicts on wedlock, that the new
law on the marriage of women produce
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abundant children,
and the sure cycle of eleven decades
bring round once more the singing and games
thronged thrice by broad day and thrice
in the pleasant night.
And you veracious Fates, may the outcome
of events confirm what has been pronounced,
and link our happy destinies with those
already performed.
Let the earth, so fertile in crops and cattle,
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deck Ceres with a wheaten wreath:
may the wholesome breezes and rains of Jove
sustain the new-born.
Calm and peaceful, your bow laid aside,
Apollo, hear our suppliant boys;
and Luna, twin-horned queen of
the stars, hear our girls.
If Rome is your work and from Ilium
the bands that gained the Tuscan shore (the remnant
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commanded to change their homes and city in an
auspicious process,
for whom righteous Aeneas, his country’s survivor,
unharmed through burning Troy secured
the way to freedom, destined to provide more
than was left behind),
Gods! give proven morals to our ductile youth,
Gods! give rest to our sober elders,
give profit, progeny and every honour
to Romulus’ race.
Whatever he of Anchises’ and Venus’ pure blood
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(a warrior heretofore, now lenient to the fallen
foe) entreats of you with white bulls,
grant him his prayers.
Now the Parthian fears the Alban axes,
the forces mighty by sea and land;
now Scythians and Indians, lately so proud,
await our answer.
Now Faith, and Peace, and Honour,
and pristine Modesty, and Manhood neglected,
dare to return, and blesséd Plenty appears
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with her laden horn.
Phoebus, adorned with his shining bow,
a prophet, companion of the nine Muses,
who with his healing art relieves the
body’s weary limbs,
if he looks with favour on the Palatine altars,
prolongs the Roman State and Latium’s
affluence through cycles ever new and
ages ever better.
Diana, who keeps the Aventine
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and Algidus, heeds the prayers of
the Fifteen Men and lends a friendly ear
to the children’s vows.
The chorus trained to sing the praises
of Phoebus and Diana, we carry home the good
and steadfast hope that Jove and all the Gods
approve these wishes.
ODES
BOOK IV
1
Intermissa, Venus
Then is it war again, Venus,
after so long a truce? Mercy, mercy, please.
I am not as I was in the reign
of my dear Cinara. Desist, fierce mother
of pretty Cupids;
do not bend my inflexible five decades
to your tender command; go away –
attend to the fluent prayers of younger men.
Carousal would be
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more timely in Paulus Maximus’ house:
take your silver swans to him
if you seek a suitable liver to inflame.
Both high-born and handsome,
not silent on behalf of the anxious defendant,
this youth has a hundred arts
to advance your standards far and wide:
and when he has mocked
and surpassed some rival’s lavish gifts,
Paulus will erect your statue
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under citrus beams by the Alban lake.
There you shall snuff
much incense; and a choir concerted with lyres
and Berecyntian flutes,
and recorders too, shall strive to attract you:
there twice a day youths
and tender girls praising your godhead
shall pace with gleaming feet
in the triple step of the Salian dance.
But me – neither woman, boy,
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nor credulous hope of sharing souls,
nor contests in wine,
nor garlands about my hair, can move me now.
Then why, my Ligurinus, why
these unaccustomed tears on my cheeks?
-Why does my eloquent tongue
ineptly fall silent among the words?
Each night in my dreams
I hold you captive, or else pursue
your obdurate flight
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across the Field of Mars, through swirling water.
2
Pindarum quisquis
Whoever attempts to emulate Pindar, Julus,
depends from wings that are fastened with wax
by Daedalian art and shall give his name
to some glassy sea.
As a river swollen by the rains above its usual
banks rushes down from the mountain,
so does Pindar surge and his deep
voice rushes on,
commanding the prize of Apollo’s bays
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whether he rolls new words along in audacious
dithyrambs and is carried by numbers
freed from convention;
or tells of Gods or kings of the blood
of Gods, through whom the Centaurs in just
execution died, and died the fire of
the daunting Chimaera;
whether he speaks of those boxers
and charioteers whom Elean palms bring
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God-like home (an honour more signal than
a hundred statues);
or laments the young hero torn from his
weeping bride, and extols to the stars (and grudges
to Orcus’ darkness) his strength, his spirit,
his golden virtue.
A mighty wind lifts the swan of Dirce,
Antonius, whenever he strives for some high tract
of clouds; but I, very much in the manner
of a Matine bee
laboriously harvesting thyme
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from numerous groves and the banks of many–
streamed Tibur, inconspicuously accrete
my intricate verses.
A maker of larger mettle, you shall celebrate
Caesar deservèdly, fittingly wreathed,
dragging the wild Sygambri along
the Sacred Way;
than whom the Fates and good Gods have given
and shall give the world nothing greater or better,
40
though time itself ran back to the
pristine age of gold.
You shall celebrate festive days
and the City’s games that mark the return
of brave Augustus and the Forum free
from litigation.
And then, if I can tell something worth
the hearing, the better part of my voice shall join
and bless’d in Caesar I’ll sing: ‘O beauteous day,
o worthy of praise!’
And as you take the lead, the State entire
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shall cry ‘Hail Triumph!’ and again ‘Hail Triumph!’
And plenteous incense shall be offered up
to the kindly Gods.
Ten bulls and as many cows shall acquit
your vow: a tender calf mine,
which has left its mother and attained its youth
amid lush pastures,
its brow resembling the crescent curve
of the new moon at its third rising,
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snowy white where it bears that mark,
all else pure ochre.
3
Quem tu, Melpomene
He whom once you, Melpomene,
have looked on at his birth with peaceful eyes,
shall not by Isthmian strife
become a famous boxer, and no impetuous stallion
shall draw him to victory in
his Achaean chariot, nor shall martial deeds
display him to the Capitol,
an officer decked with a Delian wreath, for crushing
the vengeful threats of kings;
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but the waters that flow past fertile Tibur
and the groves’ dense manes
shall build him a reputation for Aeolian song.
The children of Rome, the queen
of cities, consider me worthy to rank among
the choir of the poets whom
they love, and already envy’s teeth bite less.
Pierian virgin who governs
the golden tones of the tortoise-shell lyre,
you that could give, should
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you want, the voices of swans to dumb fish,
this is the sum of your gifts:
that I am pointed out by passers-by as an adept
of the Roman lyre; and if
I please, I please because inspired by you.
4
Qualem ministrum
As the winged bearer of lightning,
to whom the king of the Gods granted sway
over the birds of the air, having found him loyal
in the case of longhaired Ganymede;
whom, ignorant of difficulties, youth
and hereditary liveliness thrust
from the eyrie; whom, fearful,
rain-clouds removed, the vernal gales
teach unaccustomed efforts; who soon
plummets down in joyous attack on the
sheep-fold; whose love of feasting and fighting
drives him down against struggling snakes:
as a lion just weaned from his tawny
mother’s rich milk, by whose
young teeth shall perish
a she-goat intent on rich pasture:
such was Drusus when the Vindelici saw
his advance beneath the Rhaetian Alps.
(Whence was derived the custom
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that for all time has equipped them with
the Amazonian axe, I have omitted to inquire,
nor is it good to know all.) Their long
and widely victorious hordes
were defeated by that young tactician;
were made to feel what intellect, what inborn talent
correctly raised beneath an auspicious roof,
could do, and Augustus’ paternal purpose
toward the youthful Neros.
Brave men are born to the brave and good;
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their fathers’ sternness appears in bulls
and stallions; fierce eagles
beget no pacific doves.
But nurture increases native powers, development
of righteousness strengthens the heart:
whenever character has been unmade,
weakness has dirtied things born sound.
What you owe to the Neros, Rome,
witness the river Metaurus and Hasdrubal
overthrown and the fair day
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darkness was driven from Latium –
the first to smile with victory’s reward
since the dire Carthaginian rode
through Italy’s towns like fire through pines
or Eurus across the Sicilian waves.
Thereafter the youth of Rome grew strong
(its efforts ever successful) and set upright
its Gods in the shrines laid waste
by sacrilegious devastation.